Native American Heritage Month

In Turning the Power Nathan Sowry examines how some Native American students from the boarding school system, with its forced assimilationist education, became key cultural informants for anthropologists conducting fieldwork during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Salvage anthropologists of this era relied on Native informants to accomplish their mission of "saving" Native American cultures and ultimately turned many informants into anthropologists after years of fieldwork experience. Sowry investigates ten relatively unknown Native American anthropologists and collaborators who, from 1878 to 1930, attended a religiously affiliated mission school, a federal Indian boarding school, or both. He tells the stories of Native anthropologists Tichkematse, William Jones, and James R. Murie, who were alumni of the Hampton Institute in Virginia. Richard Davis and Cleaver Warden were among the first and second classes to attend the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Amos Oneroad graduated from the Haskell Indian Industrial Training School in Lawrence, Kansas, after attending mission and boarding schools in South Dakota. D. C. Duvall, John V. Satterlee, and Florence and Louis Shotridge attended smaller boarding and mission schools in Montana, Wisconsin, and Alaska Territory, respectively. Turning the Power follows the forced indoctrination of Native American students and then details how each of them "turned the power," using their English knowledge and work experience in the anthropological field to embrace, document, and preserve their Native cultures rather than abandoning their heritage.

From author Carole Lindstrom and illustrator Michaela Goade comes a New York Times bestselling and Caldecott Medal winning picture book that honors Indigenous-led movements across the world. Powerfully written and gorgeously illustrated, We Are Water Protectors, issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth's water from harm and corruption--inviting young readers everywhere to join the fight. Water is the first medicine. It affects and connects us all . . . When a black snake threatens to destroy the Earth And poison her people's water, one young water protector Takes a stand to defend Earth's most sacred resource. The fight continues with Autumn Peltier, Water Warrior, the must-read companion book to We Are Water Protectors. Written by Carole Lindstrom and illustrated by Bridget George, it tells the story of real-life water protectors, Autumn Peltier and her great-aunt Josephine Mandamin, two Indigenous Rights Activists who have inspired a tidal wave of change.

Loyalty to the community is the highest value in Native American cultures, argues Jace Weaver. In That the People Might Live, he explores a wide range of Native American literature from 1768 to the present, taking this sense of community as both a starting point and a lens. Weaver considers some of the best known Native American writers, such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Gerald Vizenor, and Vine Deloria, as well as many others who are receiving critical attention here for the first time. He contends that the single thing that most defines these authors' writings, and makes them deserving of study.

Although cancer survival has improved markedly in developed countries in recent decades, not all groups have benefited equally. In particular, Indigenous and Tribal peoples continue to have poorer cancer outcomes than their non-Indigenous counterparts. The available evidence suggests these disparities are linked to a complex combination of factors, including higher incidence of cancers associated with a high case fatality, later stage of diagnosis, reduced access to cancer treatment, and poorer overall health. Much research is underway to explore approaches to improving health system responses for Indigenous and Tribal peoples. A developing evidence base is supporting effective translation of knowledge into practice. This book offers a global perspective on this evidence base, written from Indigenous perspectives. This book is the first comprehensive publication to report on cancer incidence, mortality, prevalence, survival, and inequities for Indigenous and Tribal peoples globally, with the aim of enhancing global efforts to improve outcomes for these populations. Its content and approach are led by Indigenous researchers with international reputations in health and cancer research. Chapters provide important information and data to support Indigenous-specific, targeted cancer awareness and early detection campaigns. This book goes beyond a discussion of the issues and challenges in Indigenous health, with a strengths-based approach to discussing successful health interventions, research projects, research translation, and living well - both with and beyond cancer. This is an open access book.

