First Nation Classroom Resources

0 HOME 1 Where did they come from? 2 HISTORY, 3 Slaves / ACTIVISTS, 4 Language, 5 Music, 6 Dance, 7 Literature, 8 Stories, 9 Law, 10 Code Talkers,
11 Images, 12 Tiglit, 13 Totem Poles, 14 Lacross, 15 Alaska, 16 Canada, 17 Activities, 18 Resources

SCIENCE

Native American Ethnobotany http://naeb.brit.org
Offers visitors a comprehensive "database of plants used as drugs, foods, dyes, fibers, and more, by Native Peoples of North America.
" This searchable database is the result of more than 25 years of work and contains over 44,000 items, which "represents uses by 291 Native American groups of 4,029 species from 243 different plant families." Visitors can do a simple text search, but for more precision, they can also conduct a filtered search allowing them to specify tribe and plant use in addition to the text search. Visitors will also find lists of all the tribes and plant species contained in the database, each linking to all their documented plant uses. The database includes links to the USDA PLANTS database in the details of each plant-use documentation, thus providing immediate access to the plants' complete botanical information. The current version of Native American Ethnobotany is supported by Dan Moerman, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and Jason Best, Director of Biodiversity Informatics at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, with funding from the National Science Foundation.

LANGUAGE IS MUSIC : MUSIC IS LANGUAGE

Jeremy Dutcher, classically trained operatic tenor, ethnomusicologist and 1st nations citizen

Jeremy Dutcher, The Newest Light In Canada's Indigenous Renaissance
Dutcher, who had been alerted by [his mentor, Maggie] Paul to the existence of 110-year-old wax cylinder recordings of his ancestors' songs, stored in an archive in the Canadian Museum of History. Dutcher then created breathtakingly beautiful arias and ballads in dialogue incorporating electronic samples of those recordings, and named the award-winning album after the title of the archive." https://www.npr.org/2018/09/24/650563184/jeremy-dutcher-the-newest-light-in-canadas-indigenous-renaissance

Of the Sami, reindeer herding, & magic
“According to Weber, there is an element of mystery associated with Lapland in Scandinavian folklore. “It's a land of magic and myths, ruled by the ancient animistic beliefs of the Sami,” she said. “According to Sami mythology, spirits are present in everything, from rocks and trees, foxes and reindeer, and the northern lights in the sky.” Watch - The Adrenaline Rush of Herding Reindeer in the North Pole https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/579088/herding-reindeer-north-pole/

American Fiddle Music and That High Lonsome Sound

Carlos Nakai: American Indian Flute Music from Arizona

Q. What is the reason that all that American blue grass country music that starts up high?
A. Because of all the contact with First Nation People whose music starts like that.

Q. When did all that contact take place?

A. See the Fur Trade (Bill Monroe said Blue Grass music has that High Lonsome Sound )

Alan Jabbour, leading field researcher/folk-revival fiddler, writes that humbler musicians got their hands on the fiddle by the late 18th century. The tune repertories, playing styles, instrumental combinations, and uses of the music differ in the ethnic traditions of the English, Irish, Scottish, African, Maritime and Cajun French, Metis, and Native American. In New England, the Appalachians, the Mid-, North-, and Southwest, regional traditions emerged. Each generation of musicians changed what it inherited.

The Link from China to First Nation People Can be found in their shared throat singing traditions

Chinese people migrate. Some of them came to America and became First Nation People, Native Americans, Indians. Native Alaskan people picked up and traveled into Canada and settlled down for a time, but of course these same people decide to walk right into America and spread out from the east coast down to Florida, to the west coast of California and all over the middle of the U.S. China People aka First Nation American people are the same people.

THROAT SINGING
Among the pastoralists, emulating ambient sounds is as natural as speaking. Throat-singing is not taught formally (as music often is) but rather picked up, like a language. A large percentage of male herders can throat-sing, although not everyone is tuneful. A taboo against female throat-singers, based on a belief that it causes infertility, is gradually receding, and younger women are beginning to practice the technique as well.

Hear:

Interview with Lois Suluk-Locke, Inuit Throat Singer - Singing Dog Team Puppy
Listen to Lois Suluk-Locke speak about the particular style of throat singing from Arviat, Nunavut. Arviat is north of Churchill Manitoba, in the interview I said that Arviat was south of Churchill.

Various Dong People Pictures
We went to the Hong Feng Lake. The drum tower by the lakeshore can be reached by boat,
the folksongs similar to the ones we heard. The Dong ethnic group at Chinese New Year Eve's CCTV Gala in 1994.

