Native American Arts & Culture

Literature
History
News & Current Events
Art
Languages
Culture, Myth, & Folklore

Native American Literature

• American Native Press Archives Tribal Writers Digital Library
  The works of Native poets, fiction, and prose writers; featuring works of writers who are not ordinarily anthologized, and works which out of print or originally appeared in ephemeral sources and periodicals.

• American Indians in Children's Literature
  Critical discussion and resources on American Indians in children's books, public school curricula, and popular culture.

• Circle of Stories
  Explores Native American storytelling and storytellers through documentary film, photography, art, and music.

• Storytellers: Native American Authors Online
  This "Native Wiki" site contains information on Native American poets and novelists, including contemporary Abenaki, Anishinaabe, Blackfeet, Cherokee, Choctaw, Iroquois, Lakota / Dakota, Muscogee / Creek, Navajo, Osage, and Pueblo writers.

• Native American Authors
  From the Internet Public Library. Information on contemporary Native American authors with bibliographies of their published works, biographical information, and links to online resources including interviews, online texts, and tribal websites.

• Sherman Alexie
  The National Book Award winner's official website, which includes his biography, essays, and articles.

• Indigenous People's Literature
  Indian.org's literature collection, including traditional stories from various tribes.

• Writing Tricksters: Mythic Gambols in American Ethnic Literature (e-book)
  Jeanne Rosier Smith celebrates the Native American trickster and traces its influences in American ethnic literatures. Her thesis is that the trickster figure is a unique American phenomenon that "combines tradition and change and makes an ideal agent for a politically engaged, visionary art" found in multicultural literatures.

• The Story of Dancing Cloud and She Who Sees All
  A children's story inspired by Native American folktales; by my sister, Elisheva Herrera.  

History

• Indians/Native Americans
  Links to American history resources relating to Native Americans; from the National Archives Library Information Center (ALIC).

• Chaco Canyon
  About Chacoan/Anasazi culture, the great kivas, and the inspiration behind the poem "Kiva at Chaco Canyon." For more photos and info also check out the Chaco Culture National Historical Park page.

• The Hexagon, the Solstice and the Kiva
  Chris Hardaker discusses studies on the geometric design types found in the Chaco Canyon kivas and asserts there exists a remarkable coincidence between design and astronomy.

• Code Talkers
  Page by Harrison Lapahie Jr., son of Harrison Lapahie, a World War II Navajo Code Talker. Features the original code, the Navajo Marine Hymn, and links to other Code Talker sites.

• First Nations Tribal Collection of the Southern Oregon Digital Archives
  Documents, books, and articles relating to the indigenous peoples of southwestern Oregon and northern California, including the Coos, Hupa, Karuk, Klamath, Modoc, Takelma, Shasta, Siuslaw, Cow Creek Band of Umpqua, Yahooskin, and Yurok nations.

• First People
  An educational site on the first people of Turtle Island, or the Americas and Canada. Thank you to First People for their generous offering of beautiful Native American images and clip art, which are included on this website.

News & Current Events

• Indian Country Today
  A nation-wide American Indian news service owned and operated by the Oneida Nation. With coverage of current events, analysis, and commentary on American Indian issues.

• Reznet: Reporting from Native America
  Reznet, an online newspaper for Native America employs 30 Native American college students nationwide, most graduates of the Freedom Forum's American Indian Journalism Institute, as reporters, editors, photographers, copy editors, and multimedia journalists to cover their tribal communities or colleges. Articles, multimedia, blogs, arts, film, music, culture, and current issues affecting the Native American community.

• NativeWeb
  Resources for Indigenous Cultures around the World

• A Guide to Native American Studies Programs in the United States and Canada
  From the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures.

• Where Was the Maya Civilization in Mel Gibson's Apocalypto?
  Gerardo Aldana, Professor of Ancient Mesoamerica, Department of Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, asserts that "To the many scholars around the country who are familiar with the intricate and complex legacy of the Maya, Mel Gibson's new film is an affront and embarrassment to that history."

Art

• Native American Images
  Illustrations from rare books, pamphlets, journals, pulp magazines, newspapers, and ephemera from the Bancroft Library.

• The Edward S. Curtis Collection: Photographs of Native Americans
  The early 20th-century photographer embarked on "The North American Indian Project," a thirty-year effort he described as a goal "to form a comprehensive and permanent record of all the important tribes of the United States and Alaska that still retain to a considerable degree their customs and traditions." From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Reading Room.

• Kiowa Drawings - National Anthropological Archives
  Digital collection includes works of art on buffalo hide and contemporary works on paper. Historically important are those by Kiowa men who were imprisoned at Fort Marion in the 1870s and those by "The Kiowa Five," a group of artists who studied at the University of Oklahoma in the twentieth century.

• Agayuliyararput - Our Way of Making Prayer: Yuk'ik Masks
  Agayuliyararput is the first exhibition of Native Alaskan Yup'ik material presented from a Yup'ik perspective. The Web exhibit highlights 27 Yup'ik objects from the National Museum of Natural History collection.

• Cheryl Yellowhawk
  The Sioux artist now lives in Florida, but was a longtime resident of New Mexico. She was influenced by the physical geography and the spiritual visibility of the Native American peoples in New Mexico, and her use of bright vivid color and imagery depicts her excitement of line and form in capturing the spirituality of women and landscape. She works in oils, pastels, and a variety of other media.

• The Eagle's Nest
  A unique shop based in Washington state that offers authentic Native American Northwest art, including Coast Salish, Haida, Cowichan, Athabascan and Navajo artists. Thank you to Eagle's Nest for use on this webiste of their beautiful image of a Coast Salish wood-carved Kingfisher.
  

Native American Languages

• Words in English from Amerindian Languages
  Common American English words from a variety of Native languages.

• Native Languages of the Americas: List of Native American Indian Tribes and Languages
  A compendium of more than a thousand Native American tribes of the Western Hemisphere and the indigenous languages they speak.

• TurtleIsland.Org's Native American Languages Page
  Translate English into the following languages: Mohawk, Ojibwe, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Inuit, Naskapi. Online Cree Dictionary; Using Technology for the Mohawk Language; Lipian Apache Songs. Listen to greetings in Oneida, Cayuga, Cherokee, and many other native languages, including Aboriginal Languages of Australia.

Culture, Myth, & Folklore

• Ceremonial Costumes of the Pueblo Indians: Their Evolution, Fabrication, and Significance in the Prayer Drama (e-book)
  Full text of an e-scholarship book by Virginia More Roediger. Originally published in 1941, this important work preserves through careful research and clear descriptions, the customs, costumes and dances of the Pueblo people.

• Cry For Luck: Sacred Song and Speech Among the Yurok, Hupa, and Karok Indians of Northwestern California (e-book)
  Richard Keeling describes types of medicine songs used in personal and community ceremony and ritual, along with musical and vocal styles, song themes, and formulas. Most of the material was collected between 1900 and 1942, and preserves an important record of North American Indian music.

• Native American Images
  A web "magazine" devoted to the images, sights, sounds, stories, and songs of Native America; with many video essays. The site's author also invites visitors to download images from the picture galleries.

• Indigenous Peoples of México
  The culture and language of México's indigenous nations; with indigenous poetry, myth, song, and dance.

• Native American Spirituality
  Religious Tolerance.org's page on Native American spirituality, including the Restorationist movement's view of Native American origins; development of Aboriginal cultures; adsorption of Native beliefs; and beliefs of Native American tribes, from the Arctic to the Southwest.