Page 14 - March 2003 • Southern California Gaming Guide

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
Two So Cal Tribes
Part of Historic
Hotel Partnership
Two Southern California Native American Tribes, the Viejas Band of the Kumeyaay Nation and the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians along with two Wisconsin Tribes, the Oneida Tribe of Indians and the Forest County Potawatomi Indians have formed a historic partnership with Washington, D.C. developers and hoteliers to break ground on March 6th on a $43 million hotel in the nation’s capitol. The thirteen-story Residence Inn by Marriott will be majority-owned by the Four Fires Corporation, formed by the four tribes. The hotel will have 233 suites, and is near the Smithsonian Institution, which will open the $220 million National Museum of the American Indian at the end of 2004. The hotel is planned for completion around the same time. The Four Fires Corporation expects to draw visitors to the new hotel from the museum’s patrons and will cater to hundreds of tribal of cials who travel to Washington, D.C. to do business. This is the rst time tribes have joined economic forces to develop an off-reservation business not related to gaming.
American Indian Celebration In San Diego
The University of San Diego will host its second AmericanIndianCelebrationApril25-27,2003with artist demonstrations, lectures, music and dance and a juried art show to rival those in Santa Fe and Phoenix.
Festival participants include artist Robert Freeman, who created the Native American seal for the state of California and Albert Smith, one of the World War II Navajo code talkers. Barton Wright,
an expert on kachinas, the spirits of the Hopi Indians, is the keynote speaker for the celebration Friday, April 25.
More than 60 of the nation’s
premiere Indian artists and crafts-
men, including Jessie Hummingbird
(whose painting is shown here) and
Kim Mamaradlo, will showcase their
pottery, jewelry, paintings, sculpture
and other works at the celebration’s marketplace Saturday and Sunday, April 26 and 27.
The celebration will take place on the University of San Diego campus, overlooking the Paci c Ocean. For more information call 619-260-4698.
Native American Voices at the
Autry Museum
Often referred to as the “Native American Neil Simon,” playwright Drew Hayden Taylor brings
“The Buz’Gem Blues,” his zany new romantic comedy to the Autry Museum as the second Native
Voices at the Autry production.
This irreverent send-up of love and courtship
combines two traditional tribal enemies in their golden years, a recently divorced Rez sister, a young student exploring her 1/64th Native heritage, and a young man calling himself “The Warrior That Never Sleeps.” Add a professor researching the contemporary mating habits of Native People, toss them all together
at a Native elders’ conference, and you have the recipe for “The Buz’Gem Blues.”
The Buz’Gem Blues is directed by Randy Rinholz. Native Voices at the Autry is collaboration between the Autry Museum and the Native Voices Theatre Company that fosters the work of Native American playwrights, actors, and directors.
The Buz’Gem blues will be performed from March 7 through March 23 on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Performances on Sundays are at 2 p.m. A series of ve- minute plays, created as part of the Young Playwrights Workshop, will precede the Sunday performances from
1 p.m. to 2 p.m. All performances take place in the Autry Museum’s Wells Fargo Theatre at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, 4700 Western Heritage Way in Los Angeles. Call 213-667-2000 for more information.
Page 14 March 2003
Tribes in the News