National Museum of the American Indian

#Educators: Are you in search of ways to improve teaching and learning about Indigenous peoples, histories, and cultures? This back-to-school season, the museum’s Native Knowledge 360°?(NK360°) team is excited to welcome educators to a series of upcoming professional development opportunities at both of our museum locations and online. Keep reading to learn more about these professional development opportunities and register now via Native Knowledge 360°: https://lnkd.in/gG2_Ne5y On Saturday, September 28, our Washington, DC museum will co-host our eighth annual Indigenous Peoples’ Day Curriculum Teach-In with our partners Teaching for Change. Participants can select two workshop breakout sessions. Each session provides resource-rich experiences, such as classroom lessons about Native peoples and topics; resources from both partners; and strategies for effectively incorporating the museum’s exhibitions in Washington, DC, into classroom curricula. Not able to join us in-person? Save the date for our virtual Teach-In on Saturday, November 2. On Saturday, October 5, our New York museum will host a Native New York: Educators’ Open House. Earn CTLE credits and a certificate of participation by attending and learning about the peoples and themes featured in the “Native New York” exhibition through NK360° classroom resources, gallery tours, film, photography, beading, and other guided experiences. Visit NK360° anytime to find classroom-ready resources and standards-based lessons about topics such as the impact of the Gold Rush on California Natives, food sovereignty, and Thanksgiving. #NativeKnowledge360 #BackToSchool #Education #K12 #Teachers

#ICYMI: Our celebration of the year’s best in Native film is back and you can stream more than 30 films right now from home! Grab a friend and the popcorn and tell us what you’re watching in the comments! https://lnkd.in/esJxvgUy

Happening tonight, Wed., Nov. 20, 7-8 PM: "Complexities and Contradictions: Treaty-Making Between the U.S. and Native American Nations in the Early Republic," registration required. https://s.si.edu/3Z60PfB Join a virtual conversation with National Museum of American Diplomacy Historian Dr. Alison Mann and Michelle Anne Delaney, PhD, Acting Assoc. Dir. for Museum Research and Scholarship, National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). This conversation will explore the complex negotiation processes, cultural dynamics, and the broader historical contexts that shaped these treaties and their legacies, which include forced removal of a majority of Cherokees from their lands. The aim is for attendees to leave with a deeper understanding of early American diplomacy and its lasting impact on Native American communities. #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth #Diplomacy

Communicating stories about a nation's shared past helps listeners think critically about the choices people made in the past and those we make today. National stories examine our mistakes through discourse and encourage listening and understanding across diverse communities. #Educators: Save the dates for our upcoming professional development series which introduces the new Native Knowledge 360° (NK360°) resource "The “First Thanksgiving”: How Can we Tell a Better Story?" Based on an inquiry design model, this resource helps teachers and students dispel misconceptions about the “First Thanksgiving” by examining the events through multiple perspectives, including those of the Wampanoag Nation, who have been largely excluded from this national story. Mark your calendars for Tuesdays, January 14, 21, 28, and February 4, 2025, 7–8:15 PM ET to join us online. This opportunity is FREE and registration is open for the full series here: https://s.si.edu/4frOKak Educators will receive a Certificate of Completion upon attendance and filling out the post-survey. #Thanksgiving #K12 #Teachers Image: Art by Timothy Truman; Colors by Michael Sheyahshe (Caddo). ?2023 The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian

COMING SOON: In just one week, you can stream some of the year's best in Indigenous film from the comfort of home, all for FREE! Our Native Cinema Showcase Online kicks off next Friday, Nov. 22, 2024, 12:01 AM ET through Friday, Nov. 29, 2024, 11:59 PM ET. Don't forget to save the dates and share with friends! The museum's Native Cinema Showcase is an annual celebration of the best in Native film. In honor of the museum’s twentieth anniversary in Washington, DC, the theme of looking back and moving forward is highlighted in films that explore the challenges still confronting Indigenous peoples on disparate fronts, including sports, missing and murdered Indigenous women, intergenerational trauma, and rematriation of the land with buffalo. Learn more about the 33 films (25 shorts, eight features) representing 25 Native nations in eight countries: U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Finland films included in the showcase on our site: https://lnkd.in/gPQtJewd #NativeCinemaShowcase #IndigenousFilm #SmithsonianNAHM

