‘Alley Gallery of Loss’ Archives
Remembering Laura Waterman Wittstock:
Sept. 11, 1937 ”“ January 16, 2021 Woman of Wisdom Via Words and Voice: The Cosmos has Grown by One More Star By HARVEY WINJE “The birthright of every Indian born is that her or his ancestors paid a price beyond imagining that their descendants would live as Indians.” LAURA WATERMAN WITTSTOCK  Laura”™s compassionate eyes closed, her judicious intellect chronicled, her indigenous wisdom relayed, her corrections of errant history revealed, her gracious smile remembered, and her dedication to family of five children, four grandchildren, two great grandchildren, one great-great grandchild, and three honorary children fulfilled; Laura Waterman Wittstock”™s indelible impact lives on after passing to the Spirit world January 16th 2021. Laura was an enrolled member of the Seneca Nation of Indians, Heron Clan, and was born at the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation in New York; moved to Honolulu in 1945, to San Francisco in 1954, [...]
“Laura Waterman Wittstock, Still the Superb Journalist: First Person Radio Signs Off the Air”
Laura Waterman Wittstock BY ELAINE SALINAS, THE ALLEY, MARCH 2018 Excerpt from a longer history of First Person Radio and the beginning of Migizi Communications. “The final segment of First Person Radio (FPR) aired on KFAI Radio in Minneapolis on February 14th, 2018, forty years after it originated as The Native American Program on KUOM-AM, the University of Minnesota”™s radio station. First Person Radio can best be described as a labor of love coupled with a commitment to produce timely and accurate news and information about the American Indian community to counter the many misrepresentations and inaccuracies perpetuated about Native people in the major media. “When First Person Radio was forced to sunset in 1992 due to rising production and distribution costs and declining support for public radio across the country, its legacy continued. Laura Waterman Wittstock, founder of MIGIZI Communications, took advantage of the large [...]
Wizard Marks, assiduous artisan of articulation, bestowed a treasure trove of written wisdom
Wizard Marks”' Alley writings are “Bound for the Future” at Libraries.Wizards Marks left indelible marks (pun intended) with superb articles and extensive investigative reports for The Alley from mid 1980s to 1990s. Her excellent work is now bound within reprinted Alley Newspapers in hard-cover volumes at the Hennepin County Franklin Community Library and the Hennepin County Minneapolis Library. Wizard Marks 1943-2018 Wizard Maureen Marks was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1943 to Elizabeth Ruth Marks Halpin and Vincent Paul Halpin, and raised in a WWII federal housing project called “English Woods.” “It was a ghetto away from other neighborhoods, a ghetto in the woods,” Marks said and “because it was segregated, it was inhabited by hillbillies.”””her people. Cincinnati is the first major stop north of the Mason-Dixon Line along the Dixie Highway, the main migration route for hillbillies. In those days, federal projects did [...]
