Suppressed Histories Archives Newsletter
Winter 2007

This has been an incredibly busy year, with five conferences, three dozen presentations, and more traveling than ever before. Interest in the Archives is burgeoning, and coming from new directions. New articles are up on the SHA website and elsewhere (see below) along with a couple web-streamed radio interviews. Several hundred slides were added, and even more digital images compiled off the web. (The project of digitizing the archives of some 15,000 slides awaits.)

Work on the Women’s Power DVD continued, slowed by struggles with hardware incapacity but! thanks to a couple of generous donors, the Archives finally has a new video-capable Mac and a slide scanner, plus some long-needed software for publishing and webcrafting. So 2008 will hopefully be a year when information comes pouring out. Alivai, tfu, tfu, tfu! keina ha-ra!

Before going to the new articles, research and year in review, the most important thing first: the Women's Power DVD release events coming up in March 2008, during Women’s History Month. We need convenors to host release parties in their towns and support re-membering of women’s real history. We are calling it:

Nights of Remembrance: Women’s Empowerment Councils

On nights between March 18 through the 23rd, 2008, women will host gatherings to screen the DVD premiere of Women’s Power, the first video created by Max Dashu. This is a condensed view of female leadership, creativity, wisdom, and courage, around the world and over thousands of years. It features female governors, elders, clan mothers, culture-makers, healers, priestesses, poets, musicians, doctors, witches, athletes, rebels, and liberators.

The Councils:
After showing the DVD, women can discuss their reactions to the film and the issues it raises. Whenever I present the Women’s Power slideshow, women are stunned by the magnitude of what has been withheld from us, and invariably someone asks, How did women get to where we are now? Here is an opportunity to hold council about what needs to be done to overcome the patterns of domination, all of them. This is it, do or die, time to create change. How do we do it?

Become a Convenor:
This means organizing and hosting an event at a space of your choice, buying a copy of the DVD, showing it to your community, and collecting donations for the Archives. We recommend a modest donation at the door. After the video, people can donate more if they choose.

 

Convenors have the option (not required) to pre-order extra copies for women to buy at the event. (Prepaid orders only: no consignments.) Unsold copies can be returned for refund (seal unbroken).

Send email queries to maxdashu@LMI.net . Not online? Mail queries to Max Dashu, PO Box 3511, Oakland CA 94609 (USA), and be sure to include your phone number.

Ordering the Women’s Power DVD:
Once the order page is posted in February, anyone can order DVDs directly online (through PayPal) or by mail order. Price, shipping charges, and other ordering information will be on the Archives website once we have it all organized.

DONATE to the Suppressed Histories Archives

As always, donations to the Archives are much needed. There is no other source of funding other than contributions from the community. Please make direct donations out to Max Dashu, not the Suppressed Histories Archives.

Tax-deductible donations can be made via our fiscal sponsor, the lesbian journal Sinister Wisdom. Checks must be made out to Sinister Wisdom, but be sure to put Suppressed Histories in the memo line so they know it's for the Archives. (If you want a deduction for 2007, send it right away, so it gets to the fiscal sponsor in time for deposit.)

Mail donations by check or money order to Max Dashu, PO Box 3511, Oakland CA 94609 (USA)

Or donate online right now through PayPal:

 

New articles and interviews on the Suppressed Histories site:

Empires are doomed to fall :: as Rome went, so goes the current dominion. Down...

Shamanic priestesses of East Africa :: The Nyabingi oracles and their revolutionary movement on the borders of Uganda and Rwanda in the early 20th century. A taste from the Rebel Shamans show…

Riches of the Mississippian Civilization Magnificent but little-seen female statuettes in pipestone...

Ancestral Mothers of the BaPende A gallery of beautiful wooden sculpture from southern Congo...

 

New excerpts online from the Secret History of the Witches

The Old Goddess
http://www.suppressedhistories.net/secrethistory/oldgoddess.html

Tregenda of the Goddess, Witches, and Spirits
http://www.suppressedhistories.net/secrethistory/witchtregenda.html

The Politics of Witchcraft Studies http://www.suppressedhistories.net/secrethistory/witchpolitics.html

Khokhmah and Sophia: the Judaic Wisdom Goddess :: and her “fall” according to some Gnostic texts http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/sophia.html

New pages in Spanish including the catalog of international shows, and more to come...
So far, two articles: La Sacerdotisa y el Poderío Político
and ¿Historias suprimidas? que quiere decir?

Machete interview (2001)

Interviews on other sites:

Wisdom Talks with Dr. Tonya K. Freeman http://www.freewebs.com/mrnarchive/WisdomTalks.htm

The Gaialogue with Joanna Harcourt-Smith http://www.futureprimitive.org/mp3/MaxDashu.mp3

"Overturning the Masculine Default": with Stephanie Hiller http://www.awakenedwoman.com/dashu_interview.htm

Suppressed Histories Events in 2007:

Rebel Shamans: Indigenous Women Confront Empire was sponsored by the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center in San Antonio in November, and by the Women’s Studies and other departments at California State University-Long Beach in December.

Also in November, the Re-formed Congregation of the Goddess and Isis Institute of Women's Studies sponsored a presentation of Women Healers: Transformative Shamanic Arts in Austin, Texas.

