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Yesterday, on May 1, 2023, Elizabeth Hoover put up a "Letter of Accountability and Apology" on her personal webpage in which she states, "I am a white person who has incorrectly identified as Native my whole life." I have had the following post sitting in my drafts for a few months, and feel ready to share it because I feel there is a need for information to be in the public record, and a need to understand the level of labor actual Indigenous people had to put in to get her to the point of writing that statement. I am one of many, many Native people who have been caught up in her decades of lies and one of many Native people who has worked tirelessly to hold her accountable, and this continues to take up enormous amounts of time and emotional energy.

For the past year I have been dealing with the reality that Elizabeth Hoover ("Liz"), once one of my close friends and colleague, has falsified her Mohawk and Mi'kmaq identity. Nearly a year ago I researched her claims and communicated the findings to her. I did not do this to hurt her or destroy anything, I did this to find the truth for her and to help to exonerate her. What I found was the opposite.

In February of 2021 Elizabeth Hoover's name appeared on the controversial " Alleged Pretendian List." Since she had long asserted that she was of Mohawk/Mi'kmaq descent and the list contained the names of people who have actual, undisputed Native ties or are even enrolled in their nations, I offered to help her to write a statement about her identity to clear things up. She declined, but said she would talk with others to decide what to do. I realized then that I had never heard the full story of her family, though I had always been very open about mine--but I pushed the questions away. However, one year later, in February 2022 there was a public statement put out by an Indigenous group in Chicago questioning not only the behavior of her then-partner, Adam Sings-in-the-Timber, but her claims to heritage. We then had a conversation where I asked her directly for family names and ties, and was left confused and unsatisfied by the answers. Failing a clear story from her I embarked on my own research into her claims. After extensive research utilizing Canadian and US census records, death certificates, obituaries, marriage certificates, baptismal records, and census data from Kahnawake I found no Indigenous ties on the lines that she had claimed, tracing back to her great-great-great grandparents.

I will say that this work was not particularly difficult nor did it require a lot of specialized knowledge-her story fell apart very quickly, within a few clicks, but the subsequent months were spent trying every avenue to find something that would explain her claims, triangulating and triple checking, looking in new databases, finding more and new documents, or going back another generation.

In April 2022, Acee Agoyo of Indianz.com published a very disturbing research-driven account of her claims, looking up her dissertation, her on-line bios, while also investigating the allegations of sexual assault against her then partner. This public conversation created urgency around my need for answers from Liz directly. I sent her the letter that follows in June 2022. Four months later, in October 2022, she released a statement on her personal website [scroll below recent statement]. She has continued, publicly and in small groups, to reference "somebody" or "a colleague" who did the research into her family, and in some cases implied that it was research done out of spite or vindictive in nature. That "somebody" was me, and this research came from the exact opposite of spite or hate-I just wanted to know the truth, and I truly thought the answer would be different than what I found.

I have been very hesitant to share this letter. I wrote it for Liz. I didn't write it for a broad audience, and I am the first to admit that I am not Mohawk or Mi'kmaq, nor am I a genealogist or a historian. I worried that maybe I had gotten something wrong. That I had not identified the correct ancestors. That I missed something. However, I am a PhD trained researcher (as is Liz), and this has since been examined by several others who found the same ancestors in their research. In the months since I sent the letter, she hasn't offered any corrections or additions to the genealogy.

I also feel strangely and illogically protective over these random white ancestors, who I now feel connected to over months of reading their lives through online documents and tracing the trails and trials they endured. There is tragedy and sadness here. Though they are not Indigenous and they are not my family relations, they didn't ask to be pulled into this. However, in making these claims about herself in print and in public, in accepting opportunities designated for Indigenous peoples, Liz pulled them into this.

I continue to be referenced online as her supporter, called a "defendian," and have had my own Cherokee identity repeatedly questioned (I am an enrolled tribal citizen), which has been extremely painful. At the time I sent this, I told her that I had no plans to make this work public, and I didn't-but I feel that the work contained here and my approach may be helpful to others navigating the pervasive trespasses of ethnic frauds.

I am sharing the letter as I sent it, with the exception of one reference to a graduate student that I have redacted for privacy.

In her direct response to me, Liz didn't question any of my findings. She refuted ever lying about her identity and insists that her shifting claims about her identity in written documents was not about obfuscation or attempts to back away from her claims. She also refutes others who recall her claiming to be from other Mohawk communities as untrue. There are other minor points that she disputes, but again, she had no objections to the core of the research.

If you have any additional information about Elizabeth Hoover or have stories of how her claims impacted you or your community that you would like to share, I and a small group of other Native women have created a gmail account where you can contact us. Know that we will take the utmost care with your stories and you will have the final say over whether or how we use your information.

HooverInformation@gmail.com

I request that you please only email the above account and do not respond to me directly through my personal or work emails as the time and energy this has required has already exerted an exhausting toll. Thank you for your understanding.

***

[Sent June 20, 2022]

Dear Liz,

I want to be clear that I did all of this work hoping to vindicate you. As someone whose identity is constantly questioned, I absolutely hate this kind of thing. I wanted the rumors and the tweets and the pretendian list to be wrong. Though you wouldn't take me up on my offers to help you write a statement about your family, I wanted to help you tell your family story in a way that protected what you had described as a hurtful, embarrassing, and messy story and allowed you to move forward and put all this behind you. I didn't go into this looking to prove you wrong or wanting to prove you weren't Native. I did this work from a place of love, which makes what I found even harder for me to understand. I wanted your story to be true. I wanted to give you the tools you needed to prove everyone wrong. But I also got to a point where I needed to know for myself. Things were starting to not add up. If I was going to defend you I needed to know the truth, and I wasn't getting it from you.

This represents hours and hours of work poring over ancestry.com, cross referencing to other archives, finding online gravesites and obituaries, learning about pitfalls of Native genealogy, learning about Kahnawake and Canadian records, and even translating things from French into English.

I am a researcher, as are you, and I used every skill of my Indigenous studies researcher arsenal to try and corroborate your story or find any shred of truth. I entered into this with the most generous reading of connection as possible. Knowing how settler colonialism and Indigenous erasure function, I gave the benefit of the doubt at every turn. I still hold out some tiny flame of hope that maybe I'm wrong on one of these ancestors. Maybe I missed something. Maybe I didn't go back far enough. So I'm turning it over to you. All of this information is readily available online, and I will share all of these documents with you if you need them. I, and your friends, colleagues, collaborators, students, communities, and organizations need answers. If what I've found is untrue, incorrect, or incomplete, I need to know. If it is correct, I need to hear it from you directly.

From your dissertation:

"Because I am of Mohawk and Mi'kmaq descent (my mother has ancestors from Kahnawake, a Mohawk community to the East of Akwesasne, and my father has Mi'kmaq ancestors from Quebec), I was invited to attend Longhouse events."

From your book:

"As a person of Indigenous ancestry who is not from Akwesasne..." (Introduction, page 12)

"I have mixed Indigenous ancestry (Mohawk and Mi'kmaq) but am not enrolled in a community, so I am grateful to the Bear Clan, and especially Bear Clan mother Wakerakatsiteh, for giving me a place to sit with them in the longhouse; to Jean and Henry Laffin, who took me in as their daughter; to Ionawaiienhawi, who became my niece and her parents my dearest friends; and to the dozens of others who took me in, made me their friend and family, and put me to work." (Footnote in introduction, page 286 of Notes)

[These are the only mentions of your ancestry I could find in your whole book, which is hard to understand in hindsight.]

From what you have told me, only recently:

Your great grandmother, Adeline Rivers, was from Kahnawake, but left when she married her husband (who I now know is Morris Ovitt), a Frenchman. He was abusive and harmful, and she took her own life by drowning herself in the St. Lawrence River. Her son, your Grandfather, who I now know is Leroy Ovitt, was then raised by another woman or family and disconnected from his heritage. Your mother, Anita Ovitt/Hoover raised you with this story, and you grew up going to local powwows and some kind of ceremonies in upstate NY and surrounding areas. You also mentioned the Mi'kmaq came from your paternal grandmother, who I believe is Maxine Earl.

Below is what I've been able to compile through my research. To be upfront: None of what you have stated and/or been told appears to have any truth.
Your maternal line, tracing the claimed Mohawk descent: Elizabeth Hoover (you) B. 1978 Anita Ovitt-Hoover (mother) B. 1947 Leroy Ovitt (grandfather) B. 1918, Luzerene, NY D. 1997, Saratoga, NY Obituary: Adeline Rivers (Great Grandmother, where you have stated the ancestry comes from) B. 1888, Luzerne, NY D. 1928, Luzerne, NY Obituary:
Based on this information alone, the story you told me is patently untrue. Adeline was born in Luzerne, NY, and is listed as white on all census records (see below). Her obituary states she drowned in the Schroon River, not the St. Lawrence.

This is the 1900 Census. It shows Adeline (Addie), at age 12, living with her family in Luzerne, NY, where she was born. There are no census records or other records from her life that list her as anything other than White.

In 1902 she married Morris Ovitt in Corinth, NY, not Canada:

In 1925, she is listed as white, and the census shows that your grandfather, Leroy, was 7:

She then sadly died at age 41, three years later.

Her father, Charles Rivers, your great-great grandfather, was listed as born in "France, Canada". Her mother, Luretta, was born in NY. To give you the benefit of the doubt, I looked into Charles' origins, as maybe the story was one more generation back.

Charles Rivers, your great-great grandfather, who is also listed as white on all census documents, arrived in the US before or at age 4, and on the 1850 census is listed as living with his parents in Vermont:

His parents, Joseph and Ester Rivers, your great-great-great grandparents, are also listed as white, and listed as laborers born in Canada.

I found Ester Rivers Jr.'s death record from 1914, your great-great Aunt, where she is also listed as white:

​​

It shows her mother's maiden name as Coutour.

Joseph Rivers and Ester Coutour emigrated to the US sometime around or before the 1850 census, meaning if either of them were Mohawk from Kahnawake, they would have presumably been on the Kahnawake census records before then. The community took full community censuses throughout the 1800s, all of which were transcribed and recorded in these documents (I have the PDF if you would like to see). There are no records of the name Rivers on any of the censuses, which include other nearby Mohawk communities as well, nor Riviere (the french spelling), or even Two Rivers, Cross River, or some of the other Mohawk names that show up in the 1900s, long after your family emigrated. There are also no Countour's or any other similar spelling.

I found the marriage record for Joseph and Ester, which show them getting married in 1831 in Bertheirville, Quebec, which is a French-candadian village located about 60 miles north of Kahnawake. It appears Joseph changed the family name from the Francophone spelling of Riviere to Rivers when he and the family emigrated to Vermont.

I am happy to share any of these documents with you if you would like to see them. I was very careful with my research, cross checking and verifying and making sure I was tracking the correct people.
Liz Hoover B. 1978, New York Anita Ovitt/Hoover (mother) B. 1947 Leroy Ovitt (grandfather) B. 1918, Luzerene, NY D. 1997, Saratoga, NY Adeline Rivers (Ovitt) (great-grandmother) B. 1888, Luzerne, NY D. 1928, Luzerne, NY Charles Rivers (great-great grandfather) B. 1846, Quebec, Canada D. unknown Joseph Rivers (great-great-great grandfather) B. ~1802 All of these ancestors are not listed as Indian on any document. Through looking at all of these folks in your maternal family, there are no discernable ties to Kahnawake, or any Mohawk community for at least five generations and over 200 years. The story about your great-grandmother you told me is untrue, and there appear to be no Indigenous ancestors through your maternal grandfather, as you've claimed.
I also found plenty of Mohawk people from Kahnawake during the same time period who were very well documented. Not only on the Mohawk censuses from their communities, but also through baptism/marriage records, and records of crossings between the US and Canada. On all of these documents they are clearly marked as "Indian" and their origin/home/birthplace as "Caughnawaga" (the early spelling of Kahnawake).

In summary, for your maternal line:
Liz Hoover B. 1978, New York Robert Hoover (Father) B. 1950 Maxine Earl (Grandmother) B. 1915, Chicago, Illinois D. 1998, Altamont, NY Harry Bennet Earl (great-grandfather) B. 1884, Balston Spa, NY D. 1923, Saratoga Springs, NY Agnes Leyden (great-grandma)* B. 1895, Iowa D. 1938, Saratoga Springs, NY Rollin J. Earl (great-great grandfather) B. 1847, Mt. Holly, VT D. 1922, Saratoga Springs, NY Emily Bennett (great-great grandmother) B. 1849, Boston, MA D. 1922, Balston Spa, NY Sally Spring-Earl (great-great-great grandmother) B. 1806, Massachusetts D. 1879, Vermont Roswell Earl (great-great-great grandfather) B. ~1806, Mt. Holly, VT D. unknown All of these ancestors are listed as white on census, marriage, and death certificates. I also found documents of your great-great Uncle, Rufus Earl, who was listed as white on his death certificate as well. There appear to be no ties at all to any Mi'kmaq community, or even Canada, through your paternal grandmother for at least 5 generations and over 200 years.
Your paternal line, tracing the claimed Mi'kmaq descent:
Philip Leyden (great-great grandfather, Agnes's father) B. 1845, Ireland D. 1906, Iowa Mary Manton (great-great grandma, Agnes's mother) B. 1849, Ireland D. 1915, Iowa Questions/Concerns you probably have: Couldn't my ancestors have been miscategorized on documents?
This claim is even more baffling to me, as there are no ancestors that I could find through your paternal grandmother who were born in Canada, or even near Canada. The Vermont ties are from southern Vermont, not near the northern border. I have similar documentation as above for your paternal line, but because the locations didn't line up with Mi'kmaq communities I didn't provide it here. I'm happy to share if you want to see them.

* Agnes' parents were born in Ireland, so I didn't trace this any further, as they clearly could not be Mi'kmaq:

We know the US census is not a reliable marker for race, especially for Natives. Folks could not self categorize until 1960, and American Indian was not included as a category until 1860. However, in 1860, *only* Natives who were considered to be "assimilated" were counted on the census, meaning the folks living off reservations and in white communities, which would have included your ancestors if they were Indian. In addition, in 1900, folks were recorded with blood quantum, and in 1930 Indigenous folks who were mixed with white were recorded as solely Indian. The US government wanted to keep track of Indians.

From Pew research:

"Although American Indians were not included in early U.S. censuses, an "Indian" category was added in 1860, but enumerators counted only those American Indians who were considered assimilated (for example, those who settled in or near white communities). The census did not attempt to count the entire American Indian population until 1890.

In some censuses, enumerators were told to categorize American Indians according to the amount of Indian or other blood they had, considered a marker of assimilation. In 1900, for example, census takers were told to record the proportion of white blood for each American Indian they enumerated. The 1930 census instructions for enumerators said that people who were white-Indian were to be counted as Indian "except where the percentage of Indian blood is very small, or where he is regarded as a white person by those in the community where he lives."" ( https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2015/06/11/chapter-1-race-and-multiracial-americans-in-the-u-s-census/#fn-20724-23 )

On all of these censuses, your ancestors are listed as white. On documents where they could presumably have self-identified, such as marriage licenses, they chose to identify as white. The obituaries I found don't mention Native ancestry or connections, even in passing or as something they were proud of.

Additionally, our ancestors don't exist in a vacuum. They each have a massive web of relatives that chain off of them-siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins-and each of those relatives have relatives and so on, making thousands and thousands of relatives throughout 200+ years. I clicked and searched for as many of these relations as possible in my research, and none of them are identified as Indian that I could find.

As an example of miscategorization, I offer my own family. I found a census for my Cherokee family in the 1920s, when they were living on Cherokee allotment land in Oklahoma. For some reason, the entire family is listed on the census document as white. However, on the same census card, right next to my family, is my great-grandmother's brother and his family, who were living on the allotment next door, and they are all listed as full blood Cherokee-meaning obviously my great-grandmother was as well. Then, on all subsequent censuses, my great-grandmother is listed as Indian. My grandmother, who went to Indian boarding school and grew up on that allotment land, didn't have a birth certificate because she was born at home in the rural country. When she was an adult, she went to get a birth certificate made so she could apply for a passport, and either she or the official listed her as white. But on other documents, she is listed as Indian.
Couldn't my family have been "hiding in plain sight" for five generations? Maybe you didn't go back far enough.
So even in cases of miscategorization, there are usually other documents or relatives to demonstrate connection to a tribal nation.

For your family, there appear to be no such corroborating documents that I can find.

I mean, maybe? Your great-great-great grandparents would have already had to have been white passing enough to assimilate into the white communities in which they lived to be recorded as white on all the documents. I obviously don't ascribe to racist colonial blood quantum at all, but for a reference point, one Indigenous ancestor at the great-great-great grandparent level equals 1/64 of your ancestry, and one generation beyond that is 1/128 of your ancestry. If they were already mixed at that point, it would be even less.
But I have never claimed to be enrolled in a community, only descent?
But it also then boils down to what you think about identity. That blood quantum BS shouldn't matter at all if your ancestors were shown to be in community with a living tribal nation for all those generations, but they weren't. So being completely generous in a way that is unsupported by facts in this case, yes, maybe some beliefs, stories, lifeways, or other connections wound their way through five or six generations to be a part of your family's life today. At what point, though, do those bits and pieces warrant a primary identity? One that is so strong I've never actually heard you say that you're Native and white, or even mixed, or even talk about your whiteness at all? When does "reclaiming" become appropriation? But again, even so, I can't find evidence that your family has anything to reclaim.

I thought this essay by someone with documented Mi'kmaq heritage was a helpful musing about the difference between ancestry and claiming identity: https://maisonneuve.org/article/2021/06/29/ktaqmkuk/

To be a descendant of a tribal nation you must actually descend from that nation. As a professor of Native American studies, you know more than anyone that Indigenous identity is about nationhood. You have, as far as I can tell, no documented ties to any tribal nation. You only ever claimed a generic "Mohawk" and a generic "Mi'kmaq" which I now recognize as something I should have picked up on years ago. Those are not tribal nations. They are groups of tribal nations. That would be like me claiming "Cherokee" but not being able to state which of the three Cherokee nations I come from-a huge red flag.
This is what I was always told, this is how I was raised, I never thought to question it?
Again, to be a descendant, you must actually descend from a tribal nation. Which Mohawk? Which Mi'kmaq? To reconnect, there has to be a point of disconnection to heal. I can't find any point of disconnection, because there doesn't appear to be a connection in the first place.

I have close friends who have to list themselves as descendants because their tribal nations have restrictive enrollment policies. These are folks whose parents are enrolled, whose grandparents are enrolled, some who have even grown up in their communities. They can get official letters from their tribes affirming their descendant status, allowing them to be working artists or apply for scholarships etc. They are descendants, because they have continued ties and connections. An unverified family story is not enough to claim descent. An unverified family story is not enough to build an entire personal identity and career off of.

You are a professor of Native studies. You make your entire living and career off of being Native. You have a responsibility to know your own family story. Every Native community I have entered into folks immediately ask who my family is and where I'm from by way of greeting. If it's true you never questioned your parents, I wonder how you've been asked who your family is and where you're from throughout your whole life and never stopped to wonder who your family actually is. Where they are actually from.
But I do good work, I've made family in Akwesasne, "canceling" me isn't going to help anyone?
There are also signs that show you did know the story wasn't true. You've slowly erased your tribal affiliation from your bios online through the years, the parenthetical after your name stating Elizabeth Hoover (Mohawk/Mi'kmaq) has disappeared, you didn't offer any kind of deep positionality in your book which isn't a best practice in Indigenous studies, and Devon Mihesuah shared that you changed your bio for your book together in 2018 right before it went to press to remove any mention of your ancestry. That's four years ago. I have a hard time believing or understanding that you would have done all this if you didn't know at some level and were trying to cover your tracks.

To be Indigenous is to be from the land. You know this. If it was true you never questioned your parent's stories, how did you never want to know what lands you were from? How did you not want to find those lands and go visit with them? Stand on them? Be in relationship with them? As a food sovereignty advocate, know the plants and animals and medicines that come from the place you supposedly came from? For me, when I began reconnecting when I was a teenager, one of the first things I needed to know was what lands I came from. I needed to visit with them, and feel the place my ancestors came from, because that is what makes me Ani Yunwiya. I don't understand how you didn't have that same desire and therefore do the work yourself to find out.

You did all of your "good work" based on what appears to be a lie. You told communities and organizations you were Mohawk and Mi'kmaq. You gained entry into spaces because of that lie. You gained entry into sacred ceremonial spaces where no non-Natives are allowed based on that lie. You created family based on that lie. You earned grants and jobs and fellowships based on that lie. You gained trust for your research based on that lie. The "good work" does not exist in the world on its own. You used previous relationships and others vouching for you as a "Native woman" to gain entry into additional spaces. You built trust and relationships based on the fact that you were Mohawk and Mi'kmaq, which is untrue. You strategically performed identity in visible and marked ways so folks would make assumptions and not ask questions.

The thing that is hard for me is you could have done all of this good work as a white woman. You could have stood in solidarity with Native people, been a true accomplice, a co-conspirator, without having to claim identity. The work needs to be done, and communities need people to do it with them. You could have had the same career and do the same work as a white woman, and folks would have welcomed it. But now you've broken all of the trust and called into question all of the work, because you started it with a lie.
I don't need to address this. I stand by my work and those who support me and don't need to give in to this witch hunt.
There has to be some kind of accountability. I don't know what that looks like. I don't advocate for "canceling" anyone, but you have some major work to do to repair any level of trust, and you have to realize there are and should be consequences for falsifying your identity for your entire career. You've caused immense harm. All of your friends, your collaborators, your co-authors, your students are all having their judgment questioned. Folks are calling to not assign your work any longer, meaning any of your co-authors and the communities whose stories you are telling also suffer. I and others can no longer ask you for letters of recommendation. I've had to field dozens and dozens of texts, phone calls, emails, and zoom meetings from your devastated and angry former students and colleagues. I have to be gaslit by everyone who doesn't want to believe it's true or who questions my own judgment for being so close to you for so long.

