We observe Native American Heritage Month in November to recognize the achievements and contributions of Native Americans. In 1990 President George H. W. Bush approved a joint resolution designating November 1990 “National American Indian Heritage Month.” Similar proclamations, under variants on the name (including “Native American Heritage Month” and “National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month”) have been issued each year since 1994.
At Merced College, we want to formally and with great respect acknowledge that we are on the traditional lands of the Yokuts Nation. Merced College is built on the unceded ancestral lands of these indigenous tribes. Thank you for letting us honor them and give our thanks to their ancestors and descendants for their constant and careful stewardship of this land.
Reservation Blues by
In the 111-year life of the Spokane Indian reservation, not one person has arrived by accident-until the day the black stranger appears with nothing more than the suit he wears and the guitar slung over his back. The man happens to be the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, in flight from the devil and presumed long dead. And when he passes his enchanted instrument to young Thomas-Builds-the-Fire-storyteller, misfit, and musician-a magical odyssey begins. From reservation bars to small-town taverns, from the cement trails of Seattle to the concrete canyons of Manhattan, Thomas and his Coyote Springs bandmates careen through ancestral nightmares and rock-and-roll dreams, sounding chords of celebration and survival as timeless as their tribe. From Sherman Alexie, the Granta Award-winning author whose work has been hailed as "spare, disturbing...with stark lyric power" by the New York Times, comes a fresh, luxuriantly comic tale of power, tragedy, and redemption among today's generation of First Americans.
Tracks by
"[Erdrich] captures the passions, fears, myths, and doom of a living people, and she does so with an ease that leaves the reader breathless."--The New Yorker From award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich comes an arresting, lyrical novel set in North Dakota at a time when Indian tribes were struggling to keep what little remained of their lands. Tracks is a tale of passion and deep unrest. Over the course of ten crucial years, as tribal land and trust between people erode ceaselessly, men and women are pushed to the brink of their endurance--yet their pride and humor prohibit surrender. The reader will experience shock and pleasure in encountering characters that are compelling and rich in their vigor, clarity, and indomitable vitality.
Ceremony by
Tayo, a young Native American, has been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and the horrors of captivity have almost eroded his will to survive. His return to the Laguna Pueblo reservation only increases his feeling of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soldiers find easy refuge in alcohol and senseless violence, Tayo searches for another kind of comfort and resolution. Tayo's quest leads him back to the Indian past and its traditions, to beliefs about witchcraft and evil, and to the ancient stories of his people. The search itself becomes a ritual, a curative ceremny that defeats the most virulent of afflictions—despair.
House Made of Dawn by 
Trickster by
2010 Maverick Award winner, 2011 Aesop Prize Winner - Children's folklore section, and a 2011 Eisner Award Nominee. All cultures have tales of the trickster - a crafty creature or being who uses cunning to get food, steal precious possessions, or simply cause mischief. He disrupts the order of things, often humiliating others and sometimes himself. In Native American traditions, the trickster takes many forms, from coyote or rabbit to raccoon or raven. The first graphic anthology of Native American trickster tales, Trickster brings together Native American folklore and the world of comics. In Trickster, 24 Native storytellers were paired with 24 comic artists, telling cultural tales from across America. Ranging from serious and dramatic to funny and sometimes downright fiendish, these tales bring tricksters back into popular culture.
Red Indian Road West by
Poetry. California Interest. Native American Studies. Containing the work of 31 poets from 29 tribes, Red Indian Road West is the first poetry anthology encompassing the entire range of Native American experience in California. With more than 720,000 Native Americans, California has by far the largest Native American population of any state and perhaps the most diverse. There are currently more than one hundred American Indian tribes indigenous to California, as well as many Native Americans from tribes nationwide now residing in the state. Contributors: Indira Allegra, Judi Brannan Armbruster, J.P. Dancing Bear, Nanette Bradley Deetz, E.K. Cooper, Roberta Reyes Cordero, Lucille Lang Day, Natalie Diaz, Carolyn Dunn, Jennifer Elise Foerster, Jewelle Gomez, Janice Gould, Alison Hart, John Hershman, Senna Heyatawin, Dave Holt, Frank LaPena, Sharmagne Leland-St. John, James Luna, Sal Martinez, Shaunna Oteka McCovey, Stephen Meadows, Deborah A. Miranda, Manny Moreno, Catherine Nelson-Rodriguez, Linda Noel, Wendy Rose, Sylvia Ross, Kurt Schweigman, Marlon Sherman, Kim Shuck, Georgiana Valoyce-Sanchez "RED INDIAN ROAD WEST is an assertion and a statement saying, 'We have always been here. You will never forget us. You cannot do so.' Indigenous people and their insistent passion. Traveling from inland hills to seashores. Their experiences in hot desert and hard mountain. Vital moments to viral moments like no other, but always within the present one. Karuk. Wintu. Konkow. Pomo. Miwok. Mohave. Chumash. Costanoan Esselen. Ohlone. And more. And more than we can name but which will always be remembered. And later on, the Lakota, Dakota, Cherokee, Wampanoag, and others, so our indigenous essence will always be momentous. Read, listen, hear, and be assured. Know again and always!"--Simon J. Ortiz "An anthology is a community, each voice telling its story in this tribal gathering. RED INDIAN ROAD WEST is a pow wow of sorts. It takes many voices to tell the story of the Native spirit and experience. The voices often are uprooted, yet find place within language. There is camaraderie, wounding, anger, defiance, celebration and disclosure in these wolf songs of the heart."--Diane Glancy
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by
A true classic of American history, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown’s eloquent, meticulously documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell in their won words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, this book changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.
