Readings on Race

Drawing from forty-five years of experience, Richard Hart elucidates the use of history as expert testimony in American Indian tribal litigation. Such lawsuits deal with aboriginal territory; hunting, fishing, and plant gathering rights; reservation boundaries; water rights; federal recognition; and other questions that have a historical basis. The methodology necessary to assemble successful expert testimony for tribes is complex and demanding and the legal cases have serious implications for many thousands of people, perhaps for generations. Hart, a historian who has testified in cases that have resulted in roughly a billion dollars in judgments, uses specific cases to explain at length what kind of historical research and documentation is necessary for tribes seeking to protect and claim their rights under United States law.

This book argues that two principal factors are inhibiting Native students from transitioning from school to college and from succeeding in their post-secondary studies. It presents models and examples of pathways to success that align with Native American students' aspirations and cultural values. Many attend schools that are poorly resourced where they are often discouraged from aspiring to college. Many are alienated from the educational system by a lack of culturally appropriate and meaningful environment or support systems that reflect Indigenous values of community, sharing, honoring extended family, giving-back to one's community, and respect for creation.

Who counts as an American Indian? Which groups qualify as Indian tribes? These questions have become increasingly complex in the past several decades, and federal legislation and the rise of tribal-owned casinos have raised the stakes in the ongoing debate. In this revealing study, historian Mark Edwin Miller describes how and why dozens of previously unrecognized tribal groups in the southeastern states have sought, and sometimes won, recognition, often to the dismay of the Five Tribes--the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles.

The remarkable story of the innovative legal strategies Native Americans have used to protect their religious rights From North Dakota's Standing Rock encampments to Arizona's San Francisco Peaks, Native Americans have repeatedly asserted legal rights to religious freedom to protect their sacred places, practices, objects, knowledge, and ancestral remains. But these claims have met with little success in court because Native American communal traditions don't fit easily into modern Western definitions of religion. In Defend the Sacred, Michael McNally explores how, in response to this situation, Native peoples have creatively turned to other legal means to safeguard what matters to them.

Storytelling has always been an important part of Native culture. Stories play a part in everyday Native life--they are often oral and rich in detail and language and serve as a form of recording history. Digital media now allow for the extension of this storytelling. This necessary text evaluates how digital media are changing the rich cultural act of storytelling within Native communities, with a specific focus on Native newsroom norms and routines. The authors argue that the non-Native press often leave consumers with a stereotypical view of American Indians, and aim to give a more authentic representation to Native journalism.

Jamestown, the Lost Colony of Roanoke, and Plymouth Rock are central to America's mythic origin stories. Then, we are told, the main characters--the "friendly" Native Americans who met the settlers--disappeared. But the history of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina demands that we tell a different story. As the largest tribe east of the Mississippi and one of the largest in the country, the Lumbees have survived in their original homelands, maintaining a distinct identity as Indians in a biracial South. In this passionately written, sweeping work of history, Malinda Maynor Lowery narrates the Lumbees' extraordinary story as never before.

The lands the United States claims sovereignty over by right of the Doctrine of Discovery are home to more than five hundred Indian nations, each with its own distinct culture, religion, language, and history. Yet these Indians, and federal Indian law, rarely factor into the decisions of the country's governing class--as recent battles over national monuments on tribal sites have made painfully clear. A much-needed intervention, Many Nations under Many Gods brings to light the invisible histories of several Indian nations, as well as their struggles to protect the integrity of sacred and cultural sites located on federal public lands.

Nation to Nation- Treaties Between the United States and American Indians explores the promises, diplomacy, and betrayals involved in treaties and treaty making between the United States government and Native nations. One side sought to own the riches of North America and the other struggled to hold on to traditional homelands and ways of life. The book reveals how the ideas of honor, fair dealings, good faith, rule of law, and peaceful relations between nations have been tested and challenged in historical and modern times. The book consistently demonstrates how and why centuries-old treaties remain living, relevant documents for both Natives and non-Natives in the 21st century.

From ancient rock drawings to today's urban living, the Native American Almanac: More than 50,000 Years of the Cultures and Histories of Indigenous Peoples traces the rich heritage of indigenous people. It is a fascinating mix of biography, pre-contact and post-contact history, current events, Tribal Nations' histories, enlightening insights on environmental and land issues, arts, treaties, languages, education, movements, and more. Ten regional chapters, including urban living, cover the narrative history, the communities, land, environment, important figures, and backgrounds of each area's Tribal Nations and peoples. The stories of 345 Tribal Nations, biographies of 400 influential figures in all walks of life, Native American firsts, awards, and statistics are covered.