In October, the Convocation of the Temple of Isis sponsored a special presentation on the Kemetic goddess Neith and Goddesses of Weaving at Isis Oasis in Geyserville CA.

Two October shows in honor of Samhain took place in Berkeley, hosted by Peni Hall: The Old Goddess and her night-flying witches, and Witches and Pagans. A two-part, in-depth showing of Woman Shaman was hosted by Briana Kaufmann and Peter Neufeld in Emeryville CA.

The Goddess Temple of Orange County hosted two shows in August: Mother-Right and Gender Justice, and Priestesses.(the Oracle of Delphi: I count the grains of sand on the beach and measure the sea.
I understand the speech of the mute and hear the voiceless. [Herodotus I, 47]

In July-August, many new images shot at the British Museum, and then on to the Goddess Conference in Glastonbury. The pre-conference intensive Woman Shaman: Reconnecting with Our Source was a fully-enrolled success. Another workshop featured Icons of the Matrix, and a plenary showing of The Old Goddess of the Witches received an ovation.

June 1-3, The Voice of a Woman retreat was hosted by Angie Buchanan and the Gaia's Womb community at Lake Michigan in Racine, Wisconsin. Margot Adler taught and led pagan songs, and Max Dashu presented Mother-Right and Gender Justice and an impromptu session of incantation.

For the Pacific Northwest tour in May, Woman Shaman was the show everyone wanted: in Roseburg OR, Seattle WA, and in Canada, with packed houses in Victoria and Vancouver B.C. Only those non-conformists in Eugene picked Mother-Right and Gender Justice (but they had seen the other in 2006). And it was Woman Shaman again, natch, for the SheShamans Conference in Calistoga CA, with an exhibit of visionary art by Marisol de la Paz and Max Dashu.

In April, Suppressed Histories: Asia Minor, from Catal Huyuk to Kybele and Artemis Ephesia, here in the East Bay. The Veteran Feminists of America put on a book release party for Feminists Who Changed the World: 1963-1975, on grassroots feminist activists (including Max Dashu and the Suppressed Histories Archives) at the Montclair Women’s Club.

March was Women's History Month and time for another trip to the East Coast. Goddess Cosmologies showed at the Women's Well in West Concord MA. It was Mother-Right and Gender Justice for the Unitarian Universalists in Andover, MA, and again for Landmark College in Putney VT. 

But the Unitarians in Springfield MA wanted Suppressed Histories: Arabia and Jordan, and those wild women in Northampton had to have Female Rebels and Mavericks—“audacious women who break the rules.”

Also in March, at the Western confab of the American Academy of Religion in Berkeley, Woman Shaman was excerpted for a panel on Women and Indigenous Religion, along with co-presenters Inhui Lee (on Korean shamans’ rites for spirits of women enslaved by the Japanese military) and Jean Molesky-Paz (on Mayan shamanism and the resurgence of female shamans in Guatemala). Goddess Studies sessions made their mark and networking began for a greater recognition of this field in future conferences.

At the Pantheacon (the fabulous annual pagan conference in San José), it was The Old Goddess and her night-flying witches and—you guessed it—Woman Shaman. The phenomenal Nava ran a booth of Art by Max Dashu, for this and other occasions over the year.

For Imbolc, there was Celtia, on the pre-history of the Gaeltacht, with snake-wielding priestesses and vulva-baring Sheila-na-gigs, in Emeryville.

Also in February, Suppressed Histories: The Philippines with the incomparable musical babaylan Evelie Sáles Posch and her friends, was a hit at New College in San Francisco. Look for more of these collaborations in future.

Finally, a smattering of guest lectures for classes in San Francisco: on the Great Goddess (California Institute for Integral Studies) and The Canaanite and Hebrew Goddess (New College of CA), and incantations for Mishkan Shekhinah, priestessed by Deborah Grenn.

Coming up in 2008:

Max Dashu will give the keynote address at the Fourth Annual Pagan Studies Conference on January 19 at Claremont Graduate University. She will speak on Chaos and the Restoration of Pagan Wisdom.

She also leads off the Spring Semester of lectures at the Center for the Divine Feminine in Palo Alto with a presentation on Goddess Cosmologies on Monday February 25.

Exciting new material has been added to the regional Suppressed Histories shows on Iran, East Africa, and Mississippia, the mound-temple civilizations of central north America. Watch the events calendar for presentations...

GIFTS

Suppressed Histories Archives T-shirts

New colors: saffron on russet. $20. .... (And a few left in silver on black, in L and XL only)

Reverence for Life T-shirts

Peace to Iraq, Darfur, this Earth .... Violet on cream  $20.

Amazon for Peace and Justice T-shirts

Red and yellow on cream. $20. Only a few left: sizes xxxxxx

Tshirts can be seen and ordered at
http://www.suppressedhistories.net/purchase/tshirts.html
Add shipping for each shirt ($5. in US; $11 beyond)

Prints of Max's art can be ordered from Art by Max Dashu www.maxdashu.net.

Fine giclée on canvas prints are now available of The Wisdom Scroll and Ayyyhyt.
Special orders can be taken for other images on the site.

Look for our booth at the Pantheacon in San Jose, Feb. 15-18.
Max will be presenting her shows on Goddesses in Aztec Cosmology
and Rebel Shamans: Indigenous Women Confront Empire