Government Resources on Native American Heritage : Native American Heritage Month
Native American Heritage Month is an annual celebration of achievements by Native Americans and a time for recognizing their central role in U.S. history.
Overview
Native American Heritage Month is an annual celebration of achievements by Native Americans and a time for recognizing their central role in U.S. history.
Online Resources
- Native American Heritage MonthThe Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in paying tribute to the rich ancestry and traditions of Native Americans.
- DOD Honors Native Americans and Their Many Contributions to the NationThe Defense Department and the nation are celebrating National Native American Heritage Month, which is every November. It's a time to reflect on the contributions and sacrifices Native Americans have made to the United States, not just in the military, but in all walks of life.
- Living Nations, Living WordsCreated by Joy Harjo, 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States, The “Living Nations, Living Words” project features a sampling of work by 47 Native Nations poets through an interactive ArcGIS Story Map and a newly developed Library of Congress audio collection.
- Documented Rights: An Online ExhibitDocuments in the National Archives give voice to our national struggle for personal rights and freedoms. From the Emancipation Proclamation to the five cases that comprised Brown v. Board of Education, this exhibit features a sampling of documents from all regions of the National Archives.
- Records of Rights: An Online ExhibitExplore records of the National Archives documenting the ongoing struggle of Americans to define, attain, and protect their rights.
- Society of American IndiansThe Society of American Indians was a progressive group formed in Columbus, Ohio in 1911 by 50 Native Americans, most of them middle-class professional men and women. It was established to address the problems facing Native Americans, such as ways to improve health, education, civil rights, and local government. The Society of American Indians was the first pan-Indian reform organization in the U.S. during the Progressive Era. The Society publicized Native Americans’ aspirations and urged their assimilation into society when the Dawes Act forced assimilation, which caused Native Americans to give up their tribal ownership of land, in favor of private ownership. The papers include correspondence, organizational papers, articles, newspaper accounts and government documents.
- Native American Heritage Month - Rising Above Adversity: Bringing Native Voices to the ForefrontThe National Institutes of Health celebrates National Native American Heritage Month during November as part of a commitment to the principles of equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in our research and workplace. During this month we pay tribute to the many contributions made by Native Americans. Our hope in the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion is to continue to acknowledge the contributions of Native Americans and work to help eliminate discrimination throughout the year.
- Native Voices: Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and IllnessNative Voices: Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness explores the interconnectedness of wellness, illness, and cultural life for Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians. Visitors will discover how Native concepts of health and illness are closely tied to the concepts of community, spirit, and the land.
- National Register of Historic Places - National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage MonthThe National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation's historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America's historic and archeological resources. The National Register of Historic Places is pleased to promote awareness of and appreciation for the history and culture of American Indians and Alaska Natives during National American Indian Heritage Month.
- November 2022 Native American Heritage MonthDuring National Native American Heritage Month, we will explore the heritage, culture, and experience of Indigenous peoples both historically and in American life today, while also sharing the various ways the National Park Service collaborates with Indigenous communities.
- NPS Celebrates and Commemorates Native American Heritage MonthAmerica is a vast land of many cultures dating back thousands of years to the original inhabitants of the land. The history and heritage of Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Island communities are part of all national parks today. Throughout the year, and especially during November during Native American Heritage Month, the National Park Service and our partners celebrate together the rich traditions, languages, and contributions of Indigenous people.
- Series: The Struggle for Sovereignty: American Indian Activism in the Nation’s Capital, 1968-1978From 1968 to 1978, American Indian activists engaged in a series of marches to the nation's capital to demand rights for their tribes and communities. Foremost among their demands was that the United States honor its treaties with Indigenous nations. These movements laid the foundation for the ongoing struggle for Native rights in the United States. Read on to learn more about this important chapter in Native American history.
- National Native American Veterans MemorialThe National Native American Veterans Memorial opened on November 11, 2020, on the grounds of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. This tribute to Native heroes recognizes for the first time on a national scale the enduring and distinguished service of Native Americans in every branch of the US military.
- Online Exhibition: AmericansAmericans highlights the ways in which American Indians have been part of the nation’s identity since before the country began. It will surround visitors with images, delve into the three stories, and invite 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.
- Online Exhibition: Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian NationsTreaties—solemn agreements between sovereign nations—lie at the heart of the relationship between Indian Nations and the United States. Native Nations made treaties with one another long before Europeans came to the Western Hemisphere. The United States began making treaties with Native Peoples because they were independent nations. Often broken, sometimes coerced, treaties still define mutual obligations between the United States and Indian Nations. The eight treaties featured in Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations, on loan from the National Archives and Records Administration, are representative of the approximately 374 that were ratified between the United States and Native Nations.
- Online Exhibition: Why We Serve - Native Americans in the United States Armed ForcesWhy We Serve honors the generations of Native Americans who have served in the armed forces of the United States—often in extraordinary numbers—since the American Revolution.
- Congressional Research Service Report on Native American Heritage MonthThis guide assists congressional offices with work related to Native American Heritage Month celebrations. It provides links to sample congressional speeches and recognitions, presidential proclamations, statistical data, cultural resources, and selected federal agencies and programs that focus on Native American issues. This guide also includes links to selected educational and advocacy organizations.
- Congressional Research Service - Native American Heritage Month: Fact SheetProvides brief history of Native American Heritage Month, which was designated to be observed during the month of November as National American Indian Heritage Month on Aug. 3, 1990, by P.L. 101-343, to celebrate the contributions and achievements of Native Americans. Includes links to sample Congressional speeches and recognitions, Presidential proclamations, statistical data, cultural resources, and selected Federal agencies and programs that focus on Native American issues as well as links to selected educational and advocacy organizations.
