Source: https://collections.artsmia.org/art/36169/gathering-wild-rice-seth-eastman

Wild Rice and the Rights of Nature

A groundbreaking lawsuit asks whether wild rice, or manoomin, can hold legal rights under tribal law and the growing rights of nature movement.
A herd of Buffalo in Western Kansas, 1860s

Drought and Indigenous Migration in the American Midwest

In the seventeenth century, life at the prairie–forest edge was dynamic, unstable, and deeply shaped by climate.
Dancers prepare to enter the contest powwow at the 100th Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial at Red Rock Park on August 13, 2022

Honoring Indigenous Peoples’ Day: A Reading List

With scholarship on Indigenous knowledge, environmental justice, resistance, and decolonization, this list honors Native sovereignty and self-determination.
Dakota pipeline protestors

Celebrating Indigenous Peoples and Cultures

More and more states are choosing to celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day instead of Columbus Day.
Wild Horses at Play by George Catlin, between 1834 and 1837

The Rise and Fall of the Equestrian Cultures of the Plains

The introduction of the horse to North America by the Spanish transformed the lives of the Indigenous peoples of the Plains in decidedly mixed ways.
Tobacco leaves on a black background

The Ever-Lengthening History of Tobacco

People have been smoking in the Pacific Northwest for more than 4,500 years.
Ethnographic map of the Missouri Valley made by Inquidanecharo, great leader of the Ricara nation

Mapping “Indian Country”

In the early 1800s, the Native people of the Plains region didn’t generally think about their land in terms of tribes, territories, or racial difference.

Trees With a Secret Message

The culturally modified trees of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska bring essential stories of the past into the present.
View in the Susquehanna Valley by Charles Wilson Knapp

The Mysterious Madame Montour

Montour presented herself as a cultural intermediary between Native Americans and whites in colonial America. But who was she?
Cahokia

How Native Americans Guarded Their Societies Against Tyranny

Many Native American communities were consensus democracies that survived for generations because of careful attention to checking and balancing power.