First Nation American Indian classroom Resources found on the Educational CyberPlayGround.

Native American Dance

Yup'ik diva dances once more
Alaska: The Egan Center was packed for the drumming and dance showcase during the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention. Many -- perhaps hundreds -- were turned away at the door.  Performers representing Alutiiq, Inupiat, Yup'ik and Southeast Indian traditions took their turns, and then a surprise:  87-year-old Mary Ann Sundown planned to dance.  As the beloved "Dance Diva" from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta hobbled onto the stage, bent and slow, cheers and whistles from a thousand or more fans shook the roof.  She donned her fur headpiece and gripped her dance fans, sitting in a chair to perform.   Mary Ann's coordination, grace, charm, and humor showed through, and at the end of each song, she struggled to her feet for the final choruses.  Her performance included two comic numbers associated with Sundown:  the "Mosquito Song," which includes hilarious swatting and itching pantomimes; and the "Cigarette Song," in which the performers try to imitate the elegant puffing of movie stars and wind up coughing.  Sundown's  set closed with a tribute piece to her grandchildren,  her trademark laugh and an expression of wondering love as she looked  back at her family -- some in diapers -- in front of the stage. Before leaving, Mary Ann told the crowd in Yup'ik, through a translator, how happy she was to be here. How she had lost her ability to walk for a while but it had returned. How she had fallen off a four-wheeler while berry-picking but been unharmed.   "She says someone's looking out for her," the interpreter said, "and that's God."

Slideshow of 87-year old Yupik elder, Mary Ann Sundown,  dancing at AFN Convention. http://www.adn.com/photos/multimedia/afn
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/afn/story/8348845p-8243555c.html

Missionary contact brings the Hymnal.  Attribution withheld by Request
Indians now have dual citizenship, they are citizens of their nation and of the U.S., during the days when America was young, they were not citizens of the U.S., but citizens only of their own nations, be that Oneida, Onondaga, Mohawk, Cayuga,  or whatever their nationality happened to be. Yes, they are considered American citizens on one hand. They are not citizens of any state, but they are also considered a semi-sovereign nation. They have sovereignty, but come also under the US. Office of Indian Affairs. They have formed treaties with the U.S. government historically. Only much later did Indians become Americans. Because they were not Americans, but of different nations entirely during America's early days, I don't see how Indian music could be considered the first or one of the first American musics. The meaning of Indian nation citizenship is very tricky.

Answer: Native people were Americans long before the United States was established.

The New York Oneida Nation form of hymn singing has many similarities to Sacred Harp Singing. 
In both traditions, a lot of the repertoire is drawn from the Isaac Watts material which he composed early in the 18th Century.
I'm not enough of an historian to know how to research it, but it would be interesting to investigate when the Oneida Episcopal and Methodist hymn singing began.  Of course the Oneida Longhouse singing tradition is much older, an earlier form of American singing than Sacred Harp. 
The Oneida hymn tradition may parallel the Cherokee in some ways, in roughly the same era. 

- Most of the Oneidas I know attribute the creation of their hymnal to Eleazer Williams, the charasmatic preacher who led a portion of the tribe from New York to the vicinity of Green Bay, WI in 1822.  Williams was a controversial figure who later in life claimed to be the "Last Dauphin," the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.  He was lampooned by Mark Twain in "Huckleberry Finn." 
He was a published author both in English and in "The Language of the Seven Iroquois Tribes" as early as 1813.  Although printed versions of the hymnals were not published until the 1850s, knowledgeable Oneidas have told me that their tradition of hymn singing pre-dated the move to Wisconsin.  That the same type of singing is done in their Wisconsin, New York and Ontario communities is consistent with that assertion.
Although most Oneidas converted to Christianity in the 18th Century, I wouldn't say that they are "pretty danged acculturated."  They have it both ways, actually.  They've retained continuous Iroquoisan ceremonial traditions in the community too. 
- Acculturation is relative.  Some Cherokee living in Georgia had plantations, African slaves (which they took to Oklahoma with them), dressed in "white" fashions (or close Cherokee adaptations), sang Christian hymns (some of which were written by Charles Wesley, who corresponded with Boudinot as he compiled the Cherokee Hymnal), and  voted for the "compromises" of the Echota Treaty, which ended up with the Trail of Tears.
On the other hand, other Eastern Band Cherokee, notably those who lived just outside the Qualla Boundary in the Snowbird communities, who managed to hide out in the same mountain terrain that the anti-abortion terrorist Eric Rudolph used to hide out in recently,  managed to hang on to the traditional language and culture of the Cherokee back in the 1830s.  It was their descendants  who were Mooney's informants in his landmark ethnological report (1888). This was the basis of much that is known and retained of traditonal Cherokee Myth and religion. 
Ironically, these same Snowbird Cherokee who still sing from the old shaped note Cherokee Hymnal, and were the ones (Walker Calhoun among them) who reported that they sang the Cherokee translation of "Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah" on the Trail of Tears.  To this day, the Cherokee versions of "Guide Me O" and "Amazing Grace" are sung at the annual Trail of Tears Gospel Singing at the Jacob Cornsilk Community Center in Snowbird.
Speaking of which, I understand that Charles (Cold Mountain) Frazier's latest novel is all about William Thomas, the Trail of Tears, and Thomas's Cherokee 1st Regiment (CSA) during the Civil War.  It's the most amazing story you can imagine.  I can't wait.

