Native Americans

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At 643 Federal Sites, a Slur Is Gone

Interior Department removes 'squaw' in deference to Native Americans

(Newser) - The place long known as Squaw Canyon in Arizona is now Red Rock Canyon. In California, Squaw Valley Spring is now Oso Kum Spring. And on and on across the US—the Interior Department this week released a list of 643 federal lands that have been renamed to remove the...

Wounded Knee Artifacts Illustrate a Slow Process

Institutions working, slowly, to return Native American items taken more than a century ago

(Newser) - One by one, items purportedly taken from Native Americans massacred at Wounded Knee Creek emerged from the display cases where they’ve sat for more than a century in a museum in rural Massachusetts. Moccasins, necklaces, clothing, ceremonial pipes, tools, and other objects were laid out as a photographer snapped...

Tribal Elders Testify to Boarding School Horrors

Haaland hears Native Americans' accounts of mistreatment in government-backed program

(Newser) - Native American tribal elders who were once students at government-backed Indian boarding schools testified Saturday in Oklahoma about the hardships they endured, including beatings, whippings, sexual assaults, forced haircuts, and painful nicknames. They came from different states and different tribes, but they shared the common experience of having attended the...

Descendant Asks Harvard for Ponca Chief&#39;s Tomahawk
Harvard Gives Artifact
Back to Chief's Tribe
updated
Jun 23, 2022 5:05 PM CDT

Harvard Gives Artifact Back to Chief's Tribe

Campus museum had held Standing Bear's tomahawk since 1982

(Newser) - Update: A tomahawk that once belonged to Chief Standing Bear is back with his tribe. A museum at Harvard University turned over the artifact to members of the Nebraska and Oklahoma Ponca tribes in a ceremony on June 3, the AP reports. The tomahawk had been in Harvard's possession...

Yellowstone Dumps Massacre Leader's Name

Gustavus Doane of Mount Doane boasted of slaughtering Native Americans, including children

(Newser) - The name of a man who led a massacre of at least 173 Native Americans, including women and children suffering from smallpox, has been scrubbed from a peak in Yellowstone National Park. The 10,551-foot Mount Doane was named for Army officer and explorer Gustavus Doane, who ordered the 1870...

Harvard Should Have No Native American Remains. It Has 7K

Leaked report says it has only repatriated 3K of the 10K it had over the last 32 years

(Newser) - Harvard University holds human remains belonging to 7,000 Native Americans though a 1990 federal law bars that very thing, according to a draft report from a school committee commissioned to look into the issue last year. The unfinalized report from the Steering Committee on Human Remains in Harvard Museum...

In a First, US Assesses Grim Toll at Native American Schools

At least 500, and probably thousands, of children taken from their families died, report says

(Newser) - For the first time, the federal government has assessed and acknowledged the harm done to Native American children at boarding schools it backed or ran throughout most of the 19th and 20th centuries. A report released Wednesday by the Interior Department said the children were subjected to sexual abuse, whippings,...

Grim End to Stolen Statue of Famed Native American

Statue of ballerina Marjorie Tallchief appears to have been cut down, sold for scrap for $266

(Newser) - A bronze statue of Native American ballerina Marjorie Tallchief, stolen last week from the Tulsa Historical Society & Museum, appears to have been cut into pieces and sold as scrap metal. Pieces of the statue—one of five outdoor statues depicting famous Native American ballerinas from Oklahoma known as the...

SCOTUS Denies Penobscot Nation's Appeal Over River

Chief says case involves the 'core identity of the Penobscot Nation'

(Newser) - The US Supreme Court on Monday declined an appeal by the Penobscot Indian Nation in its fight with Maine over ownership and regulation of the tribe’s namesake river. It was a bitter defeat for the tribe that sued a decade ago, claiming the Penobscot River is part of its...

After 350 Years, Tribe Gets Land in Virginia Back

Donors, wildlife conservancy helped return land to the Rappahannock Tribe

(Newser) - A majestic site in eastern Virginia has been returned to the Rappahannock Tribe more than 350 years after they were forced from their ancestral lands by English settlers. Some 465 acres of land was officially returned to the tribe Friday, including a stretch of Rappahannock River frontage known as Fones...

