"Grown men can learn from very little children for the hearts of the little children are pure. Therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss."
~Black Elk, Oglala Lakota Sioux (1863-1950)~

Just under year ago, Shina Novalinga posted her first video of her throat singing with her mother on TikTok. Now, over 1.6 million people worldwide watch the 22-year-old's videos about Inuit culture.

Novalinga, who started throat singing around the age of seven after moving to Montreal, said her account took off after her mother, Caroline, had the idea to post a video of them singing together.

As sixth graders, Citizen Potawatomi Nation tribal member Addison Taylor and her science partner Mayzie Burke won the chance to send their experiment to the International Space Station. The two became friends after teaming up in class at Summit Christian Academy in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.

Their STEAM teacher Stephanie Bradley focuses on curriculum that brings together science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics.

Deb Haaland, a member of New Mexico's Laguna Pueblo, has become the first Native American Cabinet secretary in U.S. history.

The Senate voted 51-40 Monday to confirm the Democratic congresswoman to lead the Interior Department, an agency that will play a crucial role in the Biden administration's ambitious efforts to combat climate change and conserve nature.

Well, we closed our gallery in March. I think everybody was like, "OK, we'll be closed for three weeks to slow the spread." We had an exhibition that was going on and the three weeks just kept going and going and then the [George Floyd] uprising happened and we ended up having to very quickly remove the artwork and then the gallery shifted into a response site for AIM (American Indian Movement) patrol and community folks protecting the businesses on Franklin Avenue and the gallery.

As statistics show Native Americans dying from COVID-19 at nearly twice the rate of white people, a Little Canada-based nonprofit has developed a way for those who own tribal lands to write a do-it-yourself will, free of charge.

Created by the Minnesota-based Indian Land Tenure Foundation along with other Indian legal services groups, the organization’s “Will-in-a-Box” offers an easy way for Native American landowners in three states — Minnesota, Montana and Oklahoma — to ensure their lands stays in the hands of Native people.

The plink plink, plink plink of maple sap dripping into metal buckets every spring sings a sweet song to Barbara Wall's ears.

"It's just one of those feelings, you know?" Wall asked. "After a long winter, you've got the warm sun on your face, and you can hear the sap drip into the buckets. It just makes me want to dance."

In the early 2000s, archeologists began excavating a rock shelter in the highlands of southwestern Honduras that stored thousands of maize cobs and other plant remains from up to 11,000 years ago. Scientists use these dried plants to learn about the diets, land-use and trading patterns of ancient communities.

After years of excavations, radiocarbon dating and more traditional archaeological studies, researchers are now turning to ancient DNA to provide more detail to their insights than has ever before been possible.

A Colorado landowner was inspired to return his land to Native Americans three years after purchasing it and being “haunted” by the “spirits” of its “rightful owners”/guardians.

When artist and plumber Rich Snyder purchased a few acres of land on Wild Horse Mesa in 2015, he had no idea what he’d find there.

He was just looking for inexpensive land to get off grid, build a homestead, and free himself from civilized life.

A Wisconsin couple's interest in horticulture and environmental education has inspired a unique and significant gift to the College of Menominee Nation (CMN). Andrew and Sharon Gleisner deeded to CMN the 35-acre garden that had been their personal project since 1975.

After extensive restoration and planting on the former farmland, the Gleisners opened the tract to the public in 2000 as Arbor View Gardens. Its botanical array features many varieties of wildflowers and other flowering plants, the state's largest collection of woody plants, outdoor art installations, and facilities for educational and social events.

Toward the end of the last Ice Age, prehistoric artists painted tens of thousands of images—including depictions of mastodons, giant sloths and other now-extinct animals—on cliff walls in the Amazon rainforest, reports Dalya Alberge for the Guardian. Archaeologists found the first of the enormous set of images in 2017 but kept the trove secret while continuing work and preparing a television series on the discovery.

A British-Colombian research team funded by the European Research Council spotted the paintings stretched across eight miles of cliffs in the Serranía de la Lindosa, which is part of the Colombian Amazon. The red-ocher art features fish, lizards, birds, geometric patterns and humans, including people dancing.

Shell cups carved with mythical beings. Large effigy pipes. Beaded baskets. These are among the archaeologically significant objects excavated from the Spiro Mounds. Often overlooked, this Native American site in the midwestern U.S. is among the greatest sources of Mississippian Native American artifacts ever discovered.

Located on the Oklahoma and Arkansas border, the Spiro Mounds were part of a city complex populated from 800 to 1450 A.D. At its peak, it supported a population of some 10,000 people.

Archaeologists conducting excavations at the Templo Mayor, or Great Temple, in Mexico City (once home to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán) have discovered a 600-year-old sculpture of a golden eagle, reports Ángela Reyes for CNN en Español.

Led by Rodolfo Aguilar Tapia of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), researchers from the Templo Mayor Project unearthed the sculpture last February. The eagle—carved out of tezontle, a reddish volcanic rock commonly used in both pre-Hispanic and modern Mexico—measures 41.7 by 27.6 inches, making it the largest bas-relief (or low relief) work found at the pyramid-shaped temple to date.

The Wampanoag people's traditional lands are on the North Eastern coast of the United States. The map above shows their lands in green. There are 10 nations within the Wampanoag culture. Aquinnah, Chappaquiddick, Nantucket, Nauset, Mashpee, Patuxet, Pokanoket, Pocasset, Herring Pond, and Assonet.

The Wampanoag people are fishing people!

The men often traveled north and south along the eastern coast to fish and whale hunt.

The National Endowment for the Arts, in partnership with the National Council for the Traditional Arts, will be honoring their latest 2020 National Heritage Fellows with a virtual event open to the public on Thursday, 8 p.m. ET (Mar 4 - ed).

Among the recipients are Karen Ann Hoffman, Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, a Haudenosaunee Raised Beadworker from Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and Wayne Valliere, Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe, a birchbark canoe builder from Waaswaaganing, Lac du Flambeau, Wisconsin.

About This Issue's Greeting - "Wáa sá iyatee?"

Canku Ota is a copyright © 2000 - 2021 of Vicki Williams Barry and Paul Barry.

The "Canku Ota - A Newsletter Celebrating Native America" web site and its design is the

Copyright © 1999- 2021 of Paul C. Barry.

All Rights Reserved.