The Gypsy Scholar presents the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack,
Columbus Day vs. Indigenous People's Day:
Goodbye Columbus!
Thematic Images for Autumn Season Indigenous Peoples Day
Indigenous Peoples Day is celebrated on the second Monday of October, which is in autumn.
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One With The Golden Sky (Dudash)
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Spirit Tipi (Idol)
Thematic Images for Columbus Day
vs. Indigenous Peoples Day
Thematic Images for Columbus' Enslavement of Indigenous Peoples
Columbus First Voyage Departure for New World (8/3/1492)
Columbus Landing in New World (10/12/1492)
Columbus Landing in New World (10/12/ 1492)
Columbus Taking Possession Of The New Country
Columbus at Hispaniola
The Landing of Columbus in America 1492
Spaniards buying Native American slaves
When Christopher Colombus accidently discovered the "New World" in 1492, it was estimated there were around 6 million Native Americans living across the continent. (Some argue there were many more, upwards of 20 million.) But the white settlers brought with them a host of European plagues that were new to them, such as smallpox, measles and syphilis. The native population had no immunity to these diseases. In addition to the ravages of disease, other factors compounded their fate; warfare, forced migration, outright slaughter and a massive white land grabs for settler colonialists. By 1900 the Native American population had been reduced to around 250,000 people.
Christopher Columbus discovered a Caribbean island which he called Hispaniola, meaning "Little Spain." He set foot on what is now Haiti on December 6, 1492, shortly after his first landfall at Watling Island in the Bahamas. The recorded history of Haiti began on December 5, 1492, when Columbus landed on a large island in the region of the western Atlantic Ocean that later came to be known as the Caribbean. It was inhabited by the Taino and Arawakan people, who variously called their island Ayiti, Bohio, and Kiskeya (Quisqueya). Columbus promptly claimed the island for the Spanish Crown, naming it La Isla Española (“The Spanish Island”), later Latinized to Hispaniola.
Columbus planned to conquer and colonize all the Caribbean islands and the mainland. The islands were populated by over a million Taino Indians, peaceful farmers and fishermen. Unable to find enough gold to finance his schemes, Columbus captured thousands of Tainos and shipped them to the slave markets of Spain. The Tainos resisted with fishbone-tipped spears, but these were no match for artillery. Columbus demanded that each Taino pay a tribute of gold dust every three months, under penalty of amputation of the hands. In two years over a hundred thousand Tainos were dead, and the survivors were slaves in the mines and plantations. Therefore, to the indigenous peoples of the Americas the real history behind the myth of Columbus Day comes down to this: Columbus personally invented European imperialism in the Americas and initiated the transatlantic slave trade.
Columbus encountering Taino Arawak people in Ayti, Hispaniola
History Lesson About Columbus & Columbus Day
The Long-term Effects of Columbus' Colonization Project
![_Purchase of Land From the Indians_ or _The Beginning of Winchester_ [Massachusetts] Squaw](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d9adf4_1de6d9d85ddf48029979482e6dd84a16~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_599,h_288,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/_Purchase%20of%20Land%20From%20the%20Indians_%20or%20_The%20Beginning%20of%20Winchester_%20%5BMassachusetts%5D%20Squaw.jpg)
"Purchase of Land From the Indians" or "The Beginning of Winchester (Massachusetts)
This painting by Aiden Lasalle Ripley (1934) depicts the powerful Squaw Sachem
negotiating with the Puritans for her Tribal Lands.
To read about the historical background of this painting, "The Legacy of Nanapashemet," click here
Thematic Images for Native American History
Hiawatha (portrait above), also known as Ayenwatha or Aiionwatha, was a precolonial Native American leader and cofounder of the Iroquois Confederacy. His legend goes back to the 12th or 15th century. He was a leader of the Onondaga people, the Mohawk people, or both. According to some accounts, he was born an Onondaga but adopted into the Mohawks. He is most famously known for the Hiawatha Belt, also known as the Six Nations Confederacy belt,
The wampum belt (on the right) symbolizes peace between the original five nations of the (Iroquois) Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The belt depicts the nations in a specific order from left to right. The belt depicts the nations burying their weapons of war and living in peace. The white line that connects the nations symbolizes the unity of the Iroquois and the Wampum Treaty Great Law (or League) of Peace. The Iroquois Confederacy established that each nation should handle their own affairs. The Great Law of Peace is a unique representational form of government, with the people in the clans having say in what information is passed upward.
