Asian Americans share much in common with our Native American Indian and Alaskan brothers and sisters, not just in terms of social and cultural solidarity, but also similar anthropological ancestors as well. To celebrate their heritage, the U.S. Census Bureau has a fact sheet with some interesting statistics:

The first American Indian Day was celebrated in May 1916 in New York. Red Fox James, a Blackfeet Indian, rode horseback from state to state, getting endorsements from 24 state governments, to have a day to honor American Indians. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed a joint congressional resolution designating November 1990 as “National American Indian Heritage Month.”

4.9 million
As of July 1, 2008, the estimated population of American Indians and Alaska Natives, including those of more than one race. They made up 1.6 percent of the total population.

29.7
Median age of the American Indian and Alaska Native population in 2008, younger than the median of 36.8 for the population as a whole. About 30 percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives were younger than 18, and 8 percent were 65 and older.

5
Number of states where American Indians and Alaska Natives were the largest race or ethnic minority group in 2008. These states are Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota.

18%
The proportion of Alaska’s population identified as American Indian and Alaska Native as of July 1, 2008, the highest rate for this race group of any state. Alaska was followed by Oklahoma (11 percent) and New Mexico (11 percent).

29%
Percentage of American Indians and Alaska Natives 5 and older who spoke a language other than English at home.

$37,815
The median income of households from the 2008 American Community Survey where the householder reported being American Indian and Alaska Native and no other race.

24.2%
The 2008 poverty rate of people who reported they were American Indian and Alaska Native and no other race.

$26.9 billion
Receipts for American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned businesses in 2002. These businesses numbered 201,387.

In addition, the Association of College & Research Libraries has also compiled a very useful list of internet sites and resources related to the Native American Indian population and their history, contributions, and experiences. Below are a few of the websites that I found particularly interesting:

All submitted comments are first reviewed before appearing on the site. Constructive disagreement and intelligent debate are fine and encouraged. Comments that contain personal attacks, excessive profanity, spam or are blatantly offensive, slanderous, threatening, racist, or irrelevant to the topic are not and will be edited out or deleted.

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One thing I (always) wonder about is best-selling books. One source of info is Amazon. In their “Bestsellers in Children’s Native American Books” are the following titles. Some are on their more than once. In some cases, its clear that the duplicate is a Kindle edition, but others seem to just be repeats. There isn’t, for example, a note that says it is an audio copy.

It is, overall, a disappointing list and it makes me grumpy on this Monday morning…  I’m glad to see Native authors on the list, but duplicates of some really problematic books like Touching Spirit Bear?! And it is pretty easy to see that Amazon’s customers want works of historical fiction or “myths, legends and folktales.”  