This has been devastating for me. You were my best friend in Providence. You are the reason I am at Brown. You were my mentor and my guide for what it meant to be a Native woman in academia. And now I've had to call into question everything about our relationship and what I've learned from you. I have to reflect back and reexamine my ways of relating and being in community and the academy, knowing that I learned how to be a Native scholar from a white woman lying about her ancestry. The amount of stress and sleepless nights and crying phone calls has derailed all of my work for months and wreaked havoc on my body. I've been so angry, so upset, and questioning all of my reality and our friendship. How much of our relationship was because you loved me and wanted me as your friend, and how much was because you wanted more actual Native people close to you to be able to vouch for you? How will I ever be able to know?

The pretendian hunts of the current moment are a mess. They are harmful to those of us, like me, who are actual Indigenous people who code as white and have grown up disconnected because of settler colonialism. They are harmful to folks with complicated family stories and adoptions and estranged family and force many of us to share things about our families that we shouldn't have to. But if you have actual ties to community, it's simple and straightforward to stop the questioning. You share your family names. You tell, even an abbreviated version, of how your family was disconnected. Indian country understands the complications, when they're real. Prior to doing this digging, I never understood your resistance to writing a statement or sharing your family names and story. To me it seems like such an easy fix-you just tell the truth, even if it's messy, and people understand. You've also hinted that some of your changing of how you identify is because Mohawk's are "intense" about identity, or Kahnawake is a hard place to reconnect to because of their own identity politics-but to me, anytime I've been questioned, it makes me more obstinate in claiming my identity. It's a disservice to my ancestors to back down. There is no reason to back down if you have truth behind you. But now I see that there wasn't a way for you to fix it, because there aren't family names to share. There isn't a story to tell.

You've used stories that weren't your own. You implied your family was harmed by settler colonial policies, such the misogyny of the Indian Act, you implied your great grandmother was a victim of racist abuse, you allowed for everyone to fill in gaps and blanks with stories we all know from our own families and communities. But these stories weren't the stories of your family. Your story has also shifted and changed, and even adjusted as new information emerged. Other friends relayed that they thought you had claimed Kanesatake, or even Six Nations at various times. No one ever heard which Mi'kmaq nation you claimed.

I can't believe I'm quoting a TV show here, but it's recent and relevant. In the new season of Rutherford Falls, Reagan inadvertently hires a pretendian as curator for her tribal museum. There's a very powerful moment where Michael Greyeyes's character confronts him and says, "There are real Native people out here with deeply complex identity stories. But that's not you. You take advantage of centuries of violent displacement. You hide in the cracks of our trauma, feasting on opportunities. How long have you been pretending? What started this game? You got waitlisted at Amherst, so you thought you could sneak in the back door. To compensate for your hopeless mediocrity by presenting as...whatever this is. Now you're here, until you scurry back to a more prominent museum where no one in those white spaces has the depth to sniff out your fakery. Do you fathom the harm you cause us? Can you? As you pick and choose all the positives of who we are without ever once experiencing any of the hardships. I want you to look at me and tell me who you really are." (Rutherford Falls, Season 2, Episode 2)

So this is what I have, this is what I've found. I need to be able to address this, learn the truth, and move on. Now I need you to look at me and tell me who you really are. The full truth. Please.

-AK

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Surviving Disappearance, Re-Imagining & Humanizing Native Peoples: Matika Wilbur at TEDxSeattle

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Readers of Healer of the Water Monster by Brian Young will find it easy to immerse themselves in Nathan’s world as he unexpectedly befriends a Water Monster, a Navajo Holy Being, while staying with his grandmother and uncle on the Navajo Reservation. This book explores universal coming-of-age themes such as bravery and friendship while helping readers learn more about the contemporary Navajo Nation, including Navajo science, spirituality, language and culture, along with the challenges the Navajo people face.

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Cynthia Leitich Smith, a Muscogee Creek author, writes Sisters of the Neversea to provide readers with a refreshing counternarrative to the harmful stereotypes about Native people in J.M. Barrie’s version of Peter Pan. Smith’s version centers on Lily, a Muscogee Creek girl, and her white stepsister, Wendy, who travel to Neverland. Upon arrival, Lily and Wendy find that they will have to rely on each other, their inner strength and creative thinking to save themselves.

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JoJo Makoons: The Used-to-Be Best Friend

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JoJo Makoons: The Used-to-Be Best Friend

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o Jo Makoons: The Used-to-Be Best Friend is the first in a series written by Native author Dawn Quigley and illustrated by Tara Audibert that features Jo Jo Makoons Azure. Seven-year-old Jo Jo, a member of the Ojibwe Nation, is engaging, smart, funny and attends first grade on the reservation where she lives with her family. The book illustrates the importance of culturally relevant teaching practices, and young readers will certainly recognize themselves in the thoughts and feelings Jo Jo expresses as she moves throughout her busy days.

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Since 1990, Congress has authorized an annual presidential proclamation that designates November as National American Indian Heritage Month to encourage all people to learn about the contributions and cultures of the Indigenous peoples of the North American continent. Such recognition, however, dates back further with state and organizational recognition of Indigenous peoples days and commemorations occurring at the turn of the twentieth century. For example, Dr. Arthur C. Parker, a Seneca Indian and co-founder of the Society of American Indians in 1911, organized American Indian Day beginning in 1915. More recently, Columbus Day, which is recognized on the second Monday of October, has been reclaimed in cities across the United States as Indigenous People's Day.

This Teacher's Guide will introduce you to the cultures and explore the histories of some groups within the over 5 million people who identify as American Indian in the United States, with resources designed for integration across humanities curricula and classrooms throughout the school year.

Guiding Questions

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This Teacher's Guide will introduce you to the cultures and explore the histories of some groups within the over 5 million people who identify as American Indian in the United States, with resources designed for integration across humanities curricula and classrooms throughout the school year.

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Culturally Responsive Classroom Strategies and Activity Ideas for Thanksgiving and Native Heritage Month:

Honor the fact that not all students celebrate Thanksgiving, but recognize the importance of teaching and learning about Indigenous experiences and heritage

Share about how the “first” Thanksgiving was a devastating time for Indigenous peoples and be sensitive to Native students, families, and peers

Teach about how lots of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people spend Thanksgiving giving thanks to their families

Ask students if they engage with the holiday and how they spend their day

Teach about how lots of Indigenous people will also spend Thanksgiving mourning and honoring their ancestors

Engage students in mini lessons

Read books, short stories, or poems to students about Thanksgiving and Indigenous heritage by Native authors

Show video clips or documentaries to students about Thanksgiving and Indigenous heritage by Native directors/artists/curators

Have students look through and discuss art galleries and resistance art by Native artists

Teach students about climate change, environmental justice, and Native environmental justice activists

Teach about historical and contemporary Indigenous contributions, inventors, politicians, activists, athletes, etc.

Have students write cards to give thanks to each other and/or to give thanks to each family member

Write a card to each student telling them why you are thankful for them

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Assimiliation through Education: Indian Boarding Schools of the Pacific Northwest

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Assimiliation through Education: Indian Boarding Schools of the Pacific Northwest

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Essay by Carolyn J. Marr

The goal of Indian education from the 1880s through the 1920s was to assimilate Indian people into the melting pot of America by placing them in institutions where traditional ways could be replaced by those sanctioned by the government. Federal Indian policy called for the removal of children from their families and in many cases enrollment in a government run boarding school. In this way, the policy makers believed, young people would be immersed in the values and practical knowledge of the dominant American society while also being kept away from any influences imparted by their traditionally-minded relatives.

The Indian boarding school movement began in the post Civil War era when idealistic reformers turned their attention to the plight of Indian people. Whereas before many Americans regarded the native people with either fear or loathing, the reformers believed that with the proper education and treatment Indians could become just like other citizens. They convinced the leaders of Congress that education could change at least some of the Indian population into patriotic and productive members of society. One of the first efforts to accomplish this goal was the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, founded by Captain Richard Henry Pratt in 1879. Pratt was a leading proponent of the assimilation through education policy. Believing that Indian ways were inferior to those of whites, he subscribed to the principle, "kill the Indian and save the man." At Carlisle, young Indian boys and girls were subjected to a complete transformation. Photographs taken at the school illustrate how they looked "before" and "after". The dramatic contrast between traditional clothing and hairstyles and Victorian styles of dress helped convince the public that through boarding school education Indians could become completely "civilized". Following the model of Carlisle, additional off reservation boarding schools were established in other parts of the country, including Forest Grove, Oregon (later known as Chemawa). ( 1)

Seeking to educate increasing numbers of Indian children at lower cost, the federal government established two other types of schools: the reservation boarding school and day schools. Reservation boarding schools had the advantage of being closer to Indian communities and as a result had lower transportation costs. Contact between students and their families was somewhat restricted as students remained at the school for eight to nine months of the year. Relatives could visit briefly at prescribed times. School administrators worked constantly to keep the students at school and eradicate all vestiges of their tribal cultures. Day schools, which were the most economical, usually provided only a minimal education. They worked with the boarding schools by transferring students for more advanced studies.

In the Pacific Northwest, treaties negotiated with the Indians during the 1850s included promises of educational support for the tribes. For example, Article 10 of the Medicine Creek Treaty signed by members of the Nisqually, Squaxin, Puyallup and Steilacoom Tribes on December 26, 1854 called for the establishment of an agricultural and industrial school "to be free to the children of said tribes for a period of 20 years." The expenses of the school, its employees and medical personnel were to be defrayed by the federal government and not deducted from annuities. A similar clause appears in the Treaty of Point Elliott, signed by representatives of tribes living in the central and northern Puget Sound region.

The promised schools did not come into existence for several years. In the 1870s and 1880s a few small reservation boarding schools were established on the Chehalis, Skokomish and Makah Reservations. These institutions, which had fewer than 50 students, were all closed by 1896 and replaced by day schools. In Tacoma, a one-room shack served as a day school for young Puyallup Indians beginning in 1860. By 1873 students had begun boarding at the school and during the 1880s enrollment increased to 125 pupils. At the turn of the century, Cushman Indian School had become a large industrial boarding school, drawing over 350 students from around the Northwest and Alaska. The 1901 Report of Superintendent of Indian Schools praised Cushman for being well equipped for industrial training and photographs show a modern machine shop. Cushman remained one of the largest on reservation boarding schools in the region until it closed in 1920.

Meanwhile, on many reservations missionaries operated schools that combined religious with academic training. At Priest's Point near the Tulalip Reservation, Reverend E.C. Chirouse opened a school in 1857 for six boys and five girls. By 1860 he had 15 pupils and the school continued to grow under the auspices of the Sisters of Providence. At these missionary run schools, traditional religious and cultural practices were strongly discouraged while instruction in the Christian doctrines took place utilizing pictures, statues, hymns, prayers and storytelling.

Some missionary schools received federal support, particularly at times when Congress felt less inclined to provide the large sums of money needed to establish government schools. The Tulalip Mission School became the first contract Indian school, an arrangement whereby the government provided annual funds to maintain the buildings while the Church furnished books, clothing, housing and medical care. In 1896 Congress drastically reduced the funding for mission schools and eventually, in the winter of 1900-01, the Tulalip school became a federal facility. The old school buildings were destroyed by fire in 1902. On January 23, 1905, exactly fifty years after the signing of the Point Elliott Treaty, a new and larger school opened along the shores of Tulalip Bay.

The Tulalip Indian School began under the supervision of Charles Milton Buchanan, a physician who also served as Indian Agent for the reservation. The first year it had only one dormitory, but by 1907 both girls' and boys' buildings were completed and the school had a capacity enrollment of 200 students. The children ranged in age from 6 to 18 years and came from many different reservations as well as some off reservation communities. It was not uncommon for teachers at day schools to recommend certain students for the boarding school. Because Tulalip offered a maximum of eighth grade education, some students transferred to Chemawa for more advanced training.

In eastern Washington, a U.S. military fort near Spokane was transformed into a boarding school for Indians of the Spokane and Colville reservations.

Fort Spokane Boarding School opened in 1900 with an enrollment of 83 pupils and grew to 200 by 1902. It operated only until 1914 after which time the children attended day schools closer to their homes. Similarly, the military facility at Fort Simcoe became a school for the Yakama and their neighbors.

The national system of Indian education, including both off reservation boarding schools, reservation boarding schools and day schools, continued to expand at the turn of the century. In the Pacific Northwest, Chemawa Indian School became the largest off reservation boarding school and drew pupils from throughout the region and Alaska. Chemawa had originally been located at Forest Grove, Oregon, but was moved to Salem in 1885 after officials determined that the original site lacked adequate agricultural land. By 1920 Chemawa enrolled 903 students from 90 different tribes, nearly a third coming from Alaska.

All federal boarding schools, whether on or off reservation, shared certain characteristics. The Bureau of Indian Affairs issued directives that were followed by superintendents throughout the nation. Even the architecture and landscaping appeared similar from one institution to the next. Common features included a military style regimen, a strict adherence to English language only, an emphasis on farming, and a schedule that equally split academic and vocational training. By reading the Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and other documents you can compare the official reports submitted by various schools.

A typical daily schedule at a boarding school began with an early wake-up call followed by a series of tasks punctuated by the ringing of bells. Students were required to march from one activity to the next. Regular inspections and drills took place outdoors with platoons organized according to age and rank. Competitions were held to see which group could achieve the finest marching formation.

Everything happened by bells, 'triangles´ they were called. A triangle would ring in the morning and we would all run, line up, march in, get our little quota of tooth powder, wash our teeth, brush our hair, wash our hands and faces, and then we all lined up and marched outside. Whether it was raining, snowing or blowing, we all went outside and did what was called 'setting up exercises´ for twenty minutes. (Joyce Simmons Cheeka, Tulalip Indian School, memoirs collected by Finley)

Conformity to rules and regulations was strongly encouraged:

We went from the tallest to the littlest, all the way down in companies. We had A, B, C, D companies. E Company was the Lazy Company, those that just couldn't get up and make it. They had all kinds of demerits for those people. They thought they'd shame them a little bit if they made an extra company and called it the Lazy Company. (Helma Ward, Makah, Tulalip Indian School, from interview with Carolyn Marr)

The foremost requirement for assimilation into American society, authorities felt, was mastery of the English language. Commissioner of Indian Affairs T.J. Morgan described English as "the language of the greatest, most powerful and enterprising nationalities beneath the sun." Such chauvinism did not allow for bilingualism in the boarding schools. Students were prohibited from speaking their native languages and those caught "speaking Indian" were severely punished. Later, many former students regretted that they lost the ability to speak their native language fluently because of the years they spent in boarding school.

Another important component of the government policy for "civilizing" the Indians was to teach farming techniques. Although few reservations in the Pacific Northwest had either fertile land or a climate conducive to agriculture, nonetheless it was felt that farming was the proper occupation for American citizens. So boys learned how to milk cows, grow vegetables, repair tools, etc. and even had lessons on the various types of plows. ( 2)

The boarding schools had what came to be called the "half and half" system where students spent half of the day in the classroom and half at a work assignment or "detail" on the school grounds. The academic curriculum included courses in U.S. history, geography, language, arithmetic, reading, writing and spelling. Music and drama were offered at most schools. Young women spent either the morning or the afternoon doing laundry, sewing, cooking, cleaning and other household tasks. Older girls might study nursing or office work. The young men acquired skills in carpentry, blacksmithing, animal husbandry, baking and shop. They chopped firewood to keep the steam boilers operating. The work performed by students was essential to the operation of the institution. The meat, vegetables and milk served in the dining room came from livestock and gardens kept by the students. The girls made and repaired uniforms, sheets, and curtains and helped to prepare the meals.

A standardized curriculum for Indian schools emphasized vocational training. Estelle Reel, who served as Superintendent of Indian Education from 1898 to 1910, was a strong advocate of this curriculum which gave primary importance to learning manual skills. No amount of book learning, she felt, could result in economic independence for Indian people. Others would claim that by limiting education to manual training the educators were condemning Indian people to permanent inequality. A former student at the Fort Spokane boarding school described typical work done by the boys:

Some of the boys were detailed to the garden...others were detailed to milk and care for the cows, feed the pigs and chickens and look after the horses, besides doing other chores. There was a large barn on the place, and the boys learned a lot about farming on a small scale. But for boys who had ambitions for becoming something else, Fort Spokane was far from being adequate. (Frances LeBret, as quoted in exhibit They Sacrificed for Our Survival: The Indian Boarding School Experience, at Eastern Washington Historical Museum)

Mandatory education for Indian children became law in 1893 and thereafter agents on the reservations received instructions on how to enforce the federal regulation. If parents refused to send their children to school the authorities could withhold annuities or rations or send them to jail. Some parents were uncomfortable having their children sent far away from home. The educators had quotas to fill, however, and considerable pressure was exerted on Indian families to send their youngsters to boarding schools beginning when the child was six years old. Fear and loneliness caused by this early separation from family is a common experience shared by all former students. Once their children were enrolled in a distant school, parents lost control over decisions that affected them. For example, requests for holiday leave could be denied by the superintendent for almost any reason. ( 3)

For some students, the desire for freedom and the pull of their family combined with strong discontent caused them to run away. At Chemawa, for example, there were 46 "desertions" recorded in 1921, followed by 70 in 1922. Punishment of runaways was usually harsh, as the offenders became examples held up before their fellow students:

Two of our girls ran away...but they got caught. They tied their legs up, tied their hands behind their backs, put them in the middle of the hallway so that if they fell, fell asleep or something, the matron would hear them and she'd get out there and whip them and make them stand up again. (Helma Ward, Makah, interview with Carolyn Marr)

Illness was another serious problem at the boarding schools. Crowded conditions and only the basic medical care no doubt contributed to the spread of diseases such as measles, influenza and tuberculosis. Tuberculosis was especially feared and at the Tulalip Indian School the dormitories were kept cold by leaving the windows open at night. Several students were sent to sanitariums in Idaho or Nevada. In a letter issued to superintendents in 1913, the Indian Office advised disinfecting all textbooks at the end of each school year to reduce the chance of spreading disease. Hospital reports for Tulalip indicate that boys spent a total of 110 days in the hospital during one month and girls 125 days. Death was not an unknown occurrence either. At Chemawa, a cemetery contains headstones of 189 students who died at the school, and these represent only the ones whose bodies were not returned home for burial.

Not all experiences at the boarding schools were negative for all students. In hindsight, former students acknowledge benefits they gained from their education, and there were happy moments for some. Sports, games and friendships are examples of experiences remembered in a positive light.

The boys played baseball, broadjumping and ran foot races, played mumbley peg and marbles, spin the top and a lot of other things for entertainment. (Frances LeBret, Fort Spokane Indian School)

We played baseball, football and a game we call shinney. They get two sticks and tie them together. You got a stick that was curved and you'd hit this and throw it. To score you had to hit a little pole. (Alfred Sam, Snohomish, interview with Carolyn Marr)

As the years went by and most students persevered, strong friendships developed. Occasionally a friendship might end up in marriage, although this certainly was not encouraged by the school. Young people from one culture group met boys and girls from other areas. Reflecting on her years spent in boarding schools, one elder stated:

I think that the sharing in the government boarding school was an important part of that period. Just having the time to share with other Indian students a life that was completely different from your own was something that created a bond. (Vi Hilbert, Upper Skagit, interview with Carolyn Marr)

Another former student recognized the practical advantages offered by the schools but perceived deeper implications:

On the reservations there was no electricity or running water. When kids came to the boarding school they had these things--showers and clean clothes--and they ate decent food. My mom died when I was 13 months old. I stayed with my grandmother who wasn't well...My main criticism of the boarding school is that it didn't allow you to do your own thinking. You marched everywhere, you were governed by the bell and bugle, you were told when to go to bed and when to get up, your whole life was governed. As a result, you didn't learn how to become an independent thinker. (Arnold McKay, Lummi, interviewed by Carolyn Marr)

By the 1920s the Bureau of Indian Affairs had changed its opinion about boarding schools, responding to complaints that the schools were too expensive and that they encouraged dependency more than self-sufficiency. By 1923, the majority of Indian children nationwide attended public schools. A report on Indian education issued in 1928 revealed glaring deficiencies in the boarding schools, including poor diet, overcrowding, below-standard medical service, excessive labor by the students and substandard teaching. The 1930s witnessed many changes in federal Indian policy, among which was a shift in educational philosophy. Classroom lessons could now reflect the diversity of Indian cultures. States assumed more control over Indian education as more children enrolled in public schools. Most of the boarding schools were closed by this time, Tulalip in 1932 and Cushman in 1920, leaving Chemawa as the sole government boarding school remaining in the Pacific Northwest.

Cushman Indian School, Tacoma, Wash.

February 1, 1912

Monday

1. Harper's Weekly, v.26 (no. 1327), May 27, 1882: 324 (illus.), 327 (text).

2. Curriculum records from National Archives and Records Administration, Pacific Northwest Region, RG75, Box 321: Tulalip Agency.

3. Correspondence from National Archives and Records Administration, Pacific Northwest Region, RG75, Box 321: Tulalip Agency.

Adams, David Wallace. Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995.

Bonney, W.P. "Puyallup Indian Reservation," Washington Historical Quarterly (1928) v. 19, no. 3: 202-205.

Cheeka, Joyce Simmons as told to Werdna Phillips Finley. As My Sun Now Sets. Unpublished autobiographical memoirs.

Coleman, Michael C. American Indian Children at School, 1950-1930. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993.

Collins, Carey C. "Oregon's Carlisle: Teaching 'America´ at Chemawa Indian School," Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History, Tacoma: Washington State Historical Society, Summer 1998.

Collins, Carey C. "Through the Lens of Assimilation: Edwin L. Chalcraft and Chemawa Indian School," Oregon Historical Quarterly v. 98, no. 14 (Winter 1997-98): 390-425.