Disney World Under Fire After Performance by 'Indianettes'

Texas high school band and dance team performed at Florida theme park

(Newser) - Disney World is being widely criticized after a Texas high school band and drill team performed in one of the Florida theme park's parades over spring break and was accused of appropriating Native American culture. In video of the Port Neches-Groves High School performance, which went viral, the school'...

Feds Take Big Step Toward Ditching 'Squaw' Names

They're inviting public comment on replacements for derogatory term

(Newser) - Federal officials have come up with a list of potential replacement names for hundreds of geographic features in three dozen states that include the word "squaw," kicking off a public comment period that will run through late April. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in November formally declared the term...

'To Us, Thanksgiving Is a Day of Mourning'

Native American group is holding solemn event in Plymouth

(Newser) - Members of Native American tribes from around New England are gathering in the seaside town where the Pilgrims settled—not to give thanks, but to mourn Indigenous people worldwide who've suffered centuries of racism and mistreatment. Thursday’s solemn National Day of Mourning observance in downtown Plymouth, Mass., will...

Senators Urge Biden to Remove 'Shame on Nation'

They want him to revoke medals awarded after Wounded Knee massacre

(Newser) - Soldiers who gunned down Lakota women and children in one of the worst massacres in American history do not deserve the nation's highest military honor, 17 senators argued in a letter to President Biden this week. The lawmakers—16 Democrats and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders—said it was "...

Meet Canada&#39;s &#39;Rachel Dolezal&#39;
Meet Canada's 'Rachel Dolezal'
Nov 3, 2021 8:12 AM CDT

Meet Canada's 'Rachel Dolezal'

CBC finds Carrie Bourassa, a leader in Indigenous health, is not Indigenous

(Newser) - One of Canada's leading experts in Indigenous health issues gave a TEDx talk in 2019 dressed in a shawl and Métis sash. Holding a feather, Carrie Bourassa identified herself as "Morning Star Bear," before describing Métis, Anishinaabe, and Tlingit heritage. In a shocking twist, a...

Native Americans' Calls to Drop Gesture Fail to Move Braves

Groups dispute baseball's contention that they support the 'dehumanizing' imagery

(Newser) - The NFL's Washington Football Team has dropped its slur of a team nickname. The Cleveland Indians are becoming the Guardians. High schools are rethinking their warrior mascots . But in Atlanta, the Braves have only doubled down on their long-criticized "Tomahawk chop"—in which fans gesture with their...

Teacher Wears Headdress, Whoops in Math Lesson

California teacher placed on leave after video of 'SohCahToa' lesson goes viral

(Newser) - A California teacher accused of mocking Native Americans in an effort to teach a trigonometry mnemonic has been placed on leave. In video apparently taken by a student at John W. North High School in Riverside, the teacher, wearing a faux headdress, whoops and makes tomahawk motions as she chants...

Rare American Language Loses One of Its Last Speakers

Marie Wilcox spent 20 years creating a Wukchumni dictionary

(Newser) - Marie Wilcox, a Native American woman in California who saved her tribe’s dying language, has died. She was 87. Wilcox was once the last fluent speaker of Wukchumni but she worked for more than 20 years to produce a dictionary of the language spoken by her tribe in California’...

Salmon Ban Leaves Tribes Looking for Food

Alaska has banned fishing for dwindling salmon on the Yukon River

(Newser) - In a normal year, the smokehouses and drying racks that Alaska Natives use to prepare salmon to tide them through the winter would be heavy with fish meat, the fruits of a summer spent fishing on the Yukon River like generations before them. This year, there are no fish. For...

She's Been Missing Since 2020. Now FBI Offers $10K For Info

Mary Johnson disappeared from the Tulalip Reservation in November

(Newser) - The FBI is offering $10,000 for information that leads to the arrest of whoever is responsible for the disappearance of a Native American woman from Washington State. Per CNN , 40-year-old Mary Johnson was last seen on the Tulalip Reservation in late November. She was reportedly en route to a...

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