- Perhaps one of the earliest Indian language hymnals was published by Elias Boudinot (signator of the notorious Echota Treaty) in the Cherokee language a few years before the Trail of Tears.  I'm pretty sure he used shaped notes, though I've never seen a copy.  I don't know if he used harmony, fugued or otherwise.  Harmony singing was not, I believe, part of Cherokee singing tradition before Christianization, but, by the 1830s, the Cherokees were pretty 'danged' acculturated.

- The Oneida hymn tradition may parallel the Cherokee in some ways, in roughly the same era. 
Most of the Oneidas I know attribute the creation of their hymnal to Eleazer Williams, the charasmatic preacher who led a portion of the tribe from New York to the vicinity of Green Bay, WI in 1822.  Williams was a controversial
figure who later in life claimed to be the "Last Dauphin," the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.  He was lampooned by Mark Twain in "Huckleberry Finn." 
He was a published author both in English and in "The Language of the Seven Iroquois Tribes" as early as 1813.  Although printed versions of the hymnals were not published until the 1850s, knowledgeable Oneidas have told me that their tradition of hymn singing pre-dated the move to Wisconsin. That the same type of singing is done in their Wisconsin, New York and Ontario communities is consistent with that assertion.
Although most Oneidas converted to Christianity in the 18th Century, I wouldn't say that they are "pretty danged acculturated."  They have it both ways, actually.  They've retained continuous Iroquoisan ceremonial traditons in the community too.

- When the Indian nations were divided up among Christian denominations for evangelizing, the Presbyterians were given territory occupied by Dakota-Nakoda-Lakota peoples. There are still people on the Fort Peck Reservation who sing Presbyterian hymns in the Dakota language in 2006.

- Nez Perce, in Idaho. Our archives have a tape from a past apprenticeship that contains "Nez Perce Hymns" where one can hear Jesus Christ's name interspaced with Nimiiputimt'ky. These hymns have been sung by the Nez Perce since the times of Reverend and Mrs. Spalding (1836...) and other missionaries who established a mission at Lapwai.

Indian Rights Activist

Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) (1876-1938) Writer, musician, educator, and Indian rights activist, Zitkala-Sa (or Red Bird) was born on the Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. After her white father abandoned the family, she was brought up by her Indian mother in traditional Sioux ways. At the age of eight, Zitkala-Sa's life was transformed when white missionaries came to Pine Ridge and convinced her to enroll in a boarding school in Wabash, Indiana. Part of a movement to "civilize" Indian children by removing them from their native culture and indoctrinating them in Euro-American ways, the school trained Indian pupils in manual labor, Christianity, and the English language. Zitkala-Sa found it a hostile environment and struggled to adapt.

 

Carlisle Indian School Collection, 1878-1969
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
Bureau of Archives and History Pennsylvania State Archives MG-216

Carlisle Indian School, Pennsylvania (1880)
The United States Indian School at Carlisle, Pa., was founded by Gen. Richard Henry Pratt in 1879, and served as a model for government boarding schools for Indians until its closure in 1918. Over 10,000 students enrolled at the Carlisle Training School during its 39 years, where, separated from their native cultures, the students were prepared for work in industrial and manual labor and socialized into "civilized" life. Given new white names to replace their Indian ones, the students were prohibited from speaking their native languages, were instructed in Christianity, and were fed, clothed, and housed under strict military discipline.

