Native American Heritage Month
Native American Heritage Month, or as it is commonly referred to, American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month, had its official beginning with a 1990 landmark bill, where President George H. W. Bush honored America’s tribal people by designating November as “National American Indian Heritage Month.” (Source: Library of Congress)
The month is a time to celebrate rich and diverse cultures, traditions, and histories and to acknowledge the important contributions of Native people. Heritage Month is also an opportune time to educate the general public about tribes, to raise general awareness about the unique challenges Native people have faced both historically and in the present, and the ways in which tribal citizens have worked to conquer these challenges. (Source: National Congress of American Indians)
- Native American Heritage Month Brought to you by The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
- US Census Bureau: American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month: November 2018 A curated collection of statistics about American Indians and Alaska Natives.
- PBS: Native American Heritage Month A four-part online documentary series.
- SGLC Indigenous Land Acknowledgement Act The SGLC brings forth the acknowledgment of the stolen land of the Sioux, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Miami, and Peoria tribes that we currently reside, work, and learn upon as Loyola University Chicago community members. We, as members of the SGLC, commit to honoring these tribes, their elders, and this land in the spaces we are a part of during our time at Loyola and in our future careers. We acknowledge that our institution sits upon Indigenous land, reinforcing the colonial erasure of Native Peoples and their cultures, languages, religions, and connection to ancestral territories. We invite everyone to learn more about Indigenous Land and Peoples’ and to donate time, funds, and other resources to Indigenous Justice Organizations.
History, Experiences, and more
Local Resources
- American Indian Center Chicago The American Indian Center of Chicago (AIC) has a long history of serving American Indians. Established in 1953, this Center is the first urban Indian Center in the country.
- Midwest SOARRING (Save Our Ancestors Remains & Resources Indigenous Network Group) Midwest SOARRING (Save Our Ancestors Remains & Resources Indigenous Network Group) Foundation was formed in November of 1996. Our mission is to offer assistance, when asked, as a facilitator to the tribes regarding repatriation concerns, educate the public about various American Indian cultural issues, environmental issues, and build community among all people.
- The Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative The members of the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative are dedicated to furthering diverse causes and the greater well-being of American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and First Nations people in the Chicago area. We seek to maximize effectiveness by creating a forum for fostering mutual aide, political support, positive public recognition, strategic alliances, collaborations, and partnerships. CAICC will convene organizational leaders and members of the Chicago American Indian community for dialogue, advocacy and planning with the goal of empowering CAICC to better address the issues and needs of the American Indian community.
- Mitchell Museum of the American Indian The Mitchell Museum of the American Indian is one of only a handful of museums across the country that focuses exclusively on the art, history, and culture of Native American and First Nation peoples from throughout the United States and Canada. It promotes public understanding of cultural diversity through first voice perspectives.
- Chicago Title VI American Indian Education Program The Title VI American Indian Education Formula Grant Program offers services to Chicago Public School’s American Indian families, educators, and community members. The staff acts as a liaison between CPS and American Indian families to provide extracurricular activities, after-school programming, culturally oriented community events, and options for higher education/selective enrollment within the school district. Working closely with district curriculum writers, we are able to contemporize American Indians by providing resources such as books, documentaries, activity guides, etc. to the public schools, which in turn benefits the overall image of American Indians and AI students.
- American Indian Association of Illinois The American Indian Association of Illinois provides expert educational programs, extensive academic/social support and financial planning for students and families to access and be successful. For American Indian people, AIAI programs provide a culturally based foundation of education grounded in tribal knowledge.
- D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies: Newberry Library The D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies was founded in 1972. Its goals are to encourage the use of the Newberry collections in these areas of study; improve the quality of what is written about American Indians and Indigenous peoples; educate teachers about American Indian and Indigenous cultures, histories, and literatures; assist American Indian tribal and Indigenous historians in their research; and provide a meeting ground where scholars, teachers, tribal historians, and others can discuss their work with each other.
