Culture

In 1933 the United States Office of Indian Affairs began a major reform of Indian policy, organizing tribal governments under the provisions of the Indian Reorganization Act and turning over the administration of reservations to these new bodies...

Begun as a pork-barrel project by the federal government in the early 1900s, the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians quickly became a dumping ground for inconvenient Indians. The federal institution in Canton, South Dakota, deprived many Native...

The largest known collection of ledger art ever acquired by one individual is Mark Lansburgh’s diverse assemblage of more than 140 drawings, now held by the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College and catalogued in this important book. The...

For Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota people, historical trauma, chronically underfunded federal programs, and broken promises on the part of the US government have resulted in gaping health, educational, and economic disparities compared to the general...

Now featured on the 2019 New York Times Bestseller list! The received idea of Native American history--as promulgated by books like Dee Brown's mega-bestselling 1970 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee--has been that American Indian history essentially...

Since its founding in 1988, the Autry Museum of the American West has expanded its vision and its collections in profound ways. From its original focus on the history, art, and popular culture inspired by the West and its attendant myths, the...

On August 19, 1854, U.S. Army lieutenant John L. Grattan led a detachment of twenty-nine soldiers and one civilian interpreter to a large Lakota encampment near Fort Laramie to arrest an Indian man accused of killing a Mormon emigrant’s cow. The...

Black Elk (1863-1950), the Lakota holy man, is beloved by millions of readers around the world. The book Black Elk Speaks is the most widely-read Native American testimony of the last century and a key work in our understanding of American...

Over the course of his career, artist Paul Dyck (1917–2006) assembled more than 2,000 nineteenth-century artworks created by the buffalo-hunting peoples of the Great Plains. Only with its acquisition by the Plains Indian Museum at the Buffalo Bill...

Howard Terpning is one of the most lauded painters of Western art and considered by many to be a national treasure. He is known as the "storyteller of the Native American" because of his devotion to and respect for his subject matter, almost exclusively...

More than one hundred color reproductions--accompanied by an illuminating text by Elmer Kelton--capture the rich history and culture of native Americans in artwork inspired by the traditions of the Crow, Sioux, Apache, Blackfeet, Nez Perce, and other...

Although some aspects of Sioux history such as the Battle of the Little Big Horn and the Massacre at Wounded Knee are included in American history texts, along with mention of famous Sioux leaders such as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, little attention is...

The Great Sioux Nation: Sitting in Judgment on America is the story of the Sioux Nation’s fight to regain its land and sovereignty, highlighting the events of 1973–74, including the protest at Wounded Knee. It features pieces by some of...

To Come to a Better Understanding analyzes the cultural encounters of the medicine men and clergy meetings held on Rosebud Reservation in St. Francis, South Dakota, from 1973 through 1978. Organized by Father Stolzman, a Catholic priest studying...

Born on the shores of Big Stone Lake in modern-day South Dakota, Gabriel Renville (1825 1892) was a Sisseton-Wahpeton leader who opposed conflict with the United States during the Dakota War of 1862. He worked tirelessly to create and maintain a space...

As the first Lakota to serve in the United States Congress, Benjamin ( Ben ) Reifel (1906 1990) made a career of straddling two distinct cultures. A bilingual member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, Reifel often found his ideas challenged by...

The last significant clash of arms in the American Indian Wars took place on December 29, 1890, on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. Of the 350 Teton Sioux Indians there, two-thirds were women and children. When the smoke cleared, 84 men...

On December 29, 1890, the U.S. Seventh Cavalry killed more than two hundred Lakota Ghost Dancers – including men, women, and children – at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota.  After the work of death ceased at Wounded Knee, the work of...

Oral Teachings From Rosebud: "Our people are very lucky to be here," says Albert White Hat Sr. He lived through a time when Indians were sent to boarding schools and were not permitted to practice their own rituals. Although the Lakota people can...

For the first time, this ground-breaking book tells the forgotten story of the true genesis of the June 25, 1876 disaster along the Little Bighorn, "Custer's Last Stand." The failure of the southern column to continue to advance north after the battle of...

The history of black Elk Peak - previously known as Hinhan Kaga and more recently, as Harney Peak - remained segmented and scattered throughout the shadows of antiquity, until now.The natural landmark's namesake, Black Elk, experienced his great vision...

Make a pilgrimage into your soul... 365 DAYS OF WALKING THE RED ROAD captures the priceless ancient knowledge Native American elders have passed on from generation to generation for centuries and shows you how to move positively down your personal road...

Zitkala-Sa (Red Bird) (1876-1938), also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was one of the best known and most influential Native Americans of the twentieth century. Born on the Yankton Sioux Reservation, she remained true to her indigenous heritage as a...

During the 1920s and 1930s, Josephine Waggoner (1871-1943), a Lakota woman who had been educated at Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia, grew increasingly concerned that the history and culture of her people were being lost as elders...