Culture

From Leo Adam Biga: Depending on your point of view, Omaha has the infamy or distinction of twice being a microcosm on screen for systemic racism. Two documentaries made here more than half a century apart, the Academy Award-nominated A Time for Burning (1967) and the acclaimed Out of Omaha (2018), reveal hard truths about racial disparity still rarely seen in American cinema. Now, for the first time publicly, the films are being screened as a double feature Feb. 4 - 10 at Aksarben Cinema in the city that birthed them.

The streetcar would run from 10th Street as far west as 42nd Street and from Harney to Farnam Streets, with a northern extension to CHI Health Center Omaha.

As fighters went through their paces one recent night at B&B Sports Academy, its co-owner, world welterweight boxing champion Terence “Bud” Crawford, got right in the mix, interacting with pros and amateurs alike. He coached boxers at the North Omaha gym, teased them, cajoled them, encouraged them.

Flatwater Free Press - Nebraska homesteaders were poor and poorer, Catholic and Protestant. And almost uniformly white. Except for the homesteaders who settled in a place called Dewitty, near present day Valentine.

These homesteaders were Black. Some came from the South, lured by the promise of the 1904 Kinkaid Act – a kind of second version of the Homestead Act – that promised 640 acres of free land in the Nebraska Sandhills. Some came from Canada, where they had escaped to decades earlier. And some moved from Overton, near Kearney.

NOISEmaker Leo Adam Biga sat down with new Creighton University athletic director Marcus Blossom.

Representation matters more than ever and while CU actually has a better track record of diversity in its coaching-admin ranks compared to fellow instate Division I schools UNL and UNO, it remains a very white institution in a very white city. That reality carries extra baggage in this era since CU borders African American, Native American and Latino communities whose populations are scarcely represented on campus.

There’s no telling what difference Blossom’s presence will make in building bridges and breaking barriers.

In front of a Girls Inc. crowd last month Jemison said, "I was so grounded in space" meaning outer space and then went on to tell her story to the audience. Dr. Mae Jemison, the first woman of color to become an astronaut, encouraged the young women in the audience to pursue their ambitions, no matter how far it took them.

As a young African American girl, Jemison was told by the world around her that she would never achieve her dreams. Yet, Jemison pursued her passions.

“There is a quote from John Trudell, an AIM activist saying we are older than the concept of Indigenous or Native, we’re just human beings, “ says Nathaniel Ruleaux, artist and member of the Oglala Lakota Nation. He says that antiquated practices acted out in Hollywood and Art such as “Painting us like savages…and the Washington football team’s old name” lead to “incorrect and stereotypical representation of Native People.” We need to do better, he says.

On a warm September afternoon, NOISE culture writer, Michaela Wolf sat down with artist and founder of Unceded Artist Collective, Nathaniel Ruleaux on the land of the Umónhon and the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ. Like the name of the collective, this land is known as “Unceded” as it belonged to Indigenous Peoples and was never surrendered nor legally given to the U.S. Government. Ruleaux has pieces on display in the upcoming Native Pop-Art Show put on by the Willa Cather Foundation, 49 Minutes of Fame: An Exhibition of Native Pop-Art. Wolf and Ruleaux spoke about his work as well as his disciplined working process he shared on social media during the early days of the pandemic.