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...A Forum for American Indian Issues...
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Teaching 
Tue Apr 24, 2012 at 09:17:16 AM PDT
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America was named on April 25, 1507 after the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci. The process of naming the continent (initially what is now South America) came about through the interface of several processes, including the printing press, advances in geography, and cartography. All of these forces came together in the early 1500s in the town of St. Dié, France, in the mountains of the Vosges, some 800 kilometers (500 miles) from the sea.
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Sat Apr 14, 2012 at 14:58:58 PM PDT
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In 1245 CE, the Anasazi (Ancestral Puebloan) began construction on the Sand Canyon Pueblo in Colorado. The pueblo is located at the head of a canyon with most of the construction below the canyon rim. The pueblo would grow to 420 surface rooms, 90 kivas, 14 towers, and an enclosed plaza. A massive stone wall enclosed the village on the southwest, west, north, and east provided protection against attack and also controlled and limited access to the spring at the center of the village. The enclosing wall was at least one story tall and had very few access openings.
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Sat Mar 31, 2012 at 20:12:35 PM PDT
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The expansion of the American empire westward across the Mississippi River was motivated by greed and supported by God. During the nineteenth century American greed was manifested in an obsession for privately owned land and for gold, silver, and other precious metals. Americans believed that the role of government was to obtain land and mineral rights from the Indian nations that owned them and then give them to entrepreneurs for private exploitation. Many Americans believe that their God has made them a chosen people with dominion over both nature and all pagan nations.
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Fri Mar 30, 2012 at 18:00:27 PM PDT
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European interest in the area which would later become the state of Michigan began in the seventeenth century and was driven by two concerns: (1) to expand the lucrative fur trade with the Indians, and (2) to discover a water-based passage to the Pacific Ocean. The French expedition led by Étienne Brule reached Michigan in 1622, finding it occupied by the three Algonquian-speaking tribes of the Three Council Fires Confederacy: Ojibwa, Ottawa, Pottawatomi. In 1668 the French established a permanent settlement at Sault Ste. Marie as a base for their Catholic missions.
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Thu Mar 01, 2012 at 08:50:52 AM PST
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One of the common misconceptions about American Indians that is often repeated in the media and in high school and college textbooks is the idea that they were "hunting and gathering" people. In fact, the Indian nations of the Southeast were agricultural people who lived in permanent villages.
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Sat Feb 25, 2012 at 11:20:44 AM PST
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For more than a thousand years, American Indian agriculturalists have been living in villages in what is now Arizona and New Mexico. When the Spanish first encountered these villages, many of which had multi-story apartment complexes built from stone, they referred to them as "pueblos," the Spanish word for village.
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Mon Feb 20, 2012 at 10:23:15 AM PST
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In 1670, Prince Rupert, a duke, three earls, and other nobles subscribed to the Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson's Bay and were granted a royal charter from the English Crown. This was the birth of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). The grant consisted of all lands which drain into Hudson's Bay and HBC was given all of the powers of a sovereign nation to govern this territory which was called Rupert's Land.
The European fur traders-mostly French and Scots with a few Englishmen-quickly understood that trade with Indian nations depended upon relationships and that one of the best ways to establish relationships with the First Nations was to marry a native woman. One of the consequences of these marriages was children who were often raised in two cultures. By the nineteenth century the Métis were recognized as a distinct people. The Métis are generally seen as an ethnic group of mixed Cree, Ojibwa, Saulteaux, French Canadian, Scots, and English.
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Sat Feb 18, 2012 at 15:35:27 PM PST
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Equal protection under the law is a legal and social concept which has often not been viewed as applicable to American Indians. During much of the nineteenth century Indians were not citizens and often state and territorial laws prohibited from testifying in courts of law. A number of instances during the 1870s illustrate how justice was denied to American Indians.
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Wed Feb 01, 2012 at 21:14:41 PM PST
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Throughout the first century of its existence, the United States had carried out policies intended to decimate the First Nations that had occupied the lands for thousands of years. Having accomplished its manifest destiny of occupying the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, by 1890 American Indian policy was focused on: (1) assimilating American Indians into American society just as other immigrants had assimilated; (2) eradicating Indian cultures, including traditional languages, marriage customs, religions, and ways of dress; and (3) destroying tribal governments and breaking up tribal land holdings. The policies and programs of the American government in 1890 were driven by the viewpoint that American civilization was superior and that the existence of Indian cultures was somehow an impediment to the progress of "civilization."
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Sun Jan 08, 2012 at 15:38:31 PM PST
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Most Navajo ceremonies are focused on health: on healing someone who is ill or on maintaining health. Navajo ceremonies, often referred to as "sings" or "chants," are often a reenactment of the creation of the world through myth, song, prayer, and drama. The patient is placed in this recreated world which closely identifies the patient with the powers of the Holy People.
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Sun Jan 01, 2012 at 13:22:59 PM PST
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During the nineteenth century, academics, politicians, teachers, historians, and the general public knew that Americans Indians were a vanishing race, destined to disappear before the relentless superiority of American manifest destiny, greed, private property, and capitalism. More than a decade into the twentieth century, however, American Indians continued to exist and Indian reservations were generally places of great poverty. The nineteenth century policies regarding the administration of Indian affairs continued, and seemed to be more determined than ever to make sure that Indians would disappear. During the twentieth century, many historians and others, believing in the myth of American superiority, actually believed that Indians had disappeared and thus twentieth century Indians are usually invisible in the histories of this century. Looking back to a century ago, to the year 1912, we see that there is, however, an Indian history for this year.