- Native American Heritage Month: Native American Leaders Shaping the Biden-Harris AdministrationIn honor of Native American Heritage Month this November, the Presidential Personnel Office asked Native American leaders across the Biden-Harris Administration to share how their life and professional experiences inform their public service today. We are proud to highlight the following political appointees, whose work serves the nation every day. Responses have been edited for clarity and length.
Teaching & Learning about Native Americans
Native Knowledge 360° by the National Museum of the American Indian has compiled some of the questions frequently asked about Native Americans. Click below on each topic to learn more.
National Native American Heritage Month
The combined efforts of The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to pay tribute to the rich ancestry and traditions of Native Americans.
Select Publications at Fondren Library
National Museum of the American Indian by
The first American national museum designed and run by indigenous peoples, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC opened in 2004. It represents both the United States as a singular nation and the myriad indigenous nations within its borders. Constructed with materials closely connected to Native communities across the continent, the museum contains more than 800,000 objects and three permanent galleries and routinely holds workshops and seminar series. This first comprehensive look at the National Museum of the American Indian encompasses a variety of perspectives, including those of Natives and non-Natives, museum employees, and outside scholars across disciplines such as cultural studies and criticism, art history, history, museum studies, anthropology, ethnic studies, and Native American studies. The contributors engage in critical dialogues about key aspects of the museum's origin, exhibits, significance, and the relationship between Native Americans and other related museums.
Call Number: E56 .N36 2008ISBN: 9780803211117Publication Date: 2008-11-01
Living Nations, Living Words by
Joy Harjo, the first Native poet to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate, has championed the voices of Native peoples past and present. Her signature laureate project gathers the work of contemporary Native poets into a national, fully digital map of story, sound, and space, celebrating their vital and unequivocal contributions to American poetry. This companion anthology features each poem and poet from the project?including Natalie Diaz, Ray Young Bear, Craig Santos Perez, Sherwin Bitsui, and Layli Long Soldier, among others?to offer readers a chance to hold the wealth of poems in their hands. The chosen poems reflect on the theme of place and displacement and circle the touchpoints of visibility, persistence, resistance, and acknowledgment. Each poem?showcases, as Joy Harjo writes in her stirring introduction, ?that heritage is a living thing, and there can be no heritage without land and the relationships that outline our kinship.? In this country, poetry is rooted in the more than five hundred living indigenous nations.?Living Nations, Living Words?is a representative offering.
Call Number: PS591.I55 L56 2021ISBN: 9780393867916Publication Date: 2021-05-04
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by Call Number: E77 .T797 2019ISBN: 9781594633157Publication Date: 2019-01-22Beginning with the tribes' devastating loss of land and the forced assimilation of their children at government-run boarding schools, he shows how the period of greatest adversity also helped to incubate a unifying Native identity. He traces how conscription in the US military and the pull of urban life brought Indians into the mainstream and modern times, even as it steered the emerging shape of their self-rule and spawned a new generation of resistance. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is an essential, intimate history - and counter-narrative - of a resilient people in a transformative era.
All the Real Indians Died Off by Call Number: E76.8 .D85 2016ISBN: 9780807062654Publication Date: 2016-10-04Unpacks 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. .
Introduction to Handbook of American Indian Languages and Indian Linguistic Families of America North of Mexico by Call Number: P105 .B58 2017ISBN: 9781496201546Publication Date: 2017-10-01As Michael Silverstein discusses in his introduction to this new edition, the two foundational essays presented here are culminating moments in the scholarly history of North American indigenous peoples' languages and cultures. Franz Boas's "Introduction" essay (1911) initiates readers into the collection of grammatical sketches contained in the multiple volumes of the Handbook of American Indian Languages, underscoring critical issues of language in human cognition and its role in sociocultural variation. Twenty years earlier, J. W. Powell published "Indian Linguistic Families of America North of Mexico" to accompany his Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) of the Smithsonian Institution. Powell interpreted the BAE's vast collection of vocabularies through a classificatory perspective like those of geology, geography, and biology, thus organizing understanding of the hundreds of attested languages as members of linguistic families. Originally published in the same volume in 1966, these two essays form a cornerstone of modern indigenous language studies.
Ancient North America : the archaeology of a continent by Call Number: OnlineISBN: 0500776504Publication Date: 2019
The Land Looks after Us by Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9780195145861Publication Date: 2001-02-22Native Americans practice some of America's most spiritually profound, historically resilient, and ethically demanding religions. Joel Martin draws his narrative from folk stories, rituals, and even landscapes to trace the development of Native American religion from ancient burial mounds, through interactions with European conquerors and missionaries, and on to the modern-day rebirth of ancient rites and beliefs.
The American Indian Mind in a Linear World by Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9781032694672Publication Date: 2024-09-27Now in its second edition, The American Indian Mind in a Linear World examines the persistence of Native peoples in retaining their own worldviews, from the pre-Columbian era into the twenty-first century. The book explores the ways in which Indian people who are close to their cultural traditions think in a circular fashion, understand by relying on visual analysis, and make decisions from an Indigenous logic.
Select Publication at the Kelley Center for Government Information
- Joint Resolution Designating the Month of November 1990 as "National American Indian Heritage Month." byCall Number: 104 STAT. 391.Publication Date: 1990
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