Category Archives: history

Inside New Orleans’ House of Dance and Feathers

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Tucked away in the Lower Ninth Ward, just blocks from where the levee broke, is a unique museum, even for New Orleans. Located in a building in the back of 1317 Tupelo Street is the House of Dance & Feathers — a rough-and-tumble museum dedicated to the Mardi Gras Indian tribes. Founded by Ronald Lewis, the head of the Choctaws, the museum is full of feathered headdresses, intricately beaded chest plates, glittery costumes and, in the corner, a case of water worn shoes, that, despite the wear, still hold their fabulousness.

Related: The Stolen Generation: Australia’s Dark and Tragic Past 

“Those were my shoes that were all ruined by Katrina,” Lewis said. “Ostrich, alligator — thousands of dollars of my good shoes just ruined. I used to wear them during the parades, but now I place them there to remind people of what was lost. They’re still too nice to throw away.”

10 Years Post Katrina, NOLA’s House of Dance & Feathers Dances Back to Life

Lewis hand-beaded this chest plate and saved it from Katrina.

Ten years ago when Katrina hit, Lewis’ home and museum were covered in flood waters.

“I lost pretty much everything that I didn’t take with me,” he said. “I grabbed these beaded works and a few other things, and my wife and I fled. When I came back it was all gone.”

Lewis and his wife spent almost a year with family in Thibideaux, La., before coming back to New Orleans and rebuilding from the ground up — with help from “the great people of America.” Lewis, like many families in the Ninth Ward, didn’t receive direct compensation from the government or the Red Cross. “Fortunately, I was on NPR and so donations came in,” he said. “Don’t get me started on the government ‘funds’ or the Red Cross.” He shakes his head. “I don’t like to dwell on bad feelings.”

Related: This Burmese Nunnery Saved 300 Girls From Sex Slavery

Just last month, Lewis finally put the finishing touches on his house and museum.

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Ronald outside his museum. (Photo: House of Dance & Feathers) 

“I’m trying to keep this culture alive. It started in slavery, when the slaves were allowed out on Sundays — the only day they could congregate — to Congo square and they would beat the drums with the Indians. We learned form the Indians and started our own tribes — which march in Mardi Gras and in weekly parades from September to May.”

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The Stolen Generation: Australia’s Dark and Tragic Past

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Imagine this: You have a child playing in your front yard. As you watch through the window, a van of policemen pulls up. They walk past your front gate and take your screaming child away. You never see your child again.

And it’s all legal.

The Stolen Generation: Australia’s Dark and Tragic Past

This man never knew his real family.

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Aboriginal pupils in the junior class of St. Joseph’s Catholic Mission school at Hammond Island.  (Photo: Alan Lambert/The AGE/Fairfax Media via Getty Images)

This is what happened to Deanne Kenyon’s grandfather and countless other Aboriginals in Australia from 1906 up until the 1970s — all because of the color of their skin. Children who were very dark were allowed to stay with their parents, causing many indigenous people to dye their children’s skin dark using the sap of the milkwood tree. But if a child looked as if he had any white ancestry, he was taken away. Some, if they were white enough, were adopted by white families, but the majority were sent to harsh missionary schools, where they were purged of their history, past, and memories and taught how to “fit in” to white Australian society.

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Aboriginal Elder Nancy Hill-Wood from Sydney holds a protest banner in front of Old Parliament House on February 11, 2008 in Canberra, Australia. Aborigines arrive in Canberra for apology to the stolen generations. (Photo: Andrew Sheargold/Getty Images)

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Check Out A Deadly 350 Million Yr Old Salt Lake in Australia’s Outback

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The Australian Outback is a lot like the American West — vast, beautiful, and lonely. Animals outnumber the people about 500 to one (depending on your source), and everywhere you look are canyons, deserts, and flat. Lots of flat … and a never-ending sky. But Australia’s outback is about 10 times larger than the American West — and millions of years older.

Once, around 350 million years ago, much of the Australian Outback was covered by a huge inland sea. Today, nothing is left of that ocean except huge salt flats that dot the landscape around Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock), Kata Tjuta, and Mount Conner — the three most recognizable features in the Outback.

WATCH: 350-Million-Year-Old Salt Lakes and Fool-Uru: Australian Outback’s Other Wonders

The wide-open landscape of the Australian Outback. (Photo: Paula Froelich)

Unlike Uluru or Kata Tjuta, Mount Conner, while still considered sacred by the local Aboriginal people, lies in the middle of a million-acre cattle farm owned by the Severin family. (The land was privatized in 1938, and all Aboriginals were moved off. But because Mount Conner isn’t as sacred as the other sites in the area, no one has come to claim it, so the land remains in private hands.) Located off the Peterman highway, a one-lane dirt road, many people call it “Fool-uru” because of its similarities to Uluru and its history.

