16 minute read
Athletics
ARTS & CULTURE
New Addition
An American Indian artist — probably Cheyenne, Plains, or Sioux — crafted this chest plate using bone, rawhide, ermine, shells, and bear claws. It was among about 100 new pieces shown at David Owsley Museum of Art this Fall that included ceramics, masks, photos, prints, sculpture, and ritual objects from around the globe.
LET THE BEAT DROP
Ball State fuels young musical talent.
BY MELISSA KRAMAN
Ball State senior Malik Brown predicts a bright musical future for two middle schoolers who participated in a new immersive learning course called The Junior Producers Club.
“I expect to hear Allie rapping on the radio, and Jayden’s beats enlivening famous pop songs. They harness this natural musical talent,” said Malik, who was among nine music media production (MMP) students leading the course, designed to give Muncie kids the chance to make and produce their own music in a professional music recording studio.
For the course, MMP students partnered with the Boys & Girls Club of Muncie at the Buley Community Center in the Whitely Neighborhood. Christoph Nils Thompson, assistant professor of Music Media Production & Industry, created and advised the class.
“It appeared to me that there was a real need for this project in the Whitely community,” said Thompson. “There are talented kids out there who deserve opportunity, and we were in the perfect position to provide that opportunity through sharing our equipment and providing educational support.”
This past summer, Thompson worked with Audio/Digital Systems Engineer Jeff Seitz, ’95 MA ’97, and two MMP students to install a recording studio and control room at Buley, complete with professional headsets, instruments, microphones, and desktop computers.
Every weekday throughout the Fall semester, rotating groups of MMP students provided middle schoolers hourly, one-on-one training on song structure, building melody and harmony, and recording techniques. The children worked toward a final product that showcased all they’d learned, in whatever creative form they chose.
Some of them wrote lyrics and recorded rap, while others played instruments to create innovative beats.
Sixth-grader Allie came into the project with zero experience but learned quickly to
MMP student Chase Carter mentors X’zavier as he learns recording software. seamlessly navigate a complex recording platform, write his own lyrics, and structure a rap song that he recorded in the studio. “I could see myself going into music production as a career,” said Allie. “I want to change rap and make it better through meaningful lyrics about life and family.
“I could also see myself in the future doing what these Ball State students are doing: mentoring kids who are going through a lot of stuff and showing them that they can do more in life.”
Thompson, who has 20 years of music engineering experience in jazz and pop, explained the symbiotic essence of the course: Just as the middle schoolers practiced and mastered new skills, so, too, did the Ball State students as they learned how to bring the wildly creative ideas of a slightly younger generation to life.
Malik Brown agreed. “Seeing the middle schoolers’ eyes light up when they learn something new or enthusiastically come to class wanting to try out something they saw in a YouTube video reminds me of where my love of music started.”
A CONCERT IN THE MAKING
PHOTOS BY BOBBY ELLIS, ’13 | TEXT BY TIM OBERMILLER
As the audience crowded into Ball State’s Sursa Performance Hall on a mild October night, expectations were high. That’s no different than any other night when the University’s School of Music ensembles perform. At this concert, featuring both the Wind Ensemble and Symphony Band, listeners expected no less than the best.
But tonight’s performance was even more special. Director of Bands Emeritus Joseph Scagnoli, ’67 MA ’67, would be joining as guest conductor. Something of a Ball State legend, Scagnoli returned to his alma mater in the 1980s, reorganizing the Ball State bands to include the Marching Band, Wind Ensemble, Symphony Band, Concert Band, and others. Soon, Ball State’s band program was known nationwide, including appearances by the marching band in three college bowls and six NFL games. That tradition continues, with bands performing at national sporting events and music conferences — and even featured live on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
Director of Bands Thomas Caneva leads the Wind Ensemble. Caroline Hand, associate director of bands, helms the Symphony Band. With the directors’ blessings, Ball State photographer Bobby Ellis documented the process, from rehearsals to performance, for this photo essay.
