The Mohawk Nation has deep roots in metropolitan New York City—where, beginning in the early 20th century, Kanienʼkehá꞉ka, or Mohawk, ironworkers contributed to building many of the iconic skyscrapers that dominate the Manhattan skyline. These “Skywalkers” have for generations travelled far and wide to work on the “high steel,” bringing back good wages to support their home communities such as Kahnawake, Six Nations Reserve and Akwesasne in northern New York State and southeastern Canada.

Soon after the Meuse-Argonne campaign got underway, a company commander in the 36th Division reportedly happened to overhear two of his soldiers conversing in Choctaw. In a flash, he recognized the military potential of the language, essentially unknown to the Germans, and persuaded his superiors to to post a Choctaw speaker at various field company headquarters.  On October 26, 1918, the Choctaws were put to use for the first time as part of the withdrawal of two companies from the front. Code talkers made an even bigger impact during World War II, when the U.S. government specifically recruited Comanche, Hopi, Meskwaki, Chippewa-Oneida and Navajo tribal members for such work. The Navajo developed the most complex code, with over 600 terms, for use in the Pacific Theater.

Descriptions of Native governments appear in the three-volume handbook John Adams wrote for the convention surveying different types of governments and ideas about government. It included European philosophers like John Locke and Montesquieu, whom U.S. history textbooks have long identified as constitutional influences; but it also included the Iroquois Confederacy and other Indigenous governments, which many of the delegates knew through personal experience.

Three represents the vertical picture of the world. Man. lives in a space defined by the Heavens (the Upper World), the Earth. (the Middle World) and the Underworld (the Lower World)

When Christopher Columbus reached the Americas, he hoped the land would be rich with gold, silver and precious spices, but perhaps the New World’s greatest treasure was its bounty of native food crops cultivated for millennia by Native Americans. e.g., corn, beans, squash, potatoes, chile peppers, cacao.

Fry bread is a Native American bread that stretches back generations, particularly in the Navajo Nation with whom it originated. It's enjoyed all over the U.S. and is easily found throughout the Southwest. Frybread is a flat dough bread, fried or deep-fried in oil, shortening, or lard. Made with simple ingredients, generally wheat flour, sugar, salt, and fat, frybread can be eaten alone or with various toppings such as honey, jam, powdered sugar, venison, or beef. Frybread can also be made into taco-like meals. Send us your favorite Native American recipes

The Inuit also invented goggles fashioned from wood, bone, antler or leather to protect their eyes from over-exposure to sunlight reflected from expanses of snow. “They’d put a slit in there, to simulate the way that you can squint,”... “It cut down on the ultraviolet rays that got into the eyes.” The snow goggles were the predecessors to today’s sunglasses.

There were many different objects created by Native Americans that can be appreciated for their artistic craftsmanship and aesthetic beauty. Native art from the Americas includes Native American sculpture, textiles, beadwork, quillwork, ceramics, basket weaving, Native American paintings, murals, and Native American drawings from North and South America, as well as parts of Siberia, Alaska, and Greenland. Native art includes baskets, beadwork, quillwork, ceramics, and sculpture. Each one of these took great skill and differed from region to region.
George Longfish was born in Ohsweken, Ontario, on the 22nd of August, 1942. At the age of five, his mother took him and his brother to the Thomas Indian school and left them there. There they were responsible for looking after the animals of the farm, as well as slaughtering them. Through the paintings that he created as a child, he portrayed life without his mother and how removed he felt from his culture. He mostly produced art in modernist and socially conscious styles. His work has been recognized as being a catalyst for the rise of contemporary Native artists as well as the Native art movement as a whole. In his books, he examines the ways in which we define our own identities, probing their historical, social, political, and psychological roots.

Joy Harjo, forner Poet Laureate of the United States is the first Native American poet to have served in that position. She is an enrolled member of the Muscogee Creek Nation. She was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 9, 1951, and is the author of nine books of poetry—including “An American Sunrise” (2019); “Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings” (2015); “The Woman Who Fell From the Sky” (1994), which received the Oklahoma Book Arts Award; and “In Mad Love and War” (1990), which received an American Book Award and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award.
Harjo has also written two memoirs, “Crazy Brave” (2012) and “Poet Warrior” (2021), as well as a children’s book, “The Good Luck Cat” (2000), and a young adult book, “For a Girl Becoming” (2009). “Joy Harjo has championed the art of poetry—‘soul talk’ as she calls it—for over four decades,”Harjo currently lives in her hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is the nation’s first Poet Laureate from Oklahoma.  “What a tremendous honor was to be named the U.S. Poet Laureate,” Harjo said. “I share this honor with ancestors and teachers who inspired in me a love of poetry, who taught that words are powerful and can make change when understanding appears impossible, and how time and timelessness can live together within a poem. I count among these ancestors and teachers my Muscogee Creek people, the librarians who opened so many doors for all of us, and the original poets of the indigenous tribal nations of these lands, who were joined by diverse peoples from nations all over the world to make this country and this country’s poetry.” Harjo’s second term began Sept. 1, 2020, and she launched her signature laureate project, “Living Nations, Living Words,” on Nov. 19, 2020. This digital project gathers a sampling of work by 47 contemporary Native poets from across the nation. Developed in conjunction with the Library’s include Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets

On September 29 Nasa will send a new crew into space. And for the first time there will be a Native American woman aboard. Astronaut Nicole Aunapu Mann, of the Wailacki of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, will be mission commander - responsible for all phases of flight. She is one of eight members of the 21st Nasa astronaut class, formed for space station operations and potential future assignments to the Moon and Mars. Ms Mann, originally from California, studied mechanical engineering at Stanford university. She became a colonel in the Marine Corps, flying various fighter aircraft. She has been deployed twice on aircraft carriers supporting combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was awarded six medals for her service to the US military.

The movie is an electrifying look at the Native American influence in popular music — despite attempts to ban, censor and erase Indian culture. The film reveals how early pioneers of the blues and jazz had Native American roots, and as the folk-rock era took hold in the '60s and '70s, Native Americans such as Peter La Farge and Buffy Sainte-Marie helped to define its evolution, while Native guitarists and drummers such as Link Wray, Jimi Hendrix, Jesse Ed Davis, and many more forever changed the trajectory of rock and roll. 

is a groundbreaking, hilarious sitcom about Native American teens The dark comedy from Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi set in rural Oklahoma is a watershed for indigenous representation