T. Roosevelt on Native Americans From his State of the Union Message, 1901
In my judgment the time has arrived when we should definitely make up our minds to recognize the Indian as an individual and not as a member of a tribe. The General Allotment Act is a mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass. It acts directly upon the family and the individual. Under its provisions some sixty thousand Indians have already become citizens of the United States. We should now break up the tribal funds, doing for them what allotment does for the tribal lands; that is, they should be divided into individual holdings.

Esther Martinez Act: Native-languages bill becomes law. President Bush has signed into law legislation named after an Ohkay Owingeh storyteller and linguist.
Many of the original birch bark scrolls were destroyed by missionaries who saw the Midewiwin as an obstacle to Christianizing the Ojibwe.

THE ORAL TRADITION AND FIRST NATION LANGUAGES

Cherokee Syllabary Pronunciation Key Sequoyah, a Cherokee mountaineer, invented the original first syllabary in modern times. The Cherokee alphabet is written in the syllabary form. A syllabary is an alphabet in which each letter in a word stands for a whole syllable (such as "ga" ) instead of a single letter (such as "g"). With the exception of the letter "s," Cherokee is a complete syllabary.

 

Cree Syllabrary Pronounciation Key

Story Telling of North Carolina Indians

Center for Multilingual Multicultural Research

The Comanche Language and Cultural Preservation Committee

Broadcasting In Cherokee
Oklahoma :Experts say the Cherokee language could be extinct in two generations.  Now Tahlequah's KTLQ radio station is trying to keep the Cherokee Language alive. Recently Dennis Sixkiller and David Scott called the Sequoyah High School's state championship game in Cherokee.  "We have a lot of people that  still speak the Cherokee language, and it gives them a chance to hear the ball games," said Jim Trickett  "They may not  understand English, [but] they understand Cherokee,"  Scott says some basketball terms can't be translated, so the men had to improvise. For three pointers, they use  the Cherokee word for three.   And for coach, they use the Cherokee word for leader.
http://www.soundpartners.org/directory1987/directory_show.htm?doc_id=245024

"Redskin" Term Did Not Begin as Insult, Smithsonian Scholar Says
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution linguist Ives Goddard spent seven months researching the history of the word "redskin." His conclusion: the word did not begin as an insult.  Redskin was first used by Native Americans in the 18th century to distinguish themselves from whites encroaching on their lands and culture. The earliest known use of "redskin" was in a 1789 statement made by Illinois tribal chiefs negotiating with the British to switch loyalties away from the French. "I shall be pleased to have you come to speak to me yourself," said one statement attributed to a chief named Mosquito.  "And if any redskins do you harm, I shall be able to look out for you even at the peril of my life." The French used the phrase "peaux Rouges " -- literally "red skins" -- to translate the chief's words.  When it first appeared as an English expression in the early 1800s, "it came in the most respectful context and at the highest level," Goddard said.  "...white people and Indians talking together, with the white people trying to ingratiate themselves."  In July 22, 1815, "red skin" first appeared in print in a Missouri Gazette news story.  Government envoys were rebuking Midwestern tribes for refusing to yield territory claimed by the United States. Meskwaki chief Black Thunder was unimpressed: "Restrain your feelings and hear calmly what I say," he told the envoys.  "I have never injured you, and innocence can feel no fear.  I turn to all red skins and white skins, and challenge an accusation against me."  Goddard admits it is impossible to know whether the chiefs said "redskin" in their own languages or was merely translated that way by interpreters.  The same is true of "white-skin."  American Indian activist Susan Harjo is not impressed.  "I'm very familiar with white men who uphold the judicious speech of white men," said the Cheyenne-Muscogee writer.  "Europeans were not using high-minded language.  [To them] we were only human when it came to territory, land cessions and whose side you were on."  Harjo argues that the word "redskin" grew from the practice of offering bounties to anyone who killed Indians.  Bounty hunters "needed proof of kill, but they had a storage problem," she said, adding that instead of a body, they accepted scalps or other parts of a "redskin."  Linda Shoemaker, a University of Connecticut historian, weighed Goddard's research and Harjo's comments with her own studies. The final message, Shoemaker suggested, is that "even if the Indians were the first to use it, the origin has no relationship to later use.  What happened at the beginning doesn't justify it today."  Goddard's report appears in the European Review of Native American Studies.
http://www.washingtonpost.com 10/02/05 AR2005100201139.html

