In major museums, only a small fraction of the artifacts held by the museum are on display and interpreted for the public. Most of the museum’s artifacts are in vaults where they are available only to researchers. The Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History maintains a Visible Vault in which visitors can view hundreds … Continued
One of the displays in the San Bernardino County Museum in Redlands, California, is entitled Sacred Earth and subtitled Understanding our past and honoring cultures that thrive today. The nature of California and Southwestern Indian culture began to change with the European invasion four centuries ago. One of the displays in the Museum looks at … Continued
Water Protectors barred from entering the National Museum of the American Indian for wearing a Stand with Standing Rock patch that said “Water is Life, Mni Wiconi.” In a stunning violation of free speech, Water Protectors attending the four-day Native Nations Rise event in D.C. were barred March 11, 2017 from wearing their Mni Wiconi, … Continued
Daily Kos Director of Community Neeta Lind stands with Dale Ramsey and Duane Red Water, volunteer canvassers of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation, which straddles the border of North Dakota and South Dakota. Less than a month before the midterm elections, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Native American Rights Fund’s (NARF) emergency application to … Continued
For thousands of years the Cahuilla lived in what would become Southern California. It is not known when the Cahuilla had their first contact with the European explorers/invaders. In 1540, the Spanish explorers Hernando de Alarcón and Melchor Díaz reached the area near present-day Yuma, Arizona. The Spanish had sailed up the Gulf of California … Continued
In providing a broad overview of the hundreds of distinct American Indian cultures found in North America, it is common for museums, historians, archaeologists, and ethnologists to use a culture area model. This model is based on the observation that different groups of people living in the same geographic area often share many cultural features. … Continued
What is now Glacier National Park in Montana was an important resource and spiritual area for the Salish-speaking Pend d’Oreille and Flathead, for the Kootenai, and for the Blackfoot. The visitor center at St. Mary entrance has a small Native American display. Salish and Pend d’Oreille Salish leader Sam Resurrection drew this map of the … Continued
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D. MA) Received this e-mail today from U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D. MA) in support of Xochitl Torres Small’s (D. NM-02) campaign: Xochitl Torres Small (D. NM-02) I represent Massachusetts in the Senate — a long way from southern New Mexico. But one thing is clear even all the way across the … Continued
The Pueblos are the village agriculturists of New Mexico and Northern Arizona. While the Pueblos are usually lumped together in both the anthropological and historical writings as though they are a single cultural group, they are linguistically and culturally divergent. The Pueblos speak six mutually unintelligible languages and occupy more than 30 villages in a … Continued
For tens of thousands of years prior to the European invasion of North America, American Indian people made and used many different kinds of stone tools for hunting, for gathering wild plants, and for processing foods. For the past two centuries or so, non-Indian collectors have been gathering Indian artifacts and displaying them in cabinets … Continued
