Native American Culture

One of the most influential Native American tribes on the Great Plains was the Arapaho, a group so renowned among neighboring Native Americans that it's believed their name came from a Pawnee word for "trader. Like other notable Plains tribes, the Arapaho split off from other groups around the 16th-17th centuries and shifted from a sedentary agricultural society to the kind of nomadic group many envision when thinking of groups on the Plains.

From the Trail of Tears to Wounded Knee and Little Bighorn, the narrative of American history is incomplete without the inclusion of the Native Americans that lived on the continent before European settlers arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Outside of the Midwest, the Chippewa are not as well known as other Native American tribes like the Sioux or Cherokee, but they have long been one of the biggest groups in all of North America. Not surprisingly their presence around the Great Lakes region made them especially important to early European explorers who sailed the St. Lawrence and came into contact with the natives as they continued searching for the Northwest Passage.

From the Trail of Tears to Wounded Knee and Little Bighorn, the narrative of American history is incomplete without the inclusion of the Native Americans that lived on the continent before European settlers arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the first contact between natives and settlers, tribes like the Sioux, Cherokee, and Navajo have both fascinated and perplexed outsiders with their history, language, and culture.

On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz makes an unsettling discovery. A history buff since early childhood, expensively educated at university - a history major, no less! - he's reached middle age with a third-grader's grasp of early America. In fact, he's mislaid more than a century of American history, the period separating Columbus' landing in 1492 from the arrival of English colonists at Jamestown in 16-oh-something. Did nothing happen in between?

It's no surprise that the Shawnee continue to be closely associated with their most famous leader, Tecumseh, the most famous Native American of the early 19th century. While leading the Shawnee, he attempted to peacefully establish a Native American nation east of the Mississippi River in the wake of the American Revolution. Together with his brother Tenskwatawa, Tecumseh was in the process of forming a wide-ranging, Native American confederacy that they hoped would stem the westward flow of Anglo-American settlers.

When superstar athlete Jim Thorpe and football legend Pop Warner met in 1904 at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, they forged one of the winningest teams in American football history. Called "the team that invented football", they took on the best opponents of their day, defeating much more privileged schools such as Harvard and Army in a series of breathtakingly close calls, genius plays, and bone-crushing hard work.

The Utes are a Native American people who live today in Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah, and they currently have the second-largest Indian reservation in the United States. However, these holdings are relatively small fragments of the original Ute land base. The Utes were a fierce warrior people who fought hard to defend their land against Spaniards and later the Americans, but they remain much less well-known among the American public than many other Native American nations.

Though they are not as well known as tribes like the Sioux or Cherokee, the Creek are one of the oldest and most important Native American tribes in North America. With roots that tie them to the Ancient Moundbuilders, the Creek were one of the most established groups in the Southeastern United States, and came to be known as one of the Five Civilized Tribes. It's also believed that the Creek were the first natives encountered by Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto's historic expedition in the mid-16th century.

From the "Trail of Tears" to Wounded Knee and Little Bighorn, the narrative of American history is incomplete without the inclusion of the Native Americans that lived on the continent before European settlers arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the first contact between natives and settlers, tribes like the Sioux, Cherokee, and Navajo have both fascinated and perplexed outsiders with their history, language, and culture.

Though not as well known as the Cherokee, one of the Five Civilized Tribes was the Chickasaw. With roots that tie them to the Ancient Moundbuilders, the Chickasaw were one of the most established groups in the Southeastern United States, and they were among the first natives encountered by Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto's historic expedition in the mid-16th century.

Among all the Native American tribes, the Spanish, Mexicans, and Americans learned the hard way that the warriors of the Apache were among the fiercest in North America. Based in the Southwest, the Apache fought all three in Mexico and the American Southwest, engaging in seasonal raids for so many centuries that the Apache struck fear into the hearts of all their neighbors. Given the group's reputation, it's fitting that they are inextricably associated with one of their most famous leaders, Geronimo.

One of the most famous Native American tribes on the Great Plains is the Cheyenne, and their fame may be surpassed only by their influence on American history. The Cheyenne shifted from a sedentary agricultural society to the kind of nomadic group many envision when thinking of groups on the Plains. Land disputes and conflicts with white settlers and the Cheyenne set in motion the chain of events that led to the most famous battle among Native Americans and the American government: the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

The use of hallucinogenic substances like peyote and desert tobacco has long played a significant role in the spiritual practices and traditions of Native Americans. While the majority of those practices are well documented, the relationship between entheogens and Native Americans of the Southeast has gone largely unexplored.

Often overlooked, there is mixed blood at the heart of America. And at the heart of Native life for centuries there were complex households using intermarriage to link disparate communities and create protective circles of kin. Beginning in the 17th century, Native peoples - Ojibwes, Otoes, Cheyennes, Chinooks, and others - formed new families with young French, English, Canadian, and American fur traders who spent months in smoky winter lodges or at boisterous summer rendezvous.

Es una pena ver a una nación tan brillante de personas asesinadas por nuestros antepasados sobre la codicia, el odio y la intolerancia por la sabiduría y la manera de como vivían los nativos americanos. A pesar de lo que las escuelas públicas enseñaban a nuestros hijos, los nativos americanos no eran los "salvajes", como aprendimos en la escuela.

From the Trail of Tears to Wounded Knee and Little Bighorn, the narrative of American history is incomplete without the inclusion of the Native Americans that lived on the continent before European settlers arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the first contact between natives and settlers, tribes like the Sioux, Cherokee, and Navajo have both fascinated and perplexed outsiders with their history, language, and culture.

Growing up impoverished and shuttled between different households, it seemed life was bound to take a certain path for Eddie Chuculate. Despite the challenges he faced, his upbringing was rich with love and bountiful lessons from his Creek and Cherokee heritage, deep-rooted traditions he embraced even as he learned to live within the culture of white, small-town America that dominated his migratory childhood.

Today, hundreds of tribes use the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to help them recover their looted heritage from museums across the country. As senior curator of anthropology, Chip Colwell navigated firsthand the questions of how to weigh the religious freedom of Native Americans against the academic freedom of scientists and whether the emptying of museum shelves elevates human rights or destroys a common heritage. His book reveals a dramatic process that involves negotiating the blurry lines between identity and morality, spirituality and politics.

Overall, A Moccasin on One Foot and a Shoe on the Other: Being Native American in the 21st Century serves as a valuable guidebook for teenage listeners, promoting cultural understanding, challenging misconceptions, and empowering Native American youth to navigate their identity with pride in the 21st century.