Native Universe by
The Smithsonian's new National Museum of the American Indian will be the last museum to be built on the National Mall and its opening will be a major, national media event. To commemorate the opening, the National Geographic Society has collaborated with the museum's curators and advisers to produce a lavishly illustrated, comprehensive volume based on major themes relevant to American Indian peoples. Written by a distinguished group of Native American scholars, poets, activists, and tribal leaders, the book will offer its non-Indian readers a closer understanding of Native perspectives, beliefs, and histories. The real power of this volume rests with its power to communicate firsthand the experiences, observations, and intellectual concepts of the hemisphere's indigenous peoples, who demonstrate that their ancient philosophies and folkways are integral, valuable, and still apply in modern times.
Women Ethnographers and Native Women Storytellers by
This book focuses on the collaborative work between Native women storytellers and their female ethnographers and/or editors, but the book is also about what it is that is constitutive of scientific rigor, factual accuracy, cultural authenticity, and storytelling signification and meaning. Regardless of discipline, academic ethnographers who conducted their field work research during the twentieth century were trained in the accepted scientific methods and theories of the time that prescribed observation, objectivity, and evaluative distance. In contradistinction to such prescribed methods, regarding the ethnographic work conducted among Native Americans, it turns out that the intersubjectively relational work of women (both ethnographers and the Indigenous storytellers with whom they worked) has produced far more reliably factual, historically accurate, and tribally specific Indigenous autobiographies than the more "scientifically objective" approaches of most of the male ethnographers. This volume provides a close lens to the work of a number of women ethnographers and Native American women storytellers to elucidate the effectiveness of their relational methods. Through a combined rhetorical and literary analysis of these ethnographies, we are able to differentiate the products of the women's working relationships. By shifting our focus away from the surface level textual reading that largely approaches the texts as factually informative documents, literary analysis provides access into the deeper levels of the storytelling that lies beneath the surface of the edited texts. Non-Native scholars and editors such as Franc Johnson Newcomb, Ruth Underhill, Nancy Lurie, Julie Cruikshank, and No l Bennett and Native storytellers and writers such as Grandma Klah, Mar a Chona, Mountain Wolf Woman, Mrs. Angela Sidney, Mrs. Kitty Smith, Mrs. Annie Ned, and Tiana Bighorse help us to understand that there are ways by which voices and worlds are more and less disclosed for posterity. The results vary based upon the range of factors surrounding their production, but consistent across each case is the fact that informational accuracy is contingent upon the the degree of mutual respect and collaboration in the women's working relationships. And it is in their pioneering intersubjective methodologies that the work of these women deserves far greater attention and approbation.
Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians but Were Afraid to Ask by
"I had a profoundly well-educated Princetonian ask me, 'Where is your tomahawk?' I had a beautiful woman approach me in the college gymnasium and exclaim, 'You have the most beautiful red skin.' I took a friend to see Dances with Wolves and was told, 'Your people have a beautiful culture.' . . . I made many lifelong friends at college, and they supported but also challenged me with questions like, 'Why should Indians have reservations?' " What have you always wanted to know about Indians? Do you think you should already know the answers--or suspect that your questions may be offensive? In matterof-fact responses to over 120 questions, both thoughtful and outrageous, modern and historical, Ojibwe scholar and cultural preservationist Anton Treuer gives a frank, funny, and sometimes personal tour of what's up with Indians, anyway. * What is the real story of Thanksgiving? * Why are tribal languages important? * What do you think of that incident where people died in a sweat lodge? White/Indian relations are often characterized by guilt and anger. Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians But Were Afraid to Ask cuts through the emotion and builds a foundation for true understanding and positive action. Anton Treuer, author of The Assassination of Hole in the Day and many other books on Ojibwe history and language, received an Ambassador Award in 2011 from Facing Race: We're All in This Together, an initiative of the St. Paul Foundation. All around Minnesota, Treuer has given scores of public lectures and been asked hundreds of questions--many like the ones in this book.