#1 – The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie.
#2 – Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O’Dell
#3 – One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims, by B. G. Hennessy
#4 – Island of the Blue Dolphins (Kindle), by Scott O’Dell
#5 – Squanto’s Journey: The Story of the First Thanksgiving, by Joseph Bruchac
#6 – Touching Spirit Bear, by Ben Mikaelsen
#7 – North American Indians, by Douglas Gorsline
#8 – Tapenum’s Day: A Wampanoag Indian Boy in Pilgrim Times
#9 – Encounter, by Jane Yolen
#10 – Sing Down the Moon, by Scott O’Dell
#11 – The Rough-Face Girl, by Rafe Martin
#12 – Paddle-to-the-Sea, by Holling C. Holling
#13 – Diamond Willow, by Helen Frost
#14 – Red Fox and His Canoe (I Can Read Book), by Nathaniel Benchley
#15 – The Sign of the Beaver, by Elizabeth George Speare
#16 – The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush, by Tomie de Paola
#17 – Arrow to the Sun: A Pueblo Indian Tale, by Gerald McDermott
#18 – Touching Spirit Bear (Kindle) by Ben Mikaelson
#19 – Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George
#20 – Touching Spirit Bear, by Ben Mikaelsen
#21 – Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison, by Lois Lenski
#22 – Mountain Top Mystery (Boxcar Children), by Gertrude Chandler Warner
#23 – Grandmother’s Dreamcatcher, by Becky Ray McCain
#24 – On Mother’s Lap, by Ann Herbert Scott
#25 – Horse Diaries #5: Golden Sun, by Whitney Sanderson
#26 – The Indian in the Cupboard, by Lynn Reid Banks
#27 – Sacagawea: American Pathfinder, by Flora Warren Seymour
#28 – Code Talker: A Novel about the Navajo Marines of World War II, by Joseph Bruchac
#29 – The Heart of a Chief, by Joseph Bruchac
#30 – Little Runner of the Longhouse (I Can Red Book 2) by Betty Baker
#31 – Paddle-to-the-Sea, by Holling C. Hollins
#32 – Love Flute, by Paul Goble
#33 – Soft Rain: A Story of the Cherokee Trail of Tears, by Cornelia Cornelissen
#34 – The Journal of Jesse Smoke: A Cherokee Boy, Trail of Tears, 1838, by Joseph Bruchac
#35 – The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
#36 – The Birchbark House, by Louise Erdrich
#37 – The Legend of the Bluebonnet, by Tomie dePaola
#38 – Buffalo Woman, by Paul Goble
#39 – Cheyenne Again, by Eve Bunting
#40 – Where the Broken Heart Still Beats: The Story of Cynthia Ann Parker, by Carolyn Meyer
#41 – Julie, by Jean Craighead George
#42 – Children of the Longhouse, by Joseph Bruchac
#43 – Sacred Fire, by Nancy Wood
#44 – Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O’Dell
#45 – Mama, Do You Love Me, by Barbara J. Joosse
#46 – The Year of Miss Agnes, by Kirkpatrick Hill
#47 – Sweetgrass Basket, by Marlene Carvell
#48 – Sitting Bull: Dakota Boy, by Augusta Stevenson
#49 – The Talking Earth, by Jean Craighead George
#50 – Rainbow Crow, by Nancy Van Laan
#51 – The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses, by Paul Goble
#52 – The Polar Bear Son: An Inuit Tale, by Lydia Dabcovich
#53 – The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses, by Paul Goble
#54 – Song of the Seven Herbs, by Walking Night Bear
#55 – Ten Little Rabbits, by Virginia Grossman
#56 – The Lost Children: The Boys Who Were Neglected, by Paul Goble
#57 – Moccasin Trail, by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
#58 – Thunder Rolling in the Mountains, by Scott O’Dell
#59 – Meet Kaya: An American Girl, by Janet Beeler Shaw
#60 – When the Legends Die, by Hal Borland
#61 – Sacajawea, by Joseph Bruchac
#62 – Knots on a Counting Rope, by John Archambault
#63 – The Porcupine Year, by Louise Erdrich
#64 – Star Boy, by Paul Goble
#65 – Jim and Me, by Dan Gutman
#66 – Kaya: An American Girl: 1764/Box Set, by Janet Beeler Shaw
#67 – Between Earth and Sky: Legends of Native American Sacred Places, by Joseph Bruchac
#68 – Touching Spirit Bear, by Ben Mikaelsen
#69 – Weasel, by Cynthia Defelice
#70 – When the Shadbush Blooms, by Carla Messinger
#71 – On Mother’s Lap, by Ann Herbert Scott
#72 – The Captive Princess: A Story Based on the Life of Young Pocahontas
#73 – Powwow’s Coming, by Linda Boyden
#74 – The Gift of the Sacred Dog, by Paul Goble
#75 – Streams to the River, River to the Sea, by Scott O’Dell
#76 – Weetamoo: Heart of the Pocassets, Massachusetts – Rhode Island, 1653 (Royal Diaries) by Patricia Clark Smith
#77 – Indian Trail (Choose Your Own Adventure) , by R. A. Montgomery
#78 – Arrow Over the Door, by Joseph Bruchac
#79 – At Seneca Castle, by William W. Canfield
#81 – Pocahontas, by Joseph Bruchac
#82 – Squanto’s Journey: The Story of the First Thanksgiving, by Joseph Bruchac
#83 – Christmas Moccsains, by Ray Buckley
#84 – The Game of Silence, by Louise Erdrich
#85 – Encounter, by Jane Yolen
#86 – Beyond the Ridge, by Paul Goble
#87 – Death of the Iron Horse, by Paul Goble
#88 – The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper
#89 – Island of the Blue Dolphins (illustrated) by Scott O’Dell
#90 – Frozen Fire: A Tale of Courage by James Houston
#92 – Blood on the River: James Town 1607, by Elisa Carbone
#92 – The Give-Away: A Christmas Story in the American Tradition, by Ray Buckley
#93 – Mystic Horse, by Paul Goble
#94 – Eating the Plates: A Pilgrim Book of Food and Manners, by Lucilee Recht Penner
#95 – Mysteries in Our National Parks: Cliff Hanger, by Gloria Skurzynski
#96 – Jim Thorpe, Olympic Champion, by Guernsey Van Riper Jr
#97 – Good Hunting, Blue Sky (I Can Read Book) by Peggy Parish
#98 – Guests, by Michael Dorris
#99 – Hiawatha and Megissogwon by Henry W. Longfellow
#100 – Sing Down the Moon, by Scott O’Dell

