Petoskey Stones are stones of fossilized coral (Hexagonaria percarinata ) that can be found along the shore of Lake Michigan near the town of Petoskey (Population 6,000). Once polished, they can be beautiful, and are often made into jewelry. It is the state stone of Michigan and is celebrated in an annual festival. The origin of the name of the stone, however, is under contention. [more inside]
posted by Deathalicious on Nov 29, 2009 - 33 comments

Many kids read The Education of Little Tree in school, but the author of the book, Forrest Carter, was actually Asa Carter, a staunch racist and charlatan.
posted by reenum on Nov 10, 2009 - 101 comments

Oral histories indicate that slahal is an ancient game, dating to before the last ice age. At times discouraged, this gambling game is still being played. Also known as the bone game and the hand or stick game, the rules are simple: guess which hand holds the unmarked bone. But while your team tries to guess, the opposing team will confuse you with chants and drumming and music. And you do the same to them. An entire game can be quite loud and quite subtle. A short documentary.
posted by twoleftfeet on Nov 7, 2009 - 8 comments

War Dances: “I wanted to call my father and tell him that a white man thought my brain was beautiful”. Sherman Alexie doing his thing in The New Yorker, excerpted from his upcoming book (early review; interview 1, 2.)
posted by Non Prosequitur on Oct 5, 2009 - 45 comments

Archaeologists and Native Americans race against the border fence. The REAL ID act authorized government agencies to bulldoze long-standing environmental, cultural and anthropological standards. But a team of activists worked delicately behind the scenes to win millions of dollars in federal funding and the go-ahead for a last-ditch effort to study ancient artifacts. Archaeologists have faced similarly rushed projects elsewhere along the fence route.
posted by univac on Mar 31, 2009 - 46 comments

Tales of the Beanworld ("A most peculiar comic book experience") recently resumed publication after a long hiatus. It's a strange and abstract mix of Native American mythology and culture, with a strong ecological focus, into an wonderfully charming cosmology. While it certainly invites, uh, overthinking, it's also entertaining on a purely casual level.
A sample short Beanworld story is on the Dark Horse Comics Myspace page.
If you have questions about it, the BeanWeb just may have answers, along with illustrations from the comics. There is now a Beanworld Wiki to supplement it, and creator Larry Marder keeps a blog where he talks about things bean.

Okay, now that it's properly introduced... the real point of this post is to link to this awesome Beanworld Flash cartoon, animated by Fashionbuddha and with music by They Might Be Giants!
posted by JHarris on Dec 20, 2008 - 17 comments

"Lawless Lands": Michael Riley, writing in the Denver Post, investigates the dysfunctional state of law enforcement on Native American reservations, and the shocking consequences for crime victims. Bill Moyer's Journal has followed up with an excellent documentary expose entitled "Broken Justice." [more inside]
posted by fourcheesemac on Nov 15, 2008 - 22 comments

Helen (Hunt) Jackson was an author and an activist. Her mom died when Helen was 14, her dad 3 years later. Helen's first child died at 11 months, her second at 10 years old. In 1879 she was inspired after hearing Chief Standing Bear describe how the U.S. government took Native Americans' land. She began to publish in support of Native American rights. 1881 brought her book A Century of Dishonor [pdf], branded with the words "Look upon your hands! They are stained with the blood of your relations". In 1883, she published her most famous work, Ramona, a novel about racial discrimination set in California. If that's too much to take in, and now you need some kitties, she's still got you covered. Letters from a Cat (1879) is being featured at Archive.org today. [more inside]
posted by cashman on Aug 25, 2008 - 7 comments

Canada has apologised for forcing more than 100,000 aboriginal children to attend state-funded Christian boarding schools aimed at assimilating them. Controversial former Minister Kevin Annett has written two books on the subject of residential school abuse in Canada [Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust and Love and Death in the Valley]. Unrepentant - Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide reveals Canada’s darkest secret - that the Canadian residential school system, the Christian churches along with state authorities implemented a policy of genocide against Canada's native population. Related: Deliver Us From Evil
posted by chuckdarwin on Jun 29, 2008 - 28 comments

Native Names Projects by the Coeur d'Alene Tribe GIS Program and the Hawaii Board on Geographic Names are adding audio pronunciation guides to geospatial place-name datasets in several on-line mapping formats. [more inside]
posted by mmahaffie on Apr 3, 2008 - 5 comments

Actor/folk singer/Native American Activist Floyd Red Crow Westerman died of complications from leukemia on Thursday. Westerman, a member of the Sisseton-Wapheton Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, was best known for his roles in Dances With Wolves, The X-Files and Hidalgo, but apparently viewed acting as an avenue to make money to apply to his other endeavors in support of Native American issues.
posted by rednikki on Dec 15, 2007 - 18 comments