Dong Ethnic Song - Song of Cicadas

DONG PEOPLE AND THE DRUM TOWER
Dominating the landscape of a Dong village is the drum tower with its superb formation of multi-storied pagoda-like roofs,constructed to the unique architecture of the Dong Ethnic.The lower pavilion of each tower is where villagers congregate during festivals and special meetings. People often gather there in the evenings, to listen to traditional folk songs. After harvests, young people hold festive dances on the grounds surrounding the drum tower.
The drum tower is the highest and most revered structure in the village . A giant drum within the tower served in the past as a warning device against invasions. In ancient times, villagers assembled at the tower with their weapons to await orders from the head of their clan. Drum towers are a specialty and symbol of the Dong nationality . They first appeared in villages along the Yellow River during the Northern Dynasties (386-581 A.D). the oldest standing drum towers date from the Shunzhi period (1644-1661 A.D) of the Qing Dynasty. A typical large village consists of from 500 to 600 families, and a small one, of about 50 families. As a rule, one village is said to contain families of one or two surnames. Each drum tower signifies one surname; some villages have two or three drum towers, therefore indicating that two or three surnames dominate the village. The outline of a Dong drum tower resembles a fir tree, a sacred tree in Dong culture. Some anthropologists have suggested that the Dong people used to be tree dwellers, since they are believed to be a branch of the ancient Yue people, a tree dwelling tribe.

TRUE OR FALSE?

1) Many American Indians are the ones who work on bridges in the US - are not afraid of the height.
2) Mohawks built New York Skyscrapers because did not fear heights or dangerous conditions.

Native Village Music and Dance Library
"Listening is the first sense to develop in the womb. It is not surprising, then, that I was conscious of sounds earlier than anything else as an infant. Mainly, these were the sounds of bird wings rising up into the sky, rustling trees, the cry of the mourning dove, and the rippling wind. They were the first nonhuman sounds I heard because my family spent most of the time outdoors. This awareness was followed by other sounds of life embracing me with deep signs and measured breaths. Those human sounds then became syllables, or vocables, and voice patterns with intonations and inflections. Eventually and inexplicably, they turned into words such as Waconda, meaning Creator, or the Great Mystery of LIfe, and waduge, meaning to eat, and Mayah, the Earth. Single words became explosions of sounds and images, and these traveled outward in strings of sentences or melodies and songs."

The Lost Creation Songs of the Mohave People

Native American Songs

Edward Curtis became famous for his photographs of Native Americans .

American Indian Boarding Schools Haunt Many

MAPS


MAPS
Zheng He's Inheritance- Chinese Charts of the Americas from Ming back to Xia
Speech for Library of Congress 5/16/05 http://www.asiaticfathers.com/speech.htm

THE MAP
The Harris maps were printed from wood block. Most are on mulberry-bark paper and are written in classical Chinese. Although varying in ages they have only minimal differences. The oldest of the Harris maps are believed

CHINA PEOPLE to be from the Ming dynasty. The map books themselves are Korean but the world map in each book is a Chinese map. The Korean name for that type map is Ch'onhado meaning “Chinese map.

The Zuni Indians
of New Mexico

Case for Other Pre-Columbian Voyagers

Missouri Cherokee Tribes proclaim Jewish Heritage
The Northern Cherokee Nation of the Old Louisiana Territory has recently shocked the world by claiming their ancient Oral legends tell of a Cherokee migration made to America from the area known as Masada. This startling evidence is being offered to the public by Beverly Baker Northup whom is the spokesperson for their organization. The evidence offered in support of this connection to Cherokees escaping the mountain fortress of Masada is based in part of what Northup claims is stories passed down from elders and the similarity between ancient words. Beverly Baker Northup believes there is a connection between these two peoples based on evidence of Jews of the region around Masada during Roman times wearing braided hair and the similarities that the spokesperson attributes to Hebrew language. In explaining this connection Beverly Baker Northup is quoted as saying: "The story has been kept alive among our Cherokee people that the Sicarii who escaped from Masada, are some of our ancestors who managed to cross the water to this land, and later became known as Cherokees. (Please note the phonetic resemblance of Si'cari'i and, Cherokee or Tsa'ra-gi'.)"

Dr. Davis advanced the hypothesis that the Zuni Indians of New Mexico were distinctive in language, culture and biology , compared with other Indians, partly because they may have come in contact with Japanese in the 13th century . She noted similarities between the Zuni and the Japanese in blood chemistry and some basic words . Even the Zuni migration stories, she said, were suggestive in their description of the trek of a distinctive people from the "ocean of the sunset world" in search of the true middle of the world. "I'm not saying the Zuni are Japanese," Dr. Davis said, "but they may include influences from Japan at a particular time." From the audience arose Joseph Dishta, head councilman of the Zuni tribe in New Mexico. "We do not endorse this theory," Mr. Dishta said. "We have our own interpretation. We always feel we've been in that part of the country since time immemorial. We feel we emerged from the mother earth."
If the Japanese found their way to the Zuni, could Jewish refugees from the Roman Empire have made it to the eastern mountains of Tennessee in the second century? At least that is the meaning a few researchers read in an inscribed stone found a century ago with nine skeletons in a burial mound at Bat Creek in Tennessee.
For years, the inscription was interpreted as a message in Cherokee. When Dr. Cyrus H. Gordon, retired professor of Mediterranean studies at Brandeis University, had a look, he decided the engraving was actually in Hebrew and similar to writings found on Hebrew coins of the first and second centuries. Carbon dating shows the burial took place between the years 32 and 769.
At the conference, Dr. J. Huston McCulloch, an economist at Ohio State University who has become a leading exponent of the Jewish connection to Bat Creek, defended the stone's antiquity and the Jewish interpretation against recent attacks by professional anthropologists. He discounted the possibility of a hoax.

