"Manahoo "
The Paiute Greeting
Welcome

"Cawapekasna wi"
Moon when the wind shakes off the leaves
Lakota

"A Warrior is challenged to assume responsibility, practice humility, and display the power of giving, and then center his or her life around a core of spirituality. I challenge today's youth to live like a warrior."
~Billy Mills~

The MacArthur Foundation has announced its 2020 class of MacArthur Fellows, honoring the creativity and originality of 21 Americans. The fellowship, known colloquially as the “genius grant,” awards each fellow $625,000 over five years for professional pursuits. Playwright Larissa FastHorse is among the grantees, along with singer and composer Cécile McLorin Salvant, fine artist Ralph Lemon, and a host of other visual artists, scientists, legal scholars, and writers. The full list of awardees can be found here.

“Larissa FastHorse is a playwright and performing arts advocate illuminating Indigenous processes of artmaking and storytelling as well as Native American perspectives on contemporary life,” the MacArthur Foundation released in a statement. “A member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, FastHorse combines a keen sense of satire and facility with dramatic forms in plays that are funny, incisive, and, at times, deeply unsettling for audiences faced with the realities of Native Americans’ experience in the United States.”

North Dakota Artist Nelda Schrupp Named Honored One At Red Earth Festival

Even 26 years later, Nelda Schrupp still recalls winning an honorable mention at her first Red Earth Festival.

In the spring, Gabriellyn Yazzie worked with students as a math tutor at Diné College. It was the type of job that required a lot of face-to-face interaction as students visited her throughout the semester for help.

"What I enjoyed the most was the one-on-one contact and teaching the students things that I have picked up over the years of being a student," Yazzie said.

An archaeological dig along southern Ontario’s Fischer-Hallman Road has unearthed traces of a Late Woodland Iroquois village dated to between roughly 1300 and 1600.

Researchers originally expected to find just a few artifacts. As of last week, however, they’d excavated more than 35,000 objects, including rare carbonized pieces of beans and corn, cooking ceramics, animal bones, and stone tools, reports Luke Schulz for Kitchener Today.

What started at the turn of the century as an effort to gain a day of recognition for the significant contributions the first Americans made to the establishment and growth of the U.S., has resulted in a whole month being designated for that purpose.

One of the very proponents of an American Indian Day was Dr. Arthur C. Parker, a Seneca Indian, who was the director of the Museum of Arts and Science in Rochester, N.Y. He persuaded the Boy Scouts of America to set aside a day for the “First Americans” and for three years they adopted such a day. In 1915, the annual Congress of the American Indian Association meeting in Lawrence, Kans., formally approved a plan concerning American Indian Day. It directed its president, Rev. Sherman Coolidge, an Arapahoe, to call upon the country to observe such a day. Coolidge issued a proclamation on Sept. 28, 1915, which declared the second Saturday of each May as an American Indian Day and contained the first formal appeal for recognition of Indians as citizens.

Navajo Preparatory School is the recipient of approximately $1.2 million in federal grants to advance a couple of programs at the school.

The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Indian Education awarded $949,650 to the school to expand its International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme and $294,840 for further development of the Diné Bizaad Center.

Navajo Prep will use the amount to bring the IB Middle Years Programme curriculum to sophomores and freshmen, which would prepare them to undertake the IB Diploma Programme.

"Listen to Granny" is something many Indigenous children have heard throughout their lives, but it's taken on a bit of a different meaning recently.

It's the title of a new COVID-19 safety video produced by the Blood Tribe's communications and community engagement department, which aims to help remind, inform and teach First Nations youth how to stay safe during the pandemic.

In just a few months, La Jolla teenager Elisabeth Holm has seen her nonprofit Sisterhood of Native American Coders grow immensely in her effort to encourage girls of indigenous heritage to learn about coding.

Elisabeth, a 16-year-old senior at The Bishop's School who is heavily involved in the school's robotics team and computer science track, began SONAC in her junior year to "get young Native American girls engaged in STEM [science, technology, engineering and math]."

Monday (October 12) is Indigenous Peoples Day. It's an alternative to the federal Columbus Day holiday that many people feel essentially erases Indigenous history.

The Native vote is vital in the 2020 election because our tribal sovereignty, lands, water, and the well-being of our people hinge on the outcome. But the Native vote is the most difficult vote to win. To understand why, we have to discuss the complex history of Native citizenship and voting rights to know how they continue to impact our current political realities.

Laguna Pueblo citizen Serra Hoagland, Ph.D. talks with us about her work and her recent AISES award and our own Joaqlin Estus joins us with reactions from Alaskan tribes over two bills and a lawsuit involving a mining road. Plus Stewart Huntington updates us on the tragic events surrounding one South Dakota boarding school.

Each year at the annual convention of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, professionals are recognized for their outstanding work. On today's show we'll talk with Laguna Pueblo citizen Serra Hoagland. She's this year's recipient of AISES's Most Promising Engineer or Scientist Award.

Her peers know her as an exceptional engineer. But to some Indigenous people, Sandra Begay is legendary.

"Like many Native American students in STEM, I knew of Sandra before I met her," said Suzanne Singer, who is Navajo and interned under Begay at Sandia National Laboratories in 2008. "She was the 'iconic' Native woman engineer -- an example of what could be achieved through hard work and dedication."

A Cherokee Nation citizen promoted from commander of the U.S. Army Security Assistance Command to brigadier general is now the only Native American general officer on active duty.

Brig. Gen. Douglas Lowrey, an Oklahoma native, was given his new rank during a ceremony Sept. 18 at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama.

"Honestly, I never thought I'd be standing here," said Lowrey, who was described as an "incredible" leader. "For me it's real simple – I love being a soldier."

Imagine an icy winter with temperatures below -30 degrees Fahrenheit. Animals migrate south en masse, the days grow dark as the sun hangs low on the horizon and snow lingers on the ground for months.

For the 400,000 Indigenous people living in the Arctic, this scenario reflects the reality of life in one of the world’s harshest climates. To survive in this environment, residents have had to get creative—a fact exemplified by the British Museum’s latest exhibition, “Arctic: Climate and Culture.”

In an interactive livestream conversation hosted by Native American Yale Alumni (NAYA), Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle ’03, the first enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI, one of three federally recognized Cherokee tribes) to publish a novel, discussed her experiences and evolution as a writer, Native Americans in publishing, and the importance of storytelling in Native American culture.

History cast a shadow over the 37th annual Elders and Youth Conference hosted by the First Alaskans Institute this week. The event normally draws hundreds of Alaska Native elders and youth aged 13 to 18 from across the state into Anchorage or Fairbanks. This year it was held virtually.

“Our peoples know the continuing devastation and trauma of colonization, attempted genocide and the diseases and pandemics that have also come to our shores. And no matter what, we survive because we know what matters most,” said an institute news release.

Thanks to a newly completed digitization effort by the U.S. National Archives and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC) in Santa Fe, researchers and the public now have unprecedented access to hundreds of these critical agreements.

Growing up in the United States, I remember on Halloween my mother used to say, “Honey, this is not just a day for costumes and candy. You must also remember your relatives. Know their names.” She would show me pictures of great-aunts, uncles and other deceased relatives.

Meanwhile, my family members in Mexico observed Day of the Dead, a national holiday that is celebrated from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2. They would build small altars at home to honor their loved ones, and put food, drinks, photos and other personal items on them. They similarly decorated their ancestors’ graves.

Nature's Beauty:
All About Scarecrows

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