Poet Abena Songbird and the Native American Cultural Center collaborated to produce "Round Dance," a group poem instigated on the Web among Native American writers. Their process synthesized with a live poetry jam. At the project's culmination, they published a CD-ROM incorporating more than 50 different Native artists and poets' images, including paintings, recorded music tracks, and video clips of the live performances, along with the finished written poem. Media artist Derek Wilson collaborated with the poet and Center on design and technical aspects of the project. Derek also contributed a piece to the poem.

"Round Dance" was created through a "round robin" of poetry on an on-line bulletin board housed on the Native American Cultural Center's web site. Initially 15 Native American writers of varying background and experience were invited to participate: as the project progressed, Songbird contacted 300 Native artists by e-mail. Through the spontaneous, improvisational nature of the process, others were able (and welcome) to contribute. The series of poems began with inspiration from Abena Songbird's collection Bitterroot, (Freedom Voices Press 2001) which is dedicated "to indigenous people of Mother Earth living in recovery." As the project web site was launched on September 10, 2001, the poem's theme became a Native expression of sadness and frustration at the onset of war. Its structure developed around the theme of the four directions.

While the process began in the Bay Area, the round robin quickly traveled around the country: The Web enabled Native artists to participate whether they lived in the heart of California's Silicon Valley, or in a remote Minnesota reservation, even if they were confined in prison or in a hospital. The lead artist writes, [I've] never been part of a larger, group work where multi-submissions by a diverse tribal representation from across Indian country lent their heart/voice (cross-generation) to a group poem-a dance so to speak-that became as a prayer during extremely challenging times….

The project surpassed the collaborators' original plans for the total number of contributors and achieved broad geographical, tribal, and generation representation. Participants included Chip Livingston (Creek, poet and fiction writer), William LoneFight-Bray (Natchez, Kialegee Muscogee, poet); Princess Peter-Raboff (Gwichin Athabascan, screenwriter and poet), Donna Dean (Cherokee, non-fiction writer), Jim Northrup (Fond du Lac Band-Lake Superior Chippewa, novelist), Anne M. Dunne (Anishnaabe, novelist/poet), Debora Iyall (Cowlitz, poet, recording and visual artist), Carolyn Dunn (Cherokee/Creek/Seminole, poet), Kimberly Blaesar (White Earth Anishnaabe, educator, poet,novelist), Donna Huff-Ahrakana (Inupiaq, poet), Eileen Boughton (Pomo, educator, traditional dancer,poet), Aurora Mamea (Blackfeet, jingle dancer, poet) and Shar Suke(Oneida, Cherokee, powwow coordinator,traditional dancer, poet) and Heath St. John (Lakota/Apache/Chicano, youth outreach worker, rapper, recording artist). In the project's early phases, the collaborators realized they needed additional help with copyright and web publishing questions for a group poem: Buffy St. Marie provided in-kind assistance.

While steeped in the culture of her Abenaki people, Abena Songbird has extensive contacts and working relationships with members of the Indian community throughout the country. Derek Wilson, her artistic/technical collaborator is a multimedia artist and lecturer in the Multimedia Studies Program at California State University, Hayward.

The San Francisco Arts Commission funds the Native American Cultural Center (NACC) as a cultural center program, to produce programming for the City's Native American community. NACC is fiscally sponsored by the South of Market Cultural Center (SOMARTS). As a young organization, its initial activities have focused on regranting support to Native American cultural and social organizations such as the American Indian Film Festival and the Native American AIDS project. To promote awareness of the NACC as a cultural resource, two programs have been developed to increase visibility-the nativecc.com web site and Autumnal Equinox, an annual pow-wow styled event. "Round Dance" contributed to development of the Center's former web site-epowwow.com-as a cultural resource for the Native American community.

 
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