Indians 101: The Horse and the Plateau Indians
The stereotype of the American Indian adopted by the entertainment industry and by some educational textbooks is based on the horse-mounted, buffalo hunting Plains Indians of the nineteenth century....
View ArticleIndians 101: Central Plains Indian Migrations
The Central Plains lie south of the South Dakota-Nebraska border and north of the Arkansas River. It includes Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, southeastern Wyoming, and eastern Colorado. At the time...
View ArticleAncient America: Great Basin Oregon, 12,900 to 9,000 Years Ago
About 12,900 years ago there was an abrupt change in climatic conditions known as the Younger Dryas which marked the beginning of cooler conditions in the Great Basin area of present-day Oregon. This...
View ArticleIndians 101: Indian Issues in 1965
In 1965, Indian concerns centered around a number of issues, including the hunting and fishing rights which had been guaranteed in treaties; land claims often related to fraudulent treaties; Indian...
View ArticleIndians 201: Pontiac's War
In 1763, the Ottawa leader Pontiac led an alliance of Indian nations in the Ohio Valley in a war of resistance against the British. In defeating this Indian alliance, the British turned to biological...
View ArticleIndians 101: The Federal Government and Indian Affairs in 1965
By 1965, the administration of federal Indian relationships and Indian reservations had been firmly entrenched in the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which is a part of the Department of the Interior....
View ArticleIndians 201: Wodziwob's Ghost Dance
During the nineteenth century there were a number of religious movements that developed among diverse Indian tribes. One of these, called the Ghost Dance by non-Indians, arose among the Paiute in Nevada.
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hey, Redskins Fans, Let's Honor the Real Warriors
Proud Native Americans reject the honor of being a mascot? Okay.Recently Native American mascots have generated a lot of controversy. Apparently some Indians (67% according to a recent poll) don’t care...
View ArticleAncient America: Coastal Oregon, 13,000 to 7,500 years Ago
The Oregon coast is a part of the larger Northwest Coast culture area which stretches from the Tlingit homelands in Alaska to the Tolowa homelands in northern California. The cultures along this...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Original Americans forgotten on Memorial Day
The All-Nations Native American Veterans Memorial in Jefferson, Oregon[This is an edited and updated reprise of an essay first written for Memorial Day in 2010.]My stepfather's brother died with other...
View ArticleAncient America: The Northeast Prior to 8000 BCE
The Northeastern Woodlands of North America is a land of heavily forested rolling hills and rounded mountains, salt marshes of waving grass, calm lakes, tumbling brooks, surf-beaten beaches, and rocky...
View ArticleClik here to view.
"You're not a tribe, you're frickin' fruitcake people!"
"I was on a four-hour conference with the Rainbow People a while back and kept telling them over and over again that we don't want them here in the Black Hills. They claimed they had some tribal...
View ArticleIndians 101: Indian Events in 1715
Three hundred years ago, in 1715, the European colonies in North America were well-established and conflicts with the Indian nations were escalating. Competition between the European powers often meant...
View ArticleIndians 101: Sioux Opposition to Railroads in Montana in 1872
The westward expansion of the United States during the nineteenth century was guided by a quasi-religious philosophy of Manifest Destiny: America had been ordained by God to spread its territory across...
View ArticleClik here to view.
For Canupa Gluha Mani and James Magaska Swan, there is no mid-July rainbow
This is a sign at the Rainbow Family of Living Light's homecoming celebration in the Black Hills National Forest, where Lakota Sioux Indians call home. Hokey and ridiculous ceremonies which exploit and...
View ArticleIndians 201: The Cheyenne Medicine Bundles
Medicine bundles are important to many of the Northern Plains tribes. The concept of “medicine” refers to spiritual power, which is not limited to healing. For the Plains Indians, spirit...
View ArticleAncient America: A Plateau Clovis Cache
As the ice age was ending in North America, a new hunting technology arose. This technology, commonly known as Clovis after a find in New Mexico, is characterized by a finely made stone projectile...
View ArticleIndians 101: Shawnee Spirituality
The Shawnee, whose name means “Southerners”, once occupied a vast region west of the Cumberland mountains of the Appalachian chain in what is now part of Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia....
View ArticleIndians 101: Greed, Corruption, and the Foundation for Oklahoma Statehood,...
Thomas Jefferson was one of the Americans who envisioned removing all Indians from American soil and placing them in a confined territory west of the Mississippi River. In the early nineteenth century,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
One officer was indicted for murdering Sam Dubose. What about the officers...
The mugshot of Police Officer Ray Tensing, left, and the man for whose murder he was indicted, Sam Dubose. The murder of Sam Dubose by University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing was truly...
View Article
