French exploration into what would later become New France (and which would eventually become Canada) began in 1534 with Jacques Cartier. In 1540, King Francois I announced his intention to establish a colony in order to exploit the resources of the area, and justified this colony in religious language and with the idea of bringing … Continued
LOOK TO THE SKY AND SEE A BLUE/RED STAR IN 2012== GATHER AND ENJOY GOOD TIMES WITH THE GATHERING OF THE NATIONS===GOOD FOOD–BETTER PEOPLE–COME AS YOU ARE< AND MeANt too BE.
Welcome to the seventh edition of First Nations News & Views. This weekly series is one element in the “Invisible Indians” project put together by navajo and me, with assistance from the Native American Netroots Group. Last week’s edition is here. In this edition you will find a remembrance by Carter Camp of the Wounded … Continued
For the Plains Indians, the buffalo (technically bison) was more than an important source of food, shelter, and clothing: the buffalo was also an important spiritual and cultural symbol. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were an estimated 30 million buffalo roaming the Great Plains. A century later, in 1900, the buffalo had … Continued
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. Background: The Southeastern Woodlands is an … Continued
“Wonderful U.S. and Canada!” Obama supports TransCanada’s bid to push ahead with part of oil pipeline (Edited from an earlier version in 2008. Since it’s original publishing, the US signed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. However, that was just smoke and mirrors, so I left the original intact) A Canadian company has … Continued
Welcome to the sixth edition of First Nations News & Views. This weekly series is one element in the “Invisible Indians” project put together by Meteor Blades and me, with assistance from the Native American Netroots Group. Last week’s edition is here. In this edition you will find an article on the fight over repatriation … Continued
( – promoted by navajo) A look at the guitarist Link Wray – with 1/2 Shawnee ancestry – who is a pivotal figure in rock-n-roll and still influential six years after his death. If you try to draw a line from the first bluesman who cranked up his guitar amp to create a distorted sound … Continued
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. Europeans have grouped these … Continued
Following the so-called Red River wars in Oklahoma and Texas in 1875, the army had intended to try Indian leaders and warriors before a military commission, but the attorney general ruled that a military trial would be illegal as a state of war cannot exist between a nation and its wards. Thus the Indians were … Continued
