30 Stories for 30 Days of Native American and Alaska Native Heritage Month
Poet Joy Harjo is serving her third term as U.S. Poet Laureate. Her words speak to the soul of our nation. You can hear Harjo read her poetry in this interview.
Multimedia artist Bunky Echo-Hawk ignites conversations around topics like environmentalism and Naive rights. He makes art showing that Indigenous culture is not only a thing of the past, while sharing his family and Pawnee traditions for future generations.
Learn about Link Wray, the rock guitar legend that created a sound so new and rebellious that his instrumental song, "Rumble" was banned for inciting violence. Seriously.
Daniel's work 'Chasing Voices: The Story of John Peabody Harrington' begins airing on PBS stations across the country
Pulitzer Prize-winner and prolific writer N. Scott Momaday was a formative voice in the time literary critics refer to as the Native American Renaissance. Learn about his life, from growing up with Kiowa storytelling traditions to the art he continues to make American Masters film N. Scott Momaday: Words From a Bear.
Cree artist Buffy Sainte-Marie is often remembered around here for her time on Sesame Street, when she was featured along with her infant son from 1975 to 1981. Sainte-Marie was a successful singer and songwriter before that and her career has continued since.
Filmmaker Charles "Boots" Kennedye has focused his storytelling career highlighting Native American and Indigenous experiences. His latest project is focused on modern life for Alaska Native families.
Before Sequoyah, the Cherokee language was spoken, but not written. By all accounts, he was a Renaissance man who took it upon himself to document the language 200 years ago, creating the Cherokee Syllabary. That was in addition to his many other accomplishments as a soldier, artist, and statesman.
The first American to dance with the Paris Opera Ballet was the magnetic ballerina Maria Tallchief. She was born in Fairfax, Oklahoma and her father was Osage. Tallchief was widely known on stage for her Firebird role, which was created for her by famed choreographer George Ballanchine. Off-stage, she advocated for Native American rights and spoke out against discrimination.
Fashion designer Bethany Yellowtail gave audiences insight into her creative process in the Independent Lens alter-Native series. Her design talent serves to increase Indigenous representation in an industry that has often profited from cultural appropriation.
Sandy White Hawk is a survivor of the Indian Adoption Era, when Native American children were taken from their families by the government and placed in white homes. She tells her personal story of reconnecting with the Lakota culture she was cut off from, and going on to advocate for the thousands of others who were separated from their heritage.
Photographer Jeremy Dennis explores Indigenous identity, culture, and assimilation through his art work. He also helps other artists to create their own explorations of culture and identity by making space for them in his family home on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation in Long Island, New York.
The storied site of the first Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY is on land belonging to the Haudenosaunee. Six nations joined together to form the Haudenosaunee Confederacy: the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora, and they are a matriarchal society. The women's suffrage movement drew heavily from the these matriarchs, yet they have been largely written out of the history books. See the women's rights movement anew, through the perspective of Mohawk Clan. .
Julian Brave NoiseCat is a journalist and political strategist. His work centers Indigenous perspectives across disciplines. Most recently, he worked to increase representation of Native American voices in government, specifically at the Department of the Interior, an agency whose past leaders included some who sought to destroy Native cultures.
Albuquerque, New Mexico-based dance crew The Sacred Cypher demonstrates the close connection between Indigenous and hip hop cultures with each performance. Indigenous dancers from the many different tribes in the area come together to tell their stories through the art of dance.
Gertrude Simmons Bonnin was born in 1876 on the Yankston Reservation, but later renamed herself Zitkála-Šá which means "red bird" in the Lakota language. She saw the deeply negative impact of the strict assimilation measures at the core of Indian boarding schools and wrote about her time as a teacher at the Carlisle Indian School in a series of exposés published in the Atlantic Monthly.
Tommy Orange's debut novel "There There" explored identity and myth through its American Indian characters. Readers and critics alike loved the book, which connects historical events like the Native American occupation of Alcatraz Island to today's generations of Native youths.