Observations? Books by four Native authors are on the list: Sherman Alexie, Joseph Bruchac, Louise Erdrich, and Michael Dorris.  I’ll return to this list later to share analyses and observations. Right now, I gotta head to class. The class? American Indian Studies 101, where, over the course of the semester, students gain insight and skills in recognizing problematic depictions of Native peoples. It is encouraging to see that development in them. I wish everyone in the US could take an Intro to American Indian Studies course. Then maybe there’d be some CHANGE in what they buy.

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New genetic research has uncovered evidence that suggests a Native North American woman came to Iceland in the year 1000, most probably as a captive of Viking marauders.  This early contact between medieval Europeans and Native Americans has led to at least 80 Icelanders carrying her genes.

The story behind this finding was revealed this week in the article, “A new subclade of mtDNA haplogroup C1 found in icelanders: Evidence of pre-columbian contact?” in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.  The Icelandic and Spanish authors came across the discovery as they were doing research on the genetic background of contemporary Icelanders.

“It was thought at first that (the DNA) came from recently established Asian families in Iceland,” said Carles Lalueza-Fox, one of the study’s authors and a researcher at Spain’s CSIC  institute. “But when family genealogy was studied, it was discovered that the four families were descended from ancestors who lived between 1710 and 1740 from the same region of southern Iceland.”

Agnar Helgason, an Icelandic geneticist and study co-author, added in an interview with Postmedia News “the great human genealogical tree through the female line that has, to date, only been found in Native Americans” although they have not been able to determine which native group this women might have come from.  They speculate that it could be a person from the Beothuk, a people who lived in Newfoundland and became extinct in the 19th century.

Icelandic sagas and archaeological evidence have supported the idea that Viking ships reached the eastern coast of North America and attempted to establish settlements there. One such settlement was discovered at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland.  According to the Vinland sagas, the Norsemen came across a people they called ‘skrælings’ with whom they fought.

The article concludes, “The mystery surrounding the geographical origin of the Icelandic C1e lineage will remain until additional members are found in other populations—ancient or contemporary. Until then, we propose that the most likely hypothesis is that the Icelandic voyages to the Eastern coastline of the Americas resulted in the migration of at least one Native American woman carrying the C1e lineage to Iceland around the year 1000.”

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Myacah Sampson wants to combat obesity by urging Navajo parents to “make it a priority to teach their children to be active and eat right.” The Kirtland, N.M. high school student’s paper is one of five winners in the Young Native Writers Essay Contest of the Holland & Knight Charitable Foundation, Inc. and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

The fifth annual contest challenged high school students to: “Describe a crucial issue confronting your tribal community today. Explain how you hope to help your tribal community respond to this challenge and improve its future.”

With keen perception and captivating writing, the winners illuminated other problems ranging from suicide to natural resource preservation, from poverty to effects of dwindling blood quantum.

Ferguson Nez has a long-term vision “to help my people and my land” from within his own perspective as Diné. “To do this, I need education. I need to go into the modern world and soak up all the knowledge I can, and then go back to my land and help my people,” wrote the Mesa, Ariz. student. Nez is aspiring towards a doctorate and plans to study engineering to help improve the water supply, and/or economics, for job creation.

