Native American Heritage Month is celebrated every November in the United States. It is a time to honor and celebrate the traditions, languages, and stories of Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and affiliated Island communities as well as to reckon with our settler colonial past.
“The month is a time to celebrate rich and diverse cultures, traditions, and histories and to acknowledge the important contributions of Native people,” according to the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). “Heritage Month is also an opportune time to educate the general public about tribes, to raise a general awareness about the unique challenges Native people have faced both historically and in the present, and the ways in which tribal citizens have worked to conquer these challenges.”
While Native American heritage can seem far off from our soccer games, final exams, and dances, indigenous history permeates nearly every aspect of our lives here in Kansas City.
Native American Heritage Month was first established in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush to recognize the contributions of Native Americans to the United States and to recognize the challenges they faced throughout history. Some have criticized such a paradigm, however, pointing out that injustice to Native peoples living in the United States is an ongoing process. This is all the more reason to pay special attention to Native American history.
The Department of the Interior is celebrating this year’s Native American Heritage Month with the theme of “Celebrating Tribal Sovereignty and Identity.” Tribal sovereignty ensures that any decisions about Tribes with regard to their property and citizens are made with their participation and consent. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has been explicit about the responsibility the United States has to indigenous people, dubbed the “trust responsibility.” The federal trust responsibility is a legal obligation under which the United States “has charged itself with moral obligations of the highest responsibility and trust” toward Indian tribes.
The Department of the Interior has, however, also been heavily criticized for its treatment of indigenous people living on Turtle Island. The Department of the Interior has a generally sordid past, including accepting bribes and withholding resources from tribal nations. As recently as 2019, the Interior attempted to limit public access to records, causing many whistleblowers to fear that such opacity would lead to the same string of abuses for which the Secretary of the Interior was fired in 2018.
The National Archives holds hundreds of thousands of U.S. Government records relating to Native Americans, from as early as 1774 through the mid-1990s. These include every treaty signed with Native Americans, records from the Indian Schools, Indian Census Rolls, and Bureau of Indian Affairs records.
Additionally, the BIA itself has come under intense scrutiny over the years for its treatment of Native peoples. “For more than a century, it was part of assaults on Native American people, from the banning of ceremonial dances to the forceable placement of children in boarding schools,” describes Livia Gershon.
Such a past causes many to criticize Native American Heritage Month as solely symbolic, as an attempt to banish the ghosts that haunt colonized land. This view is certainly not universal, however, among indigenous people. No group is a monolith.
When former president Donald Trump attempted to rebrand Native American Heritage Month as “National American History and Founders Month,” many pointed out that such a move is precisely why visibility matters. The NDN Collective points out that, “The acknowledgement and celebration of Native American Heritage Month is an opportunity for America to reckon with its past, to heal long-standing historical wounds, to build national self-awareness, and fully realize what it means to be a nation built on justice and equity for all people.”
The past also need not necessarily be the future. Valerie Lambert, anthropologist at UNC Chapel Hill and citizen of the Choctaw Nation, found working for the BIA to be complicated, both as a young intern and later as an anthropologist. She recalls in 2000 when Kevin Grover, then Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs, publicly apologized for the BIA’s history and was met with backlash:
None of us, however, was prepared for the reaction to Gover’s apology outside the BIA. The people on ‘the hill’ (Capitol Hill), I was told less than a half-hour after the ceremony had ended, were livid. They had been telephoning the Main Interior Building, demanding an explanation from Gover and Gover’s boss for this ‘unauthorized’ and ‘inappropriate’ apology to Indian people on behalf of the federal government. I and my coworkers were speechless. On the floor where the apology had been given, we solemnly tried to assimilate the fact that many non-Indians with whom we shared the status of ‘federal employee’ felt that the history of the BIA needed to be buried. Possibly, they even believed that Gover had misrepresented that history. It was difficult to stomach the idea that our non-BIA federal coworkers felt it wrong for the government to apologize for BIA abuses.
Valerie Lambert. (2016). The Big Black Box of Indian Country: The Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Federal-Indian Relationship. American Indian Quarterly, 40(4), 333–363. https://doi.org/10.5250/amerindiquar.40.4.0333
What is critical is acknowledging the nuance in this history. As Lambert puts it, the relationships between tribes and the BIA as well as tribal rhetoric surrounding the BIA “are indeed multiple, conflicting, complicated, and not easily untangled.”
The greater Kansas City area is home to more than 98 different Native tribes. Unfortunately, Kansas City is no exception to the ongoing struggle for Native sovereignty. This is all the more reason to explore your local resources in learning more about our nuanced history.
- The Kansas City Indian Center aims “to encourage social, educational, and economic advancement of the American Indian community by promoting traditional and cultural values.”
- Multicultural Kansas City provides information on various cultural resources, including a history of the tribes that have lived or hunted in the area.
- The Kansas Native American Affairs Office “was opened in the summer of 2011 with the primary purpose of serving as the Liaison for the Governor to ensure that Native American concerns and needs are addressed in state policy making decisions.” They have an extensive list of online resources for indigenous people and education about indigenous issues.
- Historic Trading Post markers can be found in Case Park, the West Bottoms, Chouteau Station. the François Chouteau Monument, Native American Heritage Fountain, and surviving buildings such as 504 Westport Road.
- Frank Vaydik Park was where Hopewell artifacts were found, establishing the Hopewell’s history in Line Creek. The park is now home to the Native American Garden at Line Creek.
- The Wyandot National Burying Ground offers a place to pay respects to members of the Wyandot Tribe who died after arriving at the reservation in Wyandotte county.
- Kaw Point Park has a memorial dedicated to Native Americans.
- Prophetstown, now the Argentine neighborhood, was founded by Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee Prophet.
- The Shawnee Mission Indian Foundation is “a local advocacy group, partnering with the City of Fairway (Mission daily operations) and the Kansas State Historical Society (property owner) for the funding, preservation, and operations of the Shawnee Indian Mission State Historic Site in Fairway, Kansas.”
Here at Barstow, Betsi Waldeck ‘25 and Haddie Schedler ‘25 have started a new club, Crossroads of Culture, to draw more attention to issues Native Americans face today.
“For Native American Heritage Month we held a discussion about mascots and their impact writ large,” said Schedler. “We tried to get some speakers to come out and talk but that didn’t end up working.”
Similarly, the club has volunteered at local organizations to help out recently, including Shawnee Indian Mission. Waldeck expands on what they do there, saying “You can help organize storage, clean up the creek, or help with the actual exhibits. We organized the storage units which included some interesting artifacts and created QR codes so people can see the events,” she said. The Shawnee Indian Mission also does events throughout the year, and right now, their Christmas Tree fundraiser is happening
Additionally, many students at Barstow proudly celebrate their Native American heritage all year. One anonymous Barstow student with indigenous heritage explains the importance of artifacts and heritage, saying “My grandma gave me a turquoise ring that has a great family story behind it.”
Native American Heritage Month is not without its complications, but these complications are worth engaging instead of running from. The vast amounts of history and culture right in our backyard can help us understand our past. Go forth and learn Barstow!