Linguists Find the Words, and Pocahontas Speaks Again
Virginia: A growing number of linguists and anthropologists are recreating dead or dying Indian languages. Their field, called "language revitalization," is the science of reconstructing lost languages. One benefit of these studies is the Virginia Algonquian dialogue spoken in "The New World," a movie about Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America (1607). Virginia Algonquian had not been spoken for more than two centuries. Only two modern accounts -- one by Captain John Smith and the other by the Jamestown colony secretary, William Strachey -- preserved some Virginia Algonquian words. So, when movie director Terrence Malick decided that Powhatan should speak in his own language, he called in Dr. Blair Rudes, a linguist involved with many Algonquian language projects. The first challenge for Dr. Rudes was the limited vocabulary. Smith set down just 50 Indian words, and Strachey compiled 600. The lists were written phonetically by Englishmen whose spelling and pronunciation differed, making it difficult to determine the actual Indian word. For instance Strachey set down words for walnut, shoes and two kinds of beast,
"paukauns:" paka-ni (meaning large nut),
"mawhcasuns:" maxkesen (shoe)
"aroughcoune :" i árehkan (raccoon)
"Opposum:" wápahshum
Dr. Rudes had to apply techniques of historical linguistics to rebuilding a language from these sketchy, unreliable word lists. To discover the language, Rudes depended upon several elements:
Each Algonquin language is different, but as closely related. Comparing the related Algonquin languages reveals common elements of grammar and sentence structure and many similarities in vocabulary.
Proto-Algonquian is an early language common to all Algonquian speech. A list complied by linguists contains 4,000 words from the surviving tongues and documentation of the extinct ones. He compared this list to Strachey's words.
A translation of the Bible into Munsee Delaware, an Algonquin language once spoken by Massachusetts Indians, offered Dr. Rudes insights. He adapted some of those words for Virginia Algonquian.
100-year-old recordings of the last Munsee Delaware speakers were a valuable guide to pronunciations.
Facts:
The related Algonquian languages were among the first in America to die out. No one is known to have spoken Virginia Algonquian since 1785. Like many other Indians, Algonquian speakers had no writing system, and their grammar and most of their vocabulary were lost.
Of the more than 15 original Algonquian languages in eastern North America, the two still spoken are Passamaquoddy-Malecite in Maine and Mikmaq in New Brunswick.
Like most of the 800 or more indigenous languages in North America, Virginia Algowhen became extinct as Indians declined in number, dispersed and lost their cultural identity due to European Invasion.
At least half the world's estimated 6,000 languages have so few remaining speakers that they are threatened with extinction. By 2100, it's believed less than 3,000 languages will survive.
Phil Konstatin's October 2006 Newsletter

William Bright, 78, Expert in Indigenous Languages, Is Dead
Colorado: William Bright spent more than 50 years studying the vanishing languages of indigenous people. In 1949, Bright received a bachelor’s degree in linguistics from UC Berkeley. He then began his fieldwork among the Karuk, whose languages spoken by just a handful of elders. Since encounters with Europeans had rarely ended well for the Karuk, the community had little reason to welcome an outsider. But Bill Bright was deferential, curious and, at 21, scarcely more than a boy. He was also visibly homesick. The Karuk grandmothers took him in, baking him cookies and cakes and sharing their language. They named him Uhyanapatanvaanich, “little word-asker.” Shortly before his death, he was made an honorary member of the Karuk tribe, the first outsider to be so honored. Mr. Bright’s approach to studying language was to learn it within its cultural context, which might include songs, poetry, stories and everyday conversation. And so, lugging unwieldy recording devices, he continued to make forays into traditional communities around the world, sitting down with native speakers and eliciting words, phrases and sentences. Among the languages on which he worked were Nahuatl, an Aztec language of Mexico; Cakchiquel, of Guatemala; Luiseño, Ute, Wishram and Yurok, languages of the Western United States; and Lushai, Kannada, Tamil and Tulu, languages of the Indian subcontinent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/23/books/23bright.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Chief Illiniwek makes his last dance February 21, 2007 Chicago Tribune - The debate about mascots - of any type - is a great opportunity for teaching, and for getting students (and others) to think and feel deeply about issues of representation. Chief Illiniwek has been part of a climate of intense racial antagonism for his 81 years, including official segregation and a KKK chapter here on campus in the late 1920s.  Some of this is excellently documented in Jim Loewen's book, Sundown Towns.