Tashina Swalley, Sicangu Lakota, shines a light on the problem of suicide among Native youth. She shares her own story of the unexpected loss of her best friend in eighth grade, and then her research brings home the startling statistics of the epidemic on her Rosebud reservation and beyond.

Julian Brave NoiseCat, of Oakland, Calif., reminds Native people, “we come into conflict with traditional values when we exploit natural resources.” The only enterprise owned by his band of 568 enrolled members, the Tsq’escen Band of Shuswap from Canim Lake, British Columbia, is a logging company. But “timber dependency gives rise to a host of problems for my people.”

Ashley Vance, of Austin, Texas, beautifully paints pictures leading readers to her heartfelt point: “knowledge of your culture” can counteract “an unfortunate side-effect of the dwindling blood quantum: How to be Native American when your genes almost deny it.”

Vance’s great-grandfather was half Chickasaw and Choctaw. “Now his title is given faintly to me, what little remains of it,” she wrote. “I am 1/32 Chickasaw and Choctaw Indian.” Her tribe has no blood quantum requirements.

“Although the Indian blood quantum in my family lessens with time,” Vance said, “I have the choice to decide whether or not to be Native American, and I know what choice I will make.”

The essay contest winners will receive a scholarship of $2,500 to be paid to the college or university of their choice.

All finalists received an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C. in July for the awards ceremony. They joined the Indian Law Practice group of the worldwide law firm, Holland & Knight, for a week of tours and meetings, including a meeting with the Native American Embassy. On the tour agenda were: NMAI, other Smithsonian museums, the Capitol and other monuments. Also, Native American author, Tim Tingle held a symposium on creative writing for the students and their teachers.

“It’s such an honor to give all Native American high school students in the United States the opportunity to participate in this rewarding contest,” said Angela Ruth, executive director of Holland & Knight’s Charitable Foundation. “Our hope is that this contest will offer the participants a sense of pride for their heritage.”

“It is inspiring to read the thoughts and innovative ideas of young Native people today, who are committed to the betterment of their tribal communities,” said Kevin Gover, Pawnee, NMAI director.

The Young Native Writer’s Essay Contest debuted in 2006 in Red Lake, Minn. in response to the March 2005 tragedy where a student at Red Lake High School shot five of his fellow students, a teacher, a security guard, members of his family and then himself. The foundation set up the contest with the hope that the Red Lake community would find healing “by promoting its rich culture and traditions.”

The winners summarized what the accomplishment means to them.

“First, and most importantly, I was honored that the readers representing Holland & Knight, as well as the museum, thought that my essay was a standout amongst hundreds of entrants from throughout Indian country who wrote about pressing issues in their communities.” NoiseCat said. “The issues I wrote about in my essay – economic issues – have, and continue to be, one of the biggest issues in my community and other Indian communities throughout the Americas. Anyone who knows Indian country knows that the current status quo of our economic system tends to work against Indian people.”

NoiseCat’s essay outlined five problems he sees emanating from timber dependency at the Canim Lake Tsq’escen First Nation: Undiversified economic dependence on a single commodity; reliance on an unsustainable resource; pipelining people into the unskilled labor force; lack of educational aspiration; and loss of culture. He is a student at Berkeley High School in Berkeley, Calif.

Sampson is concerned that “if we do nothing to stop obesity, the Navajo culture will continue to die out, along with the people.”

Her essay referenced nine published articles, as well as her own observations. The main causes of obesity are a sedentary lifestyle and poor diet, which can be the result of low income or lack of health education, she said.

She would like to someday “organize a multimedia approach to getting the word out about the health issues in the Navajo community. Popular American media seems to focus all too much on trivial stories and matters. If more awareness campaigns began to outnumber unimportant advertisements, I think the priorities and focuses of my community would shift for the better.”

Swalley’s research shows Native youth are more prone to commit suicide than any other race in the age group of 15-24, adding that the reservations in South Dakota have the highest suicide rate. Yet, “suicide can be prevented,” she said, pointing out prevention programs such as Rosebud Sioux Tribe’s Wiconi Wakan Health & Healing Center. The center provides counseling, screening and monitoring programs for children and youth aged 10-24.