Iroquois Confederacy, confederation of five (later six) Indian tribes across upper New York state that during the 17th and 18th centuries, played a strategic role in the struggle between the French and British for mastery of North America. In 1722, the confederacy became known to the English as the Six Nations and was recognized as such at Albany, New York. Often characterized as one of the world’s oldest participatory democracies, the confederacy has persisted into the 21st century.
Legend has it that Benjamin Franklin used many aspects of the Iroquois system in the development of America's government. Thus, some Native American leaders hold that America's system of democracy owes much to the Iroquois Confederacy.
A depiction of the Iroquois Confederacy
Seneca Chief Red Jacket of the Iroquois League
The Iroquois Confederacy was comprised of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca tribes, later accepting the Tuscaroras who migrated from the Carolinas. Through this confederacy, six diverse nations managed to live in relative peace and harmony through a remarkable political system that was the forerunner to the United States Constitution.
There are many similarities between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Constitution: namely the devolvement of power in the federal system – just as tribes maintained autonomy in regard to local issues.
A mutual-defense pack provided a strong multi-tribe nation to protect against their enemies. It conserved lives, energy and resources that would otherwise have been spent in waging war with each other. The confederacy also employed a sophisticated system of checks and balances between three governmental branches.
The Iroquois Nation of colonial America believed in freedom of expression, provided that expression caused no harm.
Thematic Images for Native American Leaders
Thematic Images of the Ghost Dance & Wounded Knee Massacre
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Hope Springs Eternal - The Ghost Dance (Terpning)
The Ghost Dance was a religious movement that began in 1889 and was readily incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. At the core of the movement was the visionary Indian leader Jack Wilson, known as Wovoka among the Paiute. Wovoka prophesied an end to white American expansion while preaching messages of clean living, an honest life, and peace between whites and Indians. It taught that the buffalo herds would soon return and the Lakota would return to their days of power. The Lakota had seen much death among their people and one of the most intriguing aspects of the Ghost Dance was that the participants would see their departed loved ones once more. The Five Day Dance Induced Visions Of Union With Dead Relatives.
The Ghost Dance belief was not one of violence, but of pacifism. And yet, the newspapers of the day quickly took it upon themselves to condemn this spiritual practice labeling it as that of zealot’s intent upon killing all of the white people.
In January 1889, a Paiute prophet, Wovoka (c. 1856-1932), living what is now the state of Nevada, had a vision in which God gave him a message to carry back to his people. The message was that they should live honestly, work hard, and not quarrel among themselves or fight with the whites. If they followed these instructions they would not die or get sick and would be united with all those who had lived before, whom Wovoka had seen in his vision enjoying the pastimes of old in a land full of game. Wovoka was also shown a dance, which came to be called the ghost dance, and told to tell the people to perform it every day for several days in a row. If they did this, God told him, they would hasten the day of reunion with their ancestors. The dance was a version of a traditional Indian circle dance.
Word of Wovoka’s vision spread among Indians throughout the West. By late 1889, it had reached the Lakota and other Sioux, living on their reservations in what is now the state of South Dakota. Like other Indians who heard of the prophet’s vision, the Lakota sent people to meet him in person. When they returned to their reservation, they spread word of Wovoka’s message and taught the ghost dance. As did other Indians who practiced the new religion, the Lakota adapted it to their own traditions. More confrontational than some other tribes, the Sioux developed a version of the message that envisioned the disappearance of the whites from their land and a return to their former nomadic life of hunting buffalo. One of the principal promoters of the ghost dance religion among the Sioux was Sitting Bull (1831–1890), who had a long history of opposing accommodation with the whites.
In summary, the Ghost Dance was religious movement which believed proper practice of the dance would bring back the buffalo heards, reunite the living with spirits of the dead, bring the spirits of the dead to fight on their behalf, make the white colonists leave, and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to native peoples throughout the region.
