45th Infantry: The 45th Infantry Division of the National Guard included Native American men from Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Oklahoma. During World War II, the 45th served in Italy, France, and Germany. The symbol for the 45th Infantry is an American Indian "Thunderbird.” As the 45th Infantry Division completed its drive on Munich the unit participated in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp.
Allyship: Supporting people of a different culture and origin than one’s self.
American Indian Movement (AIM): Native American civil rights movement/organizations in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Founders of AIM Mary Jane Wilson, Dennis Banks, Vernon Bellecourt, Clyde Bellecourt, and George Mitchell staged a number of protests on historically significant sites of injustice and violence brought on by the federal government against Native Americans. AIM shed light on termination policies intended to assimilate Indigenous people into mainstream American culture. In 1972, motivated by prejudice in the child welfare system and hostility in the public schools, AIM organizers and local Native parents started their own community schools, call Survival Schools.
American Indian Artists Inc. (AMERINDA), established in 1987, is a community-based multi-arts organization that works to empower Native Americans, break down barriers, and foster intercultural understanding and appreciation for Native culture through its arts programs and services to individual artists. AMERINDA‘s mission is to promote the indigenous perspective in the arts to a broad audience through the creation of new work in contemporary art forms—visual, performing, literary, and media. For over 30 years, AMERINDA has been the only community-based organization specifically advocating for the inclusion of the indigenous perspective in the arts and cultural equity in public policy in New York City.
Assimilation Boarding Schools (U.S.) / Residential Schools (Canada): Boarding schools were established to assimilate Native Americans into the "American Way of Life". In 1879 Captain Richard Henry Pratt founded the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania which was a leading proponent of assimilation through education subscribing to the principle, "Kill the Indian and save the man." At Carlisle, young boys and girls were subjected to a forced transformation obligated to cut their hair, adopt American names and were forbidden to speak in their native tongue, though caught speaking their indigenous language would receive corporal punishment. Sexual and physical abuse was common and mass, unmarked graves exist at the sites of a number of the schools. In many communities children were forcibly removed to schools under threats of withholding food from their families, offering parents only a choice between separation and starvation. Boarding schools finally closed in the 1980s and early 1990s. The Canadian government had formally apologized for the generational trauma caused by the boarding schools as part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history which began to be implemented in 2007. One of the elements of the agreement was the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada to facilitate reconciliation among former students, their families, their communities, and all Canadians.
Cisgender is a term for people whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth. For example, someone who identifies as a woman and was assigned female at birth is a cisgender woman. The term cisgender is the opposite of the word transgender.
Code Talkers: In World War I and World War II, Native Americans transmitted battle messages in their languages by telephone. The World War I telephone squads played a key role in helping the United States Army win several battles in France that brought about the end of the war. The Marine Corps recruited 29 Navajo men in two weeks to develop a code within their language. After the Navajo code was developed, the Marine Corps established a Code Talking school, yielding more than 400 Navajo code Talkers.
Dakota 38: The Dakota 38 execution was the largest mass execution in the United States and took place on December 26, 1862, the day after Christmas under the order of President Abraham Lincoln. The hangings and convictions of the Dakota 38 resulted from the aftermath of the U.S.- Dakota War of 1862 in southwest Minnesota. It is believed that at least two men were executed at the mass hanging by mistake—one man answered to a name “Chaske” or “first son” that was misidentified and another young white man, raised by the Dakota, who had been acquitted but was hanged. "The trials of the Dakota were conducted unfairly in a variety of ways. The evidence was sparse, the tribunal was biased, the defendants were unrepresented in unfamiliar proceedings conducted in a foreign language, and authority for convening the tribunal was lacking. More fundamentally, neither the Military Commission nor the reviewing authorities recognized that they were dealing with the aftermath of a war fought with a sovereign nation and that the men who surrendered were entitled to treatment in accordance with that status." Carol Chomsky, Associate Professor, University of Minnesota Law School.
Doctrine of Discovery: Created by Pope Nicholas V in 1493, this ideology established a spiritual, political, and legal justification for colonization and claiming land not inhabited by Christians.