“Winning this essay contest means so much to me. Now that I have won I realized that my dreams of helping my people really can come true,” Swalley said. “I plan on going to an Indian college. I want to become a social worker or a lawyer. I think about how negative people are on our reservation and want to help better it for future generations.”

Vance irresistibly draws the reader in with creative description of making the journey with her mother once a year to visit family. “The leaves are all golden then, almost messily crayoned over, before they spill and create a slippery but solemn path across the roads. …”

She leads to the blood quantum issue by describing a compelling photograph on a far wall of her great-aunt’s den. Two people sprout from the four sides of the frame “growing like austere trees, their branches intertwined.” One is her great-grandfather; the other his wife, a white woman. Vance goes on to say that knowledge of your culture can bring back ties to ancestors. It can grant “so many personal connections to those who are deceased,” she wrote.

“I strongly believe that this essay contest has given my tribe invaluable recognition and will open the eyes of many to consider this problem of blood quantum,” she said. “However, I would like to add that I do not believe there can be a true solution due to the ‘science’ of the issue. Other than marrying within the tribe, technically there is no other way to reverse the blood quantum.”

Nez begins his essay with lyrical descriptions of riding his horse across the Navajo Nation to Window Rock, where every year council delegates and family members make a one-week journey across the land to the start of the summer meeting.

At the chapter houses, “they tell of the problems they are facing – no running water, a severe drought, or finding more money for the schools. Every year the delegates go to the meeting and talk about these problems, trying to find solutions, yet every year the same problems persist and more are brought up,” Nez said, quoting a document on the subject.

“Winning has meant a lot to me,” Nez said. “Although everyone in the country will not read my essay, by me writing it, I have taken the problems of my people another step further in recognition. By me writing it, I have at least sent it out into the world so someone may discover it, even if its discovery only leads to one person feeling the desire to help Native people, that person may be the one ripple in the pond that causes a whole widespread change of events. By writing, I am at least allowing a change to have the possibility of sprouting.”

To read the full essays, visit http://nativewriters.hklaw.com and follow the “essays” link for 2010.

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In an ongoing effort to strengthen the use of the Cherokee language, the Cherokee Nation has developed a unique keypad that allows the user to more easily type in the Cherokee syllabary

instead of using the Latin alphabet that is standard to modern computer keyboards.

The special keypad is made of thin black silicone, and fits over the top of a regular computer keyboard.

“The creation of this keypad has helped us leap forward in the teaching of Cherokee,” said Dr. Neil Morton, Group Leader for Education Services for the Cherokee Nation. “Before we were only able to utilize the print media, but now our students have computers for homework, messages and more where they can actually type and text in the Cherokee language.”

The keypad was designed and developed by Roy Boney, Jr. and Joseph Erb, of Cherokee Nation’s Cultural Resources Department. It was manufactured by zCover, Inc., a maker of silicone protective cases and accessories for digital devices.

Officials say the keypad is the most innovative language breakthrough since 1828 when Cherokee Advocate editor Elias Boudinot designed the first type set in the Cherokee syllabary for the tribal newspaper. Previously, students wishing to use the 85-character syllabary had to use a variety of keystrokes with the standard keyboard in order to type the Cherokee language. Users now can simply overlay the Cherokee keypad on a traditional keyboard and see the syllabary characters in their correct spaces.

The keypads go along with the use of computers used by students in the Cherokee Nation Immersion School, where only Cherokee is spoken and all coursework is done in the syllabary. The school offers classes in pre-kindergarten through 4th grades, and has been adding a grade each year. In addition to the Immersion students, the keypads will be used by the Cherokee Nation Translation Department as well as other Johnson O’Malley students and students in the Cherokee language program at Northeastern State University. Students in these programs already use computers embedded with the Cherokee language developed through a working relationship with Apple Computer, Inc.

Tribal officials state that this will serve as a way for individuals, especially youth, to use the Cherokee language more in their everyday lives, noting that this will help target not only the younger students, but hit the technically savvy teenage group as well.

