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. https://www.si.edu/events/native-american-heritage-month https://americanindian.si.edu/developingstories/irvine.html
American Indian images are everywhere, from the Land O’Lakes butter maiden to the Cleveland Indians’ mascot, and from classic Westerns and cartoons to episodes of Seinfeld and South Park. American Indian names are everywhere too, from state, city, and street names to the Tomahawk missile. And familiar historical events such as Pocahontas’s life, the Trail of Tears, and the Battle of Little Bighorn remain popular reference points in everyday conversation.
Americans, a major exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, highlights the ways in which American Indians have been part of the nation’s identity since before the country began. It delves into the three stories, surrounds visitors with images, and invites them to begin a conversation about why this phenomenon exists.
Pervasive, powerful, at times demeaning, the images, names, and stories reveal the deep connection between Americans and American Indians as well as how Indians have been embedded in unexpected ways in the history, pop culture, and identity of the United States.
"Missouri gets its name from a tribe of Sioux Indians of the state called the Missouris. The word "Missouri" often has been construed to mean "muddy water" but the Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology has stated it means "town of the large canoes," and authorities have said the Indian syllables from which the word comes mean "wooden canoe people" or "he of the big canoe." From Missouri History:: Origin of Missouri, Missouri Secretary of State. https://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/history/history
Here are a few titles from our collection. Additional print and digital titles may be found by searching our catalog.
Before here was here, Raven was a white bird, and the world was in darkness. So begins the story passed down among the Tlingit people of the Pacific Northwest since time immemorial. This origin story has survived by passing from the lips of one person to the ear of another—from generation to generation. In this episode of Sidedoor, Tlingit glass artist Preston Singletary shares it in a new way: leading us on a journey from darkness to light through dozens of luminous glass sculptures. This episode is from the Smithsonian's podcast Sidedoor. You can also learn more about Thanksgiving in this episode: That Brunch in the Forest or see all episodes on their website.
This three-part series from Missouri Life magazine provides an overview of the history of the original tribes of Missouri.
Part 1: When the Osage and Missouria Reigned
Part 2: Things Fall Apart
Part 3: Homecoming
In the early nineteenth century a movement began in the United States to remove Indian tribes from their ancestral lands in the rapidly developing eastern states and settle them in the newly acquired lands west of the Mississippi River. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 established the government policy of relocating the eastern tribes to a separate, reserved "Indian Territory" on the Great Plains. A chronology of contemporaneous maps of the Indian territory reveals the continuous loss of portions of this reserved land, owing to the pressure from non-Indian settlers and the commercial interests in opening Indian lands for non-Indian use. Learn more...
The Library of Congress has a rich collection of Indian maps, geographic knowledge sources, records of village sites, tribal ranges, place names, and communication routes. See the Native American Spaces research guide to learn more.
Text of the law establishing Native American Heritage Month. "
" Whereas American Indians are the original inhabitants of the lands that now constitute the United States of America..."
Lyla June is an Indigenous environmental scientist, doctoral student, educator, community organizer and musician of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages from Taos, NM.
Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden was appointed Joy Harjo as the 23rd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress on June 19, 2019 and continued to serve until 2022.
Joy Harjo is the first Native American poet to serve in the position—she is an enrolled member of the Muscogee Creek Nation. She was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 9, 1951, and is the author of nine books of poetry—including An American Sunrise (2019); Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015); The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (1994), which received the Oklahoma Book Arts Award; and In Mad Love and War (1990), which received an American Book Award and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award. Harjo has also written a memoir, Crazy Brave (W. W. Norton, 2012), which won the 2013 PEN Center USA literary prize for creative nonfiction, as well as a children’s book, The Good Luck Cat (Harcourt, Brace 2000), and a young adult book, For a Girl Becoming (University of Arizona Press, 2009).