During this episode, we’ll hear tips and tricks for keeping family heirlooms safe, take a ride on an exciting new piece of equipment for CPN’s industrial park, and visit an exhibit highlighting Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
Caring for family heirlooms
As Tribal members, we all have art pieces and family heirlooms we love and hope to preserve for future generations – including pottery pieces, photos, regalia, documents, beaded jewelry and much, much more. However, we may not always have the knowledge to best take care of these items. Hownikan reporter Mary Leaver spoke with the collections manager at the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center, Peter Kavourgias, to get some insight on how to start to take care of your precious possessions now.
“Peter wanted to stress that our traditional practices, whatever we’ve been taught, as far as taking care of our heirlooms and our regalia, those methods are all valid and highly valuable,” Leaver said.
Find out more about the Cultural Heritage Center and view its archives, read history and take a virtual tour of the museum at potawatomiheritage.com.
New train to bring opportunities to Iron Horse
Transload Facility Manager Randy Story can recall all the names given to the big machinery purchased for Citizen Potawatomi Nation’s Iron Horse Industrial Park throughout the last decade. Earlier this year, Iron Horse added another piece of equipment essential to the operation of the industrial park — A train to help move product from truck to rail and around the facility.
Director of Economic Development Dr. Jim Collard said the purchasing and refurbishing a train has been in the works for years, and now that it’s here, all of the effort has paid off.
“There are certain things you need to have available in order to be an industrial park. When you have rail, trans-loading is a natural addition to that,” Dr. Collard said.
“No question, it’s already increased our marketing ability for the park by providing services that most of the customers need.”
Check out Iron Horse Industrial Park on LinkedIn and at ironhorsecpn.com.
House of Hope hosts Sexual Assault Awareness Month exhibition
Victims of sexual violence often hear that their clothing somehow caused the assault. They get asked, “What were you wearing?” or “What did you expect was going to happen?” Citizen Potawatomi Nation’s House of Hope partnered with Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Oklahoma, to stage an exhibition titled What Were You Wearing? in an effort to change public perspective. CPN House of Hope Domestic Violence Prevention specialist Kayla Woody decided to take a different approach this year when recognizing Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
The House of Hope worked with OBU’s Normalize.No sexual assault awareness group to gather survivor submissions from around the greater Shawnee, Oklahoma, community that described what they were wearing during the assault. Both organizations then put together clothing donated by Cinderella’s Consignment of Shawnee and displayed the outfits on mannequins, recreating the submissions. Woody said these types of visualizations “grab your attention.”
“I feel like this is a really good way to visualize what’s going on with sexual violence because this is a really taboo topic, and sexual violence is something that is hard to take in,” she said. “This is a safe way to really express what’s happening, and I feel (it’s) a safe way for survivors to use their voice because speaking out when you’ve experienced something like sexual violence is such a healing thing.”
If you or someone you know is experiencing stalking, intimate partner violence, and/or sexual assault and would like more information, please contact the House of Hope at 405-275-3176 or visit them on Facebook.
Hownikan Podcast is produced and distributed by Citizen Potawatomi Nation’s Public Information Department. Subscribe to Hownikan Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud and wherever you find your favorite shows. Find digital editions of the Tribal newspaper here.