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[[underlined]] This Year's Festival of American Folklife [[/underlined]]

The 23rd annual Festival of American Folklife, scheduled for June 23-27 and June 30-July 4 on the National Mall, features programs on Hawaii, French and French-American cultures, the Caribbean, and American Indian access to resource issues.

The Hawaii program is being supported by the Governor's Office, the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, and the Hawaii Visitor's Bureau. Research involving native and immigrant communities was carried out by some 27 academic and community scholars generating a rich archive of information including the most comprehensive study of canoe builders and the most extensive catalog of hula schools to date. Approximately 100 participants will demonstrate traditional hula dance and chants, regional and immigrant musics, taro growing, traditional luau, lei making, maritime crafts, wood working, basketry and celebratory traditions.

Marking the celebration of the Bicentennial of the French Revolution, the French and French-American program examines the continuing self-assertion of cultural identity as a human right in contemporary complex societies. Research concentrating on music as a key symbol of French identity is being carried out in several regions of France, Quebec, New England, Louisiana, Missouri, and among the Mitchif Indians in North Dakota.

The American Indian program this year focuses on a key cultural conservation issue -- the importance of access to resources for the continuity of cultural traditions. The program examines, through key case studies, how limitations of significant resources -- natural, social and cultural -- affect the visability of tribal lifeways. Among particular cases to be presented at the Festival are wild ricing among Ojibway, willow basketry in the Great Basin, the use of endangered species among the Yaqui, cedar use in the Pacific Northwest, bison management in the Great Plains, and the role of lacrosse among the Iroquois.

For a Caribbean program concentrating on music, ritual and foodways, research has been carried out in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Haiti, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic. The program will examine the persistence and variation of African expressive forms in combination with different European and Asian esthetic influences. 

[[underlined]] The National Demonstration Laboratory Opens in the Arts & Industries Building [[/underlined]]

Recently the National Demonstration Laboratory for Interactive Educational Technologies -- the Smithsonian's cooperative project with Public Television's Interactive Video Consortium -- moved into its specially-configured space in the Arts & Industries Building. The Laboratory now has seventeen workstations, at which a range of optical technologies are demonstrated, as well as a kiosk area and library.

In addition to serving as the pre-eminent demonstration facility for interactive educational technologies, the Laboratory's mandate includes establishing a national clearinghouse of information. To that end, an on-line database is being established. The database will include the status of interactive projects in universities, museums, public television stations, and