Top 10 Things to Say When You Meet a White Person

All Native Americans have had those encounters -- meeting a stranger of a different race who reacts to Indian-ness with a predictable comment about your racial makeup, or a common misconception about Indians, or a (probably false) story about his or her grandmother. It's weird, it's sometimes offensive, it's sometimes oddly touching. 

This list turns the tables, offering the NDN side of the conversation. Use carefully. Thanks goes to Last Real Indians for posting this one totheir Facebook page. 

Top 10 Things Natives Should Say to White Folks

10. How much white are you?

9. I'm part white myself, you know.

8. I learned all your people's ways in the Boy Scouts.

7. My great-great-grandmother was a full-blooded white American Princess.

6. Funny, you don't look white.

5. I'm not racist, my best friend is white!

4. Do you live in a covered wagon?

3. What's the meaning behind the square dance?

2. Can I touch your facial hair?

1. Hey, can I take your picture?

Read more athttp://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/07/25/top-10-things-say-when-you-meet-white-person-156053

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21 Celebs You Didn’t Know Were Native American

November is Native American Heritage Month, when the United States officially celebrates the culture and traditions of Native American people. With more than five million people of Native American descent living in the United States, it’s no surprise that many famous people (or their ancestors) in the arts and entertainment industries are members of one of the many tribes on record.

Researching ancestry and claiming official enrollment in a Native American tribe can be a challenging process. While investigating what famous people claim Native American blood, it’s clear that you have to go on self-reporting, for the most part. It’s pretty widely known that Elvis was directly descended from the Cherokee Nation, for instance (and who was going to argue with Elvis, anyway?). Other celebrities who claim Native American origin have caused more controversy. Cher, for instance, said that she had 1/16 Cherokee blood after releasing her single, “Half Breed,” in the 1970s. Her claims were widely disputed, and her choice to wear a typical Native American headdress while performing the song on Sonny and Cher didn’t win anyone over.

There are many actors and musicians whose Native American ancestry may be less obvious. Jimi Hendrix, Tori Amos, and Chuck Norris were surprises to me. So was Angelina Jolie, for that matter. It didn’t really occur to me to wonder where these people were from, or from whom they were descended, so there ethnicity isn’t shocking. I’d just never considered it.

My favorite Native American cinematic experience was Smoke Signals, one of my favorites movies, based on Sherman Alexie’s book Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. It’s hard to believe the book was published 20 years ago this summer, but the dates don’t lie, I guess.
“When The Lone Ranger was published, I was being fêted by the publishing world while I was back living on the rez, after college,” Alexie told the New Yorker. “I was called ‘one of the major lyric voices of our time’ while I was sleeping in a U.S. Army surplus bed in the unfinished basement bedroom in my family’s government-built house.”

This quote from Alexie’s book sums up everything I’d hope wouldn’t happen to people of Native American descent in Hollywood or anywhere.

“… but I know somebody must be thinking about us because if they weren’t we’d just disappear just like those Indians who used to climb the pueblos. Those Indians disappeared with food still cooking in the pot and air waiting to be breathed and they turned into birds or dust or the blue of the sky or the yellow of the sun. There they were and suddenly they were forgotten for just a second and for just a second nobody thought about them and then they were gone.”

The history and contributions of the people are far too rich to forget. Let’s take a look at 21 celebrities you may not have known were Native American.

Benjamin Bratt



Jimi Hendrix





Tori Amos




Will Rogers





Lou Diamond Phillips





Ben Harper




Kid Cudi




Angelina Jolie




Rosario Dawson




Johnny Depp





Heather Locklear




Jessica Biel




Jennifer Tilly

Cameron Diaz

Mandy Moore




Miley Cyrus




Joe Jonas




Elvis Presley




Anthony Kiedis




Chuck Norris




Burt Reynolds



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Playground of the Native Son: An all Native American professional football team (VIDEO)

This is a one-hour documentary about the 1920s Hominy Indians football team that defeated the defending National Football champions, New York Giants in 1927.

There was an All-Native American Professional Football team in Oklahoma during the 1920's and early '30's. Consisting entirely of Native blood to form a team called 'The Hominy Indians'. 

Twenty-two different tribes were represented, some played for one game, some for years. 

Founded and financed by two Osage brothers, Ira and Otto Hamilton. They had a 22 game winning streak and had the chance of a lifetime to play against the World Champions, the New York Giants, in 1927. John Levi, was their star player and then coach. Jim Thorpe called him the greatest athlete he had ever seen. 