Curriculum Books (Children's/YA)
Moonshot: the Indigenous Comics Collection (Volume 1) by
MOONSHOT: The Indigenous Comics Collection brings together dozens of creators from North America to contribute comic book stories showcasing the rich heritage and identity of indigenous storytelling. From traditional stories to exciting new visions of the future, this collection presents some of the finest comic book and graphic novel work on the continent.
Call Number: PN6790.N72 M66 2020 vol.1-3ISBN: 9780228706205Publication Date: 2020-06-01
Tales of the mighty code talkers by
"There has been a great deal of writing the past several decades about Native American Code Talkers of World War Two. The published works have been about Navajos and the tremendous contribution they made in the Pacific campaigns of the war. What is often overlooked is the role played in both World Wars by men of other tribes. There were Cherokee, Choctaw, Comanche, Creek and other tribal representatives with their languages involved as well.
Call Number: PN6728 .T257 2019ISBN: 9781478868088Publication Date: 2019
Super Indian Volume Two by
"Hubert Logan was an ordinary Reservation Boy until he ate tainted commodity cheese infused with 'Rezium, ' a secret government food enrichment additive. Known as 'Super Indian, ' Hubert fights evil forces who would overtake the Reservation's resources and population. Assisted by his trusty sidekicks Mega Bear and Diogi, they fight crime the way they know how -- with strength, smarts and humor."-
Call Number: NC1429.S737 S87 2012ISBN: 9780985953522Publication Date: 2015-04-11
Three Feathers by
Explores the power and grace of restorative justice in one Northern community and the cultural legacy that can empower future generations.
Call Number: PN6733.V36 T57 2015ISBN: 9781553795360Publication Date: 2015-03-02
Sovereign Traces by
Volume 1 merges work of contemporary North American Indian literature with imaginative illustrations by U.S. and Canadian artists to provide a unique collection of reimagined fiction and poetry. Volume 2 provides a unique opportunity for audiences to hear from a myriad of American Indian and First Nations voices on the meaning of love. Here readers will find works of graphic literature, including both poetry and fiction, that explore how celestial bodies build and share creative intimacie
Call Number: PN6720 .N68 2018 v.1-v.2ISBN: 9781938065064Publication Date: 2018-05-01
A Blanket of Butterflies by
"A Blanket of Butterflies explores the journey of Shinobu, a mysterious stranger who visits Fort Smith, NWT, to retrieve his family's samurai suit of armor and sword from the local museum. When he discovers that his grandfather's sword has been lost in a poker game to the man they call "Benny the Bank," he sets out to retrieve it with the help of a young boy, Sonny, and his grandmother. Together, they face Benny and his men, Torchy, Sfen and the giant known as Flinch, and come to an unexpected realization. This graphic novel, beautifully illustrated by Scott B. Henderson, explores the grace of family and of trusting the power of the spirit world."
Call Number: PN6733.V36 B53 2015ISBN: 9781553795483Publication Date: 2015-10-20
There There by
Through his large cast of interwoven characters, Orange explores a wide range of experiences among Indigenous peoples living in the United States in this PEN/Hemingway Award–winning novel.
Call Number: PS3615.R32 T48 2018ISBN: 9780525520375Publication Date: 2018-06-05
The Night Watchman by
"It is 1953. Thomas Wazhushk is the night watchman at the first factory to open near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a prominent Chippewa Council member, trying to understand a new bill that is soon to be put before Congress. The US Government calls it an 'emancipation' bill; but it isn't about freedom - it threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land, their very identity. How can he fight this betrayal? Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Pixie - 'Patrice' - Paranteau has no desire to wear herself down on a husband and kids. She works at the factory, earning barely enough to support her mother and brother, let alone her alcoholic father who sometimes returns home to bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to get if she's ever going to get to Minnesota to find her missing sister Vera."