Indian company to outsource its outsourcing. Outsourcing in Ghana, where the government takes English very seriously indeed. Finally, Native American outsourcing.
posted by StrikeTheViol on Sep 24, 2007 - 8 comments

On November 29, 1864, John Chivington led the Colorado Volunteers in a dawn attack in which at least 150 Cheyenne men, women and children were slaughtered (many of their corpses grotesquely mutilated), bringing a new wave of Indian-white conflict to Colorado's high plains along the Santa Fe Trail. The Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site was officially dedicated today. See photos of some of the people involved, read some contemporary propaganda concerning the event, as well as actual testimony from witnesses and perpetrators.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Apr 28, 2007 - 17 comments

Say you live in a forest and have limited resources. You need to make signposts to point out trails, water sources, meeting places and the like, but your readers might speak a variety of languages. Also, you want the signposts to last a really long time. What do you do? Create trail trees! Now say you live in the 21st century. What do you do? Create a database! And blog about it!
posted by DU on Apr 13, 2007 - 20 comments

Established by the US Department of State, the Art in Embassies Program (AIEP) is "a global museum" exhibiting works by U.S. citizens in "approximately 180 American diplomatic residences worldwide". Recently, the AIEP began a collaboration with the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) to bring limited edition works by five important contemporary Native American artists to embassies around the world.

The Native artists selected for the project include internationally exhibited Mario Martinez, who was recently given a major retrospective at the NMAI in New York City, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, a pioneering artist and art activist, as well as Marie Watt, Larry McNeil, and Norman Akers.
posted by aletheia on Apr 2, 2007 - 13 comments

"So take that to your next rain dance and STFU" vs. "YOU GO BACK TO AFRICA AND DO YOUR GAY VOODOO LIMBO TANGO AND WANGO DANCE AND JUMP AROUND AND PRANCE AND ALL OVER THE PLACE HALF NAKED..." Emails between a gay black man and a Native American army recruiter. Copy of the email exchange here. (Quote at the bottom format, so read from the last page up.)
posted by Snyder on Mar 26, 2007 - 73 comments

Chile Pepper's Lonely Endorphins Club Cinema: I, II, III

Can all this be explained by Dr. Paul Rozin's Benign Masochism / Constrained Risk theory? I, for one, am not buying it, but any way you slice it, hot cock sauce is here to stay.
posted by NaturalScinema on Feb 23, 2007 - 35 comments

The white man brought disease, war and...accounting ledgers. The Plains Indian warrior switched from previous art materials and used the ledgers to create Ledger Art to record the glory of the hunt and battles between tribes and against whites. But as the Native American life deteriorated, Ledger Art recorded a vanishing way of life and the dramatic change in their culture. Some of that art has been lost or fallen apart, but The Plains Indians Ledger Art Website exists to preserve the images for the future.
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Dec 31, 2006 - 16 comments

When Everybody Called Me Gah-bay-bi-nayss - an ethnographic biography of Paul Peter Buffalo, son of Ojibwa medicine woman and grandson of the great chief Pezeke. Buffalo died in 1977, but spent his last dozen years chronicling his heritage and the things the elders told him. Be sure to check out the entry on John Smith, a wonderful character more popularly known as Wrinkle Meat.
posted by madamjujujive on Nov 16, 2006 - 8 comments

Just how far does this Abramoff stuff go? Sure, we've heard all about the charges of political corruption, but Wampum has been diligently putting the pieces together, and some strange things are coming up, like the Dawes act of 1887, Cobell v. Norton, and $176 billion owed by ranchers and the oil and gas industry to Native Americans. Dustin Wax at Savage Minds concluded that "Abramoff and his peers both in Congress and the business world are working to undermine the last vestige of autonomy Indian peoples possess."
posted by jefgodesky on Feb 10, 2006 - 15 comments

Indian Country Today is the national newspaper for American Indians. With news from tribes across the United States and around the world and articles like "Qitsualik: The last great polar bear hunt." And they were down on Ward Churchill before it was cool. Don't have time to add another newspaper to your reading list? Try the podcast.
posted by LarryC on Jan 6, 2006 - 10 comments

A Native American Scoops Lewis and Clark. Moncacht-apé, a Yazoo Indian, traveled up the Missouri and to the Pacific 100 years before Lewis and Clark. He told his story to the Frenchman Le Page du Pratz, who recorded it as part of his 1758 Histoire de la Lousiane (new translations here). Thomas Jefferson owned the book, as did Meriwether Lewis. But a walk to the Pacific Ocean was no big deal for the Mississippi native--after all he had walked to Niagara Falls a few years earlier.
posted by LarryC on Sep 26, 2005 - 21 comments