“Back in the day, people would come from Alice Springs on the Peterman Highway — it was the only road out here from Alice Springs for years — and they would see Mount Conner and say, ‘Oh! Uluru!’, and turn around and go back home,” my friend and guide Stacy Beswisk laughed. “Many people never actually saw Uluru.”

These days, only the Severin family members have access to the top of Mount Conner (the youngest son was married there several years ago) but, as with Uluru, the drive around it is spectacular.

Related: G’Day Mate! How To Speak Australian

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Mummified bug in the salt lake. (Photo: Paula Froelich)

Even more interesting is Lake Swanson, also on the ranch but about 10 miles away from Mount Conner.

Surrounded by salt bush and a few desert oaks, which Beswisk estimates are around 450 years old, the huge salt lake is all that’s left of the inland ocean.

“They used to mine salt here,” Beswisk said. “No more. … Now you can’t take it out of the country.”

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Experience Uluru: Australia’s Iconic Spiritual Landmark (Without the 24 Hr Flight!)

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Named Ayer’s Rock by colonists, Uluru is a massive sandstone monolith in the heart of the Northern Red Centre desert – in the southern most part of the Northern Territory.

While I’d visited Australia a few times [full disclosure: I almost married an Australian so had to make the trip several times, despite the hellacious 24 hour flight], I’d never made the 1,000 mile, Sydney to Uluru trek. In my defense, I was busy meeting the at the time, soon-to-be-future in-laws that never were. But it has always figured large in my mind and was number one on my Bucket List.

Related: G’Day Mate! How to Speak Australian

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It’s not an Aussie selfie unless Uluru is in there. 

So when I got the chance to visit the Outback, my first stop was Uluru.

Rising out of what seems like nowhere, Uluru is sacred to the local indigenous nation – the Anangu – and believed to be about 700 million years old. While it seems massive, rising 1,000 feet high out of the ground, like an iceberg, what you see is just the tip.

“It is a huge solid rock,” my guide Ryan Clark, told me. “It is embedded in the ground. Sometime about 300 million years ago it turned on its side which is why the sandstone (stripes) look like they are going up and down instead of left to right.”

Related: Go Now: The New Seventh Wonder of the World That’s Empty 

Dually listed as a World heritage Site for both its cultural and geological significance, Uluru went through a dark period starting in 1958, when the government took it and the surrounding land from the Anangu people and set up an air strip with motels directly next to the rock (on sacred ground). Tourists were allowed to climb Uluru, walking onto land that the Anangu considered holy. But, on October 26th 1985, the government returned the land to the Anangu people – this year is the 30th anniversary of Australia handing back the land to the indigenous owners – and the motels were moved several miles away. Today there are four resorts around Uluru, but at a respectful distance.

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Wadi Rum: Walking Through Lawrence of Arabia’s Jordan

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“No man can live his life and emerge unchanged. He will carry, however faint, the imprint of the desert, the brand which marks the nomad; and he will have within him the yearning to return, weak or insistent according to his nature. For this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate clime can match.” –T.E. Lawrence

Traveling in Lawrence of Arabia’s Footsteps in Jordan

Photo: Silvia/Flickr

Tucked away in the southern desert of Jordan is Wadi Rum, a vast valley cut into the sandstone and granite cliffs near Aqaba. Also referred to as the Valley of the Moon, Wadi Rum has been inhabited since prehistoric times — and has cast its spell on travelers throughout the ages.

The British officer T.E. Lawrence, later known as Lawrence of Arabia, passed through the area several times during the Arab Revolt of 1917, and described Wadi Rum as “vast, echoing, and god-like” — and it is. Spanning 280 square miles, Wadi Rum is full of silent history. The rocks in the Khaz’ali Canyon are covered in petroglyphs in Thamudic, the most ancient Arabian script, from the fourth century B.C. The sand dunes are marred only by camel footprints (and the occasional SUV track). It is the only place on earth I have been that can shock you with its open, silent emptiness.

Related: Traveling Back in Time With the Bedouin of Jordan

To truly experience Wadi Rum, spend the night in the privateCaptain’s Camp — a smaller version of the larger Captain’s Camp nearby — which will set you back $130 a night.

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Photo: Captain’s Camp, Wadi Rum/Facebook

At night, the staff there prepares lamb and vegetables, slow-cooked for hours in a zarb — a traditional underground oven covered by sand — and then, around a fire, a musician sings under the stars. You can either sleep in a tent, or do what my crew and I did: simply pass out on the pillows surrounding the fire after stargazing for hours.

Spending the night with the bedouin of Wadi Rum is a magical experience. You are fully unplugged, there is no electricity or cell service, and there is no sound… other than what you yourself make. It makes you realize that in this noisy, frenetic world, the sound never heard is actual silence. It is as if Wadi Rum is Nature’s cathedral, outdoing any splendor man has created.

Related: Go Now: The New Seventh Wonder of the World — That’s Empty

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