Sports mascots have been a tradition for decades. Along with the usual lions and tigers, many schools are represented by Native American images. Once considered a benign practice, numerous studies have proved just the opposite: that the use of Native American mascots in educational institutions has perpetuated a shameful history of racial insensitivity. "The Native American Mascot Controversy" provides an overview of the issues that have been associated with this topic for the past 40 years.

Rising from the Ashes explores continuing Native American political, social, and cultural survival and resilience with a focus on the life of Numiipuu (Nez Perce) anthropologist Archie M. Phinney. He lived through tumultuous times as the Bureau of Indian Affairs implemented the Indian Reorganization Act, and he built a successful career as an indigenous nationalist, promoting strong, independent American Indian nations. Rising from the Ashes analyzes concepts of indigenous nationalism and notions of American Indian citizenship before and after tribes found themselves within the boundaries of the United States.

In addition to revisions and updates, the second edition of "We Are Still Here" features new material, seeing this well-loved American History Series volume maintain its treatment of American Indians in the 20th century while extending its coverage into the opening decades of the 21st century. Provides student and general readers concise and engaging coverage of contemporary history of American Indians contributed by top scholars and instructors in the field Represents an ideal supplement to any U.S. or Native American survey text Includes a completely up-to-date synthesis of the most current literature in the field Features a comprehensive Bibliographical Essay that serves to aid student research and writing Covers American Indian history from 1890 through 2013

Jonathan Osorio investigates the effects of Western law on the national identity of Native Hawaiians in this impressive political history of the Kingdom of Hawaii from the onset of constitutional government in 1840 to the Bayonet Constitution of 1887, which effectively placed political power in the kingdom in the hands of white businessmen. Making extensive use of legislative texts, contemporary newspapers, and important works by Hawaiian historians and others, Osorio plots the course of events that transformed Hawaii from a traditional subsistence economy to a modern nation, taking into account the many individuals nearly forgotten by history who wrestled with each new political and social change.

Many indigenous Hawaiians who have moved to the islands' cities languish at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale and are thought to have lost their cultural roots. Initially apolitical urban Hawaiians were often skeptical of activists who sought to revitalize traditional ways; yet, as Karen L. Ito shows, Hawaiian women in particular continue to maintain and express crucial aspects of their cultural heritage in their lifestyle and interactions with others. Ito conducted intensive fieldwork with six Honolulu families, all of which shared the distinguishing characteristics of Hawaii's matrifocal society. In her close examination of the friendships and family relations among the women in these households, she focuses on the significance of a traditional manner of speech known as "talk story" which they use when conversing together.

A Nation Rising chronicles the political struggles and grassroots initiatives collectively known as the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Scholars, community organizers, journalists, and filmmakers contribute essays that explore Native Hawaiian resistance and resurgence from the 1970s to the early 2010s. Photographs and vignettes about particular activists further bring Hawaiian social movements to life. The stories and analyses of efforts to protect land and natural resources, resist community dispossession, and advance claims for sovereignty and self-determination reveal the diverse objectives and strategies, as well as the inevitable tensions, of the broad-tent sovereignty movement. The collection explores the Hawaiian political ethic of ea, which both includes and exceeds dominant notions of state-based sovereignty.

In 1897, as a white oligarchy made plans to allow the United States to annex Hawai'i, native Hawaiians organized a massive petition drive to protest. Ninety-five percent of the native population signed the petition, causing the annexation treaty to fail in the U.S. Senate. This event was unknown to many contemporary Hawaiians until Noenoe K. Silva rediscovered the petition in the process of researching this book. With few exceptions, histories of Hawai'i have been based exclusively on English-language sources. They have not taken into account the thousands of pages of newspapers, books, and letters written in the mother tongue of native Hawaiians. By rigorously analyzing many of these documents, Silva fills a crucial gap in the historical record.

Beginning 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.

Inseparable from the history of the Indians of Southern California is the role of the Indian agent--a government functionary whose chief duty was, according to the Office of Indian Affairs, to "induce his Indian to labor in civilized pursuits." Offering a portrait of the Mission Indian agents of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Reservations, Removal, and Reform reveals how individual agents interpreted this charge, and how their actions and attitudes affected the lives of the Mission Indians of Southern California. This book tells the story of the government agents, both special and regular, who served the Mission Indians from 1850 to 1903, with an emphasis on seven regular agents who served from 1878 to 1903.

In Voices of Wounded Knee, William S. E. Coleman brings together for the first time all the available sources-Lakota, military, and civilian-on the massacre of 29 December 1890. He recreates the Ghost Dance in detail and shows how it related to the events leading up to the massacre. Using accounts of participants and observers, Coleman reconstructs the massacre moment by moment. He places contradictory accounts in direct juxtaposition, allowing the reader to decide who was telling the truth.

