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How many tribes are now petitioning the federal government for “recognition” to be deemed sovereign? Over 200 tribes, such as five tribes in Virginia who are not “federally recognized.”“How did you know you’re Indian?” My dad’s youngest sister Janie asked me once on the phone. My aunt told me many stories about Granny Morris-Conner smoking a pipe, using tobacco as medicine and how she always knew she was Indian.
For me and for other adoptees, you’re on the Red Road with no map. You can only follow the voice in your head.Five years prior, in 1991, I was in Mexico and woke one night and started writing Red Man: Through the Eyes of Many. First it was a poem then developed into a series of children’s stories. I had no evil intention. I was sitting on a cold tile floor in a bathroom at 2 a.m.: this writing came like a vision and the stories just flowed out. Later, with miraculous synchronicity, back in Oregon, I met Merle Locke, a famous Oglala Lakota ledger artist, who told me to go meet his sister Ellowyn. I drove out to Pine Ridge, South Dakota, she read my stories, liked them lots, and taught me history at her kitchen table, history you’d never find in a book.
As reported by Indian Country Today, First Nations Development Institute and Echo Hawk Consulting released a report that shares research conducted with support from the Kellogg Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and others. “Reclaiming Native Truth: A Project to Dispel America’s Myths and Misconceptions” looks at how Native Americans are perceived and some ways to change and improve the accuracy of those perceptions.In its coverage of the report, Indian Country Today highlights four takeaways:
Andrew Balfour, a Cree composer and a ’ 60s Scoop survivor , has spent nearly two decades developing the ideas behind Polyphony Meets the Pr...