Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis)

I love it when I meet an American Indian who thoroughly enjoys being American Indian.

Rez Salute: The Real Healer Dealer enjoys being American Indian

What comes with such an encounter typically includes a great conversation filled with laughter.

Taos Pueblo fashion designer Patricia Michaels will appear on the 11th season of Project Runway, which will begin airing Jan. 24.

Michaels was one of 16 designers picked to compete for the popular show's grand prize of $100,000, a fashion spread in Marie Claire magazine, a Lexus, $50,000 worth of technology and the opportunity to sell their collection at Lord & Taylor department stores.

"We used to be up on the mesa area," he said. "We're mountain people, yet we ended up down here."

Now, the pueblo is trying to get at least a piece of that ancestral mountain homeland back under its control. It has filed a complaint in federal court to recover all the land now contained within the Valles Caldera National Preserve.

A group of students, community members and tribal leaders from across the region gathered in the biting-cold Friday afternoon to express support for First Nations leaders who are protesting alleged treaty-rights violations by the Canadian government.

There is now one hub of knowledge in Keshena following the merger of the Menominee Public Library with the College of Menominee Nation library.

Like the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly, North America's largest indoor butterfly pavilion is emerging from vacant acreage just east of Scottsdale.

Butterfly Wonderland is the first phase of a 35-acre, $170million entertainment complex at the northeastern corner of the Pima Freeway and Via De Ventura, on the Salt River Reservation.

The Cherokee Nation’s Natural Resources Department is again offering Cherokee gardeners a chance to grow a bit of the tribe’s history and culture in their respective gardens using heirloom seeds from its seed bank.

This year 13 seed varieties are being offered. The seeds are free, but participating gardeners are asked to help restock the seed bank by sending seeds from their crops to the tribe.

Jon Ross is drawn to the scenery, the soil and the spirit as he steps lightly through Kalifornsky Village.

Up here, where the sounds of the road are overtaken by the sound of Unhghenesditnu, the farthest over river, Ross reflects. Behind him are a few graves and further beyond are depressions in the ground where his forbearers once lived — cache pits, house pits.

Awakening Languages

Dr. Wesley Leonard is a linguistic anthropologist and associate professor of Native American Studies at Southern Oregon University. His research is changing linguistics, and his classes are transforming the way students perceive and study indigenous languages and cultures.

"There is tremendous interest and enthusiasm to learn about Indian language," says Leonard.

On September 13, the U.S. House and Senate introduced bipartisan legislation to continue funding that will help keep Native American languages alive and spoken throughout our country’s tribal communities. The Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act, first funded in 2008 and set to expire at the end of this year, has funneled more than $50 million into tribal language programs.

"Ya'at eeh," George Werito says, greeting thousands of radio listeners across the Navajo reservation in their native language, Diné.

Microsoft and Cherokee Nation officials celebrated the integration of the Cherokee language into the new Windows 8 operating system on Dec. 19 at Sequoyah High School.

We all have the Native Americans to thank for corn bread. Its humble beginnings can be traced back to the Indians that the European settlers came in contact with when they first arrived in America. However, it stands to reason that the Native Americans have been making corn bread long before that.

The Follow My Leader Game

This game is widely played among the Indian tribes, particularly by the boys, and also by the girls. The Leader improvises the steps and the movements, which all who follow must repeat and keep time to the song. The song here given is traditional in the Omaha tribe. It has been handed down from one generation of young folk to another—for how many, "nobody knows."