“The role of the keypad allows us to actually move the language initiative program away from the tribal complex and out into every community of the Nation and throughout the world,” Morton said. “It also plays an important role in getting people to actually use the language in their everyday lives.”

Cherokee language experts indicate that it will help all Cherokees and others learning the language by allowing them to type directly in the syllabary itself.

“This will make the computer much more ‘Cherokee’ by allowing the user to type faster in the Cherokee language,” said Benny Smith, a respected Cherokee elder and fluent Cherokee speaker.

The keypads are also drawing rave reviews from teachers in the Cherokee Immersion School who say it will greatly enhance the learning process and allow everyone using the keypad to become better and faster at writing in Cherokee.

“Most people remember and learn things form a hands-on learning experience. All of the students and the teaching staff will benefit from the new keypads,” said Helena McCoy, Cherokee Nation Immersion School teacher.

The keypads were purchased through a contribution from the Cherokee Nation Education Corporation, a non-profit organization that offers educational assistance to Cherokee citizens.

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A total of $300,000 is available for distribution in amounts of up to $20,000 for individuals and programs. Applications and eligibility rules are available at http://www.nativeartsandcultures.org/programs.

“The Native Arts & Cultures Foundation celebrates the role of artists as culture bearers and critical thinkers,” said Reuben Roqueñi, NACF program director. “The creative process makes a profound contribution to intellectual inquiry and to the strengthening of communities.”

The first initiative, called “Artistic Innovation: Through the Soul of an Artist,” will support the creation of new work by contemporary Native artists. These awards are designed to propel indigenous creators into unique and imaginative ways of interacting with the world, informed by tradition and culture. Projects might include work in visual arts, film, installation, dance, music, literature, drama, spoken-word or interdisciplinary projects.

The second initiative – “Mobilizing the Community Through the Arts” – will support community-based programs that involve the continuity and expression of cultural knowledge and artistic practices. With an arts-based approach, projects might address issues such as land stewardship, social justice, education or other topics.

With its third initiative – “Strengthening the Arts & Cultures Infrastructure” – NACF will award grants to pre-selected Native arts organization for program administration, infrastructure improvements, outreach, professional development and other endeavors.

Earlier this spring, the foundation announced several new additions to its boards. Actor Adam Beach (Salteaux Tribe), known for his work in films such as “Flags of Our Fathers” and television shows such as “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” joined the NACF board of advisors, alongside singer Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree). Keller George (Oneida Nation), well-known in Indian Country for his work with the National Congress of the American Indians and the National Museum of the American Indian, joined the NACF board of directors.

NACF is supported in part by gifts from the Ford Foundation, the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation and the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians.

About the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation

The Native Arts & Cultures Foundation is the first permanently endowed national philanthropic organization dedicated exclusively to the revitalization, appreciation and perpetuation of Native arts and cultures. NACF works to increase the capacity of Native cultural practices by investing in communities and artists with an eye toward cultural continuity, innovation, environmental stewardship and social justice. For more information, call 360.314.2421 or visit www.nativeartsandcultures.org.

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This collection is brought to life with the oral histories of Lenape tribal members, both past and present.  The exhibit tells the story of the ancient life ways and history of the people who greeted Henry Hudson 400 years ago from their earliest beginnings until the 21st century.  It chronicles the dispersion of the Lenape from their traditional homeland here in the East, and their emigration across the continent to enclaves in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario.  The exhibition is in many ways a homecoming for the Lenape people.

First Lady Paterson serves as the Honorary Chair of the HFCQ Commission, which has coordinated the events celebrating the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s arrival to this region and led to the founding of New York City.  Other special guests include:  John Haworth, Director of The National Museum of the American Indian in New York City (Smithsonian Institution); Michael Pace, former Assistant Chief of the Delaware Tribe of Indians in Oklahoma; William T. Reynolds, Captain of the Replica Ship Half Moon; and Mary Ellen Flynn, whose extensive collection of artifacts augments the exhibit.  Several other Delaware Indian dignitaries are also expected to address the public.  The event was highlighted by a traditional Lenape ceremony blessing the exhibition and praying for the continued preservation of Lenape ways.

