North American Porcupine - Erethizon dorsatum

When 28-year-old Lyle Eagle Tail entered the frothing waters of the Big Sioux River last year attempting to rescue 6-year-old Garrett Wallace and his 16-year-old sister Madison from the foam, he was following the way of the Lakota grandmothers.

Now the Lakota warrior's heroism, which cost him his life, has been recognized nationally. He is among 21 people awarded the Carnegie Hero Medal, the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission announced last month.

About 600 people live in Byron Nicholai's hometown of Toksook Bay, a Yup'ik Eskimo fishing village in Western Alaska. Five times that many people listen when he sings.

A 16-year-old high school junior whose first language is Central Yup'ik, Nicholai is quickly gathering an online following for videos performing an old-school Alaskan art. Beginning in 2013, Nicholai began recording clips of his singing and drumming on an iPhone and posting the videos to a Facebook page he created called "I Sing. You Dance."

Hopi High Media Students
Get Look Into TV, Radio And Print Journalism At NAU

Fifteen media students from Hopi High School visited the Northern Arizona University (NAU) Communications Department Dec. 2 to see what they had to offer and many were impressed.

The Hopi High students learned about NAU's TV, radio, print journalism and photography programs. They also viewed NAU's NAZ TV news program and participated in a mock TV news program of their own.

Native Americans represent just one per cent of the US population and some languages have only one speaker left. Now a new generation is fighting to preserve the culture.

Meet the women leading that fight:

Luger: Welcome to 'Well For Culture'; Reclaiming Ownership of Our Inherent Athletic Abilities

Welcome to Well For Culture.

In the Indigenous world, there is a beautiful and powerful movement taking place. It is a movement toward improved health, community wellness, spiritual health and mental strength. We are witnessing the development of revolutionary Indigenized fitness concepts, and a return to ancestral foods. It is an exciting time.

Acknowledging that our communities have, in many ways, been largely unwell for a century or so, the youth from all nations are now doing something about it. This is potentially a watershed moment for the peoples of the tribes of the Americas. This is perhaps that moment the people will look back on and say, "that is when our communities healed."

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 15TH ANNUAL NATIVE AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS WINNERS! Native America honored some of our most talented musicians and recording artists at this year’s NAMMY celebration. The Seneca Casino provided a luxurious backdrop for a star-studded ceremony, during which these awards were presented:

About three years ago, Niles Thomas sat in his mother's car outside of Gallup's Public School Stadium begging to go home instead of meeting the Miyamura track and field team.

Still a young eighth-grade student, Thomas was shy and unsure of his abilities as a runner.

But last Saturday, on Nov. 8, the once uncertain runner became a Class 5A cross-country state champion.

Over 14,000 years ago, much of North America was covered in ice, starting at the Alaska Range, and moving down all the way to what are now the cities of Chicago and New York. The ice was very thick — miles thick. Then, it abruptly melted over much of the northern hemisphere. Except in parts of Alaska. Around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, the ice in Alaska was close to its present configuration, with high mountain glaciers surrounding the Copper River Valley.

In Alaska, a still-cold part of the world, there remain many glaciers. And, many other icy geological features: Including gigantic “ice fields” and smaller permanent “ice patches.”

The remains of two Ice Age infants, buried more than 11,000 years ago at a site in Alaska, represent the youngest human remains from that era ever found in northern North America, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The site and its artifacts provide new insights into funeral practices and other rarely preserved aspects of life among people who inhabited the area thousands of years ago, according to Ben Potter, a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the paper's lead author.

Towering above the forest floor, aged and nurtured over centuries, an ancient cedar tree is one of Haida Gwaii's most impressive and inspiring sights. These pillars of the rainforest are a fixture of the Islands' contemporary life and economy, a fountainhead of Haida culture, and a continuous thread linking us with generations past.

Cedar was the foundation upon which Haida society was built. It bore the Islands' people upon the waves, put a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs, food in their mouths, recorded their history, their lineage, and carried the deceased into the next world. It was, as the late Haida artist Bill Reid once articulated so flawlessly, a material ideally suited to the place, the people, and the times.

Four Cherokees were honored Nov. 6 at the Greater Tulsa Area Indian Affairs Commission’s 17th annual Dream Keepers Awards Banquet inside the University of Oklahoma-Schusterman Center. Buddy McCarty, a Cherokee Nation citizen, was honored with the Lewis B. Ketchum Excellence in Business Award. CN citizen Mary Baker Shaw of Broken Arrow received the Charles Chibitty Family Community Award. Lester Revis, who is of Cherokee Yuchi descent, was honored with the Perry Aunko Indigenous Language Award. United Keetoowah Band citizen Mel Cornshucker received the Moscelyn Larkin Cultural Achievement Award for his work as an award-winning potter.