Zuni
Why does Zunian have no known affiliation to any other language in North America? How did the blood allele B get to this pueblo­and not others? Why is the religious system so highly integrated and complex? The Zuni culture is one of the ten most-documented cultures of the world, yet these and numerous other questions persist.14 Indeed, the complexities of the social, religious, and political system have "occupied scholars and defied interpretation by them since the 1890s."
The twenty contemporary Pueblo groups of the American Southwest stand out as distinctive clusters of communities derived from at least seven different language groups, sharing many characteristics, but continuing individual local traditions in pottery, jewelry, and ceremonies. Unlike the nomadic Navaho and Apache who arrived in the area much later—perhaps as late as the sixteenth century—and who live in households quite separated from each other, Pueblo peoples live in consolidated villages and have long been agriculturalists. In Chapter 9, I speculate on the possibility that the Pueblo groups as a whole share a common link to the Anasazi civilization, which may have incorporated influences from Asia at an earlier time than the one considered here for the Zuni.

see: Prehistoric American Indians Zuni Prehistory
The archeological record in the Zuni area indicates that a flurry of new pueblos was built between 1250 and 1300, but the Pueblo of Zuni in its exact present location may be quite new—perhaps as recent as A.D. 1692, after the Pueblo rebellion against Spanish and Catholic intrusion.

"Why do the Zunis and the Japanese share a rare kidney disease?
Their language, religion, and blood type are startlingly different from all other tribes. Most puzzling, the Zuni appear to have much in common with the people of Japan.
In a book with ground breaking implications, Dr. Nancy Yaw Davis examines the evidence underscoring the Zuni enigma and suggests the circumstances that may have led Japanese on a religious quest -- searching for the legendary "middle world" of Buddhism -- across the Pacific to the American Southwest more than seven hundred years ago.

TOTEM POLES

TOTEM POLES China Sources: Kim, Taegon. "A Study on the Rite of Changsung, Korea's Totem Pole." Korea Journal. p.4-19 March 1983.
communication with Timothy Tangherlini, specialist in Korean Folkloristics at the University of California, Los Angeles

American Indian Totem poles are an ancient tradition of the Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest Coast--Washington state in the USA, British Columbia in Canada--and some of the Athabaskan tribes of southern Alaska.
Pictures of Totem Poles


TIMELINE

Chinese people are American Indian First Nation people

U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs

U.S. Indian Tribes - Index by State Get contact information for tribes.

How to Find Native Websites

The Native American Holocaust by David Stannard

History of the Ojibways
Ojibwa, developed a form of pictorial writing used in religious rites of the Midewiwin and recorded on birch bark scrolls and possibly on rock. The sacred scrolls are complicated with a lot of historical, geometrical, and mathematical knowledge communicated through the many complex pictures. The miigis shell was also used in ceremonies, and this shell can only be found from far away coastal areas, indicating a vast trade network at some time across the continent. The use and trade of copper across the continent is also proof of a very large area of trading that took place thousands of years ago, as far back as the Hopewell culture. Certain types of rock used for spear and arrow heads were also traded over large distances. The use of petroforms, petroglyphs, and pictographs was common throughout their traditional territories. Petroforms and medicine wheels were a way to teach the important concepts of four directions, astronomical observations about the seasons, and as a memorizing tool for certain stories and beliefs.

National Indian Telecommunications Institute
110 N. Guadeloupe, Suite 9 Santa Fe, NM 87501
(505) 986-3872 Issues, Education, Events
Look for teacher created webpages and other information on our cultural curriculum model.

Read American Indian and Alaska Native Children: Findings From the Base Year of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort :

Read Status and Trends in the Education of American Indians and Alaska Natives

Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository - Kodiak, Alaska

Alaska Native Heritage Center is a gathering place in Anchorage that celebrates, perpetuates, and shares Alaska Native cultures. Find online FAQs about Alaska for students and other education resources.

Alaska Native Knowledge Network offers a deep wealth of educational resources on Alaska Native knowledge systems and ways of knowing, including culturally responsive standards for students, schools, teachers, communities, and libraries.

Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository won the 2000 National Award for Museum Service, awarded annually to outstanding American museums by the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services. This site offers many educational resources, including the Alutiiq word of the week.

Anchorage Museum of History and Art provides online photographs and images of artifacts as well as education information.

The Center for Native American Youth http://www.cnay.org/
Based at the Aspen Institute, the Center for Native American Youth is "dedicated to improving the health, safety and overall well-being of Native American youth through communication, policy development and advocacy. The Center was founded by former US Senator Byron Dorgan to communicate with and assist tribes with the challenges Native youth face today. On the homepage, visitors can make their way through seven areas, including Our Work, Resources, Champions for Change, and Media Gallery. In the Resources area visitors can learn about the Be Excited About Reading (BEAR) Project, national help hotlines, and jobs and internships with the Center's key partners around the country. The Media Gallery contains public service announcements, their YouTube channel, and newsletters dating back to June 2011. A highlight of this resource is the Listening to Youth section, which offers direct testimony from young Native Americans about what's important to them.