Selling the American Indian: The controversial work of Edward S. Curtis
posted by .kobayashi. on Sep 20, 2005 - 21 comments

Afterculture
posted by jefgodesky on Sep 12, 2005 - 43 comments

21 story tall statue of an American Indian to tower over the central US. Builders believe it will be as significant a monument as the St. Louis Arch, Seattle Space Needle, Mt. Rushmore.
posted by jmccorm on Jul 24, 2005 - 46 comments

Whatcha doin' tonight? Me, I think I'll mosey over the block and a half to the Pit and take in the vibes at the Gathering of Nations Pow-Wow. Might even try to score some peyote. No, I'm not trying to reinforce a stereotype; I'm truly interested in the experience. Besides, I'm descended from Sequoyah - we're on the Dawes Rolls and everything. Ha! Who am I kidding? I'm just another stupid white girl.
posted by postmodernmillie on Apr 29, 2005 - 10 comments

The Grand Coulee dam in northeast Washington state is the largest concrete structure in the United States. First conceived as a smaller dam, the idea of a large project won out and the Coulee's size was limited only by the fact that, if bigger, we'd flood Canada.

It wasn't until the New Deal philosophy of putting folks to work (even songwriters) materialized that the dam was given a green-light. The project, 30 years in development and 9 years in construction, was by all means a rousing success. Unless you were a displaced native. Or a fish.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies on Apr 28, 2005 - 14 comments

Lakota Winter Counts. Lakota and other plains tribes counted time by winters. An appointed recorder would choose one major event to mark the year, depicting that event by name and symbol. Early records dating back to the 10th century were often painted on buffalo skins; more recent winter counts were recorded as text journals. These fascinating records offer insight into natural and historic events for our land that precede accounts of European settlers. - more -
posted by madamjujujive on Apr 26, 2005 - 12 comments

Sovereign nations import prescription drugs from Canada. The latest loophole in the Canadian drugs saga: if you can't figure out a way to get your state to buy them, get Native Americans to import them for you. (Just make sure that they are, in fact, Indians.)
posted by gimonca on Mar 5, 2005 - 14 comments

" Fifty years ago, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or Mormon Church, began a foster care program for American Indian children. Between twenty and fifty thousand children, mostly Navajo, participated in what was called the Indian Student Placement Program....Through Placement, children had the opportunity to grow up in families – white Mormon families – while attending day schools in Utah and across the West. Placement also had a theological motivation. Championed in the ‘50s by an LDS Church leader named Spencer W. Kimball, Placement grew from a sense of commitment to the Indians – then regarded as descendants of the original people of the Book of Mormon. Listen to the amazing story, full of first hand accounts from both sides here
posted by BrodieShadeTree on Dec 21, 2004 - 18 comments

"For 500 generations they flourished until newcomers came... much was lost; much was devalued, but much was also hidden away in the hearts of the dispossessed." Much that is now available in image and in writing at the University of Washington's "American Indians of the Pacific Northwest" Collection.
posted by jeffmshaw on Dec 6, 2004 - 5 comments

The National Museum of the American Indian opened on Tuesday. Although generally praised, the occasion did draw some mild concern that some groups are under-represented. The museum occupies one of the last few coveted spots on the National Mall. Washington Post collumnist Courtland Milloy comments on the contrast between the opening ceremonies for the museum in the home of the 'Redskins'. And I can't resist throwing in a plug for The Eiteljorg (flash splash screen) which is the only other museum with a partnership with the Smithsonian collection.
posted by KirkJobSluder on Sep 22, 2004 - 4 comments

Native Languages of the Americas: Preserving and promoting American Indian languages.
posted by Ufez Jones on Sep 2, 2004 - 13 comments

What's an Indian, Anyway? Just one of the essays exploring real vs. fake in Native American culture posted At Wanderer's Well. Lots of opinionated reviews of the work of Louise Erdrich, N. Scott Momaday, Tony Hillerman, Ursula K. Le Guin and many others. The surprisingly rich personal site from a former academic (who now calls his departure from scholarly publishing "felicitous") offers hours of reading with detailed side-trips and fascinating links.
posted by mediareport on Aug 9, 2004 - 31 comments

Camping with the Sioux: The Fieldwork Diary of Alice Cunningham Fletcher. 'In the Fall of 1881, Alice Fletcher traveled to Dakota Territory to live with Sioux women and record their way of life, accompanied by Susette La Flesche, an Omaha Indian, and journalist Thomas Henry Tibbles... '
More online anthropological collections from the Smithsonian, including selections from William Duncan Strong's 1933 Honduras Journal, and Kiowa drawings.
posted by plep on Feb 1, 2004 - 3 comments