History of Cushman School. Typescript in Special Collections Division of the Washington State Historical Society, n.d.

Hoxie, Frederick E. A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians. Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.

Report of the Superintendent of Indian Schools, (1897/98-1903/04). Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Reports of the Indian Commissioner, Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior, various dates. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office.

The Suquamish Museum. The Eyes of Chief Seattle. [Suquamish, Wash.], 1985.

Szasz, Margaret. Education and the American Indian: The Road to Self-Determination,

1928-1973. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1974.
Other sources:
Cheney Cowles Museum, Eastern Washington Historical Society. They Sacrificed for Our Survival: The Indian Boarding School Experience. Exhibit produced 1997, available for travel.

The Tulalip Tribes. Between Two Worlds: Experiences at the Tulalip Indian School, 1905-1932. Exhibit produced 1992, available for travel.

For a typical journalist's description of a boarding schools, see "The Indian School at Chemawa," West Shore, v.13 (Jan. 1887): 5-18.

1. Examine the photographs from several different boarding schools (for example Tulalip, Cushman, Chemawa, Fort Spokane, Fort Simcoe, Fort Lapwai) and consider the similarities and differences that you can see. Also, search for additional photographs of Catholic mission schools (for example St. Mary's in Omak, Washington or Sacred Heart in DeSmet, Idaho). Make a list of these factors and speculate as to why some things look the same and others look different (for example emphasis on farming, uniforms, appearance of buildings, environment and appearance of students). What other sources of information could you look for to compare the schools?

2. What type of work did the students perform at the boarding schools? Which jobs were assigned to boys and which to girls? Look at the photographs for clues. Did these students work harder than young people today? What would they learn from their daily jobs? Do you think these work assignments helped them after they left school?

3. There are many things that photographs of the boarding schools do not tell us. Can you think of some? Who was taking the pictures and for what reason(s)? How does this affect what we can learn about the schools? What are some other sources from which we can learn more about the boarding school experience?

4. Do you think that the federal government accomplished its goal of assimilating Indians into American society? Why or why not? Is it likely that a person's cultural background can be totally erased? What aspects of your own culture do you feel most connected to?

5. Why do you think the educators stressed vocational or work-related training over academic or book learning? Was there a built-in prejudice against Indian students evident in this curriculum? What do you think self-determination means and how does it differ from the philosophy of the boarding schools?

Carolyn J. Marr is an anthropologist and photographs librarian at the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, Washington. She has worked with the Chehalis, Suquamish, Tulalip and Makah Tribes on projects relating to photographs and oral history as well as material culture, especially basketry and textiles. Several exhibits have resulted from her work, including one on the boarding school experience in western Washington. Publications include, "Portrait in Time: Photographs of the Makah by Samuel G. Morse, 1897-1903," and numerous articles in Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Columbia Magazine and other journals.

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reports of the commissioner of indian affairs

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::: American Indians of the Pacific Northwest Collection :::

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The goal of Indian education from the 1880s through the 1920s was to assimilate Indian people into the melting pot of America by placing them in institutions where traditional ways could be replaced by those sanctioned by the government.

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Native Knowledge 360° (NK360°) provides educators and students with new perspectives on Native American history and cultures.

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The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, is open to the public. Timed-entry passes are required for visitors of all ages.
The National Museum of the American Indian in New York, NY, remains temporarily closed.

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The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, is open to the public. Timed-entry passes are required for visitors of all ages.The National Museum of the American Indian in New York, NY, remains temporarily closed. Explore new and timely resources from Native Knowledge 360°.

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Welcome to this professional learning series on culturally responsive instruction for Native American students. This series provides a framework for instruction that emphasizes experiential, active, and student-centered learning. It supports all teachers in creating culturally responsive instruction for their Native students. If you are already familiar with your students' cultures and communities, you should be ready to dive into implementing this framework. If you are not yet familiar, this series will guide you on your journey to become more knowledgeable. We do not provide lessons or curricula on particular cultures, histories, or languages. Instead we provide the pedagogical principles to support you in creating (or adjusting) lessons and curricula informed by and integrating your students' cultures. Implementing this process will pave the way for your students' to achieve success, both in and out of the classroom.

If your role is to support teachers and advocate for Native students, this series is right for you as well. It can help you know what to look for in classroom observations, guide your feedback to teachers and schools, and inform your recommendations to improve programs for Native students.

The series was developed by education researchers Barbara Jones and Joan Herman through a review of the literature on culturally responsive instruction for Native American students, and through regular consultation, feedback, and contributions from David Sullivan, member of the Kiowa Nation and Special Programs Director at Anadarko Public Schools in Oklahoma. Feedback was also provided by Georgina Owen, Title XI State Coordinator at the Colorado Department of Education, who also helped organize the pilot study for these training materials with Title XI Coordinators in Colorado. This project was created through a collaboration between CRESST and WestEd, with funding provided by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

This series addresses the following questions.

What is culturally responsive instruction?

Why is it important for Native American students?

How does culturally responsive instruction connect to traditional Native American educational approaches?

What are specific guidelines for providing culturally responsive instruction for Native students?

What does culturally responsive practice look like in different subject areas?

What are the steps to take to develop a culturally responsive practice?

Working Together!

We recommend that if possible, you work through this professional learning series together with peers in a professional learning community (PLC). This PLC can be in-person at your school site, or a video/phone conference-based community, e.g., across rural schools in a district.

Our vision for using these materials involves:

Individuals, on their own time, completing one section of the professional learning series at a time. This includes watching the course video and any additional material, such as completing any handout or inventory activities that go along with the section. To support productive meetings, we've included a document on establishing meeting norms below.

After completing the section activities, individuals come together and meet with their PLC and discuss:

What they've learned through the videos and application activities

Questions that have come up

Experiences/reflections related to culturally responsive instruction in their classrooms

Goal setting for each participant

Linked below is a sample meeting agenda for these meetings.

Additionally, teachers may come together for Video Study Groups (VSG). These are more targeted meetings to provide peer feedback to one another based on video recordings teachers take of their classrooms. To support this effort, we've included a sample initial meeting agenda and an agenda for follow up VSG meetings.

Meeting Norms | PLC Meeting Agenda | VSG Meeting Agenda 1 | VSG Meeting Agenda 2

Let's get started!

The series of videos and tasks are presented in sequential lessons and build on each other. Follow the steps to complete each lesson before moving on to the next video.

1. The What and Why of Culturally Responsive Instruction

This section introduces culturally responsive instruction and explains why it's critical for the academic success of Native American students.

Steps to complete section:

1. Watch the course video

2. Click on the link below to answer the Exit Questions for this section. Note: you will be prompted to make a copy of the Google doc before using it. Keep track of where you save it for later reference. If you don't yet have a Google account. Click here to get started.

3. Complete the Reflection handout

Exit Questions I Reflection handout

2. Understanding Culture and Native American Diversity

This section provides a framework for considering culture in classroom settings and explores the range of diversity among Native students.

Steps to complete section:

1. Watch the course video

2. Answer the video Exit Questions

3. Read the article on the historical and cultural underpinnings of education in Native American communities

4. Complete the Student Inventory - either for teachers or for those who support teachers

Exit Questions | Historical & Cultural Underpinnings of Native Americans and Education | Student Inventory for Teachers | Student Inventory for those who Support Teachers

3. Foundations for Culturally Responsive Practice

This section elaborates on the foundations for our instructional guidance in this series, including traditional Native American values, epistemologies, and educational strategies, and general principles of culturally responsive instructional practice.

Steps to complete this section:

1. Watch the course video

2. Answer the Exit Questions.

3. Complete the Culturally Responsive Practice Inventory - either for teachers or for those who support teachers

Exit Questions | Culturally Responsive Practice Inventory for Teachers | Culturally Responsive Practice Inventory for those who Support Teachers

4. Where to Start: Initial Guidelines for Instruction

This section provides initial guidelines for providing culturally responsive instruction for Native students. It covers the areas of: instructional strategies, instructional activities, norms of social interaction, and teacher attitudes. It links these guidelines to specific, traditional Native American teaching and learning methods.

Steps to complete section:

1. Watch the course video

2. Answer the Exit Questions.

3. Complete the Initial Guidelines handout - either for teachers or for those who support teachers.

Exit Questions | Initial Guidelines: Handout for Teachers | Initial Guidelines: Handout for those who Support Teachers

5. Going Further: More Guidelines

This section provides more guidelines for providing culturally responsive instruction for Native students. It covers the areas of: instructional materials, curriculum, and parent and community involvement. It links these guidelines to specific Native American values and epistemologies.

Steps to complete section:

1. Watch the course video

2. Answer the Exit Questions.

3. Complete the More Guidelines handout - either for teachers or those who support teachers.

Exit Questions | More Guidelines: Handout for Teachers | More Guidelines: Handout for those who Support Teachers

6a. Pedagogical Implications for Math, Science, and Social Studies

6b. Pedagogical Implications for ELA, Native Language & Problem/Place-based Scenarios

This section illustrates what culturally responsive instruction for Native students looks like in English Language Arts and in Native languages. It also provides an in-depth example of culturally responsive principles in action in the problem/place-based scenario. This scenario is a student activity spanning many lessons. It is multi-disciplinary and engages the local community.

Steps to complete section:

1. Watch the course video

2. Answer the Exit Questions.

3. Read the Kiowa story, San-Ko and Tahlee Tdahn by David Sullivan, to begin thinking about incorporating traditional stories into lessons.

4. Complete the Kiowa story handout to reflect on the story's message and how stories like these can be integrated into instruction.

5. Review the Problem/Place-based Scenario Steps.

6. Complete the Try It Out handout for teachers or the Observation Tool for those who support teachers. Note: you will use the Strategies by Subject Area handout to support your planning processes.

Exit Questions I Kiowa Story I Kiowa Story Handout I Problem/Place-based Scenario Steps I Try It Out I Observation Tool for those who Support Teachers

7. Developing a Culturally Responsive Practice

This section illustrates the six key steps teachers need to take to become culturally literate and competent for the purpose of providing culturally responsive instruction to Native American students. ​These steps include: 1) self-assessment, 2) inventory of cultural knowledge, 3) investigation of students' culture, community, and language, 4) design and enact instruction based on this evidence, 5) reflect and repeat, and 6) moving forward.

Steps to complete section:

1. Watch the course video

2. Answer the Exit Questions.

3. Complete the step-by-step handouts that will guide you on your path towards achieving culturally literacy and competency.

Literature on Culturally Responsive Instruction for Native American Students

Review this list of references and tools that informed development of this Spotlight.

Additional Resources
Formative Assessment for Improving Native American Student Learning and Language Development: A Series of Professional Learning Modules
This series addresses formative assessment implementation with Native students across content areas with a focus on language development, including academic English and Native language. Students' levels of prior content knowledge and language development vary greatly from one to another. It is important that instructors know where each student is on their learning pathway, and then target instructional experiences that are matched to their levels. With formative assessment, teachers have the tools to do this work. It is only in connecting with students where they are on the pathway, that they are able to progress towards meeting their Learning Goals.
Formative Assessment in Action
The Formative Assessment in Action Spotlight aims to provide educators with resources that support learning about the formative assessment process. The spotlight includes classroom videos that showcase formative assessment in action, and opportunities to deepen learning about formative assessment with video viewing protocols. Educators can use the opportunities to analyze others' practice with an eye towards incorporating new learning into current instructional routines. Note: you'll see some of the same classroom videos that are in this professional development program, plus many more!
High-Leverage Principles of Effective Instruction for English Learners
New college and career ready standards (CCRS) have established more rigorous expectations of learning for all learners, including EL students, than what was expected in previous standards. A common feature in these new content-area standards is their emphasis on students' use of language to articulate and convey understanding of the content. The heightened role that language plays in CCRS presents new challenges for EL students and their teachers by calling for improved instructional strategies that simultaneously address language and content-area learning.

The purpose of this resource is to provide teachers of EL students with effective, high-leverage learning and teaching principles that can be incorporated into daily instructional plans and routines.

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Culturally Responsive Instruction for Native American Students

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Welcome to this professional learning series on culturally responsive instruction for Native American students. This series provides a framework for instruction that emphasizes experiential, active, and student-centered learning. It supports all teachers in creating culturally responsive instruction for their Native students.

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Co-hosted by experts from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, this webinar will delve into the ways American history instruction often fails to acknowledge—and contributes to—the erasure of Indigenous stories and perspectives.

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When November approaches, it is embraced in schools with fall decor, themed activities, and the teachings of the story of Thanksgiving. What many of us experienced in these teachings growing up was a story about the union of the Pilgrims and Native Americans over a delicious meal - a story of peace and thanks. When in reality - we now know - there is a bit more to the story to say the least.

So, given all that we know now, how do we move forward and honor this time in our nation's history while being culturally responsive?

As educators, we are required to review educational materials for simplistic and demeaning generalizations on the basis of race, color, sex, gender identity, religion, national origin, and sexual orientation. When generalizations are identified, appropriate activities, discussions, and/or supplementary materials can provide balance and context for any such stereotypes depicted in such materials. Through this process, we can create pathways to ensure that students can reflect on potentially problematic educational materials in ways that are inclusive, equitable, and create a sense of belonging and community.

This is why my colleague Mirko Chardin and I created a protocol focused on reviewing and revising an inquiry lesson on the relationship between the European settlers and the Wampanoag Tribe through the lens of UDL and culturally sustaining pedagogy.

Before you dive into the protocol, it's important to understand how certain holidays such as Thanksgiving can trigger different emotional responses for people that can be disruptive and harmful. To demonstrate that, we want to elevate and celebrate the experience of Robert Dias from the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, who provided insight into his experience with Thanksgiving.

"To be Mashpee Wampanoag during Thanksgiving makes me happy, yet sad on the inside. American history has different meanings to everyone including different Tribes. As a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, our history has stood the test of time - being we're the reason the entire nation celebrates Thanksgiving, which many think is based on peace between us and the English. In fact, our history shows that the English invited us to a feast to give thanks for showing them how to successfully harvest crops on this "New Land."

Unfortunately, history has always been written by those who have prevailed, especially in the case of America. As a student, I was told that Columbus discovered America. Even though my teachers told me this was history, I could never understand when my Tribe's history said otherwise. History isn't always all the facts. It's the person's perspective at the time. Hopefully, we can overcome the bias and lopsided reporting to represent history based on facts.

As a child, my grandfather told me, " Never forget how you got to where you are and never forget who helped you to get there! " That always stuck close to my heart. This statement was also one of the reasons that this time of year made me sad. As a Native man, our Tribe still faces issues from our United States Government. We seem to keep fighting for our rights as Native Americans. In one breathe we're told that America's thankful for our contributions. In the next, we are told we can't have land in a trust. It doesn't seem people are thankful, but we still celebrate this time of year as Americans.

As present-day America gives thanks to their relatives and loved ones at Thanksgiving, we must remember our history and share appreciation with our Native American community for their contributions to this country.

It gives me great hope that things are beginning to change. I've sat on the Tribal Council board for my Tribe for a few terms. I've always dedicated my time and efforts to our youth. Without good leadership, we will just lead back to the same struggles. I have faith in my Tribal youth to steer my people in the right direction through education, tradition, faith, and continued perseverance."

As educators, let us be sure to elevate and celebrate the identity of our youth and ensure that our lessons do not make them invisible, cause harm, or erase their proud history and where they have come from.

Resources

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Teaching the History of Thanksgiving With Equity - Teaching Protocol

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When November approaches, it is embraced in schools with fall decor, themed activities, and the teachings of the story of Thanksgiving. What many of us experienced in these teachings growing up was a story about the union of the Pilgrims and Native Americans over a delicious meal - a story of peace and thanks.

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Since Time Immemorial: Tribal Sovereignty in Washington State

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In 2015, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 5433 modifying the original 2005 legislation, now requiring the Since Time Immemorial: Tribal Sovereignty in Washington state or other tribally-developed curriculum be taught in all schools. The use of the Since Time Immemorial curriculum has been endorsed by all 29 federally recognized tribes.

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Since Time Immemorial: Tribal Sovereignty in Washington State

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In 2015, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 5433 modifying the original 2005 legislation, now requiring the Since Time Immemorial: Tribal Sovereignty in Washington state or other tribally-developed curriculum be taught in all schools. The use of the Since Time Immemorial curriculum has been endorsed by all 29 federally recognized tribes.

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A member of the Upper Skagit Tribe,
Hilbert spent her career working to preserve the Lushootseed
language and culture, which she also taught at the University
of Washington. S

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Vi Hilbert, a member of the Upper Skagit tribe, had as her life's work to preserve the Lushootseed (Puget Salish) language and culture. Vi learned Lushootseed (the language of Chief Seattle) as a child, listening to her parents. This recollected knowledge allowed her to help the linguist Thomas Hess transcribe and translate early Lushootseed recordings of elders, including Vi's folks. With delight, Vi quickly learned to read and write this oral language. She went on to teach the Lushootseed language and literature (traditional stories) at the University of Washington. She co-wrote Lushootseed grammars and dictionaries, and published books of stories, teachings, and place names. Vi taught hundreds of students, inspiring a few to become Lushootseed teachers and others to support and further her work. She generously shared Lushootseed language, stories, and traditions with organizations such as the Burke Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, United Indians of All Tribes, Tillicum Village, Seattle Storytellers Guild, and the National Storytelling Association. Vi brings out Lushootseed with every audience she addressed, especially traditional gatherings, so that this ancient language can be heard throughout Puget Sound, where it has been spoken for centuries. Vi Hilbert passed away at her home in LaConner on the morning of December 19, 2008.
A Skagit River Childhood
Vi Anderson was born on July 24, 1918, near Lyman, Washington, on the Upper Skagit River. Her father, Charlie Anderson, fished and logged along its reaches. He was a canoe maker and led canoe-racing teams to victory. His canoe, the Question Mark, is housed in the Smithsonian Museum Archive. Vi's mother, Louise Anderson, was vivacious, dramatic, and generous. Vi received the traditional name (shown at the right) from her grandmother.

Vi's folks moved up and down the river in search of work. They lived at Lyman, Birdsview, Concrete, Marblemount, and little places in between. Vi reports, "Each place that we lived, my mother and dad spoke of the people who had lived here before and the things they left for us to remember about each place. I felt enriched living in so many places" (Hilbert). Vi's mother had the talent of being able to make a home anywhere.

As an only child, Vi had ample opportunity to listen to her parents speak Lushootseed to each other, and also to their friends. Vi's folks often spoke "Indian English" to her, but Lushootseed in her presence. "I had to coax them to speak Lushootseed to me," Vi reports. "Their Lushootseed was so much more beautiful, in my estimation." When Vi spoke back to them in Lushootseed it made them laugh, but she also knew that it pleased them greatly to know their daughter was learning their language. "So I continued to try to talk Lushootseed to them" (Hilbert).
Getting an Education
Because her folks moved so often in search of work, Vi attended 15 different schools. "It was a very traumatic time for me, to have to be pulled out of one school and leave a group of people I had begun to get acquainted with, to go to a new school to be tested to see whether I was going to be accepted or not. Kids are mean" (Hilbert).

While her parents went to Yakima to pick apples and other fruit, Vi attended the boarding school at Tulalip. In high school, she chose to attend the Chemawa Indian Boarding School near Salem, Oregon. From there, she transferred to Franklin High School in Portland, in search of the best education she could get, working as a domestic to support herself.
Marriages, Children, Jobs
Vi married Percy Woodcock in 1936 and they lived at Taholah, Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula. Her first child, Denny was born in 1937, and her daughter, Lois, in 1938. After Denny died of meningitis in 1940, Vi and Percy Woodcock separated and Vi moved to Nooksak (near Bellingham, Washington), to live with her parents.

Vi married Bob Coy in 1942 at Tulalip (near Marysville, Washington), and gave birth to her son Ron in 1943.

Vi married Don Hilbert in 1945. They lived in a house they built in south Seattle until 2003, when they moved to Bow, Washington, in Skagit County.

Vi knew work: berry picking, ironing, housework, running a pool hall and café, processing pears in a cannery, as a stock clerk, a cookie wrapper for a Danish bakery, an electric welder at Todd's Shipyards, waiting tables at a Chinese restaurant, cashiering at a food wagon at Boeing, as a secretary at Children's Orthopedic Hospital, and as a hairdresser.
Finding Her Lushootseed Work
Vi's wake-up call came in 1967. Linguist Thom Hess had been working on Lushootseed with the Nooksak elder Louise George for a number of years in her Seattle home. When they began work on a tape recording of Vi's mother telling the Basket Ogress story, Mrs. George told Hess he should call Vi, who lived nearby and ran a hair salon in her home.

So Vi came to Louise George's home to, as Hess put it, "look into this white kid who was writing down in Skagit [Lushootseed] one of her own mother's stories" (Hess). Hess reported that Vi's interest was caught, first by the fact that he could pronounce her traditional name correctly and second by the writing system.

"She seemed intrigued by the fact that there was a system for spelling the language which had a symbol for every sound; and she was definitely interested when I told her that she could learn to read and write it in a month or less (which she later did). By the end of that session with Louise George, it was arranged that Vi would come again to our next meeting and that she would begin to learn to read and write Skagit" (Hess).
Teaching Lushootseed
Vi attended the Puget Salish (Lushootseed) class that Thom Hess taught at the University of Washington in 1972. As he recalls, "Vi sat in the front row and made it a success in several ways, the most important of which was by assuring the students that the words that white man was saying were indeed Skagit" (Hess). The following year, Hess arranged for Vi to teach the class. "She was reluctant in the beginning, but felt a strong sense of obligation to do it in memory of her people and for the need of native young people" (Hess).