Call Number: PS3555.R42 N54 2020ISBN: 9780062671189Publication Date: 2020-03-03
This Tender Land by
1932, Minnesota. The Lincoln School is a pitiless place where hundreds of Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to an orphan named Odie O'Banion, a lively boy whose exploits earn him the superintendent's wrath. Forced to flee, he and his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and a little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call their own. Over the course of one unforgettable summer, these four orphans will journey into the unknown and cross paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds
Call Number: PS3561.R766 T46 2019ISBN: 9781476749297Publication Date: 2019-09-03
Poet Warrior by
"Poet Laureate Joy Harjo offers a vivid, lyrical, and inspiring call for love and justice in this contemplation of her trailblazing life. In the second memoir from the first Native American to serve as US poet laureate, Joy Harjo invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic meditation, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice. Weaving together the voices that shaped her, Harjo listens to stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music that she first encountered as a child, the teachings of a changing earth, and the poets who paved her way. She explores her grief at the loss of her mother and sheds light on the rituals that nourish her as an artist, mother, wife, and community member. Moving fluidly among prose, song, and poetry, Poet Warrior is a luminous journey of becoming that sings with all the jazz, blues, tenderness, and bravery that we know as distinctly Joy Harjo"
Call Number: PS3558.A62423 Z46 2021ISBN: 9780393248524Publication Date: 2021-09-07
The Marrow Thieves by
"In a future world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America's indigenous population - and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow - and dreams - means death for the unwilling donors. Driven to flight, a 15-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones, and take refuge from the "recruiters" who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing 'factories.'"--
Call Number: Curriculum Collection (6th Floor) PZ7.D5954 Ma 2017ISBN: 9781770864863Publication Date: 2017-09-01
The Earth Always Endures by Call Number: PM238.65.E54 E37 1996ISBN: 0670868736Publication Date: 1996-09-01
Changing Is Not Vanishing by
Through extensive archival research in small-circulation newspapers and magazines, manuscripts, pamphlets, rare books, and scrapbooks, Robert Dale Parker has uncovered the work of more than 140 early Indian poets who wrote before 1930.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9780812222180Publication Date: 2012-08-03
Shedding Skins by
Here's the myth: Native Americans are people of great spiritual depth, in touch with the rhythms of the earth, rhythms that they celebrate through drumming and dancing. They love the great outdoors and are completely in tune with the natural world. They can predict the weather by glancing at the sky, or hearing a crow cry, or somehow. Who knows exactly how? The point of the myth is that Indians are, well, special. Different from white people, but in a good way.The four young male Native American poets whose work is brought together in this startling collection would probably raise high their middle fingers in salute to this myth. These guys and "guys" they are-don't buy into the myth. Their poems aren't about hunting and fishing or bonding with animal spirits. Their poems are about urban decay and homelessness, about loneliness and despair, about Payday Loans and 40-ounce beers, about getting enough to eat and too much to drink. And there is nothing romantic about their poetry, either. It is written in the vernacular of mean streets: often raw and coarse and vulgar, just like the lives it describes. Sure, they write about life on the reservation. However, for the Indians in their poems, life on the reservation is a lot like life in the city, but without the traffic. These poets are sick to death of the myth. You can feel it in their poems.These poets are bound by a common attitude as well as a common heritage. All four-Joel Waters, Steve Pacheco, Luke Warm Water, and Trevino L. Brings Plenty-are Sioux, and all four identify themselves as "Skins" (as in "Redskins"). In their poems, they grapple with their heritage, wrestling with what it means to be a Sioux and a Skin today. It's a fight to the finish.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9780870138232Publication Date: 2008-01-31
Sing with the Heart of a Bear by
Examining contemporary poetry by way of ethnicity and gender, Kenneth Lincoln tracks the Renaissance invention of the Wild Man and the recurrent Adamic myth of the lost Garden. He discusses the first anthology of American Indian verse, The Path on the Rainbow (1918), which opened Jorge Luis Borges' university surveys of American literature, to thirty-five contemporary Indian poets who speak to, with, and against American mainstream bards. From Whitman's free verse, through the Greenwich Village Renaissance (sandwiched between the world wars) and the post-apocalyptic Beat incantations, to transglobal questions of tribe and verse at the century's close, Lincoln shows where we mine the mother lode of New World voices, what distinguishes American verse, which tales our poets sing and what inflections we hear in the rhythms, pitches, and parsings of native lines. Lincoln presents the Lakota concept of "singing with the heart of a bear" as poetry which moves through an artist. He argues for a fusion of estranged cultures, tribal and émigré, margin and mainstream, in detailing the ethnopoetics of Native American translation and the growing modernist concern for a "native" sense of the "makings" of American verse. This fascinating work represents a major new effort in understanding American and Native American literature, spirituality, and culture.