Unpapered is a collection of personal narratives by Indigenous writers exploring the meaning and limits of Native American identity beyond its legal margins. Native heritage is neither simple nor always clearly documented, and citizenship is a legal and political matter of sovereign nations determined by such criteria as blood quantum, tribal rolls, or community involvement. Those who claim a Native cultural identity often have family stories of tenuous ties dating back several generations. Given that tribal enrollment was part of a string of government programs and agreements calculated to quantify and dismiss Native populations, many writers who identify culturally and are recognized as Native Americans do not hold tribal citizenship. With essays by Trevino Brings Plenty, Deborah Miranda, Steve Russell, and Kimberly Wieser, among others, Unpapered charts how current exclusionary tactics began as a response to "pretendians"--non-indigenous people assuming a Native identity for job benefits--and have expanded to an intense patrolling of identity that divides Native communities and has resulted in attacks on peoples' professional, spiritual, emotional, and physical states. An essential addition to Native discourse, Unpapered shows how social and political ideologies have created barriers for Native people truthfully claiming identities while simultaneously upholding stereotypes.

A photographic and narrative celebration of contemporary Native American life and cultures, alongside an in-depth examination of issues that Native people face, by celebrated photographer and storyteller Matika Wilbur of the Swinomish and Tulalip Tribes. "This book is too important to miss. It is a vast, sprawling look at who we are as Indigenous people in these United States."-Tommy Orange (Cheyenne and Arapaho), author of There There Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal In 2012, Matika Wilbur sold everything in her Seattle apartment and set out on a Kickstarter-funded pursuit to visit, engage, and photograph people from what were then the 562 federally recognized Native American Tribal Nations. Over the next decade, she traveled six hundred thousand miles across fifty states-from Seminole country (now known as the Everglades) to Inuit territory (now known as the Bering Sea)-to meet, interview, and photograph hundreds of Indigenous people. The body of work Wilbur created serves to counteract the one-dimensional and archaic stereotypes of Native people in mainstream media and offers justice to the richness, diversity, and lived experiences of Indian Country. The culmination of this decade-long art and storytelling endeavor, Project 562 is a peerless, sweeping, and moving love letter to Indigenous Americans, containing hundreds of stunning portraits and compelling personal narratives of contemporary Native people-all photographed in clothing, poses, and locations of their choosing. Their narratives touch on personal and cultural identity as well as issues of media representation, sovereignty, faith, family, the protection of sacred sites, subsistence living, traditional knowledge-keeping, land stewardship, language preservation, advocacy, education, the arts, and more. A vital contribution from an incomparable artist, Project 562 inspires, educates, and truly changes the way we see Native America.

This Place Is Who We Are profiles Indigenous communities in central and northern coastal BC that are reconnecting to their lands and waters--and growing and thriving through this reconnection. Indigenous peoples and cultures are integrally connected to the land. Well-being in every sense--physical, social, environmental, economic, spiritual and cultural--depends on that relationship, which is based on a fundamental concept: when the land is well, so are the people. With increasing strength, Indigenous peoples in this vast region of BC--which spans the homelands of more than two dozen First Nations and one of the largest remaining coastal temperate rainforests in the world--are restoring what has been lost through environmental depredation and healing what has been devastated by colonization. This volume is a collection of ten of these inspiring stories. X̱aayda voices explain how their Rediscovery camps are healing and empowering their youth; Dzawada̱'enuxw Hereditary Chief Maxwiyalidizi K'odi Nelson shares the story of building a healing centre and ecolodge; Wei Wai Kum Chief Christopher Roberts describes the challenges and opportunities for an urban First Nation looking to prosper while protecting the environment and ancient Ligʷiłdaxʷ history and living cultural values; and many more Indigenous leaders share their own experiences of growth, strength and reconnection. Thoughtful and inspiring, This Place Is Who We Are illustrates what can be accomplished when conservation and stewardship are inextricably intertwined with the prosperity and well-being of communities.