"Ghost Dancing continued across the West long after the Wounded Knee Massacre. Between eighty and one hundred Indians are known to have visited Wovoka during the first half of 1891 alone, sustaining the connections that linked the Plains to the Great Basin. Despite the threats from settlers, Native Americans kept seeking information, and many kept dancing, but agents ramped up their efforts to stop the transmission of information among groups, believing that their interactions were a threat to US government authority. Agents were more determined to eliminate the movement, using different and sometimes tougher tactics to limit visiting and letter writing regarding the dance. There were also Native American critics of the Ghost Dance who thought the movement was not a significant one or that Wovoka was a fraud. Some Natives even believed that the dance was dangerous, and others urged the US government to do more to stop it. Nevertheless, the Ghost Dance persisted into the 1890s because of intertribal interaction and because of the many who challenged US colonial authority by refusing to give up their freedoms of speech, religion, and mobility. . . .
The Ghost Dance continued to be practiced by believers, investigated by the uncertain, and disputed by critics. Belief persisted into the 1900s, even spreading farther into Canada along intertribal connections. Indian agents were given the task of policing the beliefs of colonized people, which was impossible. Not only did agents not understand Native American beliefs, they could do little to prevent Indians from thinking about and discussing those ideas collectively. What does this say about the relationship of power between the US government and the tribal nations of the West in the late nineteenth century? Despite colonization, it is clear that Native Americans were not powerless, in part because they were able to control their avenues of exchange. Strong connections were created among distant nations, even among once–bitter enemies, and those nations shared information that they thought could be mutually beneficial. If the designs of the US government’s reservation system had worked, groups like the Crows and Oglalas or the Kiowas and Southern Cheyennes would not have been able to communicate such things. But Native men and women remained mobile and exchanged ideas and information, giving them additional control over their own lives."
portrait of Sitting Bull
Alcatraz Occupation by the "Indians of All Tribes" (Nov 20, 1969 – Jun 11, 1971)
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The poster (above left) reads: "From November 1969 to June 1971, a coalition of American Indian students and urban Indians, calling themselves Indians of All Tribes, occupied Alcatraz Island off the coast of San Francisco as a call to resistance against US domination of Native peoples and land. The coalition publicized the occupation through a widely distributed newsletter and radio show broadcast in multiple cities. This action sparked years of Native resistance, including the 1972 takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington DC and the re-occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973." The quote at the top is from one of the Native American leaders of the occupation, John Trudell, and reads: "Since 1492 to the present, November 5th 1969, the Indian people have been held in bondage. Alcatraz is a release from that bondage . . . ."
After an October 1969 fire destroyed the American Indian Center in San Francisco, Native American activists took over the abandoned Alcatraz Island (actually a rock), offering beads and cloth for the deed to the land (a sarcastic offer based upon the myth that the Dutch bought Manhattan Island for such). The Native American occupiers called themselves the “Indians of All Tribes, Inc.,” led by the Mohawk Richard Oakes, with representatives of Mohawk, Cherokee and other indigenous people. (These Native American activists had relocated to the Bay Area in order to protest against the United States government's policies that took aboriginal land away from American Indians and aimed to destroy their cultures. They were an unlikely mix of Indian college activists, families with children fresh off reservations and urban dwellers disenchanted with what they called the U.S. government's economic, social and political neglect. Since well before Modoc and Hopi leaders were held at Alcatraz in the late 1800s, U.S. policy toward Indians had worsened, despite repeated pleas from American Indian leaders to honor treaties and tribal sovereignty.) The Native American activists arranged to board one of three pleasure boats in Sausalito with activists Richard Oakes, LaNada Means, John Trudell and others, who had attempted another occupation just weeks before, arguing reclamation rights under the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which stated that Indians would be granted unused federal land on Indian property. This time they were successful, and the occupation lasted for nearly eighteen months, from November 20, 1969 to June 11, 1971.
The San Francisco Chronicle sent a photographer and reporter Tim Findley to witness the 3:15 a.m. occupation of the island. He reported: “An occupation force of more than 80 young American Indians landed on Alcatraz Island before dawn yesterday and proclaimed it ‘free Indian land’ by ‘right of discovery.’” Reclaiming it as Indian land, they demanded fairness and respect for Indian peoples. Once they had captured the island, along with the media’s attention, the group issued a proclamation to the “Great White Father” outlining their goals and demands. One of their goals was to turn the island into a center for Native American culture and studies, which would “train our young people in the best of our native cultural arts and sciences, as well as educate them to the skills and knowledge relevant to improve the lives and spirits of all Indian peoples.” It soon became clear that the protesters wanted to represent the desires of all Native Americans.
