Indigenous People's Month
November is Indigenous People’s and Alaska Native Heritage Month. The theme for this year is “Affirming Native Voices: Visibility, Leadership, Service”. We honor the tapestry of achievements and the cultural and historical legacies of the First Americans who were the original inhabitants of what is now the United States and their descendants: the American Indian and Alaska Native people. We acknowledge that we are on the ancestral, unceded lands and traditional territories of the Massachusetts People. Theirs is the Indigenous Nation from whom the present-day Commonwealth of Massachusetts took its name.
From Regional History of American Indians: When the English first settled in this region, the American Indians living here were known as the Nashoba. The name means, roughly, ‘land between the waters’, a reference to the many ponds, wetlands, and streams that abound in the area. The Nashoba Indians were a small extended family band loosely affiliated with the regional Nipmuc tribe, which occupied an inland area of eastern Massachusetts, south of the New Hampshire Pennacook. John Eliot, a Puritan minister from Roxbury, was granted his request by the Massachusetts General Court to establish a series of Native American settlements where Indians willing to adopt English customs, including dress, language, and Christianity, would, in theory, be protected from harassment by the English. These communities came to be known as ‘Praying Villages.’ In these settlements, tribal people built English-style homes and tilled the land. The most northerly of these Indian settlements was Nashoba Praying Village, located in present day Littleton. King Philip’s War, fought in eastern Massachusetts between 1675 and 1676, was a general Indian uprising against the English settlers, whom the native people saw as haughty, arrogant, self-serving, and materialistic. Encroachments by English farmers onto Indian lands, and occasional killings by both sides, set the war in motion. King Philip, whose native name was ‘Metacomet’, was the second son of Massasoit, sachem of the more southerly Wampanoags. He organized and led the Indian uprising, which ended with his death and the general defeat and final subjugation of the tribal people of eastern Massachusetts. During these hostilities, some Praying Village Indians joined or aided their brethren in the skirmishes with the English. In retaliation, the settlers rounded up all village Indians in the fall of 1675 and sent them to Deer Island in Boston Harbor, where most died of cold or starvation during the winter. At the end of the war, the few survivors returned to their home areas, but the villages were never reorganized.
Did you know? There are 574 federally recognized Indian Nations plus other tribes located throughout the United States who are recognized by their respective state governments. They prefer, by and large, to be referred to as American Indian or Indigenous American.
We can learn about and celebrate the First People by educating ourselves through books, art, and film.
- Discover the Tribal land you’re living on right now and learn more.
A great way to focus your learning experience is to discover the Tribal territory you reside in by entering your zip code in the Native Lands interactive map. From there, you can learn more about their unique culture and traditions. - Watch documentaries and movies made by Indigenous American filmmakers. Some documentaries that depict Indigenous American life and modern history are Reel Injun, Trudell, 7th Generation, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Generation Red Nation, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, Halpate, and Shimasani
- Take a virtual field trip to learn more about Native American tribes and cultures. Great for older kids, National Geographic has a multi-part Virtual Field Trip: Native American Stories on YouTube that shares three storytellers’ unique perspectives.
- Visit the Addison Gallery in Andover featuring landscape paintings by contemporary Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick. “The exhibition celebrates a shared reverence for nature while engaging crucial questions about land dispossession and its reclamation by Indigenous peoples and nations and exploring the relationship between Indigenous art and American art history.” Addison Gallery
- Support Indigenous American Artists and Craft Makers. You can purchase their artwork and craft work using the following website Indigenous American Businesses
You can support them by giving them free marketing. If they have Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and/or website, share them with your own social network.
- Check out some of these websites:
https://www.mcnaa.org/ (Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness)
- Read books by Indigenous authors who continue the tradition of storytelling to explore Native identity, challenging stereotypes and historical fallacies. Want to shop some of these books from an Indigenous-owned bookstore? Check out this list of sellers.
Children
The Pencil by Susan Avingaq
Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story by Kevin Noble Maillard
My Heart Fills with Happiness Ni Sâkaskineh Mîyawâten Niteh Ohcih by Monique Gray Smith
Teens
All the Real Indian Died off: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Dina Gilio-Whitaker
Dancing Teepees: Poems of American Indian Youth selected by Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve
Adults
There, There by Tommy Orange
Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City by Tanya Talaga
“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” – Chief Seattle
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