As the year 1890 wound to a close, a band of more than three hundred Lakota Sioux Indians led by Chief Big Foot made their way toward South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation to join other Lakotas seeking peace. Fearing that Big Foot's band was headed instead to join "hostile" Lakotas, U.S. troops surrounded the group on Wounded Knee Creek. Tensions mounted, and on the morning of December 29, as the Lakotas prepared to give up their arms, disaster struck. Accounts vary on what triggered the violence as Indians and soldiers unleashed thunderous gunfire at each other, but the consequences were horrific: some 200 innocent Lakota men, women, and children were slaughtered.

Sand Creek. At dawn on the morning of November 29, 1864, Colonel John Milton Chivington gave the command that led to slaughter of 230 peaceful Cheyennes and Arapahos--primarily women, children, and elderly--camped under the protection of the U. S. government along Sand Creek in Colorado Territory and flying both an American flag and a white flag. The Sand Creek massacre seized national attention in the winter of 1864-1865 and generated a controversy that still excites heated debate more than 150 years later. At Sand Creek demoniac forces seemed unloosed so completely that humanity itself was the casualty. That was the charge that drew public attention to the Colorado frontier in 1865. That was the claim that spawned heated debate in Congress, two congressional hearings, and a military commission.

Standing Up to Colonial Power focuses on the lives, activism, and intellectual contributions of Henry Cloud (1884-1950), a Ho-Chunk, and Elizabeth Bender Cloud (1887-1965), an Ojibwe, both of whom grew up amid settler colonialism that attempted to break their connection to Native land, treaty rights, and tribal identities. Mastering ways of behaving and speaking in different social settings and to divergent audiences, including other Natives, white missionaries, and Bureau of Indian Affairs officials, Elizabeth and Henry relied on flexible and fluid notions of gender, identity, culture, community, and belonging as they traveled Indian Country and within white environments to fight for Native rights.

In Native but Foreign, historian Brenden W. Rensink presents an innovative comparison of indigenous peoples who traversed North American borders in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, examining Crees and Chippewas, who crossed the border from Canada into Montana, and Yaquis from Mexico who migrated into Arizona. The resulting history questions how opposing national borders affect and react differently to Native identity and offers new insights into what it has meant to be "indigenous" or an "immigrant." Rensink's findings counter a prevailing theme in histories of the American West--namely, that the East was the center that dictated policy to the western periphery.

Jason Edward Black examines the ways the US government's rhetoric and American Indian responses contributed to the policies of Native-US relations throughout the nineteenth century's removal and allotment eras. Black shows how these discourses together constructed the perception of the US government and of American Indian communities. Such interactions--though certainly not equal--illustrated the hybrid nature of Native-US rhetoric in the nineteenth century. Both governmental, colonizing discourse and indigenous, decolonizing discourse shaped arguments, constructions of identity, and rhetoric in the colonial relationship.

An authoritative contribution to the history of the United States' violent path toward building a continental empire, this ambitious and well-researched book deepens our understanding of the seizure of Indigenous lands, including the use of treaties to create the appearance of Native consent to dispossession. Ostler also documents the resilience of Native people, showing how they survived genocide by creating alliances, defending their towns, and rebuilding their communities.

If you want to know why American Indians have the highest rates of poverty of any racial group, why suicide is the leading cause of death among Indian men, why native women are two and a half times more likely to be raped than the national average and why gang violence affects American Indian youth more than any other group, do not look to history. There is no doubt that white settlers devastated Indian communities in the 19th, and early 20th centuries. But it is our policies today--denying Indians ownership of their land, refusing them access to the free market and failing to provide the police and legal protections due to them as American citizens--that have turned reservations into small third-world countries in the middle of the richest and freest nation on earth.

What might we learn from Native American experiences with schools to help us forge a new vision of the democratic ideal--one that respects, protects, and promotes diversity and human rights? In this fascinating portrait of American Indian education over the past century, the authors critically evaluate U.S. education policies and practices, from early 20th-century federal incarnations of colonial education through the contemporary standards movement. In the process, they refute the notion of "dangerous cultural difference" and point to the promise of diversity as a source of national strength.

"Artfully weaving old photographs, first-person accounts, and well-organized text and verse, the editors present important and predominantly Native views of some 'good, bad, and ugly' aspects of Indian boarding school life.--Choice

In May 1830, the United States formally launched a policy to expel Native Americans from the East to territories west of the Mississippi River. Justified as a humanitarian enterprise, the undertaking was to be systematic and rational, overseen by Washington's small but growing bureaucracy. But as the policy unfolded over the next decade, thousands of Native Americans died under the federal government's auspices, and thousands of others lost their possessions and homelands in an orgy of fraud, intimidation, and violence. Unworthy Republic reveals how expulsion became national policy and describes the chaotic and deadly results of the operation to deport 80,000 men, women, and children.

