By the age of 10, most children in the United States have been taught all 50 states that make up the country. But centuries ago, the land that is now the United States was a very different place. Over 20 million Native Americans dispersed across over 1,000 distinct tribes, bands, and ethnic groups populated the territory.
The Indigenous medicine wheel represents the alignment and continuous interaction of the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual realities.
Sixty percent of the food eaten in the world today was developed over thousands of years by the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. Traditional foods remain an important part of our cultural…
Are you looking read up bit more about the 7 Ojibway Teachings? then you have come to the right place. For many generations the Anishinaabe Ojibway people like many other tribes have followed the ancient passed down teaching's. So in order to nurture and take care of our lives we must learn what those different aspects are. So with that lets learn together The 7 Ojibway Teachings.
Seven Sacred Teachings The traditional ideals of respect and sharing that form the base of the Aboriginal way of life are built around the seven sacred teachings. Each law is taught by an animal to…
Culture Tuesday: An Exploration of Native American Cuisine of North America + 5 Vegan Native American recipes.
Ojibwe menwaagamig (Native American juice). Discover our recipe rated 4/5 by 31 members.
How many different uses are there for the Buffalo? While most people immediately think meat, there are in fact quite a number of products t...
Teach SEL and health topics to primary grades using the medicine wheel, an Indigenous/Native American symbol! This unit helps students understand mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health and how each type of health affects the others. They'll learn about fostering healthy habits to improve overall well-being. Included are a teacher's guide, printable posters, whole-class activities, worksheets, and an end-of-unit assessment. This cross-curricular unit covers both primary health standards as well as social studies standards using Indigenous topics, and is designed to fit the new Canadian (British Columbian) curricular standards. What is the medicine wheel? The medicine wheel is a symbol used by a variety of Indigenous groups in North America. It can symbolize a number of different things including the four directions (north, west, east, and south), the four seasons, as well as the four aspects of oneself (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual). Though it can symbolize different things, it is always a circle divided into four. Why use the medicine wheel for SEL? For this unit, the medicine wheel represents the four parts of an individual: the mind, spirit, body, and heart. While the concept of different elements of an individual is not unique to Indigenous cultures, the medicine wheel is a wonderful way to help students visualize each of these essential parts and to reinforce the idea that they are all equal and important parts of a whole. Additionally, teaching SEL using the medicine wheel is a great way to introduce students to different elements of Indigenous cultures!
Overview of the Trail of Tears, the forced relocation in the 1830s of Native Americans from the southeastern U.S. to Indian Territory (Oklahoma).
Tepees or tipis are the name of dwellings used by American Indians. Typically, they were constructed of poles arranged and fastened into a conical frame covered by animal skins. A hole was left in the top for smoke to escape and a flap was created to allow movement in and out of the teepee.
The Meaningful Teachings Of The Drum. As First Nation's People, we have always been told that the first drum beat we hear, is when we are inside our mother. That drumbeat we hear is known as the heart of our mom. In cultures all over the world, there is known to be a drum that is significant to them. Drums have always been apart of human life since the beginning and have great importance in First Nation culture. There are many stories as to how the drum came to be but for now, we will focus on just a few for today. So in honor of Mother's day here The Origin Of The Drum.
Whether you are a member of one of the recognized tribes or come from a different background, these Native American recipes will give you a delicious %
A new study has the conservation community abuzz with the (very, very old) notion that Native Americans lived in a pristine, Edenic wonderland whose ecological contours they barely altered. This…
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Seminole indians celebrating a wedding in Flordia. The bridegroom, Henri Yahula kissing his bride Haia-et-ti. The bridal couple and the guests are wearing traditional costumes of their tribe....
TIG is a product of the Australian Sports Commission, extensively researched and collated by Ken Edwards with assistance from Troy Meston.
I'm excited to be linking up for my second ever five for Friday! In past years I really never enjoyed the thematic activities for Tha...
A guide developed with Indigenous leaders to better support Indigenous employees in your workplace.
Please click on the map image or here for a full size version. The map of Canadian First Nations pre-European contact has only been hanging on Allan Yerxa’s office wall for a few days, but already the response has been “wow.” “I think (the map) is really important. It helps us with our self-identity. It’s important for the First Nations people to know where they come from, because they’re missing all that right now,” said Yerxa, who serves as lands and resources coordinator for Couchiching First Nation, and as such does a fair amount of historical research. Yerxa provided mapmaker Aaron Carapella with information of First Nations in the northwest area of Ontario. Carapella said he relied heavily on telephone conversations with people like Yerxa, along with cultural centres and tribal museums, and accessed genealogical Web sites with military and missionary reports to gather his information for his map of Canada. “I always verified the spellings with the actual tribal source before I confirmed it to be on the map,” he said. Originally, Carapella, who has already created a similar map of tribes in the United States, was not going to do a Canadian map. He spent 14 years, working on and off, on the U.S. tribal map and had hoped to encourage a counterpart in Canada to take on the project. But when that fell through, Carapella decided the map was too valuable to let slide. The end result of Carapella’s Canadian research is the locations of 212 bands identified in their own Indigenous language. The map is also peppered with photos of leaders and everyday people. “It was too difficult in some circumstances to narrow down what an autonomous group was,” said Carapella, “so I tried to group it into autonomous people.” Logistics were also a concern, he said, pointing to British Columbia and along the coast. “In order to make them all fit, even on a large map to make it visual … I couldn’t break it down to really small autonomous groups,” he said. “I tried to keep it uniform.” But Carapella is still confident that a year’s worth of research into Canada’s Indigenous people has produced a “pretty comprehensive” map. “I’m completely open to people making suggestions for me to make corrections,” he said, noting that he had “many, many” revisions for the U.S. map. “This is not my map. This is a map for the people.” Carapella, who is Cherokee Indian from Oklahoma, became interested in a tribal map of the U.S. when his grandparents introduced him to his culture and the powwow circuit as a youngster. “I always liked to hang things on the wall … and I wanted to pick up maps of the tribes, but there were never any really good maps,” he said. “As I got a little bit older … I came up with the idea to draw my own map. It became more concrete as time went on.” He began the project at 19 years of age. Now, with Canada and the United States plotted, Carapella plans to move on to Mexico and then finish up with Alaska. “I don’t really recognize the borders between countries because I have such an intense knowledge of Native history,” he said. “My grand design … I would like to have a map at least of all of North America … leaving out provincial lines and state lines and country lines, just a map of what it looked like before contact.” Carapella also hopes to do Canada and the U.S. in more detail, entertaining the idea of creating an old-fashioned driving atlas, where he can focus on specific areas of each country. Carapella would like to see the maps used in classrooms at all levels of education as well as hung up in band and tribal administrative offices. “It’s good to know that Turtle Island was occupied by First Nations people since time immemorial. We’ve always been here,” said Yerxa. Carapella has the Canada and U.S. maps available separately as well as together, with over 750 historic First Nations plotted on the combined map. Carapella has produced a video that can be seen on YouTube. He also has a web page.
