Links 


 

 

 

  1. National Museum of the American Indian
  2. Native American Silverwork
  3. Native American Navigator
  4. Inuit Education
  5. The Scandalous US Bureau of Indian Affairs
  6. Endangered Native American Languages
  7. A Highly Aboriginal Idea
  8. Dakota Culture and Religion
  9. Real American History
  10. History of Native American Health Care
  11. Turtle Tracks - Native American Newsletter for Kids
  12. Native Americans in World War I
  13. Indigenous Peoples Time Line
  14. An Argentinian Site: Los Kallpas (in Spanish,of course)
 

 

 
 

 

 

1.

National Museum of the American Indian

Housed at and hosted by the wonder-filled Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of the American Indian is a stunning and sophisticated site. Vibrant colors and artifacts warmed by the real use of long-dead people mark its exhibits. The catalogues are not the usual dry recitation of data, but instead enlivened by personal remembrances and interpretations by a select council of Native American advisors and artisans. Aside from the exhibits, take a look at the Cultural Resource Center of the National Museum of the American Indian, now being completed in stages.
http://www.si.edu/organiza/museums/amerind/start.htm

 

 
2.

Native American Silverwork

The Native Hands site features a catalogue of fine silver bracelets, earrings, buckles, rings, necklaces, pins, and other jewelry. While we wouldn't normally cover such a commercial site, the unique art and artists here make it a worthwhile visit. You can read biographies of the Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni artists and explanations of the techniques of clusterwork, inlay, overlay, and stampwork.
http://www.nativehands.com/

 

 

3.

Native American Navigator

Columbia University's Institute for Learning Technologies (ILT) offers the Native American Navigator, as comprehensive a resource as we've seen on North America's native peoples. The ILT focuses on the tools and process of learning, whatever the subject, so its own content leans toward providing resources for teachers and their students. But, oh, those links! For the rest of the surfing public, the content is measured by its considerable array of specialized links, grouped by native nation. A map shows linguistic relationships and geographic ranges within the lower 48 states. We'd have preferred a timeline that started, oh, say 20,000 years before 1830, but we can't have everything we want, now, can we?
http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/k12/naha/nanav.html

 

 
4.

Inuit Education

Inuuqatigiit is a school curriculum developed with the help of community leaders for Inuit students in some of Canada's most northern communities. Clearly written, it paints a sharp picture of the Inuit world view on issues of morality, the family, and the environment, without resorting to the reverential mysticism that sometimes mars cross-cultural texts. This skillfully written document emphasizes similarities across cultures so smoothly that it's unclear in the text just when it slips into issues that are singularly Inuit. How many Grade 12 teachers hope that students learn to hunt seals safely in different seasons and know the proper way to show respect for a seal after it has been killed? This wonderful site teaches all of us about contemporary concerns and cultural strategies among people who rely on tradition to define themselves.
http://www.learnnet.nt.ca/Inuuqatigiit/TitleoPage.html

 

 
5.

The Scandalous US Bureau of Indian Affairs

When is stealing not stealing? When it's called an "unreconciled transaction" and it is committed by the government. The US Bureau of Indian Affairs is accused on this Web site of stealing billions of dollars from the Native American population. Dollars that should be building houses or funding health initiatives are said to find their way into the capacious pockets of bureaucrats and politicians. Oil companies pay millions to the Bureau for the right to drill oil on Native land, but according to Jennifer Hicks, the article's author, the Indians do not see a dime of it. Allegedly, appallingly bad management and sloppy accounting mean vast sums owed to the Bureau go uncollected, and when a Bureau accountant tried to take action, he was fired. The site provides the fired accountant's words on the matter.
http://www.minorities-jb.com/native/fraud.html

 

 
6.

Endangered Native American Languages

Most Native American languages will not survive beyond the next 20 years, joining hundreds that are now dead and gone forever, as a few alpha male languages strut uncontested about the globe. What is to be done, and why? As a teacher of ours used to say, interesting questions, interesting questions! Fortunately, James Crawford has interesting answers too in his 6000-word essay, although perhaps not as good as he would like. Why should we care? Language loss is an irrevocable blow to science, but more critically it "can destroy a sense of self-worth, limiting human potential and complicating efforts to solve other problems". The author admits that language homogenization can be arrested only if those to whom these languages are natural wish to preserve them. Read up, think about carrier pigeons, and get anxious.
http://www.ncbe.gwu.edu/miscpubs/crawford/
 
 

7.

A Highly Aboriginal Idea

Indigenous tribes of the Americas may never fully reclaim their languages, religions, and cultures, but some in Canada are using the Net to rekindle their vitality. Aboriginal Digital Collections, a Canadian government program, is funding hundreds of Web sites produced mostly by Aboriginal youth groups and businesses. The home page tells how groups can get involved, and links take you to the interesting stuff: sites displaying art, music, history, native languages, and information about the more than 20,000 Aboriginal-owned businesses nationwide. The sites stand on their own merit, but they've also served as instructive, creative rites of passage for kids who might otherwise remain severed from their cultural roots.
http://aboriginalcollections.ic.gc.ca/
 
 
8.

Dakota Culture and Religion

This introduction to Dakota culture and history by Kevin L. Callahan, University of Minnesota, is a thoughtful and attractive presentation on the subject. The author intends the site as a teaching aid, but there's no thread as such, no structure to the place. Instead you are invited to scroll down the page and read stuff there, quotations from various folk - mostly historical, a few quite recent - and the site makes no apparent attempt to shape the conclusions or ideas you'll come away with. In an understanding way, Callahan briefly describes topics such as the Dakota view of nature and "wildness", contrasts Dakota creation stories with evolution, and provides links to other sites on related topics, including pictures and descriptions of the Thunderbird petroglyphs of the upper midwest, James Walker's outline of Oglala Dakota mythology, Dakota spirituality, and Dakota terms and concepts. It's a fine site requiring some effort on the part of visitors. Dakota religion and sacred boulders is another of Callahan's set of archeological Web sites, and continues the respectful but objective treatment of information about the Dakota people.
Dakota culture:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/5579/dakota.html
Dakota religion: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1059/dakotareligion.html
 
 
9.