Chief Illiniwek Facts
CHAMPAIGN -- As cameras flashed and students cried, University of Illinois' controversial mascot Chief Illiniwek burst onto the basketball court Wednesday night for his final, 3-minute dance.He left, then returned for a solemn curtain call, standing tall as he raised his arms and turned to each section. Then he gave one final kick and left Assembly Hall, the end to an 81-year-old tradition. Here's Tim Giago's commentary, from yesterday's Hartford Courant. Giago is an Oglala Lakota journalist. The PBS program POV broadcast an excellent documentary on the mascot controversy in 1997

Test Your Chief Illiniwek IQ

Navajo Code Talkers

When Navajos Fought Japanese for Ne-He-Mah
Navajo verb is "like a tiny imagist poem." na'il-dil means "You are accustomed to eat plural separable objects one at a time." This linguistic and phonetic complexity makes the language not only difficult for non-Navajos to understand but almost impossible to counterfeit. also see

Navajo Codetalkers Dictionary

Navajo Code Talkers lobby for Native language bill
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Three Navajo Code Talker are in Washington, D.C., to push for passage of the Esther Martinez Native American Language Act.
Keith Little, Merril Sandoval and Samuel Tso used the Navajo language to create an unbreakable code during World War II. They are visiting the White House and Congress to lobby for the importance of preserving all Native languages.
"The Navajo Code Talkers have been called into action one more time; they\ are taking to Capitol Hill this week in an unprecedented effort to save one of America's greatest legacies -- its Native languages," said Ryan Wilson, the president of the National Alliance to Save Native Languages and president of the National Indian Education Association.
H.R.4766 would authorize the Department of Heath and Human Services to award grants for language immersion programs. It passed the House before Congress went on recess but was held up in the Senate.
The bill is named after Esther Martinez, a Tewa language instructor who was killed in an auto accident shortly after receiving a National Heritage Fellowship.

Navajo Temperment Differences

(1) Bruce Lepper: Do you think that the Navajo, who have innate patience, do not have this choice, whereas you do, because you are from a culture where paying a lot of attention to time is what you describe as a culturally arbitrary value? And does it not seem likely, in view of the existence of this innate temperament among the Navajo, that we are all carrying innate temperaments, some of them intact, some of them vestigial, depending on the historical stability of our biological groups?

(2) Jay R. Feierman: That's a very thought provoking question, which I've thought about for the past 35 years. The Navajo seem to have innate calmness, as it can be demonstrated on the first day of life, based on the work of Dan Freedman, who measured activity levels in the newborn nursery of Navajo compared to non-Navajo babies. Also, the few Navajos I know who have been adopted at birth by Anglos also have this same calm disposition to them. I also delivered about 300 Navajo babies and when Navajo women are in labor, for the most part they remain relatively calm and don't make the loud type of sounds which I was used to hearing from Anglo women in labor. So in terms of calmness, I don't believe its a choice for them, its just the way they are. However, I suspect that the innate calm disposition of the Navajo and their inattentiveness to time are two separate issues, with the former being innate and the latter being culturally acquired.
In terms of time there is very little that a traditional Navajo sheep herder living on the reservation needs to do at one hour which couldn't wait a few hours or even a few days. When I was living with them in the early 1970s, most of the traditional Navajo didn't wear wrist watches. If they'd tell you they were coming to see you on one day, they may come sometime that week. They also were not into numbers. They didn't know off the top of their head numerical things which Anglos knew, such as how old they were and even how many children they had, if they had a lot of children (average was 6.7 children/family). When one would ask a traditional Navajo woman how many children she had (through a translator), she would say each name out loud and hold up a different finger for each name and then give the total number. When traditional Navajo go off the reservation to the University, the time demands are often very difficult for them. Yet, some of them do adapt and go on to get advanced degrees and work in the time conscious business world. About 15 years ago, when pagers and cell phones were just becoming part of the required equipment of a technocrat, my Navajo friends from the reservation, who would stay with us in our house when they came to Albuquerque to shop, would laugh every time my pager or cell phone rang. They didn't even have a landline phone and probably checked their mail every few weeks in the post office.
So what I learned from them was that my adherence to exact time schedules was culturally arbitrary, although necessary to get the kinds of things done I was doing in the industrialized world. When I said that I learned about patience from them, what I really learned was the arbitrary nature of my time adherence. Their innate calmness made it easy for them to sit and wait without appearing impatient, but that was also because they also didn't have a lot of other things on their schedule to do that day.
There have been times in my life where I have had to wait long periods of time, such as having to wait in an airport for a flight which has been delayed 24 hours. When I've had to do that, I have wished that waiting was as easy for me as it is for the Navajo. Also, I learned to culturally adapt to their quiet and patient ways when I was living with them. We had a 4 wheel drive Jeep, as there were only about four paved roads on the reservation, which was bigger than the state of Connecticut. When we'd be out in the middle of nowhere and picked up a Navajo walking, the Navajo would get in the Jeep and say nothing. After a half hour or hour, the Navajo would make a motion with his or her hand that this is where they wanted to get off. They just wouldn't talk, even if they could speak English. At best, they would answer questions with monosyllable answers but one got the impression that it was a strain on them to make small talk. The mother of a Navajo woman friend, who married an Anglo man, used to say about this man that he didn't talk much "for an Anglo."
In response to your last question, we probably all do carry "innate temperaments, some of them intact, some of them vestigial, depending on the historical stability of our biological groups?" However, in an amalgamated society, such as the United States, it is much more difficult to make generalizations about groups as it is with the Navajo, who although now number in the hundreds of thousands, may all be the descendants of one small hunter-gather band of a few dozen individuals, which migrated from central Alaska to the American southwest a only a few hundred years ago. I hope I answered your question in this rambling reply.~ Regards, Jay R. Feierman