"Through acts of creation, nurturing, leadership, love, and protection carried out in infinite forms, our grandmothers, aunties, sisters, cousins, nieces, and friends collectively care for our communities. As a suite, these works speak to the importance of kinship roles and tribal structures that emphasize the necessity of extended family, tribal and communal ties as meaningful and significant relationships necessary for the rearing of healthy and happy individuals and communities."—Dyani White Hawk (Si?á??u Lakota) Over the course of a year, Dyani White Hawk collaborated with Master Printer Cole Rogers and the staff at Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis, Minnesota to create “Takes Care of Them.” Many layers of ink were applied to suggest the yokes of dentalium shells as well as the textures of felted wool cloth, satin ribbons, cowrie shells and other materials traditionally used to make these Plains style women’s dresses. Metallic foil accents were then individually added by hand. Each print is individually named for a quality that embodies the ways women care for our families and communities: “Wówahoku?kiya | Lead,” “Wóka?e | Create,” “Nakí?i?i? | Protect” and “Wa?há?tognaka | Nurture.” The suite also reflects the practice of requesting four veterans to stand guard at the cardinal directions during certain ceremonies. White Hawk says, “This list is simply a starting point, an acknowledgement and gesture of gratitude for the many women in my life that have helped Create, Nurture, Protect, and Lead in ways that have taught me what it means to be a good relative.” The suite of "Takes Care of Them" prints, one of the few full sets in a museum collection, is currently on view on Level 3 at our Washington, DC location. Learn more: https://s.si.edu/3oJMdD3 This Veterans Day, and every day, we honor the service and sacrifice of Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Alaska Natives that have served in every branch of the United States military. The National Native American Veterans Memorial on the grounds of our Washington, DC museum offers a space for veterans and their families to commemorate those who served. __ “Takes Care of Them,” Dyani White Hawk (Si?á??u Lakota), 2019; suite of four screen prints; ink and metal foil on paper; 55.5” x 32”. 27/636 #VeteransDay #SmithsonianNAHM #NativeVeterans

Download your free copy of the Smithsonian Institution's new education guide, in collaboration with USA Today: https://lnkd.in/eMbik8y5. Visitors to our Washington, DC museum can see “A Warrior's Story, Honoring Grandpa Blue Bird,” by Lauren Good Day (Arikara/Hidatsa/Blackfeet/Plains Cree) on view through Jan. 20, 2026 in our exhibition "Unbound: Narrative Art of the Plains." Learn more about the expression of narrative art among Native nations of the Great Plains: https://s.si.edu/49CNkFX #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth #SmithsonianNAHM #VeteransDay #Educators #Teachers

“We are in America, and we have, each one of us, a right to express our views. […] Do you think anyone would work, devote himself entirely to a cause—without a salary—if he did not believe in it? Then you know we must all work for this thing—that the American Indian must have a voice.”—Zitkala-?a (Yankton Sioux, 1876-1938), 1919 Five years after Zitkala-?a spoke these words, the Indian Citizenship Act (ICA) of 1924 became law. Zitkala-?a (“Red Bird,” or Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) spent her life advocating for American Indian citizenship rights and sovereignty. She hoped citizenship would offer Native people a way to gain government representation while maintaining cultural identity. The ICA should have guaranteed the vote, but discriminatory tactics kept Native people from the polls as recently as the 1970s. One hundred years on, the fight to ensure the right to vote is accessible to all American citizens continues. Zitkala-?a left the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota at age 8 for a Quaker missionary-run boarding school. The US government policy of forced assimilation through boarding school education left an indelible mark on her. However, she excelled in English and music, earning a college scholarship, and going on to study violin. As a young adult, Zitkala-?a became increasingly outspoken and firmly against the “Americanization” of Indigenous people, writing personal essays about living between cultures. She used her musical talent to advocate for the preservation of Native cultural identity. She co-created the first Native opera “The Sun Dance Opera,” based on a sacred ceremony, then outlawed by the US government. In 1917, she joined the Society of American Indians to urge the US Congress to pass the ICA among other bills. In 1926, she and her husband, Raymond Bonnin of Yankton-European ancestry, and a fellow boarding school survivor, co-founded the National Council of American Indians. The council fought for healthcare, legal status and land rights for Indigenous peoples. She served as president until her death in 1938 at age 61. Zitkala-?a is buried at Arlington National Cemetery with her husband, a World War I veteran. Zitkala-?a is featured on the newest quarter in the American Women Quarters? Program. which celebrates the accomplishments and contributions made by women of the United States with new quarters released by the United States Mint in partnership with Smithsonian American Women's History Museum. Join us at our Washington, DC museum on Friday, Nov. 29 to mark Native American Heritage Day and the release of the Zitkala-?a quarter with hoop dancer Starr Chief Eagle (Sicangu Lakota Sioux). Learn more: https://s.si.edu/3NLULCe Image: Joseph Turner Keiley, 1869-1914. "Zitkála-?á," (Feb. 22, 1876-Jan. 26, 1938), 1898. Photogravure print, courtesy of Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, currently on view in the exhibition “The Struggle for Justice.” S/NPG.79.26 #SmithsonianNAHM #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth

#DeadlineApproaching Just 2 days left to apply for this critical role in collections management at our museum! Learn more and apply via USAJobs: https://lnkd.in/g7e6k2cr Interested Federal employees can apply here: https://lnkd.in/gvbnequP

#ICYMI: Teachers play a crucial role in advancing the museum’s work to transform popular understandings of Native histories, cultures, and contemporary lives. Join us ONLINE this Saturday, Nov. 2, 12-3 PM for a virtual teach-in! Registration is required, and the cost is $15 for this professional development opportunity. Participants may select two workshop breakout sessions. Each session guides educators through the effective use of classroom lessons and resources from Teaching for Change and the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). The teach-in fosters awareness of the museum’s Native Knowledge 360° (NK360°) national education initiative, which promotes improved teaching about Native American communities through online and classroom lessons. Teaching for Change and museum educators will share key concepts from the NMAI’s Essential Understandings Framework, children’s literature from Social Justice Books, and teaching materials from the museum’s Native Knowledge 360° national education initiative. Learn more and save your spot now: https://lnkd.in/eqQNe-J6 #Teachers #Educators #K12