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Native American Information & Resources

Resources for learning and teaching about Native Americans

This guide is intended to provide some general information about Native Americans, to celebrate their culture, and to look at the racism practiced against them.  Additionally, there are resources listed for allyship. This guide is a living resource: the contents are not exhaustive nor are they complete. We will add to the guide on a regular basis. Most of the material linking out from here is to open sources. 

*Accessibility varies across platforms and all linked out content may not be accessible in its current format.  I chose to leave these resources in because this material is sometimes housed in underfunded repositories who are unable to afford to bring content up to accessibility standards.  This could have the unintended consequence of silencing smaller voices in a desire to only make compliant things available.  Additionally, at the moment, these resources are not required for courses. If you find a resource you would like to have made accessible for use in your classroom or if you are an individual who would like some content made accessible, there are several options available to you via our DE department and through the library. Thank you for your understanding.

Readings Available on the Web and @RCCLibrary

Readings

The above video's Closed Captioning does not meet ADA and 508 standards.  For that reason, I am including the transcript here (corrected by me.  Any errors are mine).

00:00
Hi my name is Daunette Reyome. I'm a Native
00:02
American girl and today you're about to
00:05
get schooled. "6 Misconceptions About Native American People" "Native Americans Still Live in Tipis" We've evolved and, you know,
00:13
not all of us lived in tipis. Tipis
00:17
we're made for only travel uses. Well we
00:20
own one but we don't live in it.  We don't live in it.
00:22
you just camp in it whenever we want to.
00:24
We use them for things like ceremonies
00:27
or camping and such but we don't live in
00:30
them. "Native Americans get lots of government hand-outs." I have to say to that "Where is my
00:36
check?" We really don't get anything for
00:38
free. Everything we everything we get we
00:41
have to work for it just like everybody
00:42
else.
00:43
If we had free health care then the
00:46
diabetes and heart disease rate would be
00:48
very very low. But at this point in time
00:50
is very high. Our dad works to provide
00:52
for us. We you don't get like money or
00:56
anything. We get schooling for free?
00:57
That's not true either. We have to meet
00:59
the same academic requirement as any
01:02
other ethnicity. We still have to apply for
01:05
scholarships. "Native Americans don't have to pay taxes."  I thought it was just Donald
01:11
Trump that didn't pay taxes. "Native Americans are rich off of casinos." If we were
01:17
rich off of casinos, why would we need
01:20
government money? I think we just
01:22
mostly lose our money to casinos. We all
01:24
gamble. "All Native Americans wear headdresses."
01:29
Not all Native Americans wear
01:30
headdresses and some tribes they don't
01:33
wear them at all. In my tribe we don't
01:35
wear headdresses and we never did. Women
01:38
don't wear headdresses and you have to
01:40
earn them, it wasn't just given to them
01:42
or handed down to them-- you have to earn
01:45
every feather that makes up that
01:47
headdress. If you were to buy a headdress
01:49
there would be that would be
01:50
disrespectful because there's no meaning
01:53
behind it. You didn't do anything to earn
01:54
it. All you did was pay for it. "Another word for Native Americans is 'redskin.'" That's
02:00
racist. And a lot of people say that the
02:03
term comes from the color of our
02:05
skin but if you look at me I'm not red.
02:07
Society has just played into it like the
02:11
word redskins is okay when it's not.
02:13
The word 'redskins' came about from the
02:16
scalping of Native Americans.
02:18
'Redskin' means the blood that was dripped from
02:20
down on their faces. That's a major
02:23
league sports team and their
02:25
argument against
02:28
changing the name would be just like me
02:31
having a conversation with my mom and my
02:33
mom asked me why don't you like Brussels
02:35
sprout? Because I don't. It's not like we
02:38
have a mascot that's called white man.
02:42
In a way that's making fun of our
02:46
culture and who we are and we're human
02:48
beings just like everybody else.