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Sun Jan 01, 2012 at 09:12:53 AM PST
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While the English history of the colonization of Massachusetts often characterizes the Indians as nomadic hunters with no claim to the land, it is interesting to note that the first action of the Pilgrims when they landed in 1620 was to rob an Indian grave of the corn offerings which had been left there. Corn, or maize, as most people know, is not something hunted by nomads, but is a domesticated plant. While the first English colonists survived in the beginning on plant foods raised by the Indians, they often failed to see the Indian fields, as they didn't look like English fields.
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Fri Dec 30, 2011 at 10:44:17 AM PST
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In 1865, some drunken American squatters murdered Pai headman Anasa. In retaliation, Pai raiders attacked several wagon trains, ran off livestock, and shut down the traffic on the road between Prescott and Fort Mohave. In response to these attacks, the U.S. Army created a line of demarcation which declared that all Indians living more than 70 miles east of the Colorado River were to be considered hostile and subject to extermination. Under this declaration, not only were the Pai considered hostile, but also the Yavapai and Western Apache.
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Wed Dec 28, 2011 at 10:33:52 AM PST
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The Sand Creek Massacre and the Washita Massacre both led to the Wounded Knee Massacre. The Sand Creek Massacre brought the realization that "the soldiers were destroying everything Cheyenne - the land, the buffalo, and the people themselves," and the Washita Massacre added even more genocidal evidence to those facts. The Sand Creek Massacre caused the Cheyenne to put away their old grievances with the Sioux and join them in defending their lives against the U.S. extermination policy. The Washita Massacre did that even more so. After putting the Wounded Knee Massacre briefly into historical perspective, we'll focus solely on the Wounded Knee Massacre itself for the 121st Anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre.
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Fri Dec 23, 2011 at 10:01:30 AM PST
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The media has never been fair and balanced when it comes to serving Indian people and reporting on events which impact Indian lives. Many Indian leaders have felt that it is critical for Indians to have media which they control. One example of Indian media can be seen in The Indian Journal, a newspaper born in Indian Territory (later known as Oklahoma).
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Wed Dec 21, 2011 at 09:56:33 AM PST
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The nineteenth-century wild west shows did a great deal to firmly entrench the stereotype of the American Indian in American culture. This stereotype, loosely based on generic Plains Indian cultures, portrays Indians as savages, as a vanishing people destined to go extinct in the face of American superiority, and hindrances to the inevitability of Manifest Destiny.
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Tue Dec 20, 2011 at 16:55:11 PM PST
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When the Yavapai came under the jurisdiction of the United States following the acquisition of what was to become Arizona, they were a loose association of locally organized groups speaking mutually intelligible but nevertheless distinct sub-dialects. Traditional Yavapai territory stretched from the San Francisco Peaks in the north, to the Pinal Mountains in the east, and to the confluence of the Gila and Colorado Rivers in the southwest. Following the discovery of gold in Yavapai territory in 1863, the American government and the Americans who settled in Yavapai territory began plotting the removal of the Yavapai from their traditional territory.
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Mon Dec 19, 2011 at 21:37:11 PM PST
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While the mainstream art world did not begin to recognize American Indian art as a distinctive art form until the twentieth century, during the late nineteenth century the market for American Indian arts-or more accurately, arts and crafts-began to develop. This market included pottery, weavings, drawings, paintings, and other items. The new market was driven by tourism, trading posts, museums, and wealthy collectors. During this time, American Indian art began to shift from tribal art in which artifacts were produced primarily for tribal members to ethnic art in which artifacts were purchased by non-Indians.
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Mon Dec 19, 2011 at 08:35:39 AM PST
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During the nineteenth century, expositions and world fairs were seen as a profitable way for communities to promote themselves while educating the masses. Since Indians were seen as a vanishing people at this time, Indians were often an important attraction at these events. The 1898 Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition held at Omaha, Nebraska, was no exception. The goal of the Exposition was to showcase the development of the West, from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Coast. Indians were, of course, a part of this story, though usually seen as hindrances to development.
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Thu Dec 15, 2011 at 09:40:24 AM PST
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When cultures are under stress, particularly when that stress is coming from forced change outside of the control of the people in the culture, a messiah or prophet may emerge who will provide a religious solution to the problems. In 1875, the Yavapai were forced by the United States government to walk from their homelands to the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona, a distance of nearly 200 miles. San Carlos had been established as a reservation for the Apache and the United States mistakenly believed that the Yavapai were an Apache band. Once on the reservation, their freedoms were reduced as the United States sought to impose cultural genocide on them.
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| In Memoriam |
In honor of my mother, THE FLORA SOMBRERO LIND NAVAJO ENDOWMENT FUND has been set up to accept your donations.
This scholarship endowment has been established at the American Indian College Fund to honor Flora Sombrero Lind, as an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation who was born at Inscription House, Arizona of the Many Goats clan circa 1925. This scholarship endowment is funded by Flora's family and friends who want to see Navajo students pursue higher education and carry on their great Navajo heritage.
Please leave a comment here if you donate.
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- Please specify what your donation is for in the notes section of the PayPal window. Either propane for Pine Ridge or Rosebud or Hosting fees for this blog. --navajo
If you like to help Aji and Wings please mail a check to them at the address here:
wingssilverwork.com
Click the contact tab for address.
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Native American
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...a forum for the discussion of political, social and economic issues affecting the indigenous peoples of the United States, including their lack of political representation, economic deprivation, health care issues, and the on-going struggle for preservation of identity and cultural history
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