According to Hand, there are about 52 students in the Wind Ensemble — 30 percent of them graduate students — and 60 undergraduates in the Symphony Band. The performers represent a variety of music majors, including performance, education, music media production, and composition. The Wind Ensemble rehearses for 18 hours over four weeks to prepare for a concert; the Symphony Band rehearses 15 hours total.
“For me, the best part of working with our students is to see their overall growth from when we start a new concert cycle until we perform the concert,” said Caneva. “I find the process of the rehearsals more important than the actual concert. That’s when we are teaching, and our students grow and develop as musicians.”
Scagnoli rehearsed with the Symphony Band in the week leading up to the concert. “He’s an important part of the tradition and history of our band program, and it’s important that our students learn from his years of experience and expertise,” said Hand.
Judging from applause ringing through Sursa at the concert’s close, that tradition continues, strong and melodic as ever.
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While dress is casual, concert rehearsals can be an intense experience for both student performers and directors. At right, 1) Caroline Hand directs the Symphony Band using hands and facial expressions to convey musical meaning. 2) Director Thomas Caneva balances the strengths of his Wind Ensemble for maximum effect. He says he appreciates rehearsals for the many teaching moments they can provide.
—Stuart Ivey, conducting doctoral student
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3) Joy is evident on the face of Director of Bands Emeritus Scagnoli as he returns to the podium as a guest conductor. 4) Texas-based composer Adam Ardner, ’03, listens intently to the world premiere of his “Orange Skies,” dedicated to fellow music alumnus Arthur C. Conner, ’70 MA ’71, who died in 2019. On the Sursa stage, students in the Symphony Band (5, 6) and Wind Ensemble (7) display the cool professionalism of seasoned performers.
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the drive to discover
It’s no secret that Ball University has been the launching pad for major research initiatives. Its name appears regularly in national publications for studies that change the way our nation thinks about its greatest challenges, from health care to economics, from how we think about our past to how we prepare for our future. The following stories represent a small slice of the investigations that go on in busy classrooms and labs across the campus everyday as faculty and students combine technical skills, careful thought, rigorous study, and bold imaginations to make a lasting difference in our world.
In Ball State’s Applied Anthropology Laboratories, junior Mary Swartz of Middletown, Ohio, and graduate student Connor McCoy, ’18, of Wolcottville, Indiana, measure a musket ball discovered at the site of St. Clair’s Defeat in Fort Recovery, Ohio. A bullet’s diameter can help tell whether it was fired by U.S. forces or American Indian tribes defending their land.
By Nick Werner, ’03
The hands of sophomore anthropology student Robin Johnson of Indianapolis show through a magnifying work light inside the Applied Anthropology Laboratories as she examines a fire striker gathered from the St. Clair’s Defeat battle site. Robin is among many students working with tribal historians to develop a traveling exhibit on the battle.
Photo by Samantha Strahan
A collaboration between American Indian tribes and Ball State faculty and students brings fresh perspective to a fateful battle.
ou have to wonder if the bodies were still warm when the scapegoating began. After a three-hour battle, more than 800 U.S. officers, soldiers, and civilians were killed, their bodies piled along the banks of the Wabash River on land that belonged to American Indians. Hundreds more were wounded.
It happened on Nov. 4, 1791, at what is now Fort Recovery, Ohio, as part of the roughly 10-year Northwest Indian War.
The battlefield is just an hour’s drive east of the Ball State campus. There, an intertribal alliance of approximately 1,400 warriors led by Miami chief Mihšihkinaahkwa, also called Little Turtle, and Shawnee chief Weyapiersenwah, also known as Blue Jacket, annihilated an equally numbered force led by Maj. Gen. Arthur St. Clair.
Known variously as St. Clair’s Defeat or the Battle of the Wabash, it was considered a devastating loss to the Army.