Real American History

In the 13th century, Cahokia, with its huge ceremonial mound, probably had as many residents as London. Members of the Pueblo nation have inhabited the stone apartments of Acoma, New Mexico continuously since the 12th century. The list goes on, but the point is that North American history didn't start de novo when Columbus - or even the earlier European mariners - landed on the eastern shores. That's the message in America Before Columbus, an article that makes a moving case for understanding the deep roots of North American history. Here was a continent rich in people, highly diverse in language and custom, and with cities as populous as any in Europe. Europeans achieved dominance quickly but remained ignorant about what they encountered in North America. The article is sprinkled with amazing anecdotes and fascinating facts that will interest anyone who hasn't yet understood the real history of the continent. And it will make you wonder what might have happened if the oceans had been a real barrier to exploration and movement of people rather than just a challenging obstacle.
http://www.millersv.edu/~columbus/data/art/LORD-01.ART
 
 

10.

History of Native American Health Care

The US National Institutes of Health has posted an online version of an exhibition on Native American health care, dating from the early 19th century. Documents include letters and excerpts from journal articles, mostly by EuroAmerican doctors with little understanding of or empathy for Native American medicine. Descriptions of small pox and other epidemics, which wiped out entire communities, are heartbreaking. But, some misguided efforts to 'save the savage' are almost as tragic. One interesting journal excerpt comes from Charles Eastman, one of the first Native American MDs, who compared the medicine man's world view to that of Christian Science, where mind and spirit prevail over body. The exhibition features some beautiful photos, but not enough of them.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/if_you_knew/if_you_knew_01.html
 
 
11.

Turtle Tracks - Native American Newsletter for Kids

The purpose of this site is best summed up by its 'quote of the week', attributed to one Dale Old Horn: "The culture of a people only survives if people practice it". Produced by Cherokee elder Momfeather Erikson and a team of teachers and others interested in education, furthering Native culture is Turtle Tracks' number one priority. You don't have to be Native American, however, to enjoy this site. There are articles about Native American history, a spotlight on praiseworthy Native Americans called 'Hero of the Week', and plenty of artwork. There are many interesting articles about battles and wars, essays about native wildlife, stories, legends, and even recipes. This site makes for fascinating reading and exploration. For a culture to survive, its youth must be educated. This site is a great aid toward furthering that goal with regard to the cultures of the First Nations, and it also serves as an introduction to those rich and ancient traditions.
http://www.turtle-tracks-for-kids.org/page1.html
 
 

12.

Native Americans in World War I

"What struck me the most when I heard that 17,000 Native Americans had served in the Great War was that, not even thirty years after the end of the Indian wars, American Indians were willing to fight alongside their former enemy." So writes Diane Camurat in the preface of The American Indian in the Great War: Real and Imagined. This site is Camurat's master's thesis, submitted in 1993 to the Institut Charles V of the University of Paris. Like most text documents transferred to the Web, this one offers no sizzle or flash. But what it does provide is an examination into both the process a scholar goes through in examining and interpreting historical documents, and the role of Native Americans in World War I. One of the more dramatic contributions of Native Americans during World War I was the success of the Choctaw code talkers, which Michael Wilson highlights on a subsection of his Unofficial Choctaw Nation home page. In the closing days of the war, eight Choctaws were serving in a battalion of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) that was surrounded by Germans; the Germans had broken the AEF's codes and were intercepting their messages. An officer, overhearing two Choctaws speaking in their native language, distributed the eight among the Expeditionary forces. Communicating orders over telephone lines in their native language, which the Germans were unable to decipher, the Choctaw soldiers helped the AEF regain control. Wilson tells the story through the transcript of a 1979 interview with the last living soldier of the group and through scanned images of a January 1919 report from a commanding officer describing the Choctaws' contribution to the AEF's success.
Camurat: http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~kansite/ww_one/comment/camurat1.html
WWI code talkers: http://www.niti.net/~michael/choctaw/code.htm
 
 
13.

Indigenous Peoples Time Line

Phil Konstantin, a member of the Cherokee nation of Oklahoma, California Highway Patrol officer, and prolific writer has assembled an intriguing chronicle featuring 3000 historical events involving the indigenous peoples of North America. Reading randomly gives a compelling, if grim, impression of mostly European settlers using every dirty trick in the book to displace North American Natives from their lands. At first, there was always somewhere else for the Native peoples to go, but later space would run out, with sad consequences. Phil's labor of love is full and fascinating. The event descriptions are the heart of the site, but there's more here as well, including a link to a moving commentary about the death of his wife, killed in a car crash in 1999. This is a site that's worth dipping into from time to time, rather than devouring in one long marathon.
http://members.tripod.com/~PHILKON/index.html
 
 
14.

An Argentinian Site: Los Kallpas (in Spanish, of course)

Ahora te voy a invitar a visitar una página que hice yo. Se trata de indios, pero de un grupo de niños que desean representar la cultura sudamericana y en especial de nuestro país, para ello se agruparon en un Comparsa que se llama "Los Kallpas". Kallpa es una palabra que proviene del dialecto Quechua hablado por los Incas, que dominaron todo el Perú extendiendo sus dominios hasta el Noroeste Argentino. Recibe un gran saludo desde la Provincia de Salta en Argentina.
http://habitantes.elsitio.com/siancas
 

 

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