The Tribal Moment in American Politics by
In the "tribal moment in American politics," which occurred from the 1950s to the mid- to late-1970s, American Indians waged civil disobedience for tribal self-determination and fought from within the U.S. legal and political systems. The U.S. government responded characteristically, overall wielding its authority in incremental, frequently double-edged ways that simultaneously opened and restricted tribal options. The actions of Native Americans and public officials brought about a new era of tribal-American relations in which tribal sovereignty has become a central issue, underpinning self-determination, and involving the tribes, states, and federal government in intergovernmental cooperative activities as well as jurisdictional skirmishes. American Indian tribes struggle still with the impacts of a capitalist economy on their traditional ways of life. Most rely heavily on federal support. Yet they have also called on tribal sovereignty to protect themselves. Asking how and why the United States is willing to accept tribal sovereignty, this book examines the development of the "order" of Indian affairs. Beginning with the nation's founding, it brings to light the hidden assumptions in that order. It examines the underlying deep contradictions that have existed in the relationship between the United States and the tribes as the order has evolved, up to and into the "tribal moment."
Native Americans in the American Revolution by
This valuable book provides a succinct, readable account of an oft-neglected topic in the historiography of the American Revolution: the role of Native Americans in the Revolution's outbreak, progress, and conclusion. There has not been an all-encompassing narrative of the Native American experience during the American Revolutionary War period_until now. Native Americans in the American Revolution: How the War Divided, Devastated, and Transformed the Early American Indian World fills that gap in the literature, provides full coverage of the Revolution's effects on Native Americans, and details how Native Americans were critical to the Revolution's outbreak, its progress, and its conclusion. The work covers the experiences of specific Native American groups such as the Abenaki, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Delaware, Iroquois, Seminole, and Shawnee peoples with information presented by chronological period and geographic area. The first part of the book examines the effects of the Imperial Crisis of the 1760s and early 1770s on Native peoples in the Northern colonies, Southern colonies, and Ohio Valley respectively. The second section focuses on the effects of the Revolutionary War itself on these three regions during the years of ongoing conflict, and the final section concentrates on the postwar years. Adds the Native American perspective to the reader's understanding of the American Revolution, a critical aspect of this period in history that is rarely covered Supplies a synthesis of the best current and past work on the topic of Native Americans in the American Revolution that will be accessible to general readers as well as undergraduate and graduate-level students Shows how the struggle over the definition and utilization of Native American identity_an issue that was initiated with the American Revolution_is still ongoing for American Indians
All the Real Indians Died Off by
Unpacks the twenty-one most common myths and misconceptions about Native Americans In this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about Native American culture and history that have misinformed generations. Tracing how these ideas evolved, and drawing from history, the authors disrupt long-held and enduring myths such as- "Columbus Discovered America" "Thanksgiving Proves the Indians Welcomed Pilgrims" "Indians Were Savage and Warlike" "Europeans Brought Civilization to Backward Indians" "The United States Did Not Have a Policy of Genocide" "Sports Mascots Honor Native Americans" "Most Indians Are on Government Welfare" "Indian Casinos Make Them All Rich" "Indians Are Naturally Predisposed to Alcohol" Each chapter deftly shows how these myths are rooted in the fears and prejudice of European settlers and in the larger political agendas of a settler state aimed at acquiring Indigenous land and tied to narratives of erasure and disappearance. Accessibly written and revelatory, "All the Real Indians Died Off" challenges readers to rethink what they have been taught about Native Americans and history.
Trail of Tears by
A sixth-generation North Carolinian, highly-acclaimed author John Ehle grew up on former Cherokee hunting grounds. His experience as an accomplished novelist, combined with his extensive, meticulous research, culminates in this moving tragedy rich with historical detail. The Cherokee are a proud, ancient civilization. For hundreds of years they believed themselves to be the "Principle People" residing at the center of the earth. But by the 18th century, some of their leaders believed it was necessary to adapt to European ways in order to survive. Those chiefs sealed the fate of their tribes in 1875 when they signed a treaty relinquishing their land east of the Mississippi in return for promises of wealth and better land. The U.S. government used the treaty to justify the eviction of the Cherokee nation in an exodus that the Cherokee will forever remember as the "trail where they cried." The heroism and nobility of the Cherokee shine through this intricate story of American politics, ambition, and greed. B & W photographs
Braiding Sweetgrass by
An inspired weaving of indigenous knowledge, plant science, and personal narrative from a distinguished professor of science and a Native American whose previous book, Gathering Moss, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing. As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowing together to reveal what it means to see humans as "the younger brothers of creation." As she explores these themes she circles toward a central argument: the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgement and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the world. Once we begin to listen for the languages of other beings, we can begin to understand the innumerable life-giving gifts the world provides us and learn to offer our thanks, our care, and our own gifts in return.
Image "Native American Basket Tulare or Yokuts (3)" by mharrsch is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Celebrating Native American Women; Native American Code Talkers; Adrift, But Not Without Hope; Invoking Earth Mother; The Art of Cradleboards
Learn about the history of US government Indian boarding schools in the 19th and 20th centuries.
From the Independent Lens blog.
View territories and languages of indigenous peoples in California.
"The Why We Serve exhibition honors the generations of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian members of the United States Armed Forces, and commemorates the National Native American Veterans Memorial, dedicated at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C."