Although the Native American activists were finally removed by federal marshals, the Alcatraz occupation is recognized today as one of the most important events in contemporary Native American history. The occupation of Alcatraz was the first intertribal protest action to focus the nation's attention on the situation of native peoples in the United States. The Native American occupiers said it was about human rights. It was an effort to restore the dignity of the more than 554 American Indian nations in the United States. Historians and other experts say the occupation—though chaotic and laced with tragedy—improved conditions for the 2 million American Indians and Alaska Natives alive today. According to Vine Deloria Jr., a Native American University of Colorado-Boulder law professor, philosopher, author and historian, “Alcatraz was a big enough symbol that for the first time this century Indians were taken seriously.”
It is said that Alcatraz occupation changed everything. It ignited a protest movement which culminated with the occupation of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation of the Oglala Sioux in South Dakota in 1973. Because of the attention brought to the plight of the American Indian communities, as a result of the occupation, federal laws were created which demonstrated new respect for aboriginal land rights and for the freedom of American Indians to maintain their traditional cultures.
Alcatraz Occupation Photos
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John Trudell, a Santee Sioux, was the spokesperson for the United Indians of All Tribes' takeover of Alcatraz beginning in 1969. On Dec. 22, 1969, he began broadcasting Radio Free Alcatraz for the first time from the Native American occupation of Alcatraz Island. As explained in “The Pirate Radio Broadcaster Who Occupied Alcatraz and Terrified the FBI” in Narratively, Trudell was advocating for Native American self-determination, explaining its moral and political importance to all Americans. In the broadcasts, Trudell often spoke to activists on the island about why they were involved in the occupation and about their activism for American Indian rights. Also, he often revealed the innumerable ways the government was violating Native American rights: obstructing fishing access in Washington State, setting unfair prices on tribal lands, removing Native American children from local schools. But he didn’t just reveal the cruel contradictions at the heart of American society. He imagined a future in which equality — between different American cultures, and between all people and the earth itself — would become a reality.
Sample transcript of John Trudell broadcasting on Radio Free Alcatraz:
"Good evening, and welcome to Indian Land radio from Alcatraz Island in San Francisco. This is John Trudell, on behalf of the Indians of All Tribes, welcoming you. This evening we’ll be hearing…" (fades out)
(Zinn Education Project, "Radio Free Alcatraz")
For Trudell's Thanksgiving Day 1970 interview on Alcatraz Island, click here
An artist's rendition of John Trudell broadcasting on Radio Free Alcatraz
In actuality, there were three separate occupations of Alcatraz Island, one on March 9, 1964,
one on November 9, 1969, and the occupation which lasted nineteen months which began
on the 20th of November, 1969.
The Indigenous Peoples’ Day Sunrise Gathering at Alcatraz Island, which occurs on October 11th from 5:30 am to 8 am, is organized by the International Indian Treaty Council in commemoration of the 1969-71 occupation of Alcatraz by the Indians of All Tribes.
Thematic Images for the American Indian Movement (AIM)
Founders of American Indian Movement
Clyde Bellecourt
Dennis Banks
Russsell Means
AIM Wounded Knee Occupation and Standoff at Pine Ridge South Dakota (1973)
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Asked by Pine Ridge elders to come and help the people, AIM and other Indigenous warriors reclaimed the Wounded Knee massacre site on February 27, 1973 on the Pine Ridge Reservation (South Dakota), declaring it the "Independent Oglala Sioux Nation." This led to a 71-day siege surrounded by US federal marshals and military, which ended on May 8, 1973. It was also known as "Second Wounded Knee." The defenders of Wounded Knee declared it the “Independent Oglala Nation Wounded Knee." Liberation movements around the world supported the AIM occupation of Wounded Knee.
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AIM warriors and Leonard Peltier during Wonder Knee Occuption
A Tribute to Native American Leaders for Indigenous Peoples Day
Richard Oakes (May 22, 1942 – September 20, 1972) was a Mohawk Native American activist. He spurred the first Native American studies in university curricula and is credited for helping to change US federal government Indian termination policy policies of Native American peoples and culture. Oakes led a 19 month occupation of Alcatraz Island with LaNada Means, approximately 50 California State University students, and 37 others. The Occupation of Alcatraz is credited for opening a rediscovered unity among all Native American tribes.