Cherokee women wielded significant power, and history demonstrates that in what is now America, indigenous women often bore the greater workload, both inside and outside the home. During the French and Indian War, Cherokee women resisted a chief's authority, owned family households, were skilled artisans, produced plentiful crops, mastered trade negotiations, and prepared chiefs' feasts. Cherokee culture was lost when the Cherokee Nation began imitating the American form of governance to gain political favor, and white colonists reduced indigenous women's power. This book recounts long-standing Cherokee traditions and their rich histories. It demonstrates Cherokee and indigenous women as independent and strong individuals through feminist and historical perspectives. Readers will find that these women were far ahead of their time and held their own in many remarkable ways.

This second edition expands the provocative analysis of the racist colonial dynamics at play in philanthropy and finance into other sectors and offers practical advice on how anyone can be a healer. The world is out of balance. With increasing frequency, we are presented with the inescapable truth that systemic racism and colonial structures are foundational principles to our economies. The $1 trillion philanthropic industry is one example of a system that mirrors oppressive colonial behavior. It's an industry whose name means "the love for humankind," yet it does more harm than good. In Decolonizing Wealth, Edgar Villanueva looks past philanthropy's glamorous, altruistic façade and into its shadows: white supremacy, savior complexes, and internalized oppression. Across history and to the present day, the accumulation of wealth is steeped in trauma. How can we shift philanthropy toward social reconciliation and healing if the cornerstones are exploitation, extraction, and control?  Drawing from Native traditions, Villanueva empowers individuals and institutions to begin to repair the damage through his Seven Steps to Healing. In this second edition, Villanueva adds inspiring examples of people using their resources to decolonize entertainment, museums, libraries, land ownership, and much more. Everyone can be a healer and a leader in restoring balance--and we need everyone to do their part. As Villanueva writes, "All our suffering is mutual. All our healing is mutual. All our thriving is mutual." Are you ready?

Enormous changes affected the inhabitants of the Eastern Woodlands area during the eleventh through fifteenth centuries AD. At this time many groups across this area (known collectively to archaeologists as Oneota) were aggregating and adopting new forms of material culture and food technology. This same period also witnessed an increase in intergroup violence, as well as a rise in climatic volatility with the onset of the Little Ice Age. In Indigenous Life around the Great Lakes, Richard W. Edwards explores how the inhabitants of the western Great Lakes region responded to the challenges of climate change, social change, and the increasingly violent physical landscape. As a case study, Edwards focuses on a group living in the Koshkonong Locality in what is now southeastern Wisconsin. Edwards contextualizes Koshkonong within the larger Oneota framework and in relation to the other groups living in the western Great Lakes and surrounding regions. Making use of a canine surrogacy approach, which avoids the destruction of human remains, Edwards analyzes the nature of groups' subsistence systems, the role of agriculture, and the risk-management strategies that were developed to face the challenges of their day. Based on this analysis, Edwards proposes how the inhabitants of this region organized themselves and how they interacted with neighboring groups. Edwards ultimately shows how the Oneota groups were far more agricultural than previously thought and also demonstrates how the maize agriculture of these groups was related to the structure of their societies.

The philosophy of Mesoamerica - the indigenous groups of precolonial North-Central America - is rich and varied but relatively little-known. In this ground-breaking book, Alexus McLeod introduces the philosophical traditions of the Maya, Nahua (Aztecs), Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and others, focussing in particular on their treatment of language, truth, time, creation, personhood, knowledge, and morality. His wide-ranging discussion includes important texts of world literature such as the K'iche Maya Popol Vuh and the Aztec Florentine Codex, as well as precolonial glyphic texts and imagery. This comprehensive and accessible book will give students, specialists and other interested readers an understanding of Mesoamerican philosophy and a sense of the current scholarship in the field.

This book offers twenty original scholarly chapters featuring historical and biographical analyses of Native American women. The lives of women found her contributed significantly to their people and people everywhere. The book presents Native women of action and accomplishments in many areas of life. This work highlights women during the modern era of American history, countering past stereotypes of Native women. With the exceptions of Pocahontas and Sacajawea, historians have had little to say about American Indian women who have played key roles in the history of their tribes, their relationship with others, and the history of the United States. Indigenous women featured herein distinguished themselves as fiction and non-fiction writers, poets, potters, basket makers, musicians, and dancers. Other women contributed as notable educators and women working in health and medicine. They are representative of many women within the Native Universe who excelled in their lives to enrich the American experience.

