Los Angeles Mission Library: Research Guide of the Month: Native American Heritage: Websites

Useful Websites

National Museum of the Native American
A diverse and multifaceted cultural and educational enterprise, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is an active and visible component of the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum complex. The NMAI cares for one of the world's most expansive collections of Native artifacts, including objects, photographs, archives, and media covering the entire Western Hemisphere, from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego.
Museum of Indian Arts and Cultures
The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture produces online exhibitions illustrating themes and ideas related to Native American material culture. Some online exhibitions complement the exhibitions on view in the galleries, others are created specifically for the Web.
Poet Laureate Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo has championed the art of poetry—‘soul talk’ as she calls it—for over four decades. To her, poems are ‘carriers of dreams, knowledge and wisdom,’ and through them she tells an American story of tradition and loss, reckoning and myth-making. Her work powerfully connects us to the earth and the spiritual world with direct, inventive lyricism that helps us reimagine who we are.
Native American Heritage Month
November is National American Indian Heritage Month The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in paying tribute to the rich ancestry and traditions of Native Americans.
A Brief History Of LA's Indigenous Tongva People
Los Angeles voted in 2017 to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day, joining several other cities around the country in an attempt to honor the people on whose land the United States built its empire. The story of L.A.’s birth often goes back to the first pueblo in the area, which became the official Los Angeles settlement in 1781 (as either El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora de los Angeles or El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reyna de los Angeles—historians remain unsure), but the pueblo didn’t arrive in a vacuum. Settlers didn’t find themselves on empty soil prior to their claim on the area.
How Indigenous Fire Management Strategies Could Help Curb Wildfires
In recent years, California has become a hotspot for wildfires, which seem to rage with increasing ferocity year by year. 2020 was one of the worst wildfire seasons on record, and 2021 is on pace to reach a similar impact. This flaring in wildfire intensity is most commonly attributed to climate change, persistent drought conditions, and powerful winds. However, one factor that is commonly overlooked is the post-colonial practice of fire suppression in areas prone to wildfires.

Indigenous Digital Archive Treaties Explorer
While treaties between Indigenous peoples and the United States affect virtually every area in the USA, there is as yet no official list of all the treaties. The US National Archives holds 374 of the treaties, where they are known as the Ratified Indian Treaties. Here you can view them for the first time with key historic works that provide context to the agreements made and the histories of our shared lands.
Interactive Digital Land Map
Learn the name(s) of the tribal lands you live on and reflect on the relationships and living legacies that these communities have with the local environment.
Tending the Wild
"Tending the Wild" shines light on the environmental knowledge of indigenous peoples across California by exploring how they have actively shaped and tended the land for millennia, in the process developing a deep understanding of plant and animal life. This series examines how humans are necessary to live in balance with nature and how traditional practices can inspire a new generation of Californians to tend their environment
Native American Boarding Schools
Beginning in the late 19th century, many Native American children were sent to boarding schools run by the U.S. government. These schools were usually located away from Native American reservations, and were intended to remove children from the influence of tribal traditions and to assimilate them into what the schools’ proponents saw as American culture.
Native American boarding schools of the period transported children far from their families forced them to cut their hair, and punished them for using non-English names and languages. Most were run with military-like schedules and discipline, and emphasized farming and other manual skills. Although many Native American children attended day schools and parochial schools, between the 1880s and the 1920s, the term “Indian school” was widely used to refer to government-run off-reservation boarding schools.

Research Guide of the Month

November

Useful Websites