The story of Native peoples' resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community's rich history of activism. Through the unique lens of "Indigenized environmental justice," Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker explores the fraught history of treaty violations, struggles for food and water security, and protection of sacred sites, while highlighting the important leadership of Indigenous women in this centuries-long struggle. As Long As Grass Grows gives readers an accessible history of Indigenous resistance to government and corporate incursions on their lands and offers new approaches to environmental justice activism and policy.

The American Indian Movement, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, burst into that turbulent time with passion, anger, and radical acts of resistance. Spurred by the Civil Rights movement, Native people began to protest the decades--centuries--of corruption, racism, and abuse they had endured. They argued for political, social, and cultural change, and they got attention. The photographs of activist Dick Bancroft, a key documentarian of AIM, provide a stunningly intimate view of this major piece of American history from 1970 to 1981. Veteran journalist Laura Waterman Wittstock, who participated in events in Washington, DC, has interviewed a host of surviving participants to tell the stories behind the images.

In This Indian Country, Hoxie has created a bold and sweeping counter-narrative to our conventional understanding. Native American history, he argues, is also a story of political activism, its victories hard-won in courts and campaigns rather than on the battlefield. For more than two hundred years, Indian activists--some famous, many unknown beyond their own communities--have sought to bridge the distance between indigenous cultures and the republican democracy of the United States through legal and political debate. Over time their struggle defined a new language of "Indian rights" and created a vision of American Indian identity.

Iconic activist and AIM co-founder Clyde Bellecourt tells "the damn truth" about the American Indian Movement as he lived it.

In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century, attracting tens of thousands of Indigenous and non-Native allies from around the world. Its slogan "Mni Wiconi" Water is Life was about more than just a pipeline. Water Protectors knew this battle for Native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even after the encampment was gone, their anti-colonial struggle would continue.

Over 100 years ago Frank Bennett Fiske (1883-1952) photographed members of the Standing Rock Native American community at Fort Yates, North Dakota, where he was born. The men and women he portrayed were his friends and neighbors who were living on the reservation. These images, created with a large studio camera on glass negatives, are notable for their depth and clarity. The negatives were recently rediscovered, and have rarely been displayed. Photographer and graphic designer Murray Lemley, also from North Dakota, curated this selection of images to introduce Fiske's work to the wider public. They are published here in an attractively-priced gift edition.

In 1959 a group of Miccosukee Indians, frustrated in their attempts to gain official recognition by the United States, met with Fidel Castro and were recognized by the Cuban government. The man behind this unprecedented move to provoke the United States government into action was Buffalo Tiger, a Miccosukee elder who has become one of the most prominent Indian leaders in the southeastern United States in the modern era. This book is the story of Buffalo Tiger's life, told in his own words. Born in a small village in the Everglades in 1920, Buffalo Tiger grew up immersed in the traditional customs and language of the Miccosukees.

The fascinating story of a lost city and an unprecedented civilization. Almost a thousand years ago, a Native American city flourished along the Mississippi River near what is now St. Louis. In Cahokia, anthropologist Timothy R. Pauketat reveals the story of the city and its people as uncovered by the dramatic digs of American corn-belt archaeologists. Drawing on these pioneering digs and a wealth of analysis by historians and archaeologists, Pauketat provides a comprehensive picture of what's been discovered about Cahokia and how these findings have challenged our perceptions of Native Americans. Cahokia is a lively read and a compelling narrative of prehistoric America.

The riveting story of a dramatic confrontation between Native Americans and white settlers, a compelling conflict that unfolded in the newly created Washington Territory from 1853 to 1857. When appointed Washington's first governor, Isaac Ingalls Stevens, an ambitious military man turned politician, had one goal: to persuade (peacefully if possible) the Indians of the Puget Sound region to turn over their ancestral lands to the federal government. In return, they were to be consigned to reservations unsuitable for hunting, fishing, or grazing, their traditional means of sustaining life. The result was an outbreak of violence and rebellion, a tragic episode of frontier oppression and injustice.

The phrase Red Power, coined by Clyde Warrior (1939-1968) in the 1960s, introduced militant rhetoric into American Indian activism. In this first-ever biography of Warrior, historian Paul R. McKenzie-Jones presents the Ponca leader as the architect of the Red Power movement, spotlighting him as one of the most significant and influential figures in the fight for Indian rights. The Red Power movement arose in reaction to centuries of oppressive federal oversight of American Indian peoples. It comprised an assortment of grassroots organizations that fought for treaty rights, tribal sovereignty, self-determination, cultural preservation, and cultural relevancy in education.