Pair study American Indian languages to preserve them Oregon: The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla say only 44 elders among its 2,525 tribal members still fluently speak their three native languages: Cayuse, Nez Perce and Walla Walla.  To help preserve those languages, the tribe has received $585,000 in grants to create language classes on reservation schools and master-apprentice teams for elders to pass on the language to others. At the end of three years, apprentices may become licensed as language teachers.  "It's been the best year of my life, the most enlightened," said apprentice Linda Sampson.  "It's opened my eyes."  Sampson hopes the program will spark renewed interest in learning tribal languages, something she believes is crucial.  "Every tribe has the same  goal -- keeping their language going," she said.  "You can preserve it, but  you've got to transfer it to your kids."
http://www.oregonlive.com/news12  113070774232722

First Nation People And the Law

Concept: Why aren't First Nation people citizens of the state in which they reside, and the answer is, they do not live in the state.
Reservation land is considered outside of the state even if it is enclosed by it.
Yes, they still do use public education, state roads, etc., and hence the taxation and sovereignty issues are very much disputed.

First Nation People living on reservation land and not in a state at large.

If an Indian moves onto state land, he or she is subject to the laws of the state and local ordinances.
For instance, reservation territory does not have to calibrate gasoline dispension, allow the State Health Department to inspect facilities, or follow state environmental laws. That, again, is on reservation land. The local assertion of the NYS Oneidas has been that any land they buy here should be removed from state tax rolls, and not subject to any state or local regulation. This was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of the City of Sherrill v.s. the Oneida Indian Nation a couple of years ago, though in most cases, the taxes are not yet paid.
The Supreme Court ruled that on land purchased off the reservation, taxes are due and they are subject to state and local laws unless the land is put into trust with the Office of I.B.A.
There are enormous issues of state v.s. Indian government sovereignty here. Yes, it is problematic. The land claim issue here revolves around land that was purchased by the State of NY long ago, but the purchase was not ratified by the U.S. Congress.
Only Congress can pass laws regarding First Nation People.
Another example would be if I committed a crime on reservation land or if a crime was committed against me there, it would fall only to the First Nation Justice System which controls whatever happens on the reservation. No state or local laws would apply there. I could not take someone to court in the State of New York for committing a crime against me on the reservation. This is my understanding after signing a contract with their legal department.
Instead of having I.D. as citizens of the State of New York, they have clan cards. The Oneidas used to use them off reservation to avoid sales tax in stores, but I believe that may have been struck down. Ex-governor Cuomo negotiated a pact with the Oneidas for a Casino, but that appears illegal because he was a representive of the State and not Federal Government. It is expected to be challenged in court.
States cannot negotiate pacts with foreign entities. Another example is the issue of school tax. Most Oneidas here attend public school off the reservation. They do not pay school tax. Instead they offer what is called the "Silver Covenant Grant." However, this money can, and has been withheld. In Stockbridge, the Nation was not pleased with a Native American teacher that the school felt was doing her job. The grant was withheld, and the school district was forced to fend for money in other ways, and cut back on programs in order to avoid firing the teacher. In other instances they have imposed that certain essays be assigned the students that show the Oneida in a certain light, threatening to withhold the grant money if the district did not comply.