Eugenics: A pseudoscience concerned with “improving” humanity by controlled and selective breeding pioneered by Francis Galton in the 1880s. The aim was to increase the occurrence of desirable hereditary characteristics, which included forced sterilization of Native American women and other ethnic groups whom Galton believed had no desirable genes. The last sterilization was performed in 1981 marking an end to the Eugenics movement. American eugenicists were admired by Adolf Hitler who implemented their ideas at concentration camps throughout Europe.
Freedom of Religion Act 1978: After decades of pressure from an increasingly organized Native American lobby, Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) in order to extend the definition of constitutionally protected religion to encompass the beliefs and practices central to the spiritual health of Native communities. Before this date many Native American religious practices were banned and practitioners were jailed.
Genocide: United Nations Definition of Genocide, Article II Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The Homestead Act 1862: President Abraham Lincoln enacted the Homestead Act allowing settlers to apply for up to 160 acres of public land. Claimants were required to “improve” the plot by building a dwelling and cultivating the land. After 5 years on the land claimants gained ownership of the property. This encouraged Western expansion, resulting in the loss of Native American territory and forcing Indigenous people onto reservations.
Idle No More: Idle No More is an ongoing protest movement, founded in 2012 by three First Nations women and one non-Native ally, as a reaction to legislative abuses of Indigenous treaty rights by the Canadian federal government. The popular movement has included round dances in public places and blockades of rail lines.
Manifest Destiny: The belief that exploring America and expanding westward spreading democracy and capitalism was justified by God or a higher power. This justification prompted the take-over of Native American Territory and the killing of many Indigenous people while perpetuating negative stereotypes about Native American people as justification.
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, 1990: NAGPRA required museums and Federal agencies to complete an item-by-item inventory of human remains and associated funerary objects owned or possessed by them. The deadline for the preparation of these museum and agency inventories has long passed. These inventories include information about where the remains and objects came from, their cultural affiliation if known, and information about how and when each item was acquired by the museum or agency.
Pansexual: not limited in sexual choice with regard to biological sex, gender, or gender identity.
The Red Power Movement (1960s - ): A social movement and civil rights movement led by Native American youth to demand self-determination for Native Americans in the United States. Organizations that were part of the Red Power Movement included American Indian Movement and National Indian Youth Council.
Sand Creek Massacre 1864: Mass murder that occurred along Sand Creek, a stream in eastern Colorado. Today, less than one person per square mile inhabits this arid region. During 1864, about 1,000 Cheyenne and Arapaho lived here, at the edge of what was then reservation land. 11 of their chiefs had recently sought peace in talks with government officials. A Cheyenne chief raised the American flag above his lodge. Government troops replied by opening fire with carbines and cannons, killing at least 150 Indians, most of them women, children, and the elderly. Before departing, the troops burned the village and mutilated the dead, carrying off body parts as trophies.
Settler Colonialism: The goal of settler colonization is the removal and erasure of Indigenous peoples in order to take the land for use by settlers in perpetuity. According to Laura Hurwitz and Shawn Borque, “This means that settler colonialism is not just a vicious thing of the past, such as the gold rush, but exists as long as settlers are living on appropriated land and thus exists today.” Historically, the settler-colonial agenda involved committing genocide by murdering Indigenous peoples (see Manifest Destiny, the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890, the Wounded Knee Siege of 1970, the Sand Creek Massacre, King Philip’s War, and countless other conflicts). That agenda also meant stealing land through treaties that were later broken or ignored (see the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie and the history of the Lakota and the unceded Black Hills). The United States couldn’t exist without its settler-colonial foundation. Today, settler colonialism plays out in the erasure of Indigenous presence. American schools do not teach about Native Americans, past or present; when they do, information is often wrong or incomplete. Students are rarely taught about contemporary Native peoples who have survived the settler-colonial process and continue to thrive, create, practice their traditions, and live modern lives. From: teahcingtolerance.org
Survivance: This word was first employed in the context of Native American Studies by the Anishinaabe cultural theorist Gerald Vizenor in his book, Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance. There he explains that, "Survivance is an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or a survivable name. Native survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, tragedy and victimry". More simply, survivance is survival + resistance.