David M. Oestreicher, Ph.D., the exhibit’s curator, has spent over three decades studying the Lenape, working directly with the last remaining traditionalists and speakers of the native language.  This exhibit was created hand in hand with Lenape people and helps to fulfill the fervent wish of their traditionalists that their people be remembered and honored.  Plans are also underway to expand the exhibition into a permanent museum in New York City or vicinity.

The original and smaller traveling version of the exhibition, In Search of the Lenape: The Delaware Indians Past and Present, has appeared at numerous historic sites.  It won the 1995 award for excellence from the Lower Hudson Conference of Historical Agencies and Museums and was praised by William Zimmer as “an extended reverie, which captures the vitality and poignancy of the Lenape saga.” (New York Times)  Oestreicher’s commemorative book on the Ellis Island Exhibition is also soon to be published by SUNY Press to complement the new exhibit.

Lenape is the only Native American Exhibition featured in the statewide Hudson Quadricentennial which tells the story of the Lenape from their Paleo-Indian Predecessors to modern times.  It is also the first major exhibition in New York City about the first inhabitants of lower New York.  The exhibit is made possible by the generosity of the National Park Service, New York Council for the Humanities, the Burns Foundation, the Statue of Liberty and the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, the NYS Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial Office, Governor Paterson’s office, Yale University Art Gallery, and numerous individuals.

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Warmer still, scientists say, lies ahead.

Through 10 years of global boom and bust, of breakneck change around the planet, of terrorism, war and division, all people everywhere under that warming sun faced one threat together: the buildup of greenhouse gases, the rise in temperatures, the danger of a shifting climate, of drought, weather extremes and encroaching seas, of untold damage to the world humanity has created for itself over millennia.

As the decade neared its close, the United Nations gathered presidents and premiers of almost 100 nations for a “climate summit” to take united action, to cut back sharply on the burning of coal and other fossil fuels.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told them they had “a powerful opportunity to get on the right side of history” at a year-ending climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Again, however, disunity might keep the world’s nations on this side of making historic decisions.

“Deep down, we know that you are not really listening,” the Maldives’ Mohamed Nasheed told fellow presidents at September’s summit.

Nasheed’s tiny homeland, a sprinkling of low-lying islands in the Indian Ocean, will be one of the earliest victims of seas rising from heat expansion and melting glaciers. On remote islets of Papua New Guinea, on Pacific atolls, on bleak Arctic shores, other coastal peoples in the 2000s were already making plans, packing up, seeking shelter.

The warming seas were growing more acid, too, from absorbing carbon dioxide, the biggest greenhouse gas in an overloaded atmosphere. Together, warmer waters and acidity will kill coral reefs and imperil other marine life – from plankton at the bottom of the food chain, to starfish and crabs, mussels and sea urchins.

Over the decade’s first nine years, global temperatures averaged 0.6 degrees Celsius (1.1 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the 1951-1980 average, NASA reported. Temperatures rose faster in the far north than anyplace else on Earth.

The decade’s final three summers melted Arctic sea ice more than ever before in modern times. Greenland’s gargantuan ice cap was pouring 3 percent more meltwater into the sea each year. Every summer’s thaw reached deeper into the Arctic permafrost, threatening to unlock vast amounts of methane, a global-warming gas.

Less ice meant less sunlight reflected, more heat absorbed by the Earth. More methane escaping the tundra meant more warming, more thawing, more methane released.

At the bottom of the world, late in the decade, International Polar Year research found that Antarctica, too, was warming. Floating ice shelves fringing its coast weakened, some breaking away, allowing the glaciers behind them to push ice faster into the rising oceans.

On six continents the glaciers retreated through the 2000s, shrinking future water sources for countless millions of Indians, Chinese, South Americans. The Great Lakes of Africa were shrinking, too, from higher temperatures, evaporation and drought. Across the temperate zones, flowers bloomed earlier, lakes froze later, bark beetles bored their destructive way northward through warmer forests. In the Arctic, surprised Eskimos spotted the red breasts of southern robins.

