Suspension bridges, which connected Andean peoples who had previously been isolated from one another, were essential to the organization and administration of the Inka Empire and played a crucial role in the social history of the region into the 20th century. No wonder neighboring communities take pride in getting together each year to rebuild the last Inka bridge.
Award-winning singer Spencer Battiest (Seminole Tribe of Florida/Choctaw) is a third- or fourth-generation musician, but his cultural roots go even deeper. “I’ve always had close ties with my tribe since I was young,” Spencer explains. “As I push forward in my career and see how far I can go, I always carry my tribe with me.” Battiest’s reverence for his heritage is palpable in his work. His music videos have Native directors, actors, tech hands, and producers. “I love doing business with other Natives. That’s always been my thing.”
From our museum in New York: Native designers, artists, and entrepreneurs who are making their mark on fashion take a day off to work with young people hoping to become a part of that world. Some pointers? Communicate, collaborate, and support each other. Expect creative fields to be an ongoing struggle—keep working! And remember, perfection is not the goal.
The Indian Removal Act, signed by Andrew Jackson in 1830, became for American Indians one of the most detrimental laws in U.S. history. Nation to Nation looks at Removal’s historic and legal repercussions for the tribes. The upcoming exhibition Americans, opening in the fall, will ask us to think about what we, as a nation, have chosen to know and not know about the Trail of Tears.
Indians are everywhere in American national and pop culture, and have been for centuries. Why is that? Americans, opening in the fall, explores Americans’ and American Indians’ entangled history, revealed by the events that have shaped our national consciousness and by the imagery of American Indians all around us in our everyday lives.
Autumn White Eyes (enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, Turtle Mountain Anishinaabe, Northern Cheyenne, and Pawnee descent) talks about writing, revision, and the evolution of her work. She sees poetry and spoken word as forms of oral tradition and storytelling: "I was lucky to grow up with my great grandmothers," she says, "and I loved hearing them tell stories, which always sounded like poetry to me." Their stories are one source of her inspiration; others include the writing and performance styles of John Trudell, Mayda del Valle, Tanaya Winder, Supaman.
The broad strokes of Pocahontas’s biography are well known—unusually so for a 17th-century Indigenous woman. Yet her life has long been shrouded by misunderstandings and misinformation, and by the seemingly inexhaustible output of kitsch representations of her supposed likeness. The conference "Pocahontas and After," organized by the University of London and the British Library, sought a deeper understanding of Pocahontas's life and the lasting impact of the clash of empires that took place in the heart of the Powhatan Confederacy during the 17th-century.
Puget Sound Indians’ fundamental belief in the Medicine Creek Treaty helped inspire the great fish-ins on the salmon rivers of Western Washington in the 1960s and ’70s. Those acts of resistance fixed national attention on Indian treaty rights and laid the groundwork for the emergence of the modern tribal sovereignty movement that continues to define life in Indian Country today.