Call Number: PS310.I52 L56 2000ISBN: 9780520218901Publication Date: 1999-12-13
Kiyam by
kiyâm contemplates language loss and recovery in the twenty-first century, by relating one woman's journey in learning an Indigenous language.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9781926836706Publication Date: 2012-05-01
What I've Stolen, What I've Earned by Call Number: PS3551.L35774 W47 2014ISBN: 9781934909324Publication Date: 2013-11-12
In the Belly of a Laughing God by
In the Belly of a Laughing Godexamines how eight contemporary Native women poets in Canada and the United States employ humour and irony to address the intricacies of race, gender, and nationality.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9780802035677Publication Date: 2011-05-30
- Kanopy: Native American Heritage Month CollectionCheck out many more films in the Native American Heritage Month collection Kanopy database has put together.
Earth speaks : Native Americans speak about the Earth. by
Earth Speaks is a short documentary about the Earth as Mother and the impacts of oil and gas drilling on Native American tribal lands in the United States, particularly the Blackfeet Reservation in North Central Montana. Outside entities promise economic wealth and prosperity to territories whose unemployment rate hovers at 70%. Exploitation of people, land, and resources is not new to the Native American. How does seeing the Earth with a 'spiritual eye' affect the oil and gas industry of Native Lands? Is there a connection between those views and others that are more pragmatic, and what alternative is there for a world dependent on fossil fuels?
Publication Date: 2016
Circle of stories : Native American stories from the four directions by
This unique and engaging documentary explores the extraordinary diversity and profound contemporary relevance of Native American storytelling. A feast for the eyes, ears, and mind, the film presents eight varied stories from the four directions and seasons.
Publication Date: 2012
Ishi : the last Yahi by
In 1492, there were more than ten million Native Americans in North America. By 1910, their numbers had been reduced to fewer than 300,000. In California, massacres of Indians in the 1860s and 1870s had nearly exterminated the Native peoples in the state. Therefore the sudden appearance in northern California in 1911 of Ishi, "the last wild Indian in North America," stunned the nation. For more than 40 years, Ishi had lived in hiding with a tiny band of survivors. When he walked into the white man's world, he was the last Yahi Indian alive. For young anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, Ishi's appearance was a windfall. Kroeber had been searching for years to find "wild, uncontaminated Indians" who could document their traditional way of life. Through Kroeber's invitation, Ishi left a jail cell and lived out the remaining four years of his life as an informant and teacher at the Museum of Anthropology in San Francisco. Ishi dedicated those years to relating Yahi stories and demonstrating the traditional way of life he knew so well.
Publication Date: 1993
Our Fires Still Burn : The Native American Experience. by
This exciting and compelling one hour documentary invites viewers into the lives of contemporary Native American role models living in the U.S. Midwest. 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 great 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."
Publication Date: 2015
Science or Sacrilege: Native Americans, Archaeology and the Law by
Well into the 20th century, Native American physical remains were frequently harvested like trophies, and ritual objects and artwork often reached museums under questionable circumstances. Such glaring offenses of "œimperial archaeology" ultimately motivated Congress to pass the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990.This provocative, in-depth documentary examines the Act's underlying moral and political issues, its practical consequences, and the prospects for science in the post-NAGPRA world.
Publication Date: 1996
Language Healers - Native Americans Revitalizing Native Languages by
Heenetiineyoo3eihiiho' (Language Healers) is a documentary that tells the story of Native Americans who are striving to revitalize their languages. From Alaska to Oklahoma and Wisconsin to Montana, we witness stories about the importance of saving Native American languages and meet some of the people who are working hard to heal these national treasures.
Publication Date: 2014