So Vi converted her hair salon into the Lushootseed "Brain Room" and went to work. She and Thom wrote lesson plans for daily classes, a textbook, then a dictionary and the first Haboo book, traditional stories written down as they had been told. Vi used these materials in her 15 years of teaching at the University of Washington, followed by two years at Evergreen College as the Evans Chair scholar.
Transcribing and Translating
Vi worked over the course of years to transcribe in Lushootseed and then translate into English tape recordings made by Leon Metcalf. According to anthropologist Jay Miller, Metcalf had grown up partly among Tulalips and heard them speaking Lushootseed. As a high school music teacher in the early 1950s, Metcalf had possession of a reel-to-reel tape recorder. He feared the loss of Lushootseed information as eloquent speakers grew close to the end of their lives. So with his own time and money, he traveled around Indian Country to seek out and record the most fluent speakers, with the greatest wealth of stories and memories.

Vi's Aunt Susie Sampson Peter was one of these elders. On meeting Metcalf, Aunt Susie commented in Lushootseed, "What took him so long to get here?" Since she did not have electricity, that first session was recorded in another home. By the time Metcalf returned for the next session, Aunt Susie had electricity in her house and was ready to work. Years later, when the Metcalf tapes finally came into Vi's hands, she too was ready to work.

"I listened to a few words, then stopped the tape and wrote those words down. If I didn't understand something, I left a blank. Sometimes there were lots of blanks. Then I rewound and listened again, then again. Maybe I could fill in a blank" (Hilbert). Vi worked her way through the tapes, writing down in Lushootseed what she could, then translating into English. According to Hess, he and Vi went out in search of elders, like Dewey Mitchell, Martin Sampson, and Helen Ross, who could help her fill in the blanks and answer questions about grammar and shades of meaning.

As Hess described it:

"I do not believe anyone can fully appreciate what Vi has accomplished with those Metcalf tapes. First of all, there are lots of them. Secondly, very many of them are in poor quality so that they are difficult to hear -- sometimes well nigh impossible. Thirdly, the people recorded spoke sophisticated Lushootseed with lots of words unknown today. With all this Vi grappled indefatigably, listening over and over and over again. She scoured the entire region seeking out the best remaining speakers to listen to this and that passage in hopes that still more might be gleaned. No one else could have done this work and almost no one would have been willing to. Thanks to her Herculean efforts, much more history, grammar, lexicon and myth has been saved from oblivion than posterity had any right to expect. Only she knows at what effort this has been done" (Hess).

Vi describes this work as a gift: " switulis uyayus. Work that the Creator was wrapping around me. I was ordained to do this work. It was always there, waiting for me to do" (Hilbert).
Publishing and Speaking
Vi Hilbert always made the information she collected available to those who seek it. University of Washington Press published Haboo: Native American Stories from Puget Sound and the two dictionaries.

In her urgency to have her work reach her people and others, she established Lushootseed Press and published much of the Metcalf material in bilingual form, including the books: Aunt Susie Sampson Peter and "Gram" Ruth Sehome Shelton. Lushootseed Press also published Haboo: Lushootseed Literature in English. Holding the long view, Vi hoped that future generations will be able to access Lushootseed language and cultural information through her publications and archive.

Early on, Vi insisted that she was not a storyteller. Instead, she sees herself as a channel for cultural information. When she is at a gathering and observes that a particular story needs to be heard, she will stand and tell that story. Her listeners hear a line first in Lushootseed, then in English. The lines alternate, weaving the words into a bilingual basket to carry the story. When invited to speak, Vi never plans ahead what she will say or what stories she will tell. She arrives early to listen to her audience and see whether they need to hear the exploits of Skunk, Mud Swallow, Mink, Coyote, Deer, Bear, Ant, or other animals. Even those who know her well can be surprised by what she chooses to share.
For Generations to Come
Through her years of work, Vi collected, transcribed, translated, and documented materials that include: the Leon Metcalf Collection (1950s), the Warren Snyder and Willard Rhodes collections (1950s), Arthur Ballard's collection (early 1900s), T. T. Waterman's Puget Sound Geography (1910s), and the Thomas Hess material (1960s and 1970s). Work remains to be done to preserve this vast archive by transferring it to "a new canoe" of digital storage. Vi wanted to place copies of her archive at several locations, including the University of Washington, with the goal of making the material available to all who seek it, now and in the future.

Over the years, Vi inspired students, teachers, storytellers, filmmakers, artists, anthropologists, and linguists. She had a way of helping those around her find their own switulis uyayus -- work the Creator has wrapped around them. When speaking on Reservations, Vi often makes gifts to young people of books and recordings of traditional stories, as a way of lifting their spirits with the words of their ancestors. She would say it is Lushootseed that inspires people. But Vi is the one offering those rich teachings and setting an example of how to live by them.
A Living Treasure
Vi Hilbert was named a Washington State Living Treasure in 1989. She received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, presented by President Bill Clinton, in 1994. Vi's life and work are featured in the television documentary, Huchoosedah: Traditions of the Heart (KCTS/BBC Wales).

Vi served as advisor on a number of boards, including: the Seattle Art Museum, the Burke Museum, United Indians of All Tribes, and Tillicum Village. She has been honored by the Seattle Storytellers Guild and the National Storytelling Association.
Continuing the Work
Current teachers of Lushootseed include Zolmai "Zeke" Zahir (at the Muckleshoot Reservation and privately to adults and children in the Seattle area), David Cort and Tobey Langen (at the Tulalip Reservation), and Carmen Shone at Skagit Valley College and at the Upper Skagit and Swinomish reservations, where Lora Pennington also teaches.

Vi continued to organize and label her archive. She wanted to make it easy for future scholars to find what they were seeking. It was her hope that many will come to the archive, to "go in and dig out that information." She continued to explore the deep philosophy of her culture as presented through its language and literature.

Vi Hilbert passed away on the morning of December 19, 2008, at her home in LaConner, surrounded by her family.

Sources:

Dawn Bates, Thom Hess and Vi Hilbert, Lushootseed Dictionary (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994); Vi Hilbert, Aunt Susie Sampson Peter: The Wisdom of a Skagit Elder with an Introduction by Jay Miller (Seattle, Lushootseed Press, 1995), vii-x; Tom Hess, "That's the Way It Is," in Writings about Vi Hilbert by Her Friends ed. by Janet Yoder (Seattle: Lushootseed Press, 1992), p. 25-27; Janet Yoder interview of Vi Hilbert, February 6, 2004, Bow, Washington, tape recording and transcription in possession of Janet Yoder, Seattle, Washington; Janet Yoder interview of Vi Hilbert, September 11, 2004 at Bow, Washington, tape recording and handwritten transcription in possession of Janet Yoder, Seattle, Washington; "Award Recipients" Governor's Heritage Awards Website (http://www.arts.wa.gov/progFA/heritageAwd/ gov_award_recipients.html).

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Vi Hilbert, a member of the Upper Skagit tribe, had as her life's work to preserve the Lushootseed (Puget Salish) language and culture. Vi learned Lushootseed (the language of Chief Seattle) as a child, listening to her parents. This recollected knowledge allowed her to help the linguist Thomas Hess transcribe and translate early Lushootseed recordings of elders, including Vi's folks.

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Snohomish Indian, author,
and mother of 11 children. Fished commercially and restored
women to a place in the tribal fishing industry for women.

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Marya D. Moses was raised within a Native American tribal culture that since time immemorial had included roles for both men and women to contribute to the gathering and preparing of salmon from local rivers and the rich waters of Puget Sound. But by the mid-twentieth century, the job of fishing amo…

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Claudia Kauffman was the first woman Native American elected to the Washington State Senate.

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Claudia Kauffman was the first woman Native American elected to the Washington State Senate. She was raised in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle where her mother, Josephine, championed American Indian rights in the area. Kauffman, who is of the Nez Perce Tribe, spent her legislative career (2006-2010) serving the 47th district, taking a particular interest in issues of early childhood learning and education. Kauffman also founded the Native Action Network, a non-profit that supports female Native Americans. She lives in Kent with her husband and children.
An Activist Family
Claudia Kauffman was born in Idaho in 1959 to John and Josephine Kauffman. She was the youngest of seven children, and Kauffman's family lived in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle after moving to the area when Claudia was an infant. "Beacon Hill is a very diverse community," Kauffman said of her childhood in south Seattle. "Growing up, all my neighbors were all these different races. I actually thought everyone grew up having such a variety and diversity in your community" ( ColorsNW).

An interest in child welfare, later to be a hallmark of her political career, was apparent in Kauffman's household at an early age. Remembering her childhood, Kauffman said:

"We lived in a small three bedroom house in the south end of Seattle. But ... we always had room for more kids. That was the values I was raised in. We always had room for more kids" (Dyson).

Her parents, both members of the Nez Perce Tribe, were politically active during Kauffman's childhood. Her mother, Josephine Moody Kauffman, was born in Kamiah, Idaho, but spent the last three decades of her life in Seattle. She instilled a sense of civic duty in her children with her active participation in the Seattle Indian Center, the Seattle Indian Women's Service League, and the Seattle American Indian Elders group.

Josephine Kauffman was also was one of the protestors who took over Fort Lawton in 1970, seeking to establish an Indian cultural center. Those demonstrations eventually led to both an Indian cultural center and the development of Discovery Park on portions of Fort Lawton's land in Seattle's Magnolia neighborhood.

Education and Involvemen t

Claudia Kauffman attended Cleveland High School and later studied at the University of Idaho and the Oglala Lakota College. Bernie Whitebear (1937-2000), who was an instrumental figure in the Seattle civil rights movement and who led the Fort Lawton invasion, became a mentor to Kauffman when she was a young woman. She recalls:

"The first time he took me to Olympia was in the 1980s. He was going to do some lobbying and had set up appointments. But his administrative staff couldn't go with him, so he called me. I'd known him since I was tiny. At this time, I was in my early 20s. He said, 'I'll pick you up at your office.' So I went to Olympia and I was just following him around. We went into a Senator's office and he said: 'Here's a need in my community. Here's how I believe we can fix it. Here's how much it's going to cost. Here are the reasons we should fund it.' Then we went to the next office and he said the same thing. Then the next ... . Finally, we got to an office and he said to the legislator: 'Here's Claudia Kauffman. She has something to tell you!' Then he just turned to me and I had to speak! In the end we walked out and I hit him on his arm. But he said, 'See. It was easy. We are people. They are people. We are having a conversation. There is no need to be intimidated'" (Washblog).

In 1999, Kauffman worked as a private consultant to the Oglala Sioux Tribe, coordinating the visit of President Bill Clinton (b. 1947) to the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. And before her political career got fully underway, Kauffman was a foster parent to 10 children. Her passion for child welfare has stayed with her:

"Knowing and understanding things as a mother -- as a mother who cares deeply about her children and their education -- I've been to all the parent meetings, I've been to the classroom, I've baked the cookies. Knowing and understanding, when you get to that local level, you start to realize the little tiny things you can do to help out. And I thought, I could do more, on a broader scale" (Dyson).

Kauffman and Iris Friday, a member of the Tlingit tribe, founded the Native Action Network in 2002. The nonprofit organization's goal is to "provide an environment in which Native women daughters, mothers, granddaughters, and great-grandmothers can interact with one another, share knowledge, and honor Native women making a difference in their communities" (enduringspirit.org).
A Run for Office
In 2006, Kauffman decided to run for state senator in the 47th District as the Democratic nominee, and she defeated ex-Kent police chief Ed Crawford in the primary. Only 1 percent of the constituents in the 47th district were American Indian. Kauffman recalls:

"I hadn't run for office ever, in my life. The opportunity was there, and I had a real grassroots campaign. I wasn't the selected one for the party, or for anything else. I was just out there marching along, saying 'I'm going to run for this office' ... . I'm sorry to say, I was asked once -- when I first ran -- a reporter said, 'Are you American Indian? How can anyone expect you to represent the rest of us?' And I said, 'If you go on that theory, how can anyone else represent me?'" (Dyson).

She collected endorsements from former governor Mike Lowry (1939-2017), King County Executive Ron Sims (b. 1948), and state Senator Jeanne Kohl-Wells (b. 1942), as well as The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Her opponent in the general election was Republican Mike Riley. Kauffman was elected with 52 percent of the vote, becoming the first female Native American to serve in the Washington state senate.

Kauffman's interest in education issues was apparent even before her senatorial run. She served on Antioch University's Board of Visitors, was appointed by the governor to the Evergreen State College Board of Trustees, and served as chairman of the Kent School District's Indian Education Parent Committee. When asked about her passion for education, Kauffman notes that there is more than one reason she's drawn to the issue.

"I can give you the standard answer, that the more education you get the better person you become, and then you contribute to society and it promotes economic development, which creates ... well you know, that's the big, big picture. But what I really look at, what you get back down to, is the lower performing schools, the low-income people who are struggling and recognizing the importance of education as an individual and as a family. This can become an issue for American Indians, who have a long history of not trusting educational institutions for a number of reasons.

"My grandmother was taken from Idaho and sent to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to one of these schools. They would cut your hair, you would speak nothing but English or else you would be punished, sometimes severely. The Catholic Church, the Protestant church, all of these churches came in and said commandingly, 'We know what is best for you, we are going to take care of you, and this is what you are going to do. You are going to forget your religion, you are forbidden to practice any of your traditions,' and this was law, this was actually federal law. It created a sense that this 'education' takes everything away and is forced on me. Education became just another institution where American Indian children were forced into another culture. Historically, that is the way it has been" (Stuteville and Nelson).

Making a Difference
Kauffman spent her years in the Senate working for education issues, serving on the Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committees and sponsoring legislation to address educational concerns. One of those bills was to certify teachers of First Peoples language and culture. The bill was born out of a need for certification of tribal members to teach their language in the schools.

In 2007, Kauffman made it clear that she wasn't solely interested in educational and social issues when she penned a guest editorial in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer defending Initiative 747, which allowed property taxes to be raised by only 1 percent a year. Kauffman wrote at the time:

"The steady rise of property taxes, mainly based on the rapid growth of the housing market, has become more and more difficult for working families to afford. With gas prices double what they were four years ago, health care costs increasing three times more than inflation, and even basic living expenses more expensive than ever, some people, especially those on fixed incomes, are losing the ability keep their homes. That is unacceptable, and I've been a leader in the effort to make property tax collection fair and predictable for working families" (Kauffman, 2007).

In 2009, Kauffman also sponsored legislation to expand the Native American Scholarship Endowment, which Governor Chris Gregoire (b. 1947) later signed into law. She was a main player in forming the Early Learning Advisory Committee, which was created to design a plan addressing early learning issues in the state. Children's Alliance named Kauffman "Champion for Children" for her work sponsoring the early learning plan.

Kauffman also spearheaded legislation that strengthened burden of proof standards when it came to placing American Indian children in out-of-home care. "Indian children are overrepresented in our state's child welfare system," Kauffman said of the legislation. "This bill is a safeguard against taking children out of a home unnecessarily or breaking parental bonds prematurely. This bill will make sure courts act in their best interest" (Washington State Democrats).

In 2010, Kauffman ran unopposed in the primary, but she was defeated in the general election by Joe Fain, a former chief of staff to King County Councilman Pete Von Reichbauer. Today (2011) she serves as the intergovernmental liaison for the Muckleshoot Tribe and lives in Kent with her husband and three children.

Sources:

Sarah Stuteville and Peder Nelson, "Claudia Kauffman Opens the Door to American Indians Tracing Their Heritage," Real Change, April 11-17, 2007 (http://www.realchangenews.org); "Sen. Kauffman Concedes, Will Continue to Work for South King County," Auburn Reporter, November 4, 2010 (http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/south_king/aub/news/election/106703278.html); "Claudia Kauffman: ColorsNW March Story," ColorsNW, March 7, 2007 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olonsGKDE9M); Richard Walker, "Claudia Kauffman Makes History in Washington State," Indian Country Today, November 22, 2006; James Tabafunda, "Kauffman's Priorities Affect APIs in Diverse District," Northwest Asian Weekly, Vol. 29, No. 42, October 16, 2010; Claudia Kauffman, "One Chapter Closes, Another Opens," Indian Country Today, December 29, 2010; Claudia Kauffman, "Foster Care: Labor Of Love," Letter to the Editor, The Seattle Times, May 22, 2010 (http://seattletimes.com); "Certified Election Results," The Seattle Times, November 29, 2006 (http://seattletimes.com); Sanjay Bhatt, "Schools a Top Issue in Legislative Races," The Seattle Times, October 3, 2006 (http://seattletimes.com); Julie Emery and Charles E. Brown. "'Small but Mighty' Native American Activist Dies -- Funeral Will be Tomorrow for Josephine Kauffman," The Seattle Times, November 21, 1988 (http://seattletimes.com); HistoryLink.org Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, "Fort Lawton Military Police Clash with Native American and Other Protesters in the Future Discovery Park on March 8, 1970" (by Patrick McRoberts and Kit Oldham), http://www.historylink.org/ (accessed June 17, 2011); Claudia Kauffman, "Property Taxes Need Greater Reform," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 26, 2007 (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com); Michael Eric Dyson Show, "Sudan, Native American Politics, Soulful Symphony," December 15, 2010, (http://dysonshow.org/?p=3574); "Kauffman Thrilled Child Welfare Bill Now Law," Washington State Senate Democrats, June 17, 2011, (http://blog.senatedemocrats.wa.gov/kauffman/kauffman-thrilled-child-welfare-bill-now-law/); Noemie Maxwell, "Claudia Kauffman for State Senate: Serving the Community, Matching Resources to Needs," Washblog, June 17, 2011, (http://www.washblog.com/story/2006/6/2/135117/8202); "About," Native Action Network, June 17, 2011, (http://www.enduringspirit.org/).

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Claudia Kauffman was the first woman Native American elected to the Washington State Senate. She was raised in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle where her mother, Josephine, championed American Indian rights in the area. Kauffman, who is of the Nez Perce Tribe, spent her legislative career (2006-2010) serving the 47th district, taking a particular interest in issues of early childhood learning and education.

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Photo: Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

Quick Facts
"I've run into more discrimination as a woman than as an Indian.""A lot of young girls have looked to their career paths and have said they'd like to be chief. There's been a change in the limits people see.""Growth is a painful process.""As the Cherokee Nation's first female chief, [Wilma Mankiller] transformed the nation-to-nation relationship between the Cherokee Nation and the federal government, and served as an inspiration to women in Indian Country and across America. Her legacy will continue to encourage and motivate all who carry on her work."

University of Arkansas, San Francisco State University, Flaming Rainbow University, Skyline College

Wilma Mankiller worked for several years as a leading advocate for the Cherokee people and became the first woman to serve as their principal chief in 1985.

Who Was Wilma Mankiller?

In 1985, Wilma Mankiller became the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. She sought to improve the nation's health care, education system and government. She decided not to seek re-election in 1995 due to ill health. After leaving office, Mankiller remained an activist for Native American and women's rights until her death, on April 6, 2010, in Adair County, Oklahoma.

Early Life

Born on November 18, 1945, in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, Wilma Pearl Mankiller was a descendant of the Cherokee Indians, the Native Americans who were forced to leave their homelands in 1830s; she was also of Dutch and Irish descent. She grew up on Mankiller Flats, located near Rocky Mountain, Oklahoma, before moving with her family in the mid-1950s to San Francisco, California, in hopes of a better life. Unfortunately, the family still struggled greatly in their new home due to dwindling finances and discrimination.

Mankiller attended Skyline College and San Francisco State University in California before enrolling at Flaming Rainbow University in Oklahoma, where she earned a bachelor's degree in social sciences. Thereafter, she took graduate courses at the University of Arkansas.

Early Roles

In 1963, at age 17, Mankiller married Hector Hugo Olaya de Bardi. The couple would later have two daughters: Felicia Olaya, born in 1964, and Gina Olaya, born in 1966.

In the 1960s, Mankiller was greatly inspired by the attempts by Native Americans to reclaim the island of Alcatraz to become more active in Native American issues. Always passionate about helping her people, she decided to return to Oklahoma in the mid-1970s, not long after filing for divorce from Olaya de Bardi. Soon after returning to her native state, she began working for the government of the Cherokee Indian Nation as a tribal planner and program developer.

In 1979, Mankiller nearly lost her life in a serious car accident, in which she was struck head on by her best friend. Her friend died, and though Mankiller survived, she underwent numerous surgeries as a part of a long recovery process. She then had to battle a neuromuscular disease known as myasthenia gravis, which can lead to paralysis. Once again, Mankiller was able to overcome her health challenges.

Cherokee Indian Nation's First Female Chief

Mankiller ran for deputy chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1983 and won, subsequently serving in that position for two years. Then, in 1985, she was named the tribe's principal chief, making history as the first woman to serve as principal chief of the Cherokee people. She remained on the job for two full terms thereafter, winning elections in 1987 and 1991. A popular leader, Mankiller focused on improving the nation's government, and health-care and education systems. Due to ill health, she decided not to seek re-election in 1995.

Later Career and Death

For more than two decades, Mankiller led her people through difficult times. After leaving office, she continued her activism on behalf of Native Americans and women. She also taught for a short time at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

Mankiller shared her experiences as a pioneer in tribal government in her 1993 autobiography, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People. She also wrote and compiled Every Day Is a Good Day: Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women (2004), featuring a forward by leading feminist Gloria Steinem. For her leadership and activism, Mankiller received numerous honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998.

Mankiller died on April 6, 2010, at the age of 64, in Adair County, Oklahoma. She was survived by her second husband, Charlie Soap, whom she married in 1986.

After learning of Mankiller's passing in 2010, President Barack Obama issued a statement about legendary Cherokee chief: "As the Cherokee Nation's first female chief, she transformed the nation-to-nation relationship between the Cherokee Nation and the federal government, and served as an inspiration to women in Indian Country and across America," he stated. "Her legacy will continue to encourage and motivate all who carry on her work."

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"I've run into more discrimination as a woman than as an Indian." "A lot of young girls have looked to their career paths and have said they'd like to be chief. There's been a change in the limits people see." "Growth is a painful process."