The first biography of the great Shawnee leader to make clear that his misunderstood younger brother, Tenskwatawa, was an equal partner in the last great pan-Indian alliance against the United States. Until the Americans killed Tecumseh in 1813, he and his brother Tenskwatawa were the co-architects of the broadest pan-Indian confederation in United States history. In previous accounts of Tecumseh's life, Tenskwatawa has been dismissed as a talentless charlatan and a drunk. But award-winning historian Peter Cozzens now shows us that while Tecumseh was a brilliant diplomat and war leader--admired by the same white Americans he opposed--it was Tenskwatawa, called the "Shawnee Prophet," who created a vital doctrine of religious and cultural revitalization that unified the disparate tribes of the Old Northwest.

In 2016, the world looked on as thousands set up camp within Standing Rock Sioux Reservation to protest the re-routing of the Dakota Access oil pipeline close to the Reservation's northern border. People from many Native American tribes were joined by non-tribal environmentalists, including US army veterans, all of them standing in solidarity with the Lakota. Then, in early 2017, the protest was disbanded using brutal force. And that is when the real struggle began. From the decline of the East coast tribes to the dispossession of the native people along the Missouri basin, from the Battle of Little Bighorn to Wounded Knee, America's indigenous peoples have been subject to horrendous persecution, land grabs and the steady erosion of their way of life.

Most of us probably think of America as being settled by British, Protestant colonists who fought the Indians, tamed the wilderness, and brought "democracy" or at least a representative republicto North America. To the contrary, Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman's research indicates the earliest settlers were of Mediterranean extraction, and of a Jewish or Muslim religious persuasion. Sometimes called "Melungeons," these early settlers were among the earliest nonnative "Americans" to live in the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. The Melungeons were reticent regarding their heritage. In fact, over time, many of the Melungeons themselves "forgot" where they came from. Hence, today, the Melungeons remain the "last lost tribe in America," even to themselves.

Claimed by many to be the most frequently documented artifact in American archeology, Dighton Rock is a forty-ton boulder covered in petroglyphs in southern Massachusetts. First noted by New England colonists in 1680, the rock's markings have been debated endlessly by scholars and everyday people alike on both sides of the Atlantic. The glyphs have been erroneously assigned to an array of non-Indigenous cultures: Norsemen, Egyptians, Lost Tribes of Israel, vanished Portuguese explorers, and even a prince from Atlantis. In this fascinating story rich in personalities and memorable characters, Douglas Hunter argues that misinterpretations of the rock's markings share common motivations and have erased Indigenous people not only from their own history but from the landscape.

Now it is my turn to stand. At Acoma Pueblo meetings, members rise and announce their intention to speak. In that moment they are recognized and heard. In Speaking for the Generations, Acoma Pueblo poet Simon Ortiz brings together contemporary Native American writers to take their turn. Each offers an evocation of herself or himself, describing the personal, social, and cultural influences on her or his development as a writer. Although each writer's viewpoint is personal and unique, together they reflect the rich tapestry of today's Native literature. Of varied backgrounds, the writers represent Indian heritages and cultures from the Pacific Northwest to the northern plains, from Canada to Guatemala. They are poets, novelists, and playwrights.

Recovering Native American Writings in the Boarding School Press is the first comprehensive collection of writings by students and well-known Native American authors who published in boarding school newspapers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Students used their acquired literacy in English along with more concrete tools that the boarding schools made available, such as printing technology, to create identities for themselves as editors and writers. In these roles they sought to challenge Native American stereotypes and share issues of importance to their communities.

American Indians have faced injustice from the moment Europeans came to the Americas to claim land and resources. This volume traces the history of injustice against American Indians, from losing their land, to moving to reservations, to having their culture stolen from them. Readers will learn how the movement for rights began, and the challenges and successes activists faced. Primary sources and photographs from the movement will bring readers back in time to fully grasp the importance of events. The book concludes by challenging readers to think about how they could help advance American Indian rights today.

The United States grew rapidly from the time of the Louisiana Purchase to the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. All of this expansion came at the expense of Native American populations that had either lived in the region for centuries or been forced there from ancestral homes in the East. Tribes memorably fought on their own and together in an doomed effort to retain the land and a lifestyle that had long sustained their families. This book outlines some of the major conflicts of the Westward Expansion, and of the treaties and were signed, and often broken, by representatives of the tribes and the government of the United States.

Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Teamis an astonishing underdog sports story--and more. It's an unflinching look at the U.S. government's violent persecution of Native Americans and the school that was designed to erase Indian cultures. Expertly told by three-time National Book Award finalist Steve Sheinkin, it's the story of a group of young men who came together at that school, the overwhelming obstacles they faced both on and off the field, and their absolute refusal to accept defeat.

Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

"Eee-leee! Master Parker," Reverend Stone, headmaster at the Baptist school, called. "The answer, please." "Four," Ely thought. But he also thought something else. Why is English so strange? In Seneca every word always meant the same thing. But in English the same sound could mean different things. It could be four. Or for. Or fore. So begins this inspiring story of the early education of a famous Native American who gained greatness in the white man's world while staying true to his Seneca people. Hasanoanda was his Indian name. But in mission school he became Ely. He encountered racism and deceit but, against all odds, did not give up on his quest to walk between two worlds.

All her life, Edie has known that her mom was adopted by a white couple. So, no matter how curious she might be about her Native American heritage, Edie is sure her family doesn't have any answers. Until the day when she and her friends discover a box hidden in the attic--a box full of letters signed "Love, Edith," and photos of a woman who looks just like her. Suddenly, Edie has a flurry of new questions about this woman who shares her name. Could she belong to the Native family that Edie never knew about? But if her mom and dad have kept this secret from her all her life, how can she trust them to tell her the truth now?

Just when you think you have nothing left to lose, they come for your dreams. Humanity has nearly destroyed its world through global warming, but now an even greater evil lurks. The Indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream. In this dark world, Frenchie and his companions struggle to survive as they make their way up north to the old lands. For now, survival means staying hidden - but what they don't know is that one of them holds the secret to defeating the marrow thieves.

When Regina's Umpqua tribe is legally terminated and her family must relocate from Oregon to Los Angeles, she goes on a quest to understand her identity as an Indian despite being so far from home. Regina Petit's family has always been Umpqua, and living on the Grand Ronde Tribe's reservation is all ten-year-old Regina has ever known. Her biggest worry is that Sasquatch may actually exist out in the forest. But when the federal government enacts a law that says Regina's tribe no longer exists, Regina becomes "Indian no more" overnight--even though she lives with her tribe and practices tribal customs, and even though her ancestors were Indian for countless generations. Now that they've been forced from their homeland, Regina's father signs the family up for the federal Indian Relocation Program and moves them to Los Angeles.

Apple Starkington turned her back on her Native American heritage the moment she was called a prairie nigger-a racial slur for someone of white and Indian descendance-not that she really even knows how to be an Indian in the first place. Too bad the white world doesn't accept her either. After her wealthy father gives her the boot one summer, Apple reluctantly agrees to visit her Native American relatives on the Turtle Mountain (North Dakota) Indian Reservation for the first time. It should have been easy, except that she makes all kinds of mistakes as she deals with the culture shock of Indian customs and the Native Michif language, while trying to find a connection to her dead mother.

Four Indian teenagers are kidnapped from different regions, their lives immutably changed by an institution designed to eradicate their identity. And no matter what their home, their stories are representative of every story, every stolen life. So far from home, without family to protect them, only their friendship helps them endure. This is a work of fiction. Every word is true. John Smelcer is the author of over forty books, including essays, story collections, poetry, and novels, and five YA novels.

Chief Joseph wanted peace for his people. But the U.S. Army had different ideas. As the headman and spokesperson for the Nez Perce, Chief Joseph tried to do what was best for his people. Join him as he leads his people over vast plains and rugged mountains on the run from the U.S. army.

A joyful, body-positive picture book about a young Indian American girl's journey to accept her body hair and celebrate her heritage after being teased about her mustache. A joyful, body-positive picture book about a young Indian American girl's journey to accept her body hair and celebrate her heritage after being teased about her mustache. Laxmi never paid much attention to the tiny hairs above her lip. But one day while playing farm animals at recess, her friends point out that her whiskers would make her the perfect cat. She starts to notice body hair all over--on her arms, legs, and even between her eyebrows. With her parents' help, Laxmi learns that hair isn't just for heads, but that it grows everywhere, regardless of gender.

A young girl notices things about her grandmother that make her curious. Why does her grandmother have long, braided hair and beautifully coloured clothing? Why does she speak Cree and spend so much time with her family? As she asks questions, her grandmother shares her experiences in a residential school, when all of these things were taken away. Also available in a bilingual Swampy Cree/English edition. When We Were Alone won the 2017 Governor General's Literary Award in the Young People's Literature (Illustrated Books) category, and was nominated for the TD Canadian's Children's Literature Award.