As the blood dried, a narrative formed to explain away the rout. One report blamed a corrupt quartermaster for providing subpar supplies. Others blamed St. Clair for incompetence. Eventually, President George Washington forced the general to resign.
To better understand the battle, Christine Thompson, MA ’09, and others in Ball State’s Applied Anthropology Laboratories (AAL), conducted multiple on-site archaeological surveys and extensively reviewed contemporary journals, diaries, and maps.
Though accounts of American troops’ incompetence and corruption are valid, Thompson sees a more important factor in the outcome of the battle: the strategic, methodical fighting of the American Indians, who executed a cunning plan.
Nine tribes joined forces in the battle of St. Clair’s Defeat. The descendant tribes now number 39, and their headquarters are spread throughout nine Great Lakes and Great Plains states, from New York to Oklahoma.
St. Clair’s Defeat should be a source of immense pride for these tribal communities, said Diane Hunter, MLS ’82, a citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, which numbers about 5,500 citizens.
“It shows we were a strong people,” Hunter said. “We knew how to fight. We knew how to defend our land. And it mattered to us.”
Hunter, who lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, is the tribe’s historic preservation officer. She said that most Miami citizens are probably unaware of the battle.
“Teaching our history, in many ways, it fell away,” she said. “We were just trying to get by from day to day.”
YHistory erased AAL’s research shows that American Indian success at St. Clair’s Defeat stemmed in large part to the alliance’s battle formation. It aligned in a crescent surrounding the U.S. forces and ambushed at dawn. It was a method the American Indians had successfully used in smaller battles. Then, one by one, they used their muskets to pick off officers. Eliminating military leaders broke down the chain of command. Futile bayonet charges collapsed in disorder. Panic ensued. Soldiers abandoned the fight. Survivors retreated to Fort Jefferson, 30 miles south. Witnesses and news accounts failed to credit American Indian intellect, Thompson pointed out. Instead, they described the warriors as savage animals fighting like wild beasts. Dehumanizing them helped maintain the narrative that whites had the right to take the land because they were the superior race. “It’s the attitude that has pervaded all along toward native people in what is now the United States.” Hunter said. “We were not seen as the kind of people who could have strategically planned a battle with that kind of success.” Two years later, Gen. Anthony Wayne, Fort Wayne’s namesake, returned and built a fort at the site of the defeat and named it Fort Recovery. In 1794, Little Turtle attacked again, this time with an alliance of 2,000 men from 12 tribes. This time, American forces held, and the alliance retreated. Historians generally recognize the U.S. government victory at Fort Recovery and at the Battle of Fallen Timbers a month later as the end of the Northwest Indian War and the beginning of Indian removal from the Great Lakes states. Some Indian families assimilated into white culture. Some chose to move west. Others stayed until forcible removal began in 1830, which included the Potawatomi Trail of Death from northern Indiana to Kansas. The Miami were forcibly removed from Indiana in 1846. “It was a complicated process of trying to survive,” Nolan said. By the mid-1800s, the federal government had forcibly moved the Miami and most tribes involved in St. Clair’s Defeat. American Indian children were taken from their families and sent to boarding schools, where white teachers taught them history through the lens of Manifest Destiny, the idea that white Americans were divinely ordained to settle North America.
Photo provided by AAL
(Above) Lab student employees dig at a site in the St. Clair’s Defeat battlefield where their metal detector indicates something underground. (Right) Sophomore Robin Johnson holds a musket ball recovered on the site.
“The U.S. government tried to erase their culture,” said AAL director and senior archaeologist, Kevin Nolan.
“It broke the chain of information that had been passed down through the generations.”
A primary goal of Thompson and Nolan’s research is to help restore that chain, and they’re doing it in collaboration with the tribes themselves.
‘Why does this matter?’ Thompson, whose research interests include prehistoric archaeology as well as historic battlefields, quickly turned her focus to Fort Recovery when she joined AAL after earning her master’s in archaeology at Ball State.