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Chief Joseph was a Nez Perce chief who, faced with settlement by whites of tribal lands in Oregon, led his followers in a dramatic effort to escape to Canada.

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Photo: Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

Quick Facts

Name

Geronimo

Birth Date

June, 1829

Death Date

February 17, 1909

Place of Birth

No-Doyohn Canyon, Mexico

Place of Death

Fort Sill, Oklahoma

AKA

Goyathlay

Goyahkla

Who Was Geronimo?

Geronimo was an Apache leader who continued the tradition of the Apaches resisting white colonization of their homeland in the Southwest, participating in raids into Sonora and Chihuahua in Mexico. After years of war, Geronimo finally surrendered to U.S. troops in 1886. While he became a celebrity, he spent the last two decades of his life as a prisoner of war.

Early Years

A legend of the untamed American frontier, the Apache leader Geronimo was born in June 1829 in No-Doyohn Canyon, Mexico. He was a naturally gifted hunter, who, the story goes, as a boy swallowed the heart of his first kill to ensure a lifetime of success on the chase.

Being on the run certainly defined Geronimo's way of life. He belonged to the smallest band within the Chiricahua tribe, the Bedonkohe. Numbering a little more than 8,000, the Apaches were surrounded by enemies - not just Mexicans, but also other tribes, including the Navajo and Comanches.

Raiding their neighbors was also a part of the Apache life. In response, the Mexican government put a bounty on Apache scalps, offering as much as $25 for a child's scalp. But this did little to deter Geronimo and his people. At the age of 17, Geronimo had already led four successful raiding operations.

Around this same time, Geronimo fell in love with a woman named Alope. The two married and had three children together.

However, tragedy struck when he was out on a trading trip and Mexican soldiers attacked his camp. Word of the ransacking soon reached the Apache men. Quietly that night, Geronimo returned home, where he found his mother, wife and three children all dead.

Warrior Leader

The murders devastated Geronimo. In the tradition of the Apache, he set fire to his family's belongings and then, in a show of grief, headed into the wilderness to bereave the deaths. There, it is said, alone and crying, a voice came to Geronimo that promised him: "No gun will ever kill you. I will take the bullets from the guns of the Mexicans ... and I will guide your arrows."

Backed by this sudden knowledge of power, Geronimo rounded up a force of 200 men and hunted down the Mexican soldiers who killed his family. It went on like this for 10 years, as Geronimo exacted revenge against the Mexican government.

Beginning in the 1850s, the face of his enemy changed. Following the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848, the United States took over large tracts of territory from Mexico, including areas belonging to the Apache. Spurred by the discovery of gold in the Southwest, settlers and miners streamed into their lands. Naturally, tensions mounted and the Apaches stepped up their attacks, which included brutal ambushes on stagecoaches and wagon trains.

But the Chiricahua leader, Geronimo's father-in-law, Cochise, could see where the future was headed. In an act that greatly disappointed his son-in-law, the revered chief called a halt to his decade-long war with the Americans and agreed to the establishment of a reservation for his people on a prized piece of Apache property.

But within just a few years, Cochise died, and the federal government reneged on its agreement, moving the Chiricahua north so that settlers could move into their former lands. This act only further incensed Geronimo, setting off a new round of fighting.

Geronimo proved to be as elusive as he was aggressive. However, authorities finally caught up with him in 1877 and sent him to the San Carlos Apache reservation. For four long years, he struggled with his new reservation life, finally escaping in September 1881.

Out on his own again, Geronimo and a small band of Chiricahua followers eluded American troops. Over the next five years, they engaged in what proved to be the last of the Indian wars against the United States.

Perceptions of Geronimo were nearly as complex as the man himself. His followers viewed him as the last great defender of the Native American way of life. But others, including fellow Apaches, saw him as a stubborn holdout, violently driven by revenge and foolishly putting the lives of people in danger.

With his followers in tow, Geronimo shot across the Southwest. As he did, the seemingly mystical leader was transformed into a legend as newspapers closely followed the Army's pursuit of him. At one point nearly a quarter of the Army's forces - 5,000 troops - were trying to hunt him down.

Finally, in the summer of 1886, he surrendered, the last Chiricahua to do so. Over the next several years Geronimo and his people were bounced around, first to a prison in Florida, then a prison camp in Alabama and then Fort Sill in Oklahoma. In total, the group spent 27 years as prisoners of war.

Final Years and Death

While he and the rest of the Chiricahua remained under guard, Geronimo experienced a bit of celebrity from his white former enemies. Less than a decade after he'd surrendered, crowds longed to catch a glimpse of the famous Indian warrior. In 1905, he published his autobiography, and that same year he received a private audience with President Theodore Roosevelt, unsuccessfully pressing the American leader to let his people return to Arizona.

His death came four years later. While riding home in February 1909, he was thrown from his horse. He survived a night out in the cold, but when a friend found him the next day, Geronimo's health was rapidly deteriorating. He passed away six days later, with his nephew at his side.

"I should never have surrendered," Geronimo, still a prisoner of war, said on his deathbed. "I should have fought until I was the last man alive."

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Name Geronimo Birth Date June, 1829 Death Date February 17, 1909 Place of Birth No-Doyohn Canyon, Mexico Place of Death Fort Sill, Oklahoma AKA Goyathlay Goyahkla Geronimo was an Apache leader who continued the tradition of the Apaches resisting white colonization of their homeland in the Southwest, participating in raids into Sonora and Chihuahua in Mexico.

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Sitting Bull was a Teton Dakota Indian chief under whom the Sioux tribes united in their struggle for survival on the North American Great Plains.

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Quick Facts

"The white man made me a lot of promises, and they only kept one. They promised to take my land, and they took it."

Name

Red Cloud

Birth Date

1822

Death Date

December 10, 1909

Place of Birth

Nebraska

Place of Death

Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota

Full Name

Mahpíya Lúta (Red Cloud)

Red Cloud was a chief of the Oglala Lakota tribe. He is best known for his success in confrontations with the U.S. government.

Who Was Red Cloud?

Lakota chief Red Cloud was an important figure in the 19th-century land battle between Native Americans and the U.S. government. He successfully resisted developments of the Bozeman trail through Montana territory and led the opposition against the development of a road through Wyoming and Montana for two years-a period that came to be known as Red Cloud's War.

Early Life

Born in 1822 in what is now north-central Nebraska, Red Cloud (known in Lakota as Mahpíya Lúta) was an important Native American leader who fought to save his people's lands. His parents named him after an unusual weather event. His mother, Walks as She Thinks, was a member of the Oglala Sioux and his father, Lone Man, was Brule Sioux. When he was around 5 years old, Red Cloud lost his father.

Following his father's death, Red Cloud was raised by his mother's uncle, an Oglala Sioux leader named Smoke. At a young age, Red Cloud sought to distinguish himself as a warrior. He demonstrated great bravery in the Oglalas' battles with other tribes, including the Pawnees.

Red Cloud's War

Red Cloud was instrumental in organizing resistance to white expansion into his people's territory. He had refused to sign several treaties with the U.S. government and even stormed out of negotiations held at Fort Laramie in Wyoming in 1866. Fort Laramie was on what was known as the Bozeman Trail, which was developed by John Bozeman as a shortcut to the Oregon trail and the gold-rich lands in what is now Montana.

At the time the 1866 meeting was held, the U.S. government was building new forts along the trail north of Fort Laramie. This expansion enraged Red Cloud, who managed to unite several different Native American groups to drive away the soldiers from Fort Phil Kearny. When the U.S. government sent in reinforcements, Red Cloud and his warriors showed them just how powerful they were.

On December 21, 1866, Captain William Judd Fetterman led of party of 80 soldiers to eliminate their Native American problem. But they were quickly slaughtered by more than 1,000 warriors who rose up against them. This incident became known as the Fetterman massacre.

By the spring of 1868, Red Cloud had finally forced the white man's hand with his continued assault on those who ventured into his territory. General Ulysses S. Grant decided to abandon the forts in the northern part of the Bozeman trail. While he signed a treaty later that year, Red Cloud resisted government efforts to move him and his people from their lands.

Final Years

In 1870, Red Cloud traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby for Native American rights. He attended a special reception at the White House and later traveled to New York. The mighty leader impressed crowds with his eloquence and diplomatic skills, but could do little to preserve his lands in face of greed over gold. Once the precious metal was found in the Black Hills, the Sioux were soon pushed from their sacred lands.

While other Native American leaders, including Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, rose up against the whites, Red Cloud seemed to stay out of the fighting. He moved with his people to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in the late 1870s. In the early 1880s, Red Cloud stepped down as leader. He continued to work to improve the lives of his people, however. In 1897, he headed to Washington, D.C., to campaign for better living conditions on the reservation.

Death

Red Cloud died on the Pine Ridge Reservation on December 10, 1909, at the age of 88.

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"The white man made me a lot of promises, and they only kept one. They promised to take my land, and they took it." Name Red Cloud Birth Date 1822 Death Date December 10, 1909 Place of Birth Nebraska Place of Death Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota Full Name Mahpíya Lúta (Red Cloud) Red Cloud was a chief of the Oglala Lakota tribe.

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On November 24, 1807, Mohawk Chief Thayendanegea, also known by his English name, Joseph Brant, dies at his home in Burlington, Ontario. Before dying, he reportedly said, "Have pity on the poor Indians. If you have any influence with the great, endeavour to use it for their good."

Thayendanegea ranked among Britain's best commanders during the American War for Independence. He was an educated Christian and Freemason who studied directly with Eleazer Wheelock at Moor's Indian Charity School, the parent institution of Dartmouth College. His older sister Mary was founding father Sir William Johnson's common-law wife and also played a significant role in colonial and revolutionary Indian affairs.

The Iroquois, an alliance of Native Americans including the Mohawk, attempted to maintain neutrality at the beginning of War for Independence, but by 1777, Thayendanegea had led the Iroquois into an alliance with Britain. He, like most Native Americans, saw Great Britain as their last defense against the land-hungry colonial settlers who were encroaching into their ancestral territory.

Following the alliance with Britain, Thayendanegea led successful raids in the civil war for upstate New York. On August 6, 1777, with the Patriots en route to relieve British-occupied Fort Stanwix, a mixed party of British regulars and Thayendanegea's Mohawk Indians launched the ambush known as the Battle of Oriskany, during which Patriot General Nicholas Herkimer was wounded and his horse was shot.

One year later, on September 17, 1778, Thayendanegea launched a successful attack on German Flats, now known as Herkimer, New York. Thayendanegea led a force of 150 Iroquois and 300 British Loyalists under the command of Captain William Caldwell against the small community, which had been left virtually undefended by Patriot troops.

The following summer, on July 20, 1779, Thayendanegea's party of 90 Tories and Loyalist Iroquois executed a successful raid in the Neversink Valley of New York, during which they destroyed a school and a church, as well as farms in Peenpack and Mahackamack. When the Patriot militia responded by attempting to ambush Brant as he traveled up the Delaware River on July 22, Brandt again defeated them, killing between 45 and 50 Patriots at what is known as the Battle of Minisink.

A little over a month later, on August 29, in southwestern New York near present-day Elmira, Continental forces led by Major General John Sullivan and Brigadier General James Clinton defeated a combined force of Loyalists and Indians commanded by Captain Walter Butler and Thayendanegea in what is known as The Battle of Chemung. Sullivan subsequently embarked on a scorched-earth campaign against the Iroquois in retaliation for their raids against frontier settlements. At least 40 of the tribe's villages were destroyed along with valuable supplies. As a result, the winter of 1779 was particularly brutal for the Iroquois. Nonetheless, they managed to increase their pressure on frontier settlements in 1780.

Despite the best efforts of the Iroquois, however, the Chemung Valley fell into the hands of American settlers following the war. As a result, Iroquois attached to Chief Thayendanegea followed him in a resettlement to Canada, where they found land and safety with their British allies.
READ MORE: Broken Treaties With Native American Tribes: Timeline

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On November 24, 1807, Mohawk Chief Thayendanegea, also known by his English name, Joseph Brant, dies at his home in Burlington, Ontario. Before dying, he

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Last Thursday, amid the ceaseless din generated by Interstate 95, some twenty participants gathered at Front and Market Streets in Old City to commemorate the memory of the celebrated Lenni-Lenape leader: Chief Tamanend.

Organized by Ryan Berley of The Franklin Fountain-which also provided tasty ice cream treats to those attending-the affair, at the base of the statue of Tamanend, included readings about the chief and the ringing of small bells by participants. The event was co-sponsored by the Friends of Penn Treaty Park and the Penn Treaty Museum. This year's observance builds on the momentum of the past few years to make Tammany Day better known in Philadelphia.

Chief Tamanend (est. 1628-1700)-variously called Tammany, Temane, Taminent, etc.-was the principal Lenni-Lenape leader who welcomed William Penn upon his arrival to this region in 1682. Tamanend (the "Affable One" in the native language) partnered with Penn ("Mikwon") to bring about the bold accord in which Quaker settlers and local Native Americans would live together peacefully in Pennsylvania.

In 1995, Tamanend was dedicated at Front & Market, the statue crafted by artist Raymond Sandoval. The great chief stands on a turtle (representing Mother Earth) with an eagle (a messenger of the Great Spirit) on his shoulder. The eagle is grasping a wampum belt symbolizing the renowned "Treaty of Amity and Friendship" between William Penn and Tamanend and his Indian colleagues.

The Treaty of Amity was reputedly agreed upon at the riverside location that is today Penn Treaty Park, about two miles north of the Tamanend Statue. The extraordinary gathering occurred in the fall of 1682 (some accounts say June 23, 1683) under under a giant elm tree (the "Treaty Elm") at Shackamaxon-an ancient Native American meeting place along the Delaware River in present-day Fishtown.

While the legendary treaty itself was probably an informal unwritten pact, it did engender relatively little strife between the Quaker newcomers and the Lenni-Lenape (later known to the English speakers as Delaware Indians) living in the region. Back then, an interpreter read the deeds that Penn had prepared to the native leaders, who allegedly then made their marks. Mikwon paid for Indian land with various goods, which Tamanend divided among his people. The Affable chief then gave Penn a belt made of wampum beads as a sign of friendship. It featured a depiction of two men clasping hands: one large and with a hat (Penn) and the other smaller and hatless (a Native American). The Penn family kept and treasured this belt until 1857, when a descendant gave it to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; it resided in their Art and Artifacts Collection until 2001, when it was physically transferred to the Philadelphia History Museum, then called the Atwater Kent Museum.

Chief Tamanend reportedly announced during the treaty summit that the Lenni-Lenape and the English colonists would "live in peace as long as the waters run in the rivers and creeks and as long as the stars and moon endure." Unfortunately, white settlers after William Penn-including Penn's own offspring-did not respect Penn's fair treatment of the Lenni-Lenape and other Native American groups of Pennsylvania. Still, Mikwon's memory is still highly regarded by members of the Lenni-Lenape tribe to this day.

The Affable One was also highly regarded for years by local Quakers and other white settlers and their descendants. Tamanend appears to have been a brave, wise, and virtuous sachem, and his own Lenni-Lenape people esteemed his memory by bestowing his name on those that deserved those designations. In the American colonies, he was noted for standing for the politics of peaceful diplomacy, and he consequently became an all-American folk hero identified and venerated throughout the fledgling nation for both his nobility and his native roots. Tamanend was soon regarded as the "patron saint of America" and later nicknamed "King Tammany" as an insult to King George.

Tammany Day celebrations spread up and down the eastern seaboard from Philadelphia in the early 1770s. (This was about the time that Tamanend was "sainted.") Many calendars of the period listed "Saint Tammany's Festival" on May 1. Besides his memory being observed with feasts and festivities, social groups known as the Sons of Saint Tammany (or "Tammanies") sprang up during the War for Independence in opposition to the British-oriented societies of Saints George, Andrew and David. (The first Tammany Society was formed in Philadelphia in 1772.) Focusing on Chief Tamanend's American heritage, these organizations promoted local Tammany Day festivals, which replaced the May Day traditions of Europe. People danced in Native American style to music while holding a ribbon and moving in a circle around a pole.

Speaking of poles, the figure once atop the long-gone Indian Pole at the intersection of York Road and Wood Street, near Fourth and Vine, may have been that of Tamanend. The 85 foot high flagpole, with a sizable Native American figure perched on top, was supposedly put up in 1819 to commemorate the last Lenni-Lenape council held in Philadelphia. Or, it might simply have been raised as part of one of Philadelphia's annual tributes to Chief Tamanend.

In 1777, John Adams-in Philadelphia attending the Second Continental Congress-wrote in a letter to his wife about the Tammany festival in Philadelphia:
May 1, 1777: This is King Tammany's Day. Tammany was an Indian King, of this Part of the Continent, when Mr. Penn first came here. His Court was in this Town. He was friendly to Mr. Penn and very serviceable to him. He lived here among the first settlers for some Time and untill old Age... The People here have sainted him and keep his day.
The following May 1st, General George Washington and the Continental Army held a Tammany festival while camped at Valley Forge. These celebrations were so important that after the Revolutionary War, in 1785, George Washington appeared at the Tammany festival in Richmond, Virginia, with Virginia governor Patrick Henry. And starting in 1787, New York City had its first Tammany festival, with the chief eventually becoming known as the patron of New York's Democratic political machine (a.k.a. "Tammany Hall").

In 2003, two resolutions were introduced in the United States Congress that sought to establish "St. Tammany Day" on May 1 as a national day of recognition. While the Subcommittee on Civil Service and Agency Organization has not taken any action on these bills, last week's ceremony in Philadelphia was definitely a modern reawakening of the 18th and early-19th century homages to Tamanend.

As for the Treaty of Amity and Friendship: The French philosopher Voltaire hailed it as "the only treaty between those nations and the Christian nations which was never sworn to and never broken." Its imagery-the Treaty Elm in particular-became a worldwide symbol of religious and cultural tolerance and an inspiration to the drafters of the U.S. Constitution.

Native Americans have always respected the location of this legendary event along the Delaware River, handing down its story in their oral tradition. They have gathered on numerous occasions at Penn Treaty Park, which was officially established in 1893 as the first public park on the edge of the Delaware. The purpose of Penn Treaty Park has always been to honor the treaty. Decades before, in 1827, the Penn Society erected a monument at this sacred place; the Penn Treaty Monument still resides in the park, weathered by nearly two centuries outside, commemorating the Treaty of Amity and Friendship between Penn, Tamanend, and their peoples.

About the Author

Harry Kyriakodis Harry Kyriakodis, author of Philadelphia's Lost Waterfront (2011), Northern Liberties: The Story of a Philadelphia River Ward (2012) and The Benjamin Franklin Parkway (2014), regularly gives walking tours and presentations on unique yet unappreciated parts of the city. A founding/certified member of the Association of Philadelphia Tour Guides, he is a graduate of La Salle University and Temple University School of Law, and was once an officer in the U.S. Army Field Artillery. He has collected what is likely the largest private collection of books about the City of Brotherly Love: over 2700 titles new and old.

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Respectfully Remembering the Affable One

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On a recent day in early May, a group of citizens gathered in Old City to honor Tamanend, whose tall statue resides over the I-95 on-ramp at Front & Market Streets. Harry K.

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Chief Powhatan was the father of Pocahontas and the ruler of the tribes that lived in the area where English colonists founded the Jamestown settlement in 1607.

Who Was Powhatan?

Born sometime in the 1540s or 1550s, Chief Powhatan became the leader of more than 30 tribes and controlled the area where English colonists formed the Jamestown settlement in 1607. He initially traded with the colonists before clashing with them. The marriage of his daughter, Pocahontas, to a colonist led to another period of peace that was still in effect when Powhatan died in Virginia in April 1618.

Leader of the Powhatan

The future Chief Powhatan was born Wahunsenacawh (sometimes written as Wahunsunacock) sometime in the 1540s or 1550s. Very little is known of his early life growing up in a Powhatan settlement. The Powhatan were a matrilineal society, so his right to be chief was inherited from his mother.

When he first became chief, Powhatan ruled about six tribes. In addition to the Powhatan, these were the Pamunkey, the Arrohateck, the Appamattuck, the Youghtanund and the Mattaponi. Using both alliances and war, Powhatan would expand his influence to be the ruler of around 30 tribes. Each one had its own chief, known as a werowance, but they also answered to Powhatan. This meant that they fought on his side in conflicts and paid him tribute.

The territory Powhatan controlled was called Tsenacommacah, or Tenakomakah. It had a population of about 14,000 people and covered about six thousand square miles. Tsenacommacah was made up of what is now tidewater Virginia, the Chesapeake Bay's eastern shore and possibly southern Maryland. As its chief, Powhatan was wealthy, which allowed him to have many wives and many children (one of which was a daughter, Pocahontas).

Arrival of Jamestown Colonists

While it is not known when Powhatan became chief, he was in power when the English who would form the Jamestown settlement arrived in April 1607. In June, Powhatan sent an ambassador to the colony to seek peace. After the harvest, he also allowed food to be delivered, which helped keep the struggling colonists alive.

In the winter of 1607, Captain John Smith was captured and brought to Powhatan's capital of Werowocomoco. Smith later wrote that Pocahontas saved his life during this time. His accounting of this rescue may have been an exaggeration, as it did not appear until 1624. It is also possible that he misinterpreted a mock execution ceremony that was intended to bind Smith to Powhatan and his tribe.

Smith was released the next year but soon returned to Werowocomoco to negotiate with Powhatan. Seeking weapons that would help him defeat his enemies, and open to other trade as well, Powhatan agreed to supply the colonists with food. However, the colonists continued to explore and encroach upon Powhatan's land, which disrupted the truce. Their determination to make Powhatan a subject of the English king also caused difficulties. By 1609, Powhatan had abandoned Werowocomoco and distanced himself from the English by moving to a new capital, Orapax.