For Hawaiians, the hula is not just a dance, but a way of life. Yet while most Americans know only the stereotypes of 'grass skirt girls' from old Hollywood movies and tourist kitsch, the revival of the ancient art of hula tells of the rich history and spirituality of Hawai'i. American Aloha: Hula Beyond Hawai'i discovers a renaissance of Hawaiian culture through music, language and dance as it continues to grow in California. Following three kumu hula, or master hula teachers, the film celebrates the perpetuation of a culture - from the very traditional to the contemporary - as it evolves on distant shores. With more Native Hawaiians living on the U.S. continent than on the islands, the hula is a living tradition that connects generations far from home to their heritage.

Episode Two tells the story of the Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa, known as the Prophet. In the years following the American Revolution, the Prophet led a spiritual revival movement that drew thousands of followers from tribes across the Midwest. His brother forged a pan-Indian political and military alliance from that movement, coming closer than anyone since to creating an independent Indian state.

Episode Three explores the resolve and resilience of the Cherokee people, who resisted removal from their homelands in the Southeast in every way they knew: assimilating, adopting a European-style government and legal system, accepting Christianity, and even taking their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Episode Four takes place at the end of the Indian Wars, near the close of the nineteenth century. Here, desperate times catapulted a controversial character to the leadership of an Apache band. To angry whites, Geronimo was an archenemy, the perpetrator of unspeakable savage cruelties. To some Apaches, he was a stubborn troublemaker whose actions needlessly brought the enemy's wrath upon them. To his supporters, he remained the embodiment of proud resistance, leading the last Native American fighting force to surrender to the United States government.

Episode Five tells the gripping story of the 1973 siege of Wounded Knee, examining the broad political and economic forces that led to the emergence of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the 1960s. For 71 days, activists engaged in a standoff with the U.S. government, bringing the nation's attention to the desperate conditions on Indian reservations. Perhaps even more important, the siege united Native people across tribes, creating a pan-Indian identity and a new path into the future.

They were charismatic and forward thinking, imaginative and courageous, compassionate and resolute. At times they were arrogant, vengeful and reckless. For hundreds of years, Native American leaders from Massasoit, Tecumseh, and Tenskwatawa, to Major Ridge, Geronimo, and Fools Crow valiantly resisted expulsion from their lands and fought the extinction of their culture. Sometimes, their strategies were militaristic, but more often they used what influence they had in a diplomatic, political, legal, as well as spiritual way. Tells the history of the United States from the Native American perspective.

Record of the massive peaceful resistance led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to the Dakota Access Pipeline through their land and underneath the Missouri River.

After decades struggling to protect her ancestors' burial places, now engulfed by San Francisco's sprawl, a Native woman from a federally unrecognized tribe and her allies occupy a development site to prevent desecration of sacred ground. When this fails to stop the development, they vow to follow a new path: to establish the first women-led urban Indigenous land trust. Beyond Recognition tells the inspiring story of women creating opportunities to preserve Native culture and homeland in a society bent on erasing them. Through cinema verite, interviews, and stunning footage of the land, the film introduces Corrina Gould, Johnella LaRose, and Indian People Organizing for Change as they embark on an incredible journey to transform the way we see cities.

This powerful film, with its haunting Native American music, o-graphed in the Sovereign Dineh Indian Reservation which stretches through parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Here the Navajo people have lived on vast deposits of oil, coal and uranium. Their religion considers Mother Earth sacred and forbids them from exploiting her resources. But outside forces are at work, strip mining the coal and polluting the water. The sweet wells on Dineh land are drying up. This land has also suffered a uranium spill larger than that of Three Mile Island. Tens of thousands of Dineh were relocated. Others were fenced off from the land they worship. The film emphasizes the spiritual essence of the Dineh, with their unique art forms, music and original lifestyle.

Program focuses on the August, 1976 lawsuit filed by the the Wampanoag Indians of Massachusetts against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in an effort to reclaim lands sold from 1763 to 1870 without Congressional approval. Host Barbara Barrow speaks with guest Russell Peters, President of the Mashpee Tribal Council, about the problems the council is having regaining tribal lands, when was the lands were taken, when the council decided to file suit, how Peters feels about the claim that Wampanoag marriages with Black and white Americans has diluted their culture and claim to lands, if Mashpee becoming a town gave Native Americans the power to sell their own land (as they did willingly, according to Barrow), and what will happen to the people who are living in Mashpee who feel they own their land and houses.

This documentary reveals the true-life story of an extraordinary Alaskan woman who becomes an unlikely hero in the fight for civil rights.

A 17 minutes capsulated history of the Hawaiian people from pre-Paʻao to the overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani establishing the motivation and need for the struggle for Hawaiian rights.