Skywalkers: The name adopted by a group of Native American iron and steel workers who aided the construction of every major skyscraper in New York City and the rescue and construction efforts after 9/11. These men descend mostly from the Navajo tribe and First Nations Mohawks of the Kahnawake Reservation in Montreal.
Termination Policy 1953: A series of laws and policies with the intent of assimilating Native Americans into mainstream America and relocating Native people into urban cities. Reservations were broken down and land was stolen or sold. Indigenous people were subjected to the U.S. rights and taxes that they had been previously exempt from. The act did not dissolve all reservations but was intended to make Native people disappear into the larger population. “If you can't change them, absorb them until they simply disappear into the mainstream culture. ... In Washington's infinite wisdom, it was decided that tribes should no longer be tribes, never mind that they had been tribes for thousands of years." — Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Opening Keynote Address.
Thanksgiving & the Pequot Massacre: In 1637 the body of a white man was discovered dead in a boat. Armed settlers invaded a Pequot village nearby. They also set the village, which included many children, on fire. Those who were lucky enough to escape the fire were systematically sought, hunted down, and killed. While many, including historians, still debate what exactly happened this day, also known as the Pequot Massacre, it directly led to the creation of “Thanksgiving Day.” This is what the governor of Bay Colony had to say days after the massacre, “A day of thanksgiving. Thanking God that they had eliminated over 700 men, women and children.” William B. Newell, a Penobscot Indian and former chairman of the Anthropology Department at the University of Connecticut stated, “Gathered in this place of meeting, they were attacked by mercenaries and English and Dutch. The Indians were ordered from the building and as they came forth were shot down, the rest were burned alive in the building. The very next day the governor declared a Thanksgiving Day. For the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day ordained by a Governor was in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won.”
Trail of Tears/Forced Relocation: A series of forced relocations of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to western areas. State governments joined in this effort to drive Native Americans out of the North and South. Several states passed laws limiting Native American sovereignty and rights throughout the 1830s. President Andrew Jackson ordered the forced removal of tens of thousands of Native Americans from their homelands east of the Mississippi River. The journey to designated lands in the west, known as the Trail of Tears, occurred during harsh winters, yielding disease and the death of thousands of Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek, and Cherokee people.
Two Spirit: Refers to a person who identifies as having both a masculine and a feminine spirit, and is used by some Indigenous people to describe their sexual, gender, and/or spiritual identity. As an umbrella term, it may encompass same-sex attraction and a wide variety of gender variances, including people who might be described in Western culture as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, genderqueer, cross-dressers, or who have multiple gender identities. The creation of the term “two-spirit” is attributed to Albert McLeod, who proposed its use during the Third Annual Inter-tribal Native American, First Nations, Gay and Lesbian American Conference, held in Winnipeg in 1990. The term is a translation of the Anishinaabemowin term niizh manidoowag, two spirits. Before colonization, many indigenous groups designated two-spirit people in their community as wise people with special knowledge that should be revered. It was contact with European settlers that forced more binary gender roles in many communities.
Wounded Knee 1890: The Wounded Knee Massacre (also called the Battle of Wounded Knee) was a domestic massacre of several hundred Lakota, mostly women and children, by soldiers of the United States Army. It occurred on December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek (Lakota: Čhaŋkpé Ópi Wakpála) on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the U.S. state of South Dakota, following a botched attempt to disarm the Lakota camp. In the aftermath of the massacre, an official Army inquiry not only exonerated the 7th Cavalry but awarded Medals of Honor to twenty soldiers marking the end of the Indian Wars.
Women of All Red Nations (WARN): WARN is an activist group founded in 1974 that grew out of the American Indian Movement (AIM). WARN was pivotal in bringing attention to issues impacting Native American women, especially in regard to forced sterilization. Comprised of over 200 women from 30 nations in its inaugural moment, WARN’s transnational coalition understood that Indigenous women “face the problems of forced sterilization; our children are being taken from our families and tribes; our culture is being destroyed; our treaties, which are the basis for our very survival, are being declared invalid by the U.S.; our young are being attacked through the racist education system imposed on us; our resources are being ripped off . . . The more we get our message through to the people of the world, the more difficult it will be for the U.S. to ignore its treaty obligations with us” (“lLet this be a WARNing,” off our backs, December 1978, p. 9).