In the 2000s, all this was happening faster than anticipated, scientists said. So were other things: By late in the decade, global emissions of carbon dioxide matched the worst case among seven scenarios laid down in 2001 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N. scientific network formed to peer into climate’s future. Almost 29 billion tons of the gas poured skyward annually, 23 percent more than at the decade’s start.

By year-end 2008, the 2000s already included eight of the 10 warmest years on record. By 2060, that trajectory could push temperatures a dangerous 4 degrees C (7 degrees F) or more higher than preindustrial levels, British scientists said.

Early in the decade, the president of the United States, the biggest emitter of the foul gases, blamed “incomplete” science for the U.S. stand against rolling back emissions, as other industrial nations were trying to do. As the decade wore on and emissions grew, American reasoning leaned more toward the economic.

By 2009, with a new president and Congress, Washington seemed ready to talk. But in the front ranks of climate research – where they scale the glaciers, drill into ocean sediments, monitor a changing Earth through a web of satellite eyes – scientists feared they were running out of time.

Before the turn of the last century, with slide rule, pencil and months of tedious calculation, Svante Arrhenius was the first to show that carbon dioxide would warm the planet – in 3,000 years. The brilliant Swede had not foreseen the 20th-century explosion in use of fossil fuels.

Today their supercomputers tell his scientific heirs a much more urgent story: To halt and reverse that explosion of emissions, to head off a planetary climate crisis, the 10 years that dawn this Jan. 1 will be the fateful years, the final chance, the last decade.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Charles J. Hanley has covered climate issues for The Associated Press since the Kyoto conference of 1997.

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By 1948, Mary G. Ross was on the ground floor of what would become the space race. In 1952 Lockheed asked her to be one of 40 engineers in what became known as the Lockheed Skunk Works, a super-secret think tank led by legendary aeronautics engineer Clarence “Kelly” Johnson. It was the start of Lockheed Missiles & Space Co., a major consultant to NASA based in Sunnyvale, Calif.

Ross was 45, the only woman and the only Native American. Most of the theories and papers that emerged from that Lockheed group, including those by Ross, are still classified.

Around the time of the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik, Ross moved into the public eye. In 1958 she appeared on the television show “What’s My Line?” It took contestants many guesses before they realized that the smiling woman in a V-necked, sleeveless black dress in fact, as the caption read, “Designs Rocket Missiles and Satellites (Lockheed Aircraft).”

One San Francisco-area newspaper article from 1961 called Ross “possibly the most influential Indian maid since Pocahontas,” and noted that she was “making her mark in outer space.” She told the interviewer, “I think of myself as applying mathematics in a fascinating field.”Comment:  I wonder how often Indians appeared on What’s My Line? It would’ve been interesting to have a tribal chief who didn’t look like a (stereo)typical Indian as the mystery guest.

Sacajawea is undoubtedly the most famous Indian woman, and the most influential in terms of pop culture, since Pocahontas. But that raises the question of who really are the most important and influential indian women in history. Most people would put Pocahontas and Sacajawea on the list, but they actually didn’t do that much. They certainly didn’t do much to help Indians in general.

But if not them, then whom? There must be better candidates than these two, but I’m not sure whom I’d put on the list. Do we go with someone (relatively) obvious such as Wilma Mankiller or Winona LaDuke, or are there better candidates in the historical record?

Below:  ”Mary G. Ross, at 96, joins the 2004 opening procession for the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.” She’s accompanied by Suzette Brewer, the author of Sovereign: An Oral History of Indian Gaming. (Photo by Mary McCarthy)

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When Dee Brown wrote his book “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” he could not have known that it would become a classic.

This year an illustrated 40th anniversary edition was published in hardback. It is a beautiful book and the photos add so much to the stories that made the book great. There are photos of a young Black Elk, Sitting Bull, Hollow Horn Bear, Short Bull and Kicking Bear.

The 543 page book is truly a collector’s treasure.Comment:  I was in a bookstore Monday and I saw this new edition of Bury My Heart. I only glanced at it, but it looks great. It would make a fine present for anyone who’s interested in history but doesn’t know much about Indians. And it goes without saying that readers of this blog should have it in their libraries.

For more on the subject, see Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee:  The Movie.

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