Native American Heritage month

                                                                                                            Photo by: Alane Golden

November is Native American Heritage month...November is also when we celebrate Thanksgiving. 

But Thanksgiving wasn't always a national holiday. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a resolution making Thanksgiving a federal holiday--320 years after the first feast between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe of the Americas. (FYI: It wasn't really a "thanks giving" meal either, it was a military exercise, so to speak, honoring a mutual-defense pact). 

So how did one meal become synonymous for the American experience of the Native American? This short video by the Smithsonian Museum discusses the "Invention of Thanksgiving" and helps answer that question. 

Below are five other facts about Native Americans (by the way, they've got nothing to do with Thanksgiving!):

Fact #1: Chances are you've probably heard of these Indigenous tribes: Navajo, Sioux, Lakota, but did you know there are hundreds of tribes across North America, each with its own culture? According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the government agency responsible for the administration of Native American affairs, there are 574 federally recognized Native American tribes. Of these, 231 are in Alaska. There are also an unknown number of tribes that are not federally recognized. (Here's a list of 26 states that were named by Native Americans).

Fact #2: Over 24,000 Native Americans served during World War II. You may have heard of the Navajo Code Talkers, a group of 29 Navajo men who were part of a top-secret communications network that could not be understood by the Germans and Axis Alliance. But did you know they created more than 200 new Navajo words for military terms? None of the original code talkers are alive today but a few of them were punished by teachers and others for speaking the Navajo language when they were children. 

Fact #3: Benjamin Franklin and the founding fathers modeled the constitution on the democratic constitution of the Iroquois confederacy. The Iroquois Constitution was also known as "The Great Law of Peace."

Fact #4: The first American to dance with the prestigious Paris Opera Ballet was Maria Tallchief, whose father was a member of the Osage nation. At 17, she moved to Manhattan to pursue ballet full-time but was often discriminated against because of her Osage heritage. She resisted calls to change her name and disavow her background and was recognized as one of the greatest ballet dancers in the world.

Fact #5: Between 1776 and 1887, the United States seized over 1.5 billion acres from America's Indigenous peoples. This interactive, time-lapsed map created by University of Georgia's Professor Claudio Saunt shows how forced treaties and executive orders took over an eighth of the planet.

Have any facts to share? Add it to the "Comments" section below. Remember to cite your source. 

If you would like to learn more about Indigenous American experiences, then come check out our library display!

Here are some books that your librarians recommend:

Ms. Mamdani recommends Crazy Brave: A Memoir (2012) by the current U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. Harjo describes how she survived abuse and abandonment and how her spiritual "visions" and intuitions helped guide her through a tumultuous early childhood and adulthood.

Mrs. Shaurette recommends The Marrow Thieves (2017) by Cherie Dimaline. "If you like Dystopian books," Mrs. Shaurette says, "then you will love this book which has an adventurous feel as Indigenous people are being hunted for their ability to dream in a world where all others can no longer dream and therefore have started to descend into a type of madness."

Mr. Petkus recommends War Dances (2009) by Sherman Alexie. Mr. Petkus says, "this stunning collection of short stories and brief, impactful poems followed on the heels of his National Book Award-winning YA novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), which I also highly recommend. And, while we're talking about it, go ahead and check out Alexie's amazing debut novel (also described as a linked short-story collection), The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1992), which is by now a genuine classic."

Happy Reading!