Native Americans

Choctaw chief Greenwood LeFlore had 15,000 acres of Mississippi land (above, his Mississippi home Malmaison) and 400 enslaved Africans under his dominion.

How Native American Slaveholders Complicate the Trail of Tears Narrative

The new exhibition 'Americans' at the National Museum of the American Indian prompts a deeper dive for historic truths

"Now," says the American Indian Museum's director Kevin Gover (right with Lonnie Bunch, director of the African American History museum) "some of these institutions are able to produce excellent scholarship that tells a vastly different story from what most Americans learn.”

Two Museum Directors Say It’s Time to Tell the Unvarnished History of the U.S.

History isn’t pretty and sometimes it is vastly different than what we’ve been taught, say Lonnie Bunch and Kevin Gover

The 1868 treaty is "not just a historical relic," says Navajo Nation president Russell Begaye, "it’s a living document. . . It’s a contractual agreement with the U.S. government and the Navajo nation.”

The Navajo Nation Treaty of 1868 Lives On at the American Indian Museum

Marking a 150-year anniversary and a promise kept to return the people to their ancestral home

Philip Yenyo, executive director of the American Indian Movement for Ohio, leads a protest of the Cleveland Indians Chief Wahoo mascot before a baseball game against the Detroit Tigers Friday, April 10, 2015, in Cleveland.

Smithsonian Curator Weighs in on Cleveland Indians’ Decision to Retire ‘Racist’ Logo

Chief Wahoo, says Paul Chaat Smith, is a prime example of how the appropriation of Native American culture can be terribly problematic

Likenesses of American Indians have been used to sell everything from cigars to station wagons.

Probing the Paradoxes of Native Americans in Pop Culture

A new exhibition picks apart the cultural mythologies surrounding the first “Americans”

A scientific illustration of the Upward Sun River camp in what is now Interior Alaska.

Genetics Rewrites the History of Early America—And, Maybe, the Field of Archaeology

The genome of an infant from Upward Sun River, Alaska offers tantalizing insight into the story of human migration

Pleito cave site

Virtual Reality Is Allowing Us To See Some of the World’s Most Inaccessible Archaeological Sites

A Native American tribe in California got a chance to reconnect with its past through virtual reality models of sacred sites

Graduate Fernando Yazzie after the ceremony at Navajo Technical University.

The Importance of Graduating in the Navajo Way

Education in traditional knowledge, as well as global issues, form the foundation of this Navajo Nation university

A pod of dolphins swim along a boat in the Channel Islands National Park, California

What Archaeologists and Historians Are Finding About the Heroine of a Beloved Young Adult Novel

New scholarship reveals details about the Native American at the center of the classic <em>Island of the Blue Dolphins</em>

Ancient Orca Geoglyph Rediscovered in Peru

Found on a hillside in the Palpa desert, the 200-foot image was likely made by peoples of the Paracas and Nazca cultures

Archaeologists Date Pre-Hispanic Puerto Rican Rock Art for the First Time

A new analysis looks at the thousands of images found in caves on Mona Island, a spiritual hub for the Taino culture

American Indian Movement leader Dennis Banks

Dennis Banks, Native American Civil Rights Warrior, Has Died

He rose to national attention after spearheading a 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota

A signpost from Standing Rock is now in the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.

Signpost From Standing Rock, Now in the Smithsonian Collections, Shows the Power of Solidarity

A new addition to the National Museum of the American Indian links current events to a long and problematic history

The Russian Orthodox Church in Igiugig

In Emotional Homecoming, Smithsonian Repatriates 24 Sets of Human Remains

Collected by an anthropologist in 1931, the National Museum of Natural History returned the bones to the village of Igiugig

A researcher uses a pipette to remove DNA from a micro test tube.

The Navajo Nation Might Lift a Longstanding Ban on Genetic Research

A policy written by tribal officials could help alleviate ethical concerns and guide genetic research and data sharing

Illustration of the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope

Controversial Hawaiian Telescope Gets State Approval

The long-delayed Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea faces opposition from native Hawaiian groups and environmentalists

The Village of Whitesboro's old seal (left) adjacent to its new seal (right).

New York Village Changes Controversial Seal Showing a White Settler Wrestling a Native American

The seal was widely mocked and criticized after villagers voted against changing it last year

Brazil Investigates Alleged Murders of "Uncontacted" Amazon Tribe Members

Gold miners were heard in a bar talking about killing 10 indigenous people in the remote Javari Valley

The replica (left) and original were first displayed together at the 2012 clan conference in Sitka, Alaska.

This Replica of a Tlingit Killer Whale Hat Is Spurring Dialogue About Digitization

Collaboration between museums and indigenous groups provides educational opportunities, archival documentation—and ethical dilemmas

Metin Eren recreates ancient arrowheads to see how they respond when fired with bows like this

This Lab Replicates Weapons to Reveal Stone Age Feats of Engineering

A Kent State archaeologist is testing the innovative engineering of the Clovis people, one of the earliest communities to inhabit North America

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