It's been ten years since the start of the Hopitutuqaiki (Hopi School) located on Third Mesa, Hotevilla.

But this year has been the most successful for the Hopitutuqaiki, with more collaboration with outside support education agencies, additional funding and more national recognition around the Hopi summer art school's integration of Hopi values, customs and cultural strengths in the curriculum.

Lila Greengrass Blackdeer has a talent she hopes won't be lost.

She's a black ash basket maker and she's been teaching many Tribal Office Building employees the skills of the craft.

For about three weeks, she has been meeting with Donna Littlegeorge, Sandy Winneshiek, Natalie Bird and Tina Warner. And while they're making their baskets, Lila has been teaching them the Ho-Chunk language, especially the terms for the materials and the directions for creating them.

It all started when Kamehameha High School Girls Cross Country Head Coach Joel Truesdell watched a 2002 movie by independent film-maker C.P. Goheen called "Lady Warriors" about the Tuba City High Girls Cross Country team who won four consecutive Arizona State Championship cross country titles.

Truesdell watched the documentary at two Hawaiian island high schools, Oahu and Hilo, and though he said that both high school audiences were deeply moved, even to tears in some cases, that it was really the Lady Warriors of Kamehameha High whom the film deeply resonated with.

The Cherokee National Youth Choir released its 12th CD during an Oct. 28 launch party at the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame. Cultural songs from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians inspired the 12-track CD titled “From the East.”

The CD offers listeners an opportunity to experience songs from the Cherokees’ ancestral homeland that are sung in the Cherokee language.

The launch party included a live performance by the 28-member choir and Cherokee opera singer Barbara McAlister, who makes a special performance on the album.

It is always difficult to get to the reasons why teaching Native languages to very young children in Minneapolis is unusual and rare. Today, the unlikely leadership for doing that and support for languages comes from a U.S. Senator from Montana, a state most known to be conservative.

Montana sits in the middle of the ten poorest states according to Forbes magazine and it moves along with its staple farming, ranching and mining, but contrary to ideas of conservative cowboys, it also sits in the middle politically, having elected both Republicans and Democrats to statewide offices. Jon Tester won office in 2007 and the other Democratic Senator, former Lt. Governor John Walsh, has been serving since February 2014 by appointment of Gov. Steve Bullock.

Native American artist Lillian Pitt feels a deep commitment to passing on the legends of her people to the younger generations.

Pitt, who is a descendent of Wasco, Yakama and Warm Springs people, has created many works of art drawing on the tradition of the Columbia River region, including sculpture, mixed media, clay, bronze, wearable art, prints and glass — and of course masks.

"Giving reference to the elders by duplicating the petroglyphs and using the basket designs in my masks has always been the basis for my work. And I always hope I'm doing it with honor and reverence," says Pitt.

Several days after Election Day, Janene Yazzie sat in the sand with her 3-and-a-half-month-old daughter, Seleste, between the towering red rocks outside Lupton, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation. Her husband, Kern, their 5-year-old son, and her friend, Kim Smith, the self-titled "responsible auntie," took turns firing a .22 at a target propped up by a soda can several hundred yards away. The group was enjoying a respite from tribal politics. On Nov. 4, Navajo voters at the polls had been instructed not to select a president. Though candidate Chris Deschene's name was on the ballot, he had been disqualified for not speaking Navajo fluently, a formal requirement for office. A special presidential election was planned, but had not yet been scheduled.

I was born July 10, 1938, in the Pine Ridge Hospital, the oldest child of Jackson “Joe” One Feather and Elva (Stinking Bear) One Feather. There were four brothers in the family: Morris, who was born in 1941, the twins Kelmar and Delmar who were born in 1952, and myself. My father was born and raised in Kyle on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. After he married my mother, they settled in Oglala in the Stinking Bear Tiospaye compound. I resided there throughout my youth and later established my own home where I married and had my children. I lived in a log home on the compound. My mother lived in a small house in the compound and lived to be 88 years old when she died in 2002.

There have been three intertwining themes in my life: the spiritual, the political and the academic. I have been fortunate to be selected and elected as a leader in each of these fields.

The month of November is Native American Heritage Month. A recent editorial by Kevin Gover, director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, suggests that "the vast majority of Americans have a limited -- and often mistaken -- understanding of Native American history."

That so? Native American languages can offer deep insights into our nation's history. Here's seven things to know about Native American languages.

Philosophy professor Dr. Herbert Benally visited Tuba City Unified School District Nov. 5 to share a presentation on the Navajo T'aa'Dine' teaching philosophy, which incorporates daily, clockwise four direction driven values and principles for teaching young students how to become successful, productive, honest, inspired and environmentally sensitive people.

In the next couple of months, a presentation for teachers and staff will take place on incorporating Hopi tribal values and lifeways into the daily curriculum and activities for the student population.