Growing Conflict

Relations worsened between Powhatan and the English as he tried to maintain control of his territory. In November 1609, Powhatan invited a group of colonists to his new settlement. Instead of trading with them as promised, an attack followed and most of the group was killed. Powhatan then cut off trade with the colonists and ordered those who left the Jamestown fort to be attacked. The settlers had a difficult time until new supplies and leadership arrived in the summer of 1610. At this point, they began to strike out more forcefully against the tribes.

Pocahontas was captured by the colonists in 1613. Trying to secure her release, Powhatan returned a few English to the fort, along with some of the guns that his people had taken. However, Powhatan did not meet all of the colonists' demands, so Pocahontas remained in captivity. She soon converted to Christianity and drew the interest of colonist John Rolfe. Powhatan consented to Pocahontas marrying Rolfe, which led to another period of calm between his tribes and the settlers.

Death and Legacy

The peace that came with Pocahontas's marriage lasted for the rest of Powhatan's life. After traveling to England with her husband, Pocahontas died there in 1617. Powhatan died soon after, in April 1618, in the territory that is now part of Virginia. Powhatan was succeeded by his brother, Opitchapam, and then by another brother, Opechancanough. Under Opechancanough, war with the colonists would begin again.

Powhatan was an impressive ruler who had amassed a great deal of power and influence before the arrival of the Jamestown colonists upended his way of life. He ably countered their actions, but numbers and weaponry were not on Powhatan's side for long.

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Chief Powhatan was the father of Pocahontas and the ruler of the tribes that lived in the area where English colonists founded the Jamestown settlement in 1607. Born sometime in the 1540s or 1550s, Chief Powhatan became the leader of more than 30 tribes and controlled the area where English colonists formed the Jamestown settlement in 1607.

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Lushootseed What is That Animal Tutorial Lesson 1.3

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Four Seasons Hotel Seattle * 10.06.2022 @ 11:30 AM
After more than 100 years of dreaming, we will have a new central waterfront park, where people can gather to continue old traditions and create new ones.

Join us on October 6 at the Four Seasons for HistoryLunch as we look at how the stories of Dzidzilalich and Seattle are woven together, and marvel at an immersive experience that will reveal the Waterfront Park to come.

We promise you a program you will never forget!
Register at HistoryLink.org/Lunch Can't attend? Donations are welcome!

Hispanic Heritage Month
This week HistoryLink recognizes National Hispanic Heritage Month (celebrated from September 15 to October 15) with a look at the many roles Hispanics have played in Washington history. We begin with Spanish explorer Juan Perez, who in 1774 led the first European exploration of the Pacific Northwest. After traveling the Pacific Coast as far north as Alaska, Perez returned to Mexico, but soon made his way back to "Nueva Galicia" with Bruno de Hezeta. In 1775, they landed at the future site of Grenville Bay and laid claim to the Pacific Northwest for Spain. Their joy of accomplishment was shattered later that day when seven of their crew members were killed by Quinault warriors. A third expedition was made in 1779, but Spain would later cede its claims to the British.

Before Washington became a state, small numbers of Mexican immigrants found work in the mining industry as mule packers. More moved north in the late 1910s during the political turmoil of the Mexican Revolution, but the watershed moment for Latino settlement in Washington state came during World War II, when labor was sorely needed on Eastern Washington farms. The federal Bracero program contracted Mexican migrant workers, whose numbers greatly added to the growth of such towns as Wapato, Grandview, Prosser, Tieton, and much of Yakima County.

Since then, Hispanic men and women in Washington have shown their influence in schools, labor unions, the civil-rights movement, government, media, and the arts. And this October marks the 50th anniversary of Seattle's El Centro de La Raza, the "Center for the People of All Races," which has been overseen since 2009 by Estela Ortega (shown above, next to her late husband Roberto Maestas.)
World at War
Eighty years ago this week, on September 21, 1942, Boeing's B-29 bomber -- a top-secret aircraft that the company had been working on before America's entry into World War II -- made its maiden flight. Although the project later suffered a setback, thousands of B-29s were eventually used in the Pacific theater, and the Superfortress became the first, and so far last, aircraft to drop atomic bombs during wartime.

The same day that Boeing engineers watched the prototype B-29 take to the air, military brass were gathered near Oak Harbor for the opening of Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. During World War II, NAS Whidbey was used to train fighter and patrol-bomber crews and remains the Navy's principal air facility north of San Francisco and west of Chicago.

The day after the B-29 launch and the opening of NAS Whidbey, one more wartime event took place that few knew about at the time. President Franklin Roosevelt made a secret visit to Washington that the press was ordered not to report. He arrived by train, stopping first at Fort Lewis. From there he traveled north to tour the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard near Bremerton, and then viewed Boeing bombers being assembled in Seattle. After spending the night at his daughter's home on Mercer Island, he traveled the next day with her to Vancouver, where they toured the Alcoa plant before heading off to a ship launch at the Kaiser shipyard in Portland.

Land Acquisition

On September 20, 1853, the Upper Yakamas in the Wenas Valley hosted the Longmire-Byles wagon train, headed for Naches Pass. Chief Owhi himself supplied the pioneers with produce from his gardens. Three decades later, David Longmire, who was just nine years old in 1853, returned to the Wenas Valley and purchased the site of Owhi's gardens, adding it to his farm.

Plenty of Fishin'

On September 20, 1888, the Northwest's commercial halibut fishery began when the schooner Oscar and Hattie arrived at Tacoma with 50,000 pounds of the tasty fish. Thirty-five years later, fish stocks had declined so drastically that the Pacific Halibut Convention was signed, and today the fishery is one of the world's healthiest.

Leading the Nation

On September 20, 1971, John Singer and Paul Barwick requested a marriage license in Seattle, but were denied. They later filed one of the first same-sex-marriage lawsuits in the United States, but their claims of discrimination were rejected by the courts. It wasn't until 2012 that Washington became one of the first states to approve marriage equality by popular vote.

Incorporation

Quite a few Washington cities celebrate birthdays this week, beginning with Port Orchard, which incorporated as Sidney on September 15, 1890. Sunnyside incorporated on September 16, 1902, and Wapato did the same exactly six years later. Grandview's incorporation was certified on September 20, 1909, and Gold Bar incorporated on September 16, 1910, while Moses Lake did so on September 15, 1938.

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Four Seasons Hotel Seattle * 10.06.2022 @ 11:30 AM After more than 100 years of dreaming, we will have a new central waterfront park, where people can gather to continue old traditions and create new ones.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Four Seasons Hotel Seattle * 10.06.2022 @ 11:30 AM
After more than 100 years of dreaming, we will have a new central waterfront park, where people can gather to continue old traditions and create new ones.

Join us on October 6 at the Four Seasons for HistoryLunch as we look at how the stories of Dzidzilalich and Seattle are woven together, and marvel at an immersive experience that will reveal the Waterfront Park to come.

We promise you a program you will never forget!
Register at HistoryLink.org/Lunch Can't attend? Donations are welcome!

Hispanic Heritage Month
This week HistoryLink recognizes National Hispanic Heritage Month (celebrated from September 15 to October 15) with a look at the many roles Hispanics have played in Washington history. We begin with Spanish explorer Juan Perez, who in 1774 led the first European exploration of the Pacific Northwest. After traveling the Pacific Coast as far north as Alaska, Perez returned to Mexico, but soon made his way back to "Nueva Galicia" with Bruno de Hezeta. In 1775, they landed at the future site of Grenville Bay and laid claim to the Pacific Northwest for Spain. Their joy of accomplishment was shattered later that day when seven of their crew members were killed by Quinault warriors. A third expedition was made in 1779, but Spain would later cede its claims to the British.

Before Washington became a state, small numbers of Mexican immigrants found work in the mining industry as mule packers. More moved north in the late 1910s during the political turmoil of the Mexican Revolution, but the watershed moment for Latino settlement in Washington state came during World War II, when labor was sorely needed on Eastern Washington farms. The federal Bracero program contracted Mexican migrant workers, whose numbers greatly added to the growth of such towns as Wapato, Grandview, Prosser, Tieton, and much of Yakima County.

Since then, Hispanic men and women in Washington have shown their influence in schools, labor unions, the civil-rights movement, government, media, and the arts. And this October marks the 50th anniversary of Seattle's El Centro de La Raza, the "Center for the People of All Races," which has been overseen since 2009 by Estela Ortega (shown above, next to her late husband Roberto Maestas.)
World at War
Eighty years ago this week, on September 21, 1942, Boeing's B-29 bomber -- a top-secret aircraft that the company had been working on before America's entry into World War II -- made its maiden flight. Although the project later suffered a setback, thousands of B-29s were eventually used in the Pacific theater, and the Superfortress became the first, and so far last, aircraft to drop atomic bombs during wartime.

The same day that Boeing engineers watched the prototype B-29 take to the air, military brass were gathered near Oak Harbor for the opening of Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. During World War II, NAS Whidbey was used to train fighter and patrol-bomber crews and remains the Navy's principal air facility north of San Francisco and west of Chicago.

The day after the B-29 launch and the opening of NAS Whidbey, one more wartime event took place that few knew about at the time. President Franklin Roosevelt made a secret visit to Washington that the press was ordered not to report. He arrived by train, stopping first at Fort Lewis. From there he traveled north to tour the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard near Bremerton, and then viewed Boeing bombers being assembled in Seattle. After spending the night at his daughter's home on Mercer Island, he traveled the next day with her to Vancouver, where they toured the Alcoa plant before heading off to a ship launch at the Kaiser shipyard in Portland.

Land Acquisition

On September 20, 1853, the Upper Yakamas in the Wenas Valley hosted the Longmire-Byles wagon train, headed for Naches Pass. Chief Owhi himself supplied the pioneers with produce from his gardens. Three decades later, David Longmire, who was just nine years old in 1853, returned to the Wenas Valley and purchased the site of Owhi's gardens, adding it to his farm.

Plenty of Fishin'

On September 20, 1888, the Northwest's commercial halibut fishery began when the schooner Oscar and Hattie arrived at Tacoma with 50,000 pounds of the tasty fish. Thirty-five years later, fish stocks had declined so drastically that the Pacific Halibut Convention was signed, and today the fishery is one of the world's healthiest.

Leading the Nation

On September 20, 1971, John Singer and Paul Barwick requested a marriage license in Seattle, but were denied. They later filed one of the first same-sex-marriage lawsuits in the United States, but their claims of discrimination were rejected by the courts. It wasn't until 2012 that Washington became one of the first states to approve marriage equality by popular vote.

Incorporation

Quite a few Washington cities celebrate birthdays this week, beginning with Port Orchard, which incorporated as Sidney on September 15, 1890. Sunnyside incorporated on September 16, 1902, and Wapato did the same exactly six years later. Grandview's incorporation was certified on September 20, 1909, and Gold Bar incorporated on September 16, 1910, while Moses Lake did so on September 15, 1938.

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Four Seasons Hotel Seattle * 10.06.2022 @ 11:30 AM After more than 100 years of dreaming, we will have a new central waterfront park, where people can gather to continue old traditions and create new ones.

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There was a time when the Indigenous women of the Pacific Northwest's coastal regions paddled their canoes to small, rocky islands once a day or so to care for packs of small white-furred dogs. The dogs would greet them, yelping and pawing as they implored their keepers for food. The women, in turn, would pet the dogs and dispense a stew of fish and marine mammal bits-not scraps, but quality food. Once the dogs (most of them perhaps females, probably in heat) had eaten their fill, the women might linger awhile to sing to them and brush their long white fur. The dogs-and their fur-were the women's source of wealth, and the women kept watch to ensure that no village cur crept onto the islands to taint the breed.

Once or twice a year, the women arrived as usual with a supply of food, but also brought mussel-shell knives. The dogs knew the routine: settle down and relax so that the women could cut away their white tresses, shearing the dogs as closely as shearers do sheep.

Back in their village longhouses, the women transformed that fur into yarn, spinning it and mixing it with the wool of mountain goats and adding plant fibers and goose down to make the thread strong and warm. They beat the yarn with white diatomaceous earth to deter insects and mildew. They dyed some of the yarn red with alder bark, tinted it a light yellow with lichen, and produced blue and black threads using minerals or huckleberries. The rest-an ivory-hued yarn-they set aside. Then the women set up their looms and began to weave, turning out twill-patterned blankets of various sizes, some with elaborate and colorful geometric designs, others with simple stripes. The dogs did more than provide fur. They were also part of village life: sometimes, a favorite wooly dog would keep a weaver company.

The finely woven blankets symbolized wealth, and also a connection to ancestors and the spirit world. They represented a person's generosity, too-great numbers of blankets were given away at potlatches, gift-giving ceremonial feasts. The blankets had other uses as well. Sometimes they wrapped together a couple in a marriage ceremony, or adorned a chief, while smaller ones might swaddle a newborn, or were worn as garments. People used blankets to negotiate the purchase of brides and slaves or to settle disputes. Blankets cloaked chiefs and other members of the nobility for burial. Proud owners stored their blankets in scented cedar boxes.

Indigenous oral traditions attest to a robust weaving industry in some coastal nations-such as the Cowichan on British Columbia's Vancouver Island and the Squamish on British Columbia's southern coast-that endured for thousands of years.

Eighteenth-century European explorers wrote about seeing flocks of wool dogs and observing people robed in blankets partly woven from the canines' fur. The material remains, however, are scant. Many scientists doubted the existence of wool dogs and the fabric. If it had been such a large-scale enterprise, then where were the textiles? Or the dogs, or their bones? A researcher who, in the 1970s, studied more than 100 weavings made during a time when using dog hair was plausible could not find a trace.

But new avenues of research have merged to underscore the presence, and importance, of the dogs and their wool.

Over the years, scientists have employed new techniques to study coastal peoples' blankets in museum collections-and discovered some that do contain dog hair, although blankets woven entirely from our best friends' pelts have yet to be found. Just last year, archaeologists and experts on animal remains reexamined thousands of mammalian bones collected from archaeological sites along the west coasts of Canada and the United States. Their analysis reveals that canids-wolves, coyotes, foxes, and dogs-were ubiquitous across the sites, making up nearly 10 percent of all mammalian bones. Further, domesticated dogs proved to be the most common type of canid.

"That was one of the problems," says Iain McKechnie, a zooarchaeologist with the Hakai Institute* and University of Victoria in British Columbia, and the lead author of the new study. "Any doglike bones were put in a catch-all category: canid." Until now, nobody had embarked on the time-consuming challenge of identifying such a large collection.

But McKechnie and his colleagues drilled even further into the data, far enough to find that in southern British Columbia, small-sized domestic dogs were particularly abundant. The weight of evidence points to one overwhelming probability: wool dogs. They played an important role in the social and economic practices of Pacific Northwest peoples, and they're a testament to a remarkable accomplishment-using selective breeding to invent a wool dog. "It was likely unique in the world," McKechnie says.

Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest's coastal regions have a deep and rich history with dogs. Wool dogs have been elusive, but they were part of communities that lived in the areas around Puget Sound, Vancouver Island, and the BC Lower Mainland for thousands of years.

Elders from the Nuu-chah-nulth communities on Vancouver Island's west coast and Coast Salish elders on the island's east coast and the province's mainland have described the care of these unique canines. They've told stories of how women weavers groomed and tended the dogs; never fenced or restrained them, but kept them isolated on small islands so that they would not breed with the hunting dogs; and fed them special diets. For anyone who breeds dogs today, that kind of effort speaks to the importance of the animals.

McKechnie and his colleagues went to great effort to support what they long suspected. The team analyzed data on 175,000 mammalian bones collected at 210 sites from southern Oregon to southeast Alaska over the past five decades. Of those sites, 173 had canid bones, and nearly 54 percent were identified as dogs. Domestic dogs were obviously a significant animal. "They were part of these Indigenous communities for at least 5,000 years," says McKechnie.

The scientists found that the second most common type of canid was the wolf, although wolf bones were found at only 19 of the sites-perhaps because the Indigenous people in this area believed it was spiritually dangerous to kill a wolf, says McKechnie. Coyote and fox bones were even rarer. But prior to the 18th century, wolves probably kept out coyotes, and foxes may have been restricted to the eastern Cascade Range.

Susan Crockford, a coauthor of the new study, first began to tease apart the canid bone collections in the 1990s. Because dogs descended from wolves, the two share many skeletal similarities, though dogs are typically smaller. Domestication adds other differences. In general, domesticated animals retain more juvenile features-as seen in dogs' shorter snouts and narrower skulls. Using these and other differences, Crockford revealed that many canid bones were those of domesticated dogs. Further, she found that these could be easily separated into two sizes: large and small, reflecting what the Indigenous peoples and early European explorers had reported. The coastal peoples had a large dog for hunting and a smaller one that they bred specifically for its long, white spinnable fur.

The new study supports Crockford's findings and further shows that these small dogs outnumbered the larger ones-especially on the south coast of British Columbia and in Washington State's Puget Sound. Coastal peoples had developed the wool dog as a separate breed.

The first Europeans to visit the region seemed intrigued by the numerous little white dogs. In May 1792, Captain George Vancouver noticed the dogs and weavings-he'd not encountered such an industry elsewhere in North America. He wrote about the animals, struck by these dogs that resembled large Pomeranians. "They were all shorn as close to the skin as sheep are in England; and so compact were their fleeces, that large portions could be lifted up by a corner without causing any separation." Indeed, he noted the dogs' "very fine long hair [was] capable of being spun into yarn." And the captain quickly put two and two together. "This gave me reason to believe their woolen clothing might in part be composed of this [dog] material mixed with a finer kind of wool from some other animal ..."

Sylvia Olsen, a historian and wool worker on Vancouver Island, has studied a few of the remaining samples of dog hair and goat wool blankets. She's also sheared and made yarn from her own dog, a mutt. Like others who've worked with dog hair, Olsen says that the yarn "doesn't bind like sheep's wool; it lacks the nubs and hooklike fibers." The coastal weavers mixed their dog hair with the wool of mountain goats, another highly prized commodity that was difficult to harvest, Olsen says, and would have been acquired through trading or by making long journeys to mountain goat territory far from Vancouver Island.

"They were making blankets up to 10 to 20 feet [three to six meters] long and very heavy, because of the many materials, including diatomaceous earth in them," Olsen says. That was a lot of fur.

Imagine a fine September day in 1828. Coast Salish people from Cowichan on eastern Vancouver Island are traveling down the Fraser River on mainland British Columbia, paddling a flotilla of 160 canoes, returning from a fall fishing trip. A formidable armada from a distance, perhaps, but the cedar-trunk carved boats are full of mothers, fathers, children-and dogs. The dogs are shorn; their remaining white fur just stubble. About half a dozen dogs are tucked in each canoe, making up a flock of nearly 1,000 dogs on this trip across the sea. It is likely a merry voyage, as the people sing and the dogs yip and yodel. European explorers noted that the wool dogs did not bark, but howled.

Perhaps the women brought with them baskets filled with dog fur to trade with other Indigenous communities for mountain goat fur. Some researchers think that it was the love of mountain goat fur that led to the wooly dog breed. Hunting the goats, which live in precipitous, rocky mountains on the mainland, was dangerous and time consuming, and not necessarily feasible if in another nation's territory. Even collecting goat fur in the spring as the animals sloughed off their winter coats required lengthy journeys. Maybe that's why some enterprising women hit on the idea of breeding dogs for their similarly colored hair, suggested Oxford University archaeologist Rick Schulting in 1994. If they were to keep their breed pure, they knew they had to devise a way to keep their female wooly dogs from mating with the village or (later) European dogs-islands provided a perfect solution.

But at Hudson's Bay Company trading posts, an insidious economic threat awaited the dogs and weavers: stacks of inexpensive, manufactured woolen blankets. They could be easily purchased for sea otter skins, and in general, the company and Indigenous communities engaged in a brisk trade.

Despite the wool dogs' abundance in the early 18th century, they were almost extinct by 1858, anthropologists say; the blankets, too, were increasingly scarce. It was far easier to acquire a ready-made woolen Hudson's Bay blanket than to go to all the trouble of caring for dogs, bargaining for mountain goat fur or traveling to distant mountains to search for it, cleaning and spinning the fur into yarn, and then producing the weavings. The wooly dogs disappeared, too, as the women ceased isolating them and they interbred with village and European dogs.

As the wool dogs disappeared, so too did the prime evidence for the Pacific Northwest peoples' invention. Because the dogs as a distinct breed no longer exist, scientists cannot easily trace their evolution. They do know that the earliest dogs in the Americas were a lineage of now-extinct Arctic dogs. They were probably used for hunting, hauling supplies, and guarding camps-not unlike some breeds today-and traveled with their human companions from Eurasia some 10,000 years or more ago.

It's likely some type of dog traveled with human migrants into western North America from Siberia and other parts of Asia and did not go extinct. At some point, over 10,000 years ago, people and their dogs settled the Pacific Northwest coastal regions. Scientists don't know when people began selectively breeding the wool dogs, or what type of dog they used. But they likely started their wool dog breed by working with a spitz-like dog-dogs that have thick, dense fur; pointed ears and muzzles; and fluffy tails that curl up and over their rears. A spitz actually describes several such breeds today, including the Samoyed, American Eskimo dog, Shiba Inu, and chow chow-all of which descend from ancient breeds that evolved in Arctic regions and fit early European explorers' descriptions of the wool dog.

In academic retrospect, it makes sense that Indigenous peoples zeroed in on animal breeding early on. Coastal communities cultivated plants and practiced mariculture. They built clam gardens and managed salmon fisheries. "These were not subsistence cultures," says McKechnie. "The people were thriving, and they had ample free time to develop arts and add cultural material to their lives. Some of that time they invested in dog husbandry." The only other domesticated species in North America prior to the arrival of Europeans was the turkey, Meleagris gallopavo, bred by Indigenous peoples in central Mexico about 800 BCE. The Indigenous peoples in the Pacific Northwest did not breed dogs to eat, McKechnie says.

