hastings

Dennis Hastings, MA,
Phd Pending

Umoⁿhoⁿ Tribal Member Dennis Hastings is a veteran grassroots organizer who has committed his life to collaborative work between Native American and non-Native cultures.

Active in the Alcatraz and Wounded Knee occupations of the early 1970's, Mr. Hastings later went on to earn a Bachelor's degree from the New School of California in 1984, and a Master's from the Western Institute for Social Research in 1998, a school which he co-founded. Mr. Hastings helped to author Nebraska's repatriation law which became the model for the federal law.

He has co-authored with Robert Ridington the story of the return of the Umoⁿhoⁿ's Sacred Pole in Blessing For a Long Time: The Story of the Omaha Sacred Pole (University of Nebraska Press, 1997), which later won Honorable Mention of the Victor Turner Prize in Anthropology.

In addition Mr. Hastings has been responsible for a series of video tapes about his culture -- two of which have won national awards -- and numerous published articles. He was instrumental in reintroducing early recordings of Umoⁿhoⁿmusic into our modern time, melodies of which were later incorporated into a collaborative work with the Omaha Symphony Orchestra, West Meets West in 1993, a performance which received the 1993 Governor’s Art Awards from the Nebraska Arts Council. Hastings is the founder of the Omaha Tribal Historical Research Project, Inc. [OTHRP] which has created the vision of the New Moon Moving Interpretive Center/Museum designed by Vincent Snyder as the latest in the organization's many projects over its thirty year history.

Click on the titles below to learn more about
Dennis Hastings' work.

Omaha Tribal Historical Research Project [OTHRP]

Omaha Tribal Historical Research Project [OTHRP] is a non-profit, charitable organization whose purpose is cross-cultural coalition building, public education and advocacy to effect positive social change between the Native and non-Native communities of Nebraska and elsewhere.

New Moon Moving
Interpretive Center/Museum

New Moon Moving Interpretive Center/Museum is designed to be a world-class exhibition, archival and educational facility situated among ancestral Reservation lands on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River. Designed by architect Vincent Snyder, a Wahoo, NE native who became both a Nebraska University and a Princeton graduate with a distinguished career that includes extensive professional associations with the architects Michael Graves and Frank Gehry where as a senior design architect he contributed to such internationally acclaimed projects as the Vitra Headquarters in Switzerland, EuroDisneyland in France, and the EMR Communications and Technology Center in Germany.

Roots to Racism

This essay was originally written for Macy Public School [now Umoⁿhoⁿ Nation Public School] during Dennis Hasting's term on the local school board.

To contact OTHRP, INC. directly:

RR 1 Box 79A
Walthill, NE 68067

402-846-5454

A museum for the people, built by the people to house
the artifacts and sacred items taken from the people over a century ago. Help right a historic wrong by being a part of the return of a culture, make a donation with or without a purchase.

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This site is the work of an all volunteer multi-cultural group of people. We update it regularly so that it is timely and useful. It is constantly expanding as we bring new information and new art pieces to the public. This is a free service given willingly by people who believe in promoting artisans and in helping the Omaha people built their museum for their artifacts and sacred objects that were finally returned to them in 1991. We ask that you join us by telling others about the site and to make a donation to the museum. Every little bit helps.

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