Curious about how landscape features and American Indian strategy affected St. Clair’s Defeat, she and her students conducted field work that included metal detector surveys and physical excavations. scholarship. One definition is “applying knowledge for the direct benefit of external audiences.”
The tribal and Ball State scholars hope to have the exhibit finished and on the road by later this year or 2021. It will start in Ohio and then travel to American Indian museums throughout the country, where it has the potential to reach thousands of K-12 students who are members of the 39 tribes.
The very descendants of Little Turtle and Blue Jacket and the rest of the alliance will be able to learn about and be proud of this history.
“It’s humbling,” Thompson said.
Tribal input will make the exhibit more accurate and more relevant to the target audience. It also will provide personal context to the archaeological research.
Only one-quarter of the “New View” exhibit will focus on the battle. The rest will talk about the lead-up, the aftermath, and the persistence of tribes and tribal identity. Tribal input helps answer, “Why does this matter today?”
Hunter, who is a humanities scholar for the project, said she appreciates that “New View” is a chance to shine the light on native people living today, not just in the past.
The Ball State team did an initial design for the exhibit and organized three meetings, in Oklahoma and Ohio, with tribal nations to exchange ideas and information to co-create the exhibit design.
Sophomore Robin Johnson, an anthropology major from Indianapolis, has combed through diaries and documents to develop content for the exhibit.
“It’s important to hear from everyone involved,” she said. “If we only hear from one side, your perspective is skewed. We have to hear the side of the Native Americans.”
“A New View” won’t end when the traveling exhibit does. Researchers have amassed so much information that they want it to continue to live on, probably reformatted for new purposes. One possibility is to work with the states of Ohio and Oklahoma to improve classroom materials and curricula.
Many tribal members from Indiana ended up in Oklahoma, and their descendants still live there today. That state’s K-12 history curriculum doesn’t give much detail about how all these tribes ended up in Oklahoma or what their lives were like when they lived in Ohio and Indiana territories, according to Nolan.
“There are all kinds of ideas,” Thompson said. “That’s for all of us to decide. It’s almost endless.”
One thing is for sure. No matter where the content ends up, Mihšihkinaahkwa and Weyapiersenwah will be seen in a brand-new light.
The project was a partnership with the Fort Recovery Historical Society and the community of Fort Recovery, with National Endowment for the Humanities funding.
But it has evolved into much more than discovering artifacts and fine-tuning history. AAL’s research won’t just live inside the walls of academia and on the pages of peer-reviewed journals.
“The end product will be a traveling exhibit and presentations created with tribal communities for tribal communities,” Thompson said.
A multidisciplinary team of Ball State students, staff, and faculty from the anthropology and architecture programs, with American Indian humanities scholars and consultants, are designing the exhibit. It will be called, “St. Clair’s Defeat Revisited: A New View of the Conflict.”
By engaging communities, Thompson and Nolan are following a new model of research called community-engaged
Laboratories embrace student focus
Since it opened in 1978, Ball State’s Ball State’s Applied Anthropology Laboratories (AAL) has provided a range of cultural resource management and research services, including field surveys, excavations, analysis, and curation.
Partners include consulting engineers, private developers, small towns and large cities, state and federal agencies, schools, and historical societies, as well as tribal communities.
In 2009, AAL shifted how it operates to focus on studentcentered, hands-on training in archaeology and heritage management. The shift has also resulted in a significant increase in grant funding to support new student learning opportunities and paid student employment in the field. Since 2011, the lab has been awarded and successfully managed more than $2.3 million in external grant funding.
Fort Recovery, Ohio, is an easy day trip from Indianapolis, Muncie, and Fort Wayne. There you can visit a state museum, open seasonally, and take part in a walking tour developed in partnership with Ball State. You can also experience the tour through an interactive story map at fortrecoverymuseum.com.