Dogs were so important to people on the coast that the canines were sometimes buried in association with humans-a practice not extended to other animals. The anthropologist William Elmendorf, who studied linguistics of the Coast Salish peoples, noted in his studies, which began in the 1930s, that especially valued dogs were typically wrapped in blankets prior to being buried. More recently, Washington State University graduate student Matthew Marino analyzed numerous such burials and concluded that some dogs operated as persons in the Coast Salish world, a conclusion that echoes Indigenous elders. Chief Janice George, who resurrected the art of weaving in the Squamish Nation has written about this special relationship. "You should think about blankets as merged objects," she wrote in the opening paragraph of Salish Blankets: Robes of Protection and Transformation, Symbols of Wealth. "They are alive because they exist in the spirit world. They are the animal. They are part of the hunter; they are part of the weaver; they are part of the wearer."

Coast Salish and Nuu-chah-nulth narratives are also rich with stories involving dogs-describing dog-human marriages, supernatural sexual relations and conception, and the passage of names and wealth from people to their dogs. One such narrative tells of a female dog and male human mating; their offspring become a new human community after a flood. And a Nuu-chah-nulth narrative explains the origin of the Broken Group Islands in Barkley Sound (off the southwest coast of Vancouver Island), says Denis St. Claire, an independent archaeologist, coauthor of the new study, and representative of the Tseshaht, a Nuu-chah-nulth nation. According to this supernatural tale, a chief's daughter gives birth to four curly, white-haired dogs, leading her people to abandon her. The four puppies transform into four strong young men who avenge the spurning of their mother when they spy their kin's canoes approaching-they wash their long hair in the sea, creating whitecaps that cause all the canoes to capsize. "All the peoples' boxes and goods were left floating in the sea; they turned into the Broken Group Islands," says St. Claire. "The dogs were not just cute and cuddly, they play a major role in spiritual beliefs."

It's fitting that in 2019, St. Claire and his colleagues completed the excavation of a wool dog skeleton dated to 800 years ago on Keith Island (Kakmakimilh), one of the islands in the Broken Group, in the territory of the Tseshaht Nation.

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As persons and ancestors, dogs were entitled to a better life than other animals. And since wool dogs provided wealth via their fur, they were accordingly well fed and treated kindly. The dog bones that Marino examined showed little damage, although some puppies may have been sacrificed to accompany the burial of a child; one adult dog had a healed broken vertebra, indicating it had been cared for long enough to recover from an injury. The wool dogs, in particular, ate well. According to another new paper by McKechnie and led by University of Victoria graduate student Dylan Hillis, dogs from sites in the Tseshaht Nation territory dating to 2,900 to 300 years ago were fed a rich mixture of salmon, herring, anchovies, and marine mammals-a diet likely similar to that of their human companions. The researchers teased out this information by analyzing chemicals in the dogs' bones.

Christyann Darwent, a zooarchaeologist at the University of California, Davis, who studies animal remains, including those of sled dogs in the Arctic, says the existence of such a unique breed says a lot about the people. "These dogs weren't simply scavenging for scraps at the margins of a village; they were being cared for," Darwent says. To create such a dog, she says, "takes effort, a surplus of food-and a love of dogs." In the broader story of dog domestication, Carly Ameen, a zooarchaeologist at the University of Exeter in England who has studied the Inuit peoples' sled dogs, points out that the new research focuses on a different part of the narrative about humans and dogs: what happens after dogs' initial domestication.

"Studying domestic dogs in the Americas is interesting because-unlike in Eurasia-we don't have the [puzzle] of figuring out their actual domestication," she says. In Eurasia, the long-standing riddle facing archaeologists is determining when and where dogs were first domesticated. Instead, the dogs that arrived in the Americas with humans were already dogs. The new research "explores ... how they've evolved and adapted alongside their human companions to fit into a wide range of roles," Ameen says.

In his 1994 study, Schulting had identified one blanket as having dog fur. Pieces of a blanket donated to British Columbia's Simon Fraser University in 1978 provided the clue. The blanket had wrapped an infant laid to rest sometime between 1770 and 1860 and was found in Yale, British Columbia, along the Fraser River. The tightly woven fabric features a diamond twill pattern, and though stained, it was probably originally white, off-white, or brown. Schulting tested the stable isotopes in the fibers and found they contained a high percentage of protein derived from primarily eating marine animals-likely salmon. It "would be a strange mountain goat indeed" that lived on such a diet, he noted in his study. The fabric had to be from the elusive Salish wool dog.

It was, however, a dog named Mutton who cleared the way for definitively identifying wool dog fur.

Sometime before 1858, Mutton, a wooly dog, had found himself a new keeper, George Gibbs, a 19th-century ethnographer with the Pacific Railroad Survey and the Northwest Boundary Survey. Gibbs studied the customs and languages of peoples in the Pacific Northwest, and in his notes on the Nisqually language, he recorded the name of the dog wool blankets as Ko-matl'-ked. Mutton likely came from a Coast Salish village in British Columbia. Gibbs named the dog for his love of chasing sheep.

Not too much is known about Mutton in life, though apparently goats also attracted him. In 1859, Mutton ate the head off a mountain goat skin that was in Gibbs's care, bringing a colleague to near tears. Naturalist C. B. R. Kennerly had meant to send the skin as a specimen to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. "[Gibbs] sent it to me yesterday & when I opened the bag & saw the injury I could almost have cried," Kennerly wrote in a letter. And more ominously, he added, "Mutton was sheared a short time ago, & as soon as his hair grows out we will make a specimen of him." Which they did, at some point. In death, Mutton has shared the very essence of himself-his pelt-likely the only known wool dog hide to exist.

Mutton's pelage, however, tucked in a drawer at the Smithsonian, was only found in 2002, after historian Candace Wellman in Bellingham, Washington began digging into the historical record. Elaine Humphrey, a scanning electron microscope specialist at the University of Victoria, matched fibers from Coast Salish blankets to fibers from Mutton's pelt. In 2011, another study at the Smithsonian of 11 blankets-woven before 1862-revealed that seven contained wool dog fibers. And in 2016, Coast Salish spinning researcher Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa began a fellowship at the University of Washington's Burke Museum to study woven blankets. Peering closely at a small tear in the fabric of a blanket, she could see individual threads that she identified as sinew, likely from a deer or elk, and cedar fibers, but also wool that looked a lot like the wooly dog hair she had seen at the Smithsonian on an earlier research trip. Humphrey's subsequent microscopic analysis supported Hammond-Kaarremaa's hunch: the blanket did indeed contain wool dog fur. As Hammond-Kaarremaa said at the time, the find "confirms and validates First Nations oral history."

There is no doubt wool dogs underpinned a robust weaving industry on the coast, an activity noted in archaeological digs. For instance, excavations in the 1970s at the Makah village of Ozette on the westernmost point of today's Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, uncovered wooden looms, spinning whorls, combs, and beaters, as well as miniature looms for training children. A landslide-probably caused by an earthquake on January 26, 1700-had destroyed the village and buried several cedar longhouses beneath a three-meter wall of mud.

The disaster preserved numerous belongings of the people-kin to the Nuu-chah-nulth-including one blanket containing dog fur that was largely intact, as it was stored in a cedar wood box. They were very productive weavers. "They built 25-foot [7.5-meter] longhouses of cedar," says Dale Croes, an archaeologist at Washington State University, who helped on the excavation. "They could easily fit three to four looms inside. We calculated they could have easily had nine weavers per household. It was an absolute industry."

The discoveries are paying off for the Coast Salish people. Once again, women are picking up the ancient craft, albeit without the fibers of dog wool, and galleries and museums have held exhibitions of their weavings. The art of weaving is "the heartbeat of our nation," wrote Squamish elder Joy Joseph-McCullough or Siyaltenaat (her ancestral name) in Salish Blankets: Robes of Protection and Transformation, Symbols of Wealth. It's fine to have it beating again-even without the wool dogs' assistance.

* The Hakai Institute and Hakai Magazine are both part of the Tula Foundation. The magazine is editorially independent of the institute and foundation.

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The Dogs That Grew Wool and the People Who Love Them | Hakai Magazine

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There was a time when the Indigenous women of the Pacific Northwest's coastal regions paddled their canoes to small, rocky islands once a day or so to care for packs of small white-furred dogs. The dogs would greet them, yelping and pawing as they implored their keepers for food.

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A Decade of Disappearance: Bull Kelp in the San Juan Islands

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A presence/absence comparison of Bull Kelp canopies over a decade in Samish Traditional Territory, San Juan Archipelago, Washington

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For thousands of years, our Coast Salish ancestors relied on an expansive and diverse landscape and rich network of intertribal trade to secure resources and materials for our sustenance and culture.

ARTICLE 5 of the
1855 Treaty of Point Elliott

The right of taking fish at usual and accustomed grounds and stations is further secured to said Indians in common with all citizens of the Territory, and of erecting temporary houses for the purpose of curing, together with the privilege of hunting and gathering roots and berries on open and unclaimed lands. Provided, however, that they shall not take shell-fish from any beds staked or cultivated by citizens.

These resources were spread across the high mountains, inland freshwater river valleys, brackish estuaries and the tidal and coastal salt waters and islands of the Salish Sea.

In 1855, with the signing of the Treaty of Point Elliott, Tulalip's ancestors ceded millions of acres of our ancestral lands, but reserved our rights to continue our culture and way of life. The reservation of the Tribes' rights to hunt and gather is outlined in Article 5 of the treaty, referring to the "privilege of hunting and gathering roots and berries on open and unclaimed lands". Like fishing rights, these reserved land-based hunting and gathering rights are rights Tribes have always possessed, and not new rights granted by treaty. This provision of the treaty has been interpreted by the courts to mean hunting and procurement of all animals and plants used and gathered at treaty times.

As for most Western Washington treaty tribes, Tulalip's relatively small reservation land base cannot, by itself, furnish all of the foods, medicines, and materials and places needed to sustain our livelihood and culture. Our ancestors knew this at the time the treaty was signed, and ensured that our rights to continue our way of life on our ancestral lands outside of the reservation were acknowledged and maintained.

The Treaty Rights Office (TRO) staff works closely with other Natural Resources staff and divisions, Tulalip's Cultural Resources Department, and the Tulalip Tribes' Board of Directors to ensure these land-based treaty rights are upheld. We try to be vigilant and proactive in our approach, by tracking projects and policies that affect treaty resources and access to them, and by seeking opportunities to educate others to ensure these rights are recognized and accounted for within our off-reservation treaty areas.

Most importantly, TRO staff works to ensure that these hunting and gathering rights are not merely "paper rights" as outlined in the treaty, but are rights that tribal members today can exercise in a practical and meaningful way on the land (Watch video "Harvesting Plants for Spiritual and Physical Health" from Sustaining Our Culture: Management and Access to Traditional Plants of Public Lands Intertribal, Conference, October 2011.)

Since "Open and Unclaimed Lands" includes public lands, we work in close partnership with public land managers to evaluate the condition of treaty resources on public lands and access to them. (Watch video "Forging Partnerships" from Sustaining Our Culture: Management and Access to Traditional Plants of Public Lands Intertribal, Conference, October 2011.)

This agreement is much more than a piece of paper when it comes to the Tulalip peoples' historical relationship to the land as understood and valued by our ancestors. It is an instrument to acknowledge their historical legacy of respect for the land." (MOA Preamble, 2007)

In 2007, the Tulalip Tribes signed a historic agreement with the U.S. Forest Service to foster a strong working partnership and to ensure Tulalip's treaty rights were protected on ancestral lands that now lie within the national forests.

Treaty rights encompass more than an opportunity to pick berries, hunt game or harvest fish. Having a meaningful role on the ground, in the stewardship of these resources, helps reconnect tribal peoples to these lands and the teachings of their ancestors. In 2011, under Tulalip's MOA, a special Tulalip-Forest Service Co-Stewardship area was designated at swədax̌ali "Place of Mountain Huckleberries". swədax̌ali is a two square mile area in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest where Tulalip and the U.S. Forest Service will work collaboratively to sustain and enhance the area for treaty gathering and other cultural practices.

Tulalip has actively engaged in conducting research on public lands, and recently secured funding and completed a forest-wide study on the distribution and recreational harvest of huckleberries.

The Tulalip Tribes organized and hosted a three day inter-tribal symposium at Tulalip's Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve. The symposium grew out of our growing concern for the continued supply and availability of plants that are integral to our culture, and the need to ensure commitment on the part of public land managers to provide for sustainable, harvestable plant populations and the meaningful exercise of tribal gathering rights. Proceedings from this workshop include individual presentations, and the following photo gallery and videos:

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For thousands of years, our Coast Salish ancestors relied on an expansive and diverse landscape and rich network of intertribal trade to secure resources and materials for our sustenance and culture.

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In 2004, with the objective of supporting Coast Salish artists who were reviving the traditional Salish art style, we started commissioning limited-edition silkscreen prints (or serigraphs) from seven artists. Each edition counts 50 prints, and all prints are 22-inch square. By the end of 2015, we had 27 limited editions of 50 prints each.

Back in 2008, inspired by Susan Point's Salish Weave panel of nine carvings, we created a group of prints by taking prints numbered 1/50 from each of the first nine editions and called it Salish Weave Box Set I, 1/50. We carried on until we had 50 Box Sets I. In 2010, nine other commissions of limited-edition prints had been completed and assembled in the same way so that 50 Box Sets II, and by the end of 2015 there were also 50 Box Sets III.

Focused on raising the awareness of Salish art and artists, we gifted Box Set prints and other works to galleries, museums, colleges, and universities and supported exhibitions, displays, and publications. This journey led us to venture into supporting education at the University of Victoria through programs in Visual Anthropology and Indigenous Education. In conversation with a friend of the university, we learned that an elementary school teacher longed to bring 'real' art to the classroom. We made this teacher's wish a reality by giving Box Set prints to the teacher's school district.

This was 2014 and the seed of the Salish Weave School Program was planted. Its objective would be to give the same opportunity to teachers of all school districts located in traditional Salish Territories. The prints of the Box Sets became the Salish Weave 'working collection' destined for the classrooms.

At the beginning of the program, we simply distributed prints to some school districts of Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland. Soon, we learned of the new BC curriculum adding Indigenous perspectives in all subjects at all grade levels and realized that teaching resources were needed to support the use of the prints in the classrooms. To that effect, we initiated two projects.

The first project of the Salish Weave school program started as a pilot project in 2017 within the Cowichan Valley School District 79, and the project team members continue to develop new resources such as lesson plans and activities tailored to meet the diverse needs of their learners. The second pilot project was launched in 2019 in partnership with the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. This project ran for a year until early March 2020.

To learn more about the objectives and the deliverables of these projects, click on Cowichan Valley Project and UVic Education Project.

To view the prints of each of the Box Sets and which school districts hold them, view the Salish Weave Box Sets module below.

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In 2004, with the objective of supporting Coast Salish artists who were reviving the traditional Salish art style, we started commissioning limited-edition silkscreen prints (or serigraphs) from seven artists. Each edition counts 50 prints, and all prints are 22-inch square. By the end of 2015, we had 27 limited editions of 50 prints each.

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Between a Rock and a Soft Place - Hakai Institute

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Indigenous people of the west coast of North America used a range of techniques and practices to maintain or increase the production of culturally important foods, including clams. These practices…

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Indigenous people of the west coast of North America used a range of techniques and practices to maintain or increase the production of culturally important foods, including clams.  These practices are encompassed within age-old social, economic, and spiritual beliefs and practices of coastal First Peoples. One long-lasting and visible practice was the building of clam gardens.

What is a clam garden?

Clam gardens are ancient intertidal features constructed by the coastal First Nations of British Columbia (Canada) and Native Americans of Washington State and Alaska (USA), to enhance shellfish productivity. These features are made by constructing rock walls at the low tide line along the edges of bays and inlets, transforming naturally sloping beaches or rocky shorelines into productive, level beach terraces. While clam garden morphology, character, and setting can vary greatly, they generally consist of a well-sorted boulder wall built at the lowest tide line and a terrace on the landward side of the wall. By building the walls at particular heights in relationship to the tides (“tidal heights”), these features expand the zone of the beach where clams thrive. According to local knowledge, clamming beaches, including those associated with clam gardens, were kept clear of large rocks as another means to increase clam habitat. The flattened terrace created by garden walls can range in size from a few square meters on small beaches to well over a kilometer in length. These larger beaches are more like vast fields than ‘gardens’ in size.

Where are clam gardens?

There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of clam gardens that have yet to be recorded along the northwest coast. Rising or dropping sea levels, lack of surveying, and industrial development of the foreshore are among the main reasons why modified beaches are yet to be identified in some regions.  Mapping the locations of these features is slow-going. Given that most clam gardens are situated at today’s low-low tide levels, there are only about 40 to 80 daylight hours per year (May – September) when they are visible. Nonetheless, clam gardens have been recorded or observed from Alaska, through British Columbia, and into Washington State.

Photo and Image: Amy Groesbeck.

Photo: Mary Morris.

Clam gardens are sometimes visible from Google Earth satellite images. Photo: Dana Lepofsky.

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The Festival of What Works brought together thousands residents across Salmon Nation for online discussions, workshops, film screenings and panels discussing "what works" in our bioregion-from Alaska to California, and everywhere between.

Indigenous leaders, activists, scientists, authors and entrepreneurs shared practicall, replicable ideas at the leading edge of education, economic development, social activism, health, healing, food production, media making, the arts and environmentalism.

Last year's speakers and performers included: Wade Davis, Portugal.The Man, Stephanie Anne Johnson, Annita McPhee, Ryan McMahon, Harold R. Johnson, Gerry Oleman, Eden Robinson, Gisele Martin, Don Svanvik and Napaġiak Dalee Sambo Dorough, to name a but few.

Stay tuned for our 2021 schedule, launching September 28.

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The Festival of What Works brought together thousands residents across Salmon Nation for online discussions, workshops, film screenings and panels discussing "what works" in our bioregion-from Alaska to California, and everywhere between. Indigenous leaders, activists, scientists, authors and entrepreneurs shared practicall, replicable ideas at the leading edge of education, economic development, social activism, health, healing, food production, media making, the arts and environmentalism.

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TRIBAL COMMUNITY FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

Food sovereignty is an increasingly important issue among native communities across the world. As the industrial food system grows and wild food landscapes dwindle, many tribal people are severed from their traditional food ways. Native foods are not only nutritionally superior to industrial foods (particular something like freshwater chlorella), they are deeply woven into culture. When people cultivate, harvest, process, prepare and serve native foods, they build strong relationships with the land and with each other. We believe in the power and source of our indigenous spirits as being connected to the lands, foods, plants, waters and rocks of our ancestors.
Communities that exhibit tribal food sustainability and food sovereignty are those that:
* Have access to healthy food
* Have foods that are culturally appropriate
* Grow, gather, hunt, and fish in ways that is maintainable over the long-term
* Distribute foods in ways so people get what they need to stay healthy
* Adequately compensate the people who provide the food
* Utilize tribal treaty rights and uphold policies that ensure continued access to traditional foods
Tribal Treaties and Native Foods
A violent war for natural resources erupted between Indian people and settlers soon after non-Indians arrived in the Pacific Northwest. While settlers wanted to possess the land through ownership, Indian people wanted to access the land as they had for countless generations. This difference in world-view caused tensions and Indians became the target of animosity and violence, perhaps because they stood between settlers and the Northwest's rich resources.

In response to tensions, the U.S. government negotiated a series of treaties with 20 Indian tribes in western Washington in 1855-1856. Treaties are legally binding contracts under the United States Constitution. Tribes were recognized as sovereign nations and agreed to give up some land but reserved certain rights to ensure their cultures would survive. Among them were the rights to fish, hunt, and gather native foods.

Initially, the U.S. government was complacent about treaty rights, believing that settlers were primarily interested in farming as a food source. They were gravely mistaken. As Washington State took control of salmon harvests and treaty rights were denied, many American Indians revolted. Treaty rights were not upheld until what is commonly referred to as the "Boldt Decision" of 1974, which reaffirmed original treaty rights and established tribes as co-managers of salmon within the state.

In spite of U.S. District Court Judge George Boldt's decision in United States v. Washington, tension among sports and commercial fishers, the State of Washington, tribes, and tribal fishers has persisted. Other laws make it difficult for native people to access their traditional foods. New regulations require that Indian people get a permit for harvesting forest products, including berries and cedar. This costs extra time and money. There is concern that if native people do not exercise their rights to hunt, fish and gather, they will lose their rights under the treaties.

Soon after the treaties were signed, the U.S. government began distributing annuity foods that included pig fat, beans, flour and sugar to tribes. According to Rudolph Ryser (Cowlitz) chair of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, "The strategy was to wean people away from reliance on the land. Then they would not need access to deer, fish, and other traditional foods. They could become 'civilized.'" These annuity foods were used to create foods such as fry bread. Unfortunately, the lard was far inferior to the people's customary sources of fat from wild animals and fish. Carbohydrates, including wheat, were refined in a way that removed most of the fiber and made them into quick digesting high-gluten cereal and flour. Because milk and grains were not present in the traditional diet of Washington coastal tribes, people did not have the ability to digest lactose and high-gluten wheat. All of these may be factors in the subsequent development of chronic diseases, including diabetes.

In the 1930s, the U.S. government created the formal commodity foods program to help farm workers who were suffering from the upheaval of the Great Depression. Surplus grains and other foods were bought from American producers to keep prices stable. Commodity foods changed over time based on what surplus was available. These surplus foods were distributed to Indian communities. Many Indian People experienced growing up with commodity foods, including powdered milk that would not dissolve, poor quality meat, and processed cheese.

Tribal communities still rely heavily on government commodities and state and federal food programs to feed their people. While food that is provided has improved over the decades, it is often high in sugar, carbohydrates, and poor quality fats that increase the risk of diabetes and other chronic diseases. Fresh produce, good quality proteins and healthy fats that were the foundation to a healthy traditional diet are not as available in these food programs. Additionally, state and federal food programs often mandate what types of foods must be served, even if they are not culturally appropriate. This is where the importance of food sovereignty is evident. As tribal communities are able to produce more of their own healthy food, they become less restricted by food regulations.