Black Indian Mexico
Facts, along with analysis, pics, reading list, links, and page reference "proofs" of African origins of heroes in Mexican History.

Black Indian Slave Narratives
It is significant to know that the Freedmen of Indian Territory were a unique people with a unique lifestyle and culture. Most of the Freedmen were bilingual, although many did speak little or no English and only the language of their Indian slavemasters. The Oklahoma Slave Narratives contain many references to their culture and lifestyle, illustrating how immersed they were in the Native way of life.

Cherokee

Cherokee Freedmen win tribal citizenship lawsuit Read Ruling: Oklahoma: The Cherokee Tribe's highest court has ruled that the Cherokee Freedman, descendants of African-American slaves who lived among the tribe, may claim full Cherokee citizenship.    The Judicial Appeals Tribunal said the Freedmen can retain citizenship and tribal privileges despite not having identifiable "Indian" blood.  "If the Cherokee people wish to limit tribal citizenship, and such limitation would terminate the pre-existing citizenship of even one Cherokee citizen, then it must be done in the open," the court wrote.  The court said the only way to legally terminate the Freedmen's citizenship is through the Cherokee constitution.  The current constitution, enforced in 1975, does not limit tribal citizenship by blood.  The Freedmen dispute began in the 1980s when Lucy Allen, 73, a Freedmen descendant, was barred from voting in tribal elections.

Cherokee Tribe: http://www.cherokee.org/
Eastern Tribe: http://www.cherokee-nc.com/
And this is the ONLY other Federally recognized Cherokee tribe, The United Keetowah Band http://www.unitedkeetoowahband.org/ This is a SMALL intense group.
Military http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/nativeamerican01/inner.html Other standards: http://www.nmai.si.edu/
U.S. Gov http://www.ed.gov/free/past/2005/111.html
The National Register of Historic Places
http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/feature/indian/
is pleased to promote awareness of and appreciation for the history and culture of American Indians and Alaska Natives during National American Indian Heritage Month. This month is dedicated to recognizing the intertribal cultures, the events and lifeways, the designs and achievements of American Indians and Alaska Natives. As part of the observance, this site showcases historic properties listed in the National Register, National Register publications, and National Park units. Join the National Register in paying powerful tribute to the spirit of American Indians and Alaska Natives, and their contributions to our history.

Tribes on the Plains, Mississippi and the Ohio River Valley.
Find out about Haida totem poles, village life in Hidatsa and Mandan tribes on the plains, sacred ceremonial sites for the Yoeme (Yaqui) people, daily life of the Pueblo Indians, mounds of Mississippi and the Ohio River Valley, and more. 

The American Virgin Islands

Tainos, Carib Indians who lived in the U.S.Caribbean Islands

HAWAIIANS

The first settlers of Hawai'i.

• From the 34th Annual Report of the Hawaiian Historical Society, 1925
• Wayfinding (Non-Instrument Navigation)
• The Spirit of 'Ohana and the Polynesian Voyagers /Cecilia Kapua Lindo
• Proverbs of Hawai'i

Native American Songs

Omaha Indian Tribe Music includes The American Memory Collection of the Library of Congress just added songs of Omaha Indians from the 1890s to their website; 44 recordings made by Francis La Flesche and Alice Cunningham Fletcher between 1895 and 1897, as well as recordings made by staff of the American Folklife Center at the 1983 Omaha harvest celebration pow-wow and the 1985 Hethu'shka Society Concert held at the Library of Congress.These were recorded between 1895 and 1897. There are wax cylinder recordings from the 1890s that are still viable. Also included with this collection are interviews with members of the Omaha tribe that provide background information about the songs performed, fieldnotes and tape logs made by Center staff during the 1983 pow-wow, and photographs and related publicity materials from the various performances. Collection Finder

Omaha Indian Music - American Memory Library of Congress

Spirit of White Earth, a six-part story of the people of White Earth -- and the legacy of one remarkable woman, Winnie Jourdain, grandmother of the reservation. Designed both for the general public and for classroom use. It uses text, photos, the spoken word, music, video and interactive graphics to bring the sights and sounds of Ojibwe (Chippewa) culture into the home or classroom.

The Seminole Tribe of Florida has a children's educational packet and LOTS of great legends and songs.