Dr. Lornada Warjack (aka LaNada Means) is a Native American visionary and the founder of the "Take back Alcatraz" movement. She is a member of the Shoshone Bannock Tribes where she lives on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Idaho. In January of 1968, she was the first Native American student enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley and graduated with honors in an Independent Major of Native American Law & Politics. While attending UC Berkeley, she participated as the first Native American component of the first Ethnic Studies Program in the UC statewide effort in establishing Native American Studies, African American Studies, Chicano Studies and Asian Studies. In 1969, she and students throughout California united together to take over Alcatraz Island in peaceful protest against the federal government’s ill treatment of the Native Indigenous people and the federal government's repeatedly breaking of treaties with tribes. This ended the Indian Termination Policies, beginning the self determination era and facilitated certain subsequent government funded policies for Indian Tribes' Nation wide while recovering millions of acres of land back.
Dennis Banks (April 12, 1937 - October 29, 2017), a Native American leader, teacher, lecturer, activist and author, is an Anishinaabe born on Leech Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota. He has been a longtime leader of the American Indian Movement, which he co-founded in 1968 with other Native Americans in Minneapolis. He's best known for leading the 1973 occupation by militant Indians of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. In February of 2012, Banks received the Living Legends Award in Washington DC for his contributions as a co-founder of the American Indian Movement and his ongoing committed to the well being of the American Indian community. Banks has also had roles in the movies: War Party (1988), The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Thunderheart (1992), and Older Than America (2008). Banks also is involved in making music. The musical release "Still Strong" (1993) features Banks' original work as well as traditional Native American songs. He can also be heard on other albums: Peter Gabriel's Les Musiques du Monde and Peter Matthiessen's No Boundaries. In 2012, Dennis Banks joins forces with Golden Globe and Grammy Award-Winning artist Kitaro in celebration of our Earth in the new CD, Let Mother Earth Speak. Banks published his autobiography, Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement, in 2004.
Russell Charles Means (November 10, 1939 – October 22, 2012) was born an Oglala/Lakota Sioux Indian. After joining the the American Indian Movement (AIM) organization in 1968, he became its first national director, in which role he helped organize notable events that attracted national and international media coverage, most notably the 1973 standoff with the U.S. government at Wounded Knee. He was a tireless activist for the rights of Native American people and also championed the rights of indigenous peoples in other countries. In 1987, he joined the U.S. Libertarian Party and announced his candidacy for the party's presidential nomination. Since 1992, Means went into acting and has appeared in major films: The Last of the Mohicans (1992), in which he starred as the titular Chingachgook, father figure to Daniel Day-Lewis' Hawkeye; Natural Born Killers (1994); and other movies. He has as well recorded two music albums; Electric Warrior (1993) and The Radical (2007). He authored his autobiography, Where White Men Fear to Tread (1995).
Clyde Howard Bellecourt (May 8, 1936) is a White Earth Ojibwe civil rights organizer noted for co-founding the American Indian Movement (AIM) in 1968 with Dennis Banks, Herb Powless, and Eddie Benton Banai, among others. His older brother, the late Vernon Bellecourt, was also active. Clyde was the seventh of 12 children born to his parents (Charles and Angeline) on the White Earth Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota.
Bill Means, older brother of Russel Means, is the founder of the International Indian Treaty Council and currently President of the Board. He has been on the Grand Governing Council of the American Indian Movement since 1972. He is a veteran of Wounded Knee 1973 and helped coordinate legal defense work on over 500 Wounded Knee federal indictments.
Leonard Peltier (September 12, 1944) is of Lakota, Dakota, and Anishinaabe descent, and was raised among the Turtle Mountain Chippewa and Fort Totten Sioux Nations of North Dakota. He is a Native American activist and a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) who, following a controversial trial, was convicted of two counts of first degree murder in the deaths of two FBI agents in a June 26, 1975, shooting on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment and has been imprisoned since 1976. Peltier ran for president of the United States in 2004, winning the nomination of the Peace and Freedom Party, and receiving 27,607 votes, limited to the ballot in California. He ran for vice president of the United States in 2020 on the Party for Socialism and Liberation ticket with Gloria La Riva as the presidential candidate, as well as tickets for other left-wing parties and on the ballot of the Peace and Freedom Party. For health reasons, Peltier withdrew from those tickets on August 1, 2020. Peltier remains in prison after being denied parole a number of times.
