attn: arizona voters and music fans across the lands ...

for an example of someone not playing indian, not masquerading in redface, check out this July 11 story ("Titla: The audacity of inclusion") at Indian Country Today. Mary Kim Titla (San Carlos Apache) is running for the congressional District 1 seat in Arizona. If elected, Titla will be the first Native woman in Congress. You can read her inspiring story here. The Bureau of Brady Braves encourages all brady bravers to check out www.gomarykim.com.

speaking of Titlas, another San Carlos Apache for y'all to check out is Boe Titla, a country singer-songwriter. his CD Native American Balladeer is available at cdbaby.com/cd/titlaboe. and anthropologist David Samuels, in his very impressive 2005 book Putting a Song on Top of It: Expression and Identity on the San Carlos Apache Reservation talks at length about Titla's musical expressions. the book’s title, which derives from what a young Apache said after she won a local pageant by performing Plains Sign Talk to Mariah Carey’s song “Hero,” refers to Apaches putting influences from inside and outside of their local communal spaces on top of each other. as discussed in chapter five, “Boe Titla’s Idiosyncratic Authenticity,” Titla—a self-described “Apache ballad singer and writer” whose influences include Apache relatives and country music performed by George Jones and Merle Haggard—fuses his singing of Apache-themed lyrics with his playing of country-western music.

speaking of relationships between Indigenous Peoples and country music, we look forward to reading more on the topic in the forthcoming (2010, says the publisher) Songs Out of Place: Country Musics of the World, edited by Aaron Fox and Christine Yano, from Duke University Press. hmmm ... wonder if Duke would also be interested in the intersecting stories of a lovely lady (who was bringing up three very lovely girls) and of a man named Brady (who was busy with three boys of his own), all six kids of whom would one day form--for 1 episode, ennit?--The Brady Six, that singing sensation behind the Greg Brady-penned classic tune "We can make the world a whole lot brighter." and then they met Indians in the grand canyon. THE END.