Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura)

On display through June 17, 2016 at the Denver Art Museum, Super Indian: Fritz Scholder, 1967–1980 features more than 40 rarely seen, monumental paintings and lithographs by the renowned, sometimes controversial artist Fritz Scholder (1937–2005). This is one of the first exhibits to explore how Scholder mixed figurative and pop art influences to create colorful, compelling and revolutionary images of Natives in a way that had not been seen before – holding beer cans and ice cream cones, painted bright neon pink and draped in American flags with distorted faces.

The lessons we teach, much like the places we inhabit, are multivalent and layered in the stories they tell. At the Minnesota Humanities Center, we have long sought to empower educators to create lessons that recognize and amplify absent narratives, the stories that have been systematically marginalized or left out in classrooms and curricula for generations. By interrogating their own worldviews and personal experiences, educators recognize absent narratives in their work and develop strategies to surface these stories in a respectful way.

She has been called the Native American Maya Angelou, and at a time when most people who are decades younger have retired or cut back on their activities, Henrietta Mann is still crisscrossing the United States teaching, speaking and advocating for Native American education.

Cherokee Immersion Charter School students recently took home 18 trophies during the 14th annual Oklahoma Native Youth Language Fair for their use of the Cherokee language in verbal outlets.

The students competed in spoken language, modern and traditional song, spoken prayer, spoken poetry, short film and a poster contest.

On Wednesday, April 13, Red Cloud Indian School's 3rd and 4th graders put on a play, with all speaking parts in Lakota. The play is titled Iktómi Wichítegelga Sinté Wán Un!.

The writers and creators of the Lakota play consisted of fluent speakers from all over Lakota Country, including Rosebud, Eagle Butte and McLaughlin, South Dakota. They envisioned that it would soon make its way into the school system.

In this documentary from Twin Cities PBS, Ojibwe stories tell of the beginnings and the healing powers of the Jingle Dress Dance, a popular tradition throughout Native communities.

The Mille Lacs band of Ojibwe produced the video and consulted with a lot of their members about the jingle dress.

It's long been a desire of Larry "Amik" Smallwood to tell the story he heard growing up of how the jingle dress came to be.

Young people in Yukon, including girls, playing hand games. A group in Yukon is organizing its first all women hand games tournament this weekend. In the N.W.T., women are generally not allowed to play the traditional Dene game.

A hand games society in the Yukon has organized its first all-women tournament this weekend in Whitehorse, saying it's a "gift" that women can play in the territory.

Unlocking Silent Histories, or “USH,” is an up-and-coming organization that you’ll want to know. We aim to combat the legacy of genocide and colonialism by empowering Indigenous youth to raise their voices and tell their stories through film. Our work has captured the attention of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), which will feature these youth-produced films between September 9 – 18, 2016. USH began to emerge in 2012 when our founder Donna DeGennaro left her academic job to focus on developing self-directed, technology-enabled learning with youth in the Lake Atitlan region of Guatemala

The first pictograph on the High Dog Winter Count, carefully drawn a hundred years ago by a hand that still practiced the old style form, meaning that it wasn't drawn with the detail of post-Catlin/Bodmer pictography nor the finesse of ledgergraph art, begins in the top left corner of a cotton banner, which is followed by more pictographs intentionally wound in a spiral from the outside in.

Jeni Hendricks will not be spending her summer at home this year.

Instead, the Pawhuska native will be in Washington, D.C., as a Udall intern working for the Department of Justice in its division of environmental and natural resources.

Perry Horse Discusses Identity, Tribal Sovereignty At UNCA

Perry Horse, a member of the Kiowa Nation and a national advocate for the importance of education in American Indian communities, gave a talk, "Identity Development in American Indian Students," March 31 on the UNC Asheville campus.

Cherokee Nation citizen Lisa Snell recently finished writing and designing a guidebook for the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association and National Park Service about Native American tribes along the historic Route 66.

The Vote Bison Coalition is proud to celebrate the House and Senate passage of the National Bison Legacy Act, which when signed by the President will officially make bison the National Mammal of the United States.

In Hawai'i, we have a proverb that says "He ali'i ka 'aina, he kauwa ke kanaka": "The land is a chief, and man is its servant." In our worldview, there is no separation between nature and people; just as the land takes care of us, we need to take care of the land.

This concept may seem simple, but years of cultural repression following the United States' takeover of Hawai'i jeopardized this connection — and we're only now beginning to restore it. Much of this recovery is due to the resurgence of the Hawaiian language.

Many children grow up with dreams of playing the game professionally. However less than 11 percent of NCAA college athletes are drafted by a Major League Baseball team and less than 1 percent of high school players are drafted into the professional ranks.

Cherokee Nation citizen Zachary Slade Heathcott is part of the less than percent after being drafted by the New York Yankees out of high school.

Over the blat of engines and hum of tires on nearby Farmers Loop, Mark Spangler hears the chuckles of the animal he is studying. Male wood frogs in a one-acre pond on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks are singing a song of spring.

The mating calls of several frogs ring off the eardrum. It’s a piercing noise created by air in the inflated cheeks of a creature that could hide in a moose track.

Nature's Lessons

Seven Native American tribes in Oklahoma will provide habitat and food on their lands for monarch butterflies, whose numbers have plummeted in recent years due to troubles along their lengthy migration route.

Tribal leaders said at a news conference on Tuesday in Shawnee, southeast of Oklahoma City, they will plant crucial vegetation for the butterflies, including milkweed and native nectar-producing plants, on their lands.