Proposing to "kill the Indian and save the man," U.S. Army captain Richard H. Pratt envisioned an educational system that would erase Native American culture and "civilize" the continent's indigenous people. His chosen method? Removing children from Pennsylvania's tribal communities and confining them in barracks-style schools - initially the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which Pratt founded in 1879. In myopic terms it was a remarkably effective strategy, and Carlisle became a cruel model for institutions all over the U.S. and Canada, including Michigan's Mount Pleasant Indian School. Subjected to emotional, physical, and spiritual abuse, Mount Pleasant students were inevitably alienated from their families, native languages, and tribal religions.

Kaho'olawe Aloha 'Aina focuses on the cultural, political and military significance of the "target island" of Kaho'olawe in the Hawaiian archipelago. The Hawaiian term aloha 'Āina refers to love of the land, the basis of Hawaiian cultural belief that animates the current movement to bring the island back to life. This video, produced by the Protect Kaho'olawe 'Ohana and directed by NÄ Maka o ka 'Āina, traces the history of the island, from ancient times through the years of ranching, U.S. military bombardment and the modern-day struggle to stop the bombing and reclaim the island.

By the time Sonia Boileau's grandfather Mitchell left the Shingwauk Indian Residential School in 1947 he no longer knew how to speak his native tongue. The institution had done its job well - Mitchell married and raised children, who didn't realize until they had children of their own that Mitchell was in fact Mohawk. Sonia now faces a similar stripping away of the First Nation heritage her family only recently reclaimed. According to Canada's Indian Act, any children she has will not be "officially Indian" unless their father has the requisite percentage of indigenous blood. In this powerful documentary, filmmaker Sonia Boileau returns to Shingwauk to work out the implications of her grandfather's life and of his death, especially in relation to Canada's race policies and her own cultural identity.

Nā Kamalei: The Men of Hula captures the journey of legendary master hula teacher Robert Cazimero and the only all-male hula school in Hawai'i as they prepare to compete in the world's largest hula festival. Beyond deep-rooted stereotypes of 'grass skirt girls', the film tells a story of Hawaiian pride as the men celebrate their 30th anniversary in continuing the revival of men dancing the hula.

The instructional television program, The Oneida Speak, is based in part on oral interviews of Oneida Indian elders in Wisconsin conducted between 1939-1941, as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project sponsored by the federal government. Several stories from these interviews are reenacted in this program, which also includes interviews of contemporary Oneida historians, cultural preservationists, and elders by program producers. Oneida voices, both historic and contemporary, tell their own Oneida stories--stories of loss and rejuvenation over the past 150 years. Nominated for two Emmys.

"This compelling one-hour documentary invites viewers into the lives of contemporary Native Americans. It dispels the myth that American Indians have disappeared from the American horizon, and reveals how they continue to persist, heal from the past, confront the challenges of today, keep their culture alive, and make significant contributions to society. Their experiences will deeply touch both Natives and non-Natives and help build bridges of understanding, respect, and communication. The tragic history of Native Americans is considered by many to be our “American Holocaust.”

The 40,000 Sioux Lakota Native Americans living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota are the poorest inhabitants in America. In this film, they describe the abysmal conditions there, with neither a bank, a store, an industry or technology of any kind. Unemployment has reached 95%, life expectancy is about 50 years of age and social problems are rife. They are shockingly isolated from the rest of the U.S. More than 90% of the land In Pine Ridge is rented and farmed by non-Indians who do not even live on the reservation. The closest city offering employment is Rapid City, South Dakota, the economic and financial hub of Western Dakota.

In October of 1993 Joan Lander and Puhipau of the production team Na Maka o ka Aina traveled to the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in Japan to screen their documentary, Act of War - The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation. This video follows Puhipau as he participates in a press conference by the First Nations Film and Video World Alliance, is interviewed by New Zealand television, travels to the summit of Mount Zao for a filmmakers' excursion, and receives an award at the film festival closing ceremony. Music by Brother Noland.

In this compelling and intimate portrait of economic and cultural survival through art, Navajo filmmaker Bennie Klain takes viewers into the world of contemporary Navajo weavers and their struggles for self-sufficiency. Highlighting untold stories and colorful characters involved in the making and selling of Navajo rugs, Weaving Worlds explores the lives of Navajo artisans and their unique--and often controversial--relationship with Reservation traders. The film artfully relates the Navajo concepts of kinship and reciprocity with the human and cultural connections to sheep, wool, water and the land, showing how indigenous artisans strive for cultural vitality and environmental sustainability in the face of globalization by 'reweaving the world.'