The language of native American baskets - simply gorgeous display of native basketry with commentary from five weavers who keep classic traditions alive. It includes contemporary and antique basketry ranging from burden baskets, jars, and ollas to fancy baskets and hats. This is exhibit is currently on view at the National Museum of the American Indian.
posted by madamjujujive on Dec 13, 2003 - 9 comments

The Kumeyaay Nation of southern California. 'This Web site is dedicated to the promotion and preservation of the Kumeyaay culture. Kumeyaay.com tells the story from the Kumeyaay perspective, and is the premiere source for Kumeyaay Indian information.' With an interesting history, language and culture section.
posted by plep on Nov 12, 2003 - 6 comments

“Prescott Bush, George W's grandfather, and a band of Bonesmen, robbed the grave of Geronimo." Grandpa Prescott brought the skull of the Apache leader back to Yale in 1919, where they were kept in a glass case in the Skull and Bones House. Today the Mescalero Apaches are not amused. Meanwhile, the Skull and Bones initiation ceremonies are finally revealed! Eating clubs are nothing compared to this...
posted by zaelic on Nov 10, 2003 - 15 comments

Hopi dancing in pictures and words: Kachina, ladder, rain, butterfly and snake.
posted by moonbird on Oct 29, 2003 - 5 comments

Images of Native Americans, from UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library, is comprehensive online exhibit of over 400 years of text and images of Native American history. [via a Berkleyan article that has sample images and more info]
posted by kirkaracha on Aug 18, 2003 - 8 comments

Southwestern United States Rock Art Gallery. 'This page is devoted to Native American Rock Art of the Southwestern United States. Currently, most images on this page are from Utah. This will change as time permits.'
Related :- this Precolumbian Collection from Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (which has an interesting history itself).
posted by plep on May 18, 2003 - 7 comments

The Feather Distribution Project collects molted wild turkey, macaw and parrot feathers and distributes them, free of charge, to Pueblo Indians for use in traditional religious ceremonies.
posted by gudrun on May 5, 2003 - 3 comments

Voices from the Trading Post. You know, you can get a job anywhere, but this is not just a place to make a living. This is a way of life. Life on the Navajo reservation in the 19th and 20th century, in the words of the traders themselves (text and sound).
posted by gottabefunky on Feb 3, 2003 - 3 comments

[A]nother race may have pre-dated native Americans.
....Dr Gonzalez told BBC News Online: "We believe that the older race may have come from what is now Japan, via the Pacific islands and perhaps the California coast....this discovery, although it is very significant, raises more questions than it solves." This seems like real news to me: the 'Bering Straits' route is still the dominant theory of pre-Colombian migration, is it not? Yet clearly, for anthropologists, it hasn't that simple for quite some time. Are we on the verge of a new consensus about human expansion across the globe? Or is this doomed to fail, like previous speculation? [Kon-Tiki, anyone?]
posted by dash_slot- on Dec 3, 2002 - 42 comments

Reading the 9th Prophecy of the American Hopi Indians has sent a chill in my spine! Some interpretations I have read say that this prophecy is an interpretation of Nasa's Skylab falling back to Earth circa 1979. However when I read this prophecy a few months ago the crash of the World Trade Center immediately popped into my mind! The Hopi's 9th prophecy states "You will hear of a dwelling-place in the heavens, above the earth, that shall fall with a great crash! It will appear as a blue star." "These are the Signs that great destruction is here: The world shall rock to and fro. The white man will battle people in other lands - those who possessed the first light of wisdom. " Is this not our time?
posted by thedailygrowl on Nov 10, 2002 - 42 comments

Misunderstanding the joke.
posted by zedzebedia on Apr 18, 2002 - 15 comments

Navajo Code Talkers honored As indigenous languages die out all over the world, it's especially nice to see some recognition for the Navajo code talkers. There's also a dictionary here.
posted by judith on Jul 26, 2001 - 6 comments

Scalping. As an amateur historian who concentrates on pre-1900 Texas, I often come across accounts of scalping by the dreaded Comanche. Inevitably, someone claims that the practice was started by Europeans. This link provides archeological proof that the practice was widespread in North America before contact with Europeans. (It also briefly describes a pre-historic massacre of almost 500 people, which in terms of the cultures involved is like wiping out New York.)
posted by CRS on May 16, 2001 - 5 comments

DEA Raids Lakota Sioux Industrial Hemp Crop The DEA destroys 1.5 acres of Industrial Hemp with "No detectable THC content" - and devastates a native american family farm. This is the only place I found a story about the Raid. Can you say news blackout?
posted by snakey on Sep 12, 2000 - 2 comments