Artist and filmmaker Jeffrey Palmer takes great care to represent Indigenous experiences in all their diversity and cultural adaptations. He recalls listening to his Kiowa family and elders tell stories in his upbringing and carries on that storytelling in his own work. His documentary profile of Kiowa artist and writer N. Scott Momaday for American Masters displays all facets of a compelling story: lush soundscapes, connections to the land, and artistic visuals.
Susan La Flesche Picotte was born on the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska in 1865. Encouraged to pursue higher education and driven to help her community, she earned a medical degree and became a physician. She returned home, to the reservation, and treated everyone who needed help. Dr. La Flesche saw patients in her home and made house calls, arriving on foot or via horse and buggy. She also achieved her lifelong goal of founding a hospital on the Omaha Reservation in 1913 and left a legacy of culturally competent medical care in her community.
Billy Luther’s award-winning documentaries share Native American stories with wider audiences. Luther explores and honors his own Navajo, Hopi, and Laguna Pueblo heritage through filmmaking. His documentaries, whether it’s Miss Navajo (2007) or Alter-NATIVE: Kitchen (2019), tell the contemporary Native American stories that he didn’t see in film and on television as a kid. You can stream his work inAlter-NATIVE and Alter-NATIVE: Kitchen via Independent Lens.
Ben-Alex Dupris directed the 2020 PBS Short Film Festival entry “Sweetheart Dancers,” in which he explored the respect and acceptance of Two-Spirit people within Indigenous communities. Dupris uses the story of a dance competition to highlight the damaging effects of assimilation efforts that stripped Native Americans of their cultural traditions and belief systems.
Brian Yazzie (a.k.a. Yazzie the Chef) is a Diné Chef from Dennehotso, Arizona which is located on the Northeastern part of the Navajo Nation. He currently resides in Saint Paul, MN and has a degree in Associate of Applied Science (AAS) in Culinary Arts from Saint Paul College.
Rock guitarist Stevie Salas set out to make a documentary about his rock and roll heroes. Salas produced Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World, a film that explores the Indigenous roots of the foundational sounds of American music genres like rock, pop, jazz, and blues. The story is told through artists who themselves were influenced by the sounds of Native American musical heroes, ensuring music history records the contributions of Indigenous artists.
Jordan Dresser, film producer and current Chairman of the Northern Arapaho tribe, is dedicated to uplifting Native American stories and contemporary art in different forms. He wrote about the present-day battle over tribal lands and how a land developer or tourist might see the same place so very differently than Indigenous people who care for the land because it represents home and heritage as it related to the Independent Lens film Conscience Point.
Princess Daazrhaii Johnson is able to share her Neets-aii Gwich’in heritage through the eyes of a child. Her stories, and those of many other Alaska Native people, are reflected in the PBS Kids series Molly of Denali.
Sarah Ortegon recalls feeling fully herself on weekends as a child when she visited with family on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Now a multimedia artist, Indigenous stories are central to her art. At times, she discovers Shoshone and Arapaho connections in her work that she previously had not known about, helping her learn more about modern ties to her ancestral past.
Phillip Kilirunguq Blanchett co-founded the band Pamyua with his brother in Anchorage, Alaska. He describes their sound as “Inuit Soul” and it blends different elements of traditional Yup’ik and R&B music. Pamyua’s music is a clear representation of Blanchett and his bandmates and their interwoven cultures.
Julianna Brannum has been making documentaries and films for over 15 years. Her work includes American Experience’s We Shall Remain, Native America, and the recent Independent Lens film Conscience Point, a documentary on the Shinnecock Nation in what is now known as Long Island, NY.
Chris Eyre, the nation's most celebrated American Indian film director, was born in Oregon. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, he gained national attention in 1998 with the movie Smoke Signals. People Magazine called him "the preeminent Native American filmmaker of his time."
(https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/eyre_chris_1968_/#.Y5dyVnbMK70)
Dartmouth Directory
Arts and Sciences Directory
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
American law relating to tribal sovereignty and political relations with state and federal governments.
WORKS IN PROGRESS
Examining political pluralism in the context of tribal authority in criminal matters for reservation-based offenses.