Native American History

The push to rename Mount Evans in Colorado has gained momentum in recent years.

Officials Delay Vote to Rename Colorado's Mount Evans

The mountain is named for John Evans, who oversaw the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864

Stories of the enslaved people who helped kick-start paleontology and the Native American guides who led naturalists to fossils around the continent have long been suppressed.

The First Fossil Finders in North America Were Enslaved and Indigenous People

Decades before paleontology’s formal establishment, Black and Native Americans discovered—and correctly identified—millennia-old fossils

Big Chief Monk Boudreaux (center) leads his Mardi Gras Indian tribe, the Golden Eagles, on Super Sunday.

What You Should Know About the Mardi Gras Indians

For more than a century, New Orleans' Black residents have donned Native-inspired attire to celebrate Carnival

Aerial view of Apple's California headquarters

How California Took Over the World

A sweeping book offers a provocative new history arguing that today's inequality can be traced back to the state's founding

Wesley Miles, a Pima archaeologist, points out that the placement of this new canal parallel to a prehistoric channel “says something about our ancestors’ engineering skills.”

This Native American Tribe Is Taking Back Its Water

With a new state-of-the-art irrigation project, Arizona’s Pima Indians are transforming their land into what it once was: the granary of the Southwest

Havasu Falls in Arizona

Havasu Falls Is Reopening After Three Years

Travelers whose reservations were canceled during the pandemic are first in line

Indigenous people brought to Spain by Hernán Cortés play the game patolli.

The Indigenous Americans Who Visited Europe

A new book reverses the narrative of the Age of Discovery, which has long evoked the ambitions of Europeans looking to the Americas rather than vice versa

Fascinating finds unveiled in 2022 ranged from a 2,000-year-old statue of a dog to colorful sarcophagi at Saqqara to a Qing dynasty vase.

Ninety-Six Fascinating Finds Revealed in 2022

The year's most exciting discoveries included hidden portraits by Cézanne and van Gogh, sarcophagi buried beneath Notre-Dame, and a medieval wedding ring

Sim’oogit Ni’isjoohl (Chief Earl Stephens) of the Nisga’a Nation with the Ni’isjoohl memorial pole

Inside the Nisga'a Nation's Fight to Get a 36-Foot Totem Pole Back From Scotland

National Museums Scotland agreed to repatriate the object, which was stolen in 1929, following an in-person appeal by an Indigenous delegation

View of the Grand Canyon showing the Bright Angel Trail, which leads to Havasupai Gardens, formerly known as Indian Garden

Officials Rename Popular Grand Canyon Site to Honor Havasupai Tribe

The National Park Service forcibly removed members of the tribe from the area in the 1920s

Harvard's Peabody Museum received the collection of 700 Native American hair samples as a donation in 1935.

Harvard Museum Pledges to Return Hair Samples of 700 Native American Children

The samples come from students who were forced to attend government-run boarding schools

Leola One Feather, of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, observes as Native American artifacts are photographed in Barre, Massachusetts. 

Massachusetts Museum Returns Wounded Knee Artifacts to Sioux Tribes

A ceremony on Saturday marked the conclusion of a long repatriation process

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian dedicated the National Native American Veterans Memorial Friday, November 11 as part of a three-day event to honor Native veterans.

A Long-Deserved Tribute to Native American Veterans

A ceremonial procession kicked off a weekend of events to dedicate the National Native American Veterans Memorial

One reader wonders: Have any Native American nations been governed by women? 

Have Women Ever Run a Native American Nation? And More Questions From Our Readers

You've got questions. We've got experts

According to contemporary accounts, Crazy Horse carried himself with great humility.

How Would Crazy Horse See His Legacy?

Perhaps no Native American is more admired for military acumen than the Lakota leader. But is that how he wanted to be remembered?

Nicole Mann poses for a portrait in a T-38 trainer jet at Ellington Field in Houston, Texas, in 2018.

Nicole Mann Becomes the First Native American Woman in Space

She is the mission commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission that will spend five months on the International Space Station

This photo of the south end of the canal, taken in 2018, shows where the waterway met up with Little Lagoon. 

Archaeologists Dig Up 1,400-Year-Old Native American Canal in Alabama

The nearly mile-long structure allowed inhabitants to paddle to rich fishing grounds and access trade routes

A butte in Gem County, Idaho, is now named Sehewoki’I Newenee’an Katete.

Hundreds of Federal Sites Officially Drop Racial Slur From Their Names

The Interior Department is renaming locations across the country to remove the derogatory word for Native American women

Sacheen Littlefeather speaking at the Academy Awards in 1973

Indigenous Rights Activist Sacheen Littlefeather Dies at 75

Marlon Brando sent her to decline his Best Actor award in protest over Hollywood’s depiction of Native Americans

Members of Ho-Chunk Nation and the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa help clean the 3,000-year-old canoe found in Lake Mendota.

3,000-Year-Old Dugout Canoe Recovered From Wisconsin Lake

Archaeologists believe it’s the oldest canoe ever found in the Great Lakes region

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