Taking Control of Food Resources

For many reasons, tribal communities across the nation are striving to become more stable in their ability to provide their own food. According to the Food Sovereignty Assessment Tool designed by the First Nations Development Institute (2004):
Assuming power to localize your food supply affords opportunities to regain control of the most significant assets possessed by Native communities. Conscious management of food supplies affords opportunities for tribal use of land, deliberate control of health, sustainability of the environment, and maintenance or revitalization of cultural integrity.
Innovative techniques for building food sovereignty are growing in many tribal communities across the Northwest. The Nisqually Tribe support a garden program that produces enough native and non-native fruits and vegetables to supply tribal programs including Headstart, the elders program, community events, and individual families. The Suquamish Tribe have created a food policy council. Tulalip and other tribes offer community education programs that teach people how to harvest native foods and grow food in gardens. Farmers markets on reservations are helping to fill the gap in access to local fresh produce.

Building strong partnerships within communities is central to tribal food sovereignty. One woman from the Skokomish Tribe who fishes for a living spoke about how important it is to get to know people in your community who gather, grow, hunt or fish for food. Often these people are willing to donate food for tribal events or may be willing to trade. No person is an island. We each carry different knowledge and skills. If we rely on each other, it makes the community stronger. When we are active citizens that recognize our dependence on the environment and on other people, then we can maintain those relationships and pass them on to the next generation. This strengthens our social fabric and creates a balanced food system.

NORTHWEST INDIAN COLLEGE FOOD SOVEREIGNTY PROGRAMS

The Traditional Foods of Puget Sound Project

The importance of native foods emerged as a central theme through our Northwest Indian College Traditional Plants and Foods Program. In 2008 we started a community based research project to answer the question: How do we utilize research about traditional foods of Puget Sound Indians to create a healthier diet and lifestyle for Indian people today?

Through a review archeological research and ethnographic records as well as interviews with elders and native food experts, we identified native foods that are readily available along with locally grown foods that are nutritionally similar to native foods. Through community roundtable discussions we documented what native foods people are still using, what the barriers are to accessing those foods, and how to overcome those barriers. Finally, we hosted a 3-day cooks camp where 20 tribal cooks developed delicious, healthy, and inexpensive traditional foods recipes. Project findings, stories, native foods descriptions, a grocery shopping guide, and recipes were compiled in a book entitled Feeding the People, Feeding the Spirit: Revitalizing Northwest Coastal Indian Food Culture. Over 3,000 copies have been distributed within tribal communities. A native foods nutrition curriculum based on the project has been taught in three Western Washington Tribal Communities and will be released as a free access teaching tool in 2013. Read more...

The Lummi Traditional Food Project

In 2009, we began a program to increase access to healthy local foods and traditional foods in the Lummi community. Twenty Lummi families receive boxes of fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables throughout the spring, summer, and fall. The box includes recipes and instructions on how to prepare and preserve the foods.
One of the participants in the project said: Before the Lummi Traditional Food project, my children didn't know what zucchini was. When they saw me cooking a veggie stir fry, they asked if I could put that "green stuff" in the stir fry. Now, they enjoy eating more fruits and vegetables, and they help me cook using the CSA foods.
Through interviews with participants, data is gathered on the use of traditional foods, usual and accustomed resource sites, typical meals, meals for special gatherings, food preparation methods, and more. This program model will be useful in other tribal communities. Read more...

The Muckleshoot Food Sovereignty Project

To be a sovereign tribe, we need food sovereignty. When our ancestors signed treaties, they made sure we'd be able to flourish physically, culturally, and spiritually for centuries to come. Our Muckleshoot Food Sovereignty Project builds community food resources and helps knowledge keepers to share their gifts so we can sustain a healthy food system in the future for everyone. -Valerie Segrest, Muckleshoot, Project Coordinator

In 2010, we started a project in the Muckleshoot community that focuses on building community food security through examining the tribe's food assets, accessibility, and production potential. We offer hands-on workshops that feature the cultural teachings related to some of our most revered traditional foods including salmon, camas, elk and berries. Plus we use a variety of traditional cooking methods. We also help put on traditional foods feasts for community events and have coordinated the installation of three edible food gardens that feature both local and traditional foods. These gardens are both food production areas and educational spaces.

Collectively, through this program, the Muckleshoot community has instigated over thirty initiatives in the first two years alone. Every initiative has been requested by community members, and completely relies on community participation in order to be successful. In 2013, community members came together to form a coalition that is developing food policy, organizing tribal food purchasing power, and creating a multi-year food sovereignty plan by 2014. Wendy Burdette, Muckleshoot, Elders Program Coordinator for the Muckleshoot Tribe, says:
Food sovereignty is important to us. Historically, we had good access to many types of seasonal foods from a variety of ecosystems. Sadly, this is no longer the case. This program is great because it lets youth work with elders. Cultural sharing is done the traditional way. It's passed along orally.
Books on Food Sovereignty

Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for Food Justice. This booktakes you on a journey through many of the current globalized food system's failures, and showcases creative solutions that communities worldwide are designing to regain control over their food, and the health of their bodies and neighborhoods. The Northwest Indian College Traditional Foods of Puget Sound Project is featured along with recipes from Elise Krohn and Valerie Segrest. Order from Community Alliance for Global Justice. http://www.seattleglobaljustice.org/food-justice/ofor/ or Amazon.com

Messages from Frank's Landing: A Story of Salmon, Treaties and the Indian Way (2000) by Charles Wilkinson

Red Alert! Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge (2009) by Daniel Wildcat

Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. (2007) by Raj Patel

Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming (2005) by Winona LaDuke

In Defense of Food: An Eaters Manifesto (2009) by Michael Pollen

Renewing Americas Food Traditions (2008) by Gary Paul Nabhan

Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart-Cookin'Mamas (2010) and Closing the Food Gap (2008) by Mark Winne

Food Movements Unite: Strategies to Transform our Food Systems (2011) edited by Eric Holt-Gimenez

Online Resources:
Community Alliance For Global Justice Community Food Security Coalition First Nations Development Institute Oneida Community Integrated Food Systems The Puget Sound Traditional Diet and Diabetes Project Renewing Americas Food Traditions Tohono O'Odham Community Action White Earth Land Recovery Project

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Food Sovereignty - NWIC Plants and Foods

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TRIBAL COMMUNITY FOOD SOVEREIGNTY Food sovereignty is an increasingly important issue among native communities across the world. As the industrial food system grows and wild food landscapes dwindle, many tribal people are severed from their traditional food ways. Native foods are not only nutritionally superior to industrial foods (particular something like freshwater chlorella), they are ...

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There are a combination of treaty and non-treaty tribes in WA State. Between 1854 and 1856 seven treaties were signed between the Federal Government and tribes. This included the Treaty of Point Elliott that encompasses the San Juan Islands. The Treaty of Point Elliott was signed on January 22, 1855 at Mukilteo and included the Duwamish, Suquamish, Lummi, Skagit, Swinomish, and Tulalip Tribes (the Tulalip tribes include the Snoqualmie, Skykomish, and Snohomish Tribes).

Links to the Treaties

Coast Salish Cultural Work Sessions

In December 2020 San Juan County Environmental Stewardship hosted a 3-session virtual workshop with Debra Lekanoff to share Coast Salish relationships through the Salish Sea and connections to the environment and resources and a discussion of best practices to working with Washington Tribes.
Along with Debra Lekanoff panelists included Jay Julius of the Lummi Nation, Patti Gobin of the Tulalip Tribes, Ray Harris of the Chemainus First Nation, Sam Barr of the Samish Indian Nation and the Stillaguamish Tribe, and Diana Bob from Native Law Firm.
These sessions have been made available for your viewing below.

In March 2021 San Juan County Environmental Stewardship hosted a second set of work sessions. These sessions, led by Stacey Bumbeck of Jacobs Engineering focused on the technical aspects of Section 106 requirements of the National Historic Preservation Act and local and state laws. Due to some sensitive material shared in the presentations, these recordings are only available to county staff upon request. Please contact Frances Robertson or Kendra Smith if you are interested.

Video 1: Coast Salish Relationship

Through the Salish Sea

Video 2: Science and Policy of the Salish Sea

Video 3: Best Practices to Work with Washington Tribes
For County departments please note that Environmental Stewardship manages four Archaeological Master Services Contracts, these are available to all County departments. If you have a project in the nearshore, or are required to have an archaeological review, please contact us to help select an appropriate firm for your needs.
If you have permit related questions about cultural resources, please contact Shannon FitzGerald at the Department of Community Development & Planning: Email Shannon Fitzgerald

For all other questions please contact Frances Robertson, Environmental Stewardship: Email Frances Robertson

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There are a combination of treaty and non-treaty tribes in WA State. Between 1854 and 1856 seven treaties were signed between the Federal Government and tribes. This included the Treaty of Point Elliott that encompasses the San Juan Islands.

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Indian Stories and Legends of the Stillaguamish, Sauks, and Allied Tribes

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Indian Stories and Legends of the Stillaguamish, Sauks, and Allied Tribes [Bruseth, Nels] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Indian Stories and Legends of the Stillaguamish, Sauks, and Allied Tribes

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Teachings of the Tree People: The Work of Bruce Miller

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Teachings of the Tree People is a tribute to the life and work of Skokomish elder Gerald Bruce Miller (subiyay), a nationally prominent cultural leader and teacher who brought his talents home to lead a cultural renaissance in the Pacific Northwest.
His story offers a powerful model of cultural and environmental stewardship. IslandWood is honored to have worked with Bruce as a cultural advisor and teacher.
"The trees were our first teachers."
Nationally acclaimed artist and Skokomish tribal leader, Gerald Bruce Miller (subiyay) interpreted the sacred teachings of the natural world to anyone who wanted to learn.
A passionate student of the traditional culture, Bruce became the bearer of the language, oral history, art and spirituality of the tuwaduq (Twana) and Southern Coast Salish peoples. This gentle and generous film documents his race against time and ailing health to pass the knowledge of his ancestors on to those who would listen.
The film chronicles Bruce's youth among his tribal elders; his young adulthood in school (Berkeley), war (Viet Nam) and on the stage (New York City); and his decision to return home and lead a cultural renaissance in the Pacific Northwest. It documents traditional practices of gathering and preparing cedar bark for weaving, uses of medicinal plants, and the presentation of wild foods for the fall Ceremony of First Foods. Throughout the film Bruce delivers lessons from our first teachers, the trees.
The four-part seasonal structure, gradually unfolding narrative, and currents of deep emotion make Teachings of the Tree People a poignant walk through Indian Country.

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This is a picture book but geared towards older students.

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Rising Voices: Writings of Young Native Americans

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Rising Voices: Writings of Young Native Americans

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On this day in 1912, Jim Thorpe wins the pentathlon at the fifth modern Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. At the time, Thorpe, a Native American who attended Pennsylvania's Carlisle Indian School, was only beginning to establish his reputation as the greatest all-around athlete in the world.

Born May 28, 1887, in Prague, Oklahoma, on a Sac-and-Fox Indian reservation, James Francis Thorpe was given the name Wa-Ho-Thuck by his mother, meaning "bright path." In 1908, Thorpe matriculated at the Carlisle Indian School, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and joined the school's track team. Two years later, Thorpe tried out for the Carlisle football team, coached by the legendary Pop Warner. At one practice, Warner challenged the inexperienced Thorpe to run the ball against the entire Carlisle team. Thorpe dodged, weaved and out-ran all 30 of the Carlisle players to score a touchdown. Warner was incredulous, and asked Thorpe to do it again. Thorpe did, and then joined the team as a running back. He was named an All-American in 1911 and 1912.

In the spring of 1912, Thorpe returned his focus to track to train for that summer's Olympics. On July 7, competing against the best athletes in the world in the Olympic pentathlon, Thorpe placed first in the broad jump, 200-meter sprint, discuss throw and the 1,500 meters, and third in the javelin throw to win the gold easily. Later in the day Thorpe failed to medal in the high jump and long jump competitions, placing fourth and seventh, respectively. His second medal of the games would come in the decathlon, which he won nearly as easily as he had won the pentathlon, breaking the world record in the event. At the closing ceremonies, where the medals were presented, Thorpe was introduced to King Gustaf V of Sweden. According to legend, the king said, while shaking Thorpe's hand, "Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world," to which Thorpe replied "Thanks, king."

Thorpe returned to a ticker-tape parade in New York City. In 1913, though, he was stripped of his Olympic medals because he had played minor league baseball professionally in 1909 and 1910. While he was not the only amateur athlete of his era to play for money to pay his bills, he naively did so using his real name and was easily caught. Also in 1913, Thorpe was recruited by New York Giants manager John McGraw to play baseball, which he did on and off with middling success at the plate in six of the next eight years. In 1920, Thorpe used his fame to help launch the American Professional Football Association (APFA), which eventually morphed into the NFL. Thorpe served as the APFA's first president and played for the league professionally from 1921 to 1926 and again in 1928. During his playing career, it was said that Thorpe could punt a ball with full force, and then sprint down the field and catch it himself.

In 1950, the Associated Press named Thorpe the greatest athlete of the first half of the 20th century. Before his death from a heart attack in 1953, Thorpe was known to entertain fans at NFL games by punting balls between the uprights in the end zone from the 50-yard line. The two gold medals stripped from Thorpe in 1913 were returned to him in 1982, 30 years after his death.

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On this day in 1912, Jim Thorpe wins the pentathlon at the fifth modern Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. At the time, Thorpe, a Native American who attended Pennsylvania's Carlisle Indian School, was only beginning to establish his reputation as the greatest all-around athlete in the world.

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Origin of Men's Lacrosse

What began as stickball, a native American Indian contest played by tribal warriors for training, recreation and religious reasons, has developed over the years into the interscholastic, professional and international sport of lacrosse

Edited by Jane Claydon
Lacrosse was started by the Native American Indians and was originally known as stickball. The game was initially played in the St. Lawrence Valley area by the Algonquian tribe and they were followed by other tribes in the eastern half of North America, and around the western Great Lakes.

The Native American games were seen as major events, which took place over several days.They were played over huge open areas between villages and the goals, which might be trees or other natural features, were anything from 500 yards to several miles apart. Any number of players were involved. Some estimates have mentioned between 100 and 100,000 players participating in a game at any one time. The rules were very simple, the ball was not to be touched by a player's hand and there were no boundaries. The ball was tossed into the air to indicate the start of the game and players raced to be the first to catch it.

The original wooden balls were later replaced by deerskin balls filled with fur and the sticks developed over time to become more sophisticated implements, the netting made from deer sinews. In preparation for a game players used paint and charcoal to decorate their faces and bodies.

Games of lacrosse were played for a number of reasons. It was considered a sport that toughened up young warriors for war but it was also a game played for recreation and for religious reasons. It was not unusual for bets to be placed on the outcome of games.

French Jesuit missionaries working in the St. Lawrence Valley in the 1630s were the first Europeans to see lacrosse being played by the Native American Indians. One of them, Jean de Brébeuf, wrote about the game being played by the Huron Indians in 1636 and it was he who the named the game "lacrosse".

A demonstration of lacrosse was given by the Caughnawaga Indians in Montreal in 1834.

As a result, interest in the game of lacrosse began to develop in Canada. A Canadian dentist, Dr William George Beers, was responsible for founding the Montreal Lacrosse Club in 1856 and a decade later he drew up rules which included reducing the number of players, introducing a rubber ball and a redesigned stick.

By 1860 lacrosse had become Canada's national game and in 1867 exhibition games were played in England. In 1876 Queen Victoria watched a game being played and remarked that "The game is very pretty to watch."

In 1883 a touring team from Canada and and a team made up of Iroquois natives visited Scotland.

During this tour promotional literature was distributed to the spectators pointing out the benefits of emigration to Canada.

By the turn of the century lacrosse was becoming more popular in several countries and in 1904 and 1908 lacrosse was played in the Summer Olympics.

Origin of Women's Lacrosse

The first-ever recorded women's lacrosse contest was played in Scotland

- By Jane Claydon

St. Leonards School, in St Andrews, Scotland claims to be the first girls' school to have played lacrosse in 1890.

1890 St. Leonards Women's Lacrosse Team
(courtesy St. Leonards Historical Archives)

The first Headmistress, Miss Lumsden, watched a game played in Canada, in 1884, between the Canghuwaya Indians and the Montreal Club, in Montreal and thought it "beautiful and graceful." As a result the game was introduced at the school.

A girl, writing in student magazine, reported details of the very first lacrosse match at St. Leonards on March 27th 1890: "After our crosses having undergone a severe inspection i.e. our referee holding them up one by one and squinting with one eye to see if that which ought to be plane surface was not a curved one. Our referee said it was time to begin, but, owing to the absence of the ball it was rather difficult for the order to be carried out. However, the ball was duly found & after '123 Play' had been called, a vigorous game began."

An official account of this first game indicated: "Whether the game on the whole has proved successful may be doubted, but at least we advanced so far in its mysteries as to get a good and exciting game in the matches. They were played in the field with teams of eight, and they lasted one hour, not including a ten minutes' interval in the middle, after which goals were changed."

The number of players increased to ten in 1895 and by 1913 there were twelve players, known by the positions in use today. The players used long sticks with short handles.

DATE

PLAYERS

POSITIONS AND NOTATIONS

Seniors (alumni) of St Leonards introduced lacrosse to schools in the south of England, specifically Wycombe Abbey School in 1896 and Roedean School in 1902.

Bedford Physical Training College and Madame Bergman Österberg's College of Physical Education in England added lacrosse to their programs in 1903/04 with the help of some of their students who had played at school. Trained teachers then introduced the game into their schools.

Initially lacrosse was a school based game and clubs followed later. The first club to be founded was the Southern Ladies Club in England in 1905.

The Ladies Lacrosse Association was founded in England in 1912 and international matches began in the following year. The "Standard" newspaper, dated April 18th 1913, stated that "in the very first international lacrosse match, held at Richmond, Scotland beat Wales 11 goals to 2.

The Scottish Ladies Lacrosse Association was founded in 1920 and at that stage international matches with England were placed on an official footing. Wales and then Ireland founded their organisations in 1930.

Rosabelle Sinclair, an alumnus of St Leonards and a former Scottish lacrosse player, was instrumental in establishing the game of lacrosse for women in the United States.

Despite earlier attempts by other enthusiasts, it was not until Rosabelle started a girls' high school team in 1926, at Bryn Mawr School, in Baltimore, that lacrosse became popular in other nearby schools. The United States formed their organisation, the USWLA, in 1931.

Lacrosse was played by women in Victoria, Australia, in 1936 but it was not until 1962 that they founded their national organisation, the Australian Women's Lacrosse Council. Canada selected an international team in 1982 to take part in the first World Lacrosse Tournament which took place in Nottingham, England.

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What began as stickball, a native American Indian contest played by tribal warriors for training, recreation and religious reasons, has developed over the years into the interscholastic, professional and international sport of lacrosse Edited by Jane Claydon Lacrosse was started by the Native American Indians and was originally known as stickball.

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Mary and the Trail of Tears: A Cherokee Removal Story

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Mary and the Trail of Tears: A Cherokee Removal Story

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An Indigenous People's History of the US

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An Indigenous People's History of the US

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Grades 3-5

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Grades 4-6

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American Indian Perspective on Thanksgiving

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American Indian Perspective on Thanksgiving

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American Indian Perspective on Thanksgiving

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School Thanksgiving activities often mean dressing children in "Indian" headdresses and paper feathers as they sing " My Country 'Tis of Thee" or " Mr. Turkey." Some teachers might even ask their students to draw themselves as Native Americans from the past, complete with feather-adorned headbands and buckskin clothing. These activities might seem friendly and fun, unless you are aware of how damaging this imagery is to perceptions of contemporary Native peoples. This imagery contributes to the indoctrination of American youth into a false narrative that relegates Indigenous peoples to the past and turns real human beings into costumes for a few days a year. It's not just bad pedagogy; it's socially irresponsible.

Native Americans have been speaking out and writing back against the colonialist narrative of Thanksgiving for as long as the American narrative has existed. More recently, comedian Jim Ruel (Ojibwe) includes Thanksgiving in his act ( starting at 1:40 in this clip), Dr. Debbie Reese (Nambe Pueblo) writes about children's books that "set the record straight," and Native American students speak out about what Thanksgiving means to them.

Doris Seale (Santee/Cree) and Beverly Slapin (Dakota/Cree/Abenaki) edited A Broken Flute in 2005, which includes a chapter that deconstructs the myths perpetuated about the first Thanksgiving. This chapter also includes critical reviews of many books on the market or readily available in libraries and classrooms. Providing ample evidence that many non-Native publishers, illustrators and writers are missing the mark in several critical ways, these books exemplify the ineffectiveness of good intentions, the perpetuation of misinformation and the exclusion of Native American voices and experiences.

Teaching about Thanksgiving in a socially responsible way means that educators accept the ethical obligation to provide students with accurate information and to reject traditions that sustain harmful stereotypes about Indigenous peoples. Thankfully, there are excellent online resources that can help educators interested in disrupting the hegemonic Thanksgiving story.

Challenging the dominant and inaccurate narrative about Thanksgiving, providing students with a more balanced perspective of this oft-romanticized holiday, and refusing to dress students in feathered headbands are socially responsible actions. They're actions that every teacher should undertake to benefit their students and the society their students will inherit.

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Teaching Thanksgiving in a Socially Responsible Way

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Educators have an ethical obligation to teach accurately about Thanksgiving. Here are some online resources that can help.

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A Racial Justice Guide to Thanksgiving  for Educators and Families

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Map of Federally Recognized Tribes in Washington State

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Map of Federally Recognized Tribes in Washington State