L. Frank

L. Frank is the "nom d'arte" of L. Frank Manriquez, a California Indian artist, writer, tribal scholar, and community activist. Her tribal background is the Tongva/Ajachmen tribes of California.

Art

In 1990, L. Frank was Artist in Residence at the Headland Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California; her artwork has been exhibited widely throughout California and appears in several publications.

Publications

Her regular column/graphic, "Acorn Soup," has appeared in the quarterly newsletter [http://www.heydaybooks.com/news/ "News from Native California"] since 1992. "Acorn Soup" features the comic adventures of Coyote in his various guises: the Creator of the Universe and the Buffoon, the Trickster and the Tricked, always the Indian's Wise Fool. A selection of L. Frank's "Acorn Soup" cartoons have been collected and published in book form. Concerning L. Frank, one reviewer of the book at [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1890771147 Amazon.com] commented: "Introducing the Gary Larson of the Native American cartoon world!"

Another book, "First Families: Photographic History of California Indians" with co-author Kim Hogeland, is due to be published in September 2006. It is an introduction to California’s native populations, with pictures such as the re-creation and sailing of the "tii’at" (a traditional Tongva/Gabrieleño canoe) off Catalina Island in 1995, to the 1918 picture of Kumeyaay men performing a sacred funerary dance with "karuk" (vision) dolls, to an image from 1932 of Salinans leading anthropologist J. P. Harrington on an expedition along California’s central coast. Each chapter covers a different region of California, with brief essays introducing the region’s cultures, histories, and contemporary life.

Community Activism

She is a Board Member of the California Indian Basketweavers Association and one of seven founding board members of the Advocates for Indigenous California Languages, organizations that are involved in the preservation and revival of Native Californian languages through traditional arts practice, language immersion, conferences and workshops.

She has won several awards for her activities, including from the American Association of University Women, the James Irvine Foundation, the Fund for Folk Culture (for travel to the Native Californian art collection at the Musée de l' Homme in Paris). In 1995 she was featured as a "Local Hero" in KQED-TV/Examiner Newspaper's Native American Heritage Month series.

References

* [http://www.calacademy.org/research/anthropology/art/Artists/Artist04.htm Biographical note at California Academy of Sciences]
* [http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/Endangered_Lang_Conf/Manriquez.html Biographical note for the Endangered Language Conference at University of California, Berkeley, Jepson and University Herbaria]
* [http://www.aicls.org/ Advocates for Indigenous California Languages]
* [http://www.ciba.org/ California Indian Basketweavers Association]