Floyd "Red Crow" Westerman (August 17, 1936 – December 13, 2007), also known as Kanghi Duta was a Sioux musician, political activist, and actor. After establishing a career as a country music singer, later in his life, he became a leading actor depicting Native Americans in American films and television. He worked as a political activist for Native American causes.
John Trudell
John Trudell was a Native American author, poet, actor, musician, and political activist. He was the spokesperson for the Indians of All Tribes' takeover of Alcatraz beginning in 1969, broadcasting as Radio Free Alcatraz. Later the same year, Trudell became involved with AIM and quickly became one of its most prominent leaders. He participated in protests and demonstrations. In his later years, Trudell was involved with environmental activism and advocacy.
John Trudell (February 15, 1946 - December 8, 2015) was a Santee Sioux author, poet, actor, musician, and former political activist. He was the spokesperson for the United Indians of All Tribes' takeover of Alcatraz beginning in 1969, broadcasting as Radio Free Alcatraz. During most of the 1970s, he served as the chairman of the American Indian Movement (1973 to 1979), based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. John Trudell is an acclaimed poet, national recording artist, actor and activist whose international following reflects the universal language of his words, work and message. In February of 1979, a fire of unknown origin killed Trudell's wife, three children and mother-in-law. It was through this horrific tragedy that Trudell began to find his voice as an artist and poet, writing, in his words, "to stay connected to this reality." In 1982, Trudell began recording his poetry to traditional Native music and in 1983 he released his debut album Tribal Voice on his own Peace Company label. Trudell then teamed up with the late legendary Kiowa guitarist Jesse Ed Davis. Together, they recorded three albums during the 1980's. The first of these, AKA Graffiti Man, was released in 1986 and dubbed the best album of the year by Bob Dylan. AKA Graffiti Man served early notice of Trudell's singular ability to express fundamental truths through a unique mix of poetry, Native music, blues and rock. Since that time, Trudell has released seven more albums plus a digitally re-mastered collection of his early Peace Company cassettes. His 2002 CD, Bone Days, was executive produced by Academy Award winning actress Angelina Jolie and released on the Daemon Records label. In addition to his music career, Trudell has played roles in a number of feature films, including a lead role in the movie Thunderheart (1992) and a major part in Sherman Alexie's Smoke Signals. He most recently played Coyote in Hallmark's made for television movie, Dreamkeeper (2003).
Native American Jesus
John Trudell on Columbus
John Trudell Memes by The Gypsy Scholar
"There's a difference between imitation and influence. And then there's something else entirely. Like John Trudell...." ~ Bob Dylan (The Philosophy of Modern Song, Chapter 40)
Thematic Memes for Indigenous Peoples Day
by the Gypsy Scholar
Indigenous Peoples Day Official National & State Proclamations
click on either image to expand
Thematic Images for Native American Heritage Month (November)
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“November is Native American Heritage month, and a good time to honor the legacy of our ancestors, but every day we should stop to think about our country’s beginning and that the United States would not exist if not for a great deal of sacrifice, blood, and tears by Indian Tribes across the country.” – Deb Haaland
Welcome to Native American Heritage Month at the Department of the Interior! National Native American Heritage Month is celebrated each year in November. It is a time to celebrate the traditions, languages and stories of Native American and Alaska Native communities and ensure their rich histories and contributions continue to thrive with each passing generation. This November and every month, we celebrate the culture and heritage of these remarkable Americans who deeply enrich the quality and character of our Nation. We celebrate Indian Country with its remarkable diversity of American Indian and Alaska Native cultures and peoples while remembering and honoring our veterans who have sacrificed so much to defend our Nation.
Our theme is Weaving together our past, present and future. We will focus on the failed policies of the past with a focus on the Federal Indian Boarding Schools and moving into the present and the work being done to address the intergenerational trauma Native people still face. In partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Smithsonian Institution, we are working to record the lasting impacts of that era and share that information with all Americans.
As Indigenous people, our past, present and future are all connected.
U.S. Department of the Interior
Indian Affairs
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Nahimana: Native Goddess of the Medicine Wheel