The Navajo Community College was established in Tsaile, Arizona in 1969. This college was an outgrowth of the idea of self-determination in which the tribes were to control their own destinies. In addition, it was evident that traditional colleges and universities were not meeting the needs of rural communities, and particularly Indian communities. Navajo Community … Continued
During the 1930s, the conservation policies of the federal government collided with Navajo culture. What the Navajo perceived as the callous disregard of the government for sheep and goats-both important in Navajo culture-resulted in resentments toward the American government which are still present today. Domesticated sheep and goats were not native to the American … Continued
By 1840, some 40,000 Indians from the Five Civilized Tribes-Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole-had been resettled in what is now Oklahoma as a part of the efforts of the American government to remove all Indians from American territory east of the Mississippi. Each of the Five Civilized Tribes was organized into self-governing republics and … Continued
I mourn the loss of my specific tribal heritage due to my biological family being assimilated into Christianity, the shame that religion put into them, which caused them to lose their tribal heritage – thus mine. The Massacre For Which Thanksgiving Is Named (Pt.2) photo credit: Aaron Huey I mourn the loss of Native Languages, … Continued
The clear origins of the Native American Flute date back several thousand millennia to flutes made of bone, to petroglyphs, and oral history. Unclear “origins” involve the Spanish Conquest insofar as the Spanish stealing the bamboo flute from Asia, and then introducing it to the Five Civilized Tribes. A Cheyenne Flute Maker relayed this to … Continued
The United States came into existence in its current governmental form with the adoption of the Constitution in 1787. Under the Constitution, the federal government, not the states, was to be involved with the Indian tribes. For the Cherokee, one of the largest tribes in the American southeast, the creation of the United States led … Continued
European nations assumed that they had a right to govern the Indian nations they encountered. This right stemmed from the legal and religious Doctrine of Discovery which declares that Christian nations have a right, if not an obligation, to govern all non-Christian nations. Once an Indian nation had been read the Christian history of the … Continued
During the nineteenth century non-Indian scholars, intellectuals, government officials, and others were convinced that American Indians were a dying race and that by the twentieth century, Indians would have vanished. Thus, when the twentieth century started Indians became invisible, relics of a mythical past. The symbol of American Indians was “The End of the Trail,” … Continued
In 1762 the Delaware (Lenni Lenape) prophet Neolin, who was living in Ohio, had a vision in which he undertook a journey to meet the Master of Life. He was told: “The land on which you are, I have made for you, not for others. Wherefore do you suffer the whites to dwell upon your … Continued
During the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth century, American Indian objects that would today be considered works of art were relegated to display in cabinets of curiosity with dinosaur fossils, stuffed penguins, and unusual geological specimens. By the 1930s, however, some museums were beginning to recognize American Indian art as a distinct … Continued