Between 1902 and 1934, the United States confined hundreds of adults and children from dozens of Native nations at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, a federal psychiatric hospital in South Dakota. But detention at the Indian Asylum, as families experienced it, was not the beginning or end of the story. For them, Canton Asylum was one of many places of imposed removal and confinement, including reservations, boarding schools, orphanages, and prison-hospitals. Despite the long reach of institutionalization for those forcibly held at the Asylum, the tenacity of relationships extended within and beyond institutional walls. In this accessible and innovative work, Susan Burch tells the story of the Indigenous people--families, communities, and nations, across generations to the present day--who have experienced the impact of this history. Drawing on oral history interviews, correspondence, material objects, and archival sources, Burch reframes the histories of institutionalized people and the places that held them. Committed expands the boundaries of Native American history, disability studies, and U.S. social and cultural history generally.

Explores the interplay of religion and food in Native American cultures. Native Foodways is the first scholarly collection of essays devoted exclusively to the interplay of Indigenous religious traditions and foodways in North America. Drawing on diverse methodologies, the essays discuss significant confluences in selected examples of these religious traditions and foodways, providing rich individual case studies informed by relevant historical, ethnographic, and comparative data. Many of the essays demonstrate how narrative and active elements of selected Indigenous North American religious traditions have provided templates for interactive relationships with particular animals and plants, rooted in detailed information about their local environments. In return, these animals and plants have provided these Native American communities with sustenance. Other essays provide analyses of additional contemporary and historical North American Indigenous foodways while also addressing issues of tradition and cultural change. Scholars and other readers interested in ecology, climate change, world hunger, colonization, religious studies, and cultural studies will find this book to be a valuable resource.

Recovering Our Ancestors' Gardens is back! Featuring an expanded array of tempting recipes of indigenous ingredients and practical advice about health, fitness, and becoming involved in the burgeoning indigenous food sovereignty movement, the acclaimed Choctaw author and scholar Devon A. Mihesuah draws on the rich indigenous heritages of this continent to offer a helpful guide to a healthier life. Recovering Our Ancestors' Gardens features pointed discussions about the causes of the generally poor state of indigenous health today. Diminished health, Mihesuah contends, is a pervasive consequence of colonialism, but by advocating for political, social, economic, and environmental changes, traditional food systems and activities can be reclaimed and made relevant for a healthier lifestyle today. New recipes feature pawpaw sorbet, dandelion salad, lima bean hummus, cranberry pie with cornmeal crust, grape dumplings, green chile and turkey posole, and blue corn pancakes, among other dishes. Savory, natural, and steeped in the Native traditions of this land, these recipes are sure to delight and satisfy. This new edition is revised, updated, and contains new information, new chapters, and an extensive curriculum guide that includes objectives, resources, study questions, assignments, and activities for teachers, librarians, food sovereignty activists, and anyone wanting to know more about indigenous foodways.

Since the arrival of European settlers, Native American cultural sovereignty has been under attack. Self-determination is a tribal right of Native people, but colonial oppression banned their traditions and religion, purloined and misused sacred sites, and betrayed treaties when convenient. Over time, the settlers usurped Native American culture and lands, and these destructive behaviors continue today. Within the decimated Native American culture left after forced assimilation, American Indians still struggle to retain their rights. In this historical account of the despotism against Native American culture, the altercations of sovereignty, territory, and pluralistic democracy are analyzed in an effort to provide a path towards justice.

This book is a collection of Native American Recipes from tribes across North America. Some of the recipes provide new and different ways to prepare USDA commodities, in addition to traditional recipes. Traditional recipes include bison recipes, blue corn recipes, and traditional breads. Most of these recipes make use of USDA's commodities that are provided to recipients who participate in the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations. Some of the original recipes have been altered to help lower the fat and sodium found in the recipes.