Adam Beach is seen in a publicity photo for upcoming films based on the Hominy Indians, an Oklahoma-based, semi-professional football team of the 1920s. Fully Funded Films/IndieInFilms - 

What happens during the pre-game speech by the Coach to inspire this team to dig deep is a speech so motivating that it will be used in locker rooms for generations to come. This is their story.

- Written by Executive Producer Celia Xavier 

  VIDEO

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Chickasaw Chief Tishomingo

Tishomingo

     Tishomingo in 1836 lived on the place in Lee county, known in 1870 as the Larkin Gambrell place, and was the chief of that district.  From map sent me in 1904 by Miss Janie Agnew, Bethany, Lee county, Miss., and by one or more members of Larkin Gambrell’s family I learn that Tishomingo’s house was on S. W. 1-4, Sec. 13, Town 7, Range 5, Lee Co., Miss.;  Larkin Gambrell’s home in 1849 was on N. W. 1-4 of same section.

     From Edwin G. Thomas, May 10, 1880:

“In 1834, before I moved to Pikeville, I made a trip through the Indian nation. I first made my way to Cotton Gin, on the east side of the Tombigby, across which was the Indian nation. By night of one of the days when traveling in the Chicksaw nation, we reached the settlement of an Indian, Tishomingo. On this day we were guided by an Indian, and passed several Indian huts. Some Indians run their horses by us during the day—drunk. The guide talked with the sober Indian, and learned that they had been at a trading place and gotten spirits. Tishomingo lived on the south side of a traveled road running a little north of east. He had a right smart sized farm and a good many negroes. He had a large spring across the road from his house, and below, a few hundred yards, there was a natural rock bridge, the branch running under it. The distance from the T. C. Stuart mission was 35 or 40 miles.” 

     Tishomingo was then (1836) a hundred years old, his wife seventy or eighty, and his mother (who lived with him) one hundred and twenty. He had been living at that place sixty one years. He had come from the Chickasaw Old Fields. 

     The Creeks and Chickasaws had had a fight sixty-one years before.  The Creeks came to the Chickasaw Old Fields and killed the Chickasaws, and the latter scattered out from this place, which had been up to that time the head-quarters of their tribe. 

     Tishomingo was a good, clever man, and very infiuential. The chief seems to have possessed some property in 1834; for we are told that in that year, Edwin G. Thomas, traveled in the Chickasaw Nation and that Tishomingo “had a right smart size farm and a good many negroes.”

     In personal appearance the chief was big, tall, and rawboned,
so described by one who knew him and who had visited his house many times, Wm. Henry Gates, Prentiss County, Nov 9, 1880:

“I have heard Brother [T. C.] Stuart and the first settlers speak in high terms of Tishomingo, as a noble-spirited chief, distinguished for his high sense of honor and virtue.”” In one of the treaties he is spoken of by the Chickasaws “as their old and beloved chief.”

Narrative of Berry Hodges, Union county, Miss., June 8, 1880:.

“While I was living near Ripley I visited the neighborhood of Tishomingo. Tennessee wagoners got me to sell their stock to the Indians, because I understood their language. I found no whites in Tishomingo’s neighborhood. Tishomingo was a noted Indian, an old man, very old. I saw him at Ripley several times. The Indians knew me very well. At Indians’ houses men would lie on bear-skins, covered with blankets if they had them. Their eating was poor stuff. I have eaten tom-fulla (hominy) beat and boiled, a little lye dropped in it, and turned a little sour) with Tishomingo. Tom-fulla was a common diet among the Indians.” 

     Tishoming died at Little Rock, Ark., on his way to the Territory, and was buried there.  It is supposed that he died about 1841. A county in Mississippi and a town in the Indian Territory perpetuate the name of this old minco.



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Sitting Bull

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FIRST NATIONS LEADERS URGE NATIVES AND NON-NATIVES TO UNITE AGAINST NORTHERN GATEWAY

A Protest sign hangs from a building in the town of Kitimat, British Columbia, April 12, 2014. Residents of the town voted against the Northern Gateway pipeline project in a blow to Enbridge Inc’s efforts to expedite the flow of crude from Canada’s landlocked oil sands to high-paying markets in Asia. Photo taken April 12, 2014.

Globe and Mail Jun. 17 2014

The federal government’s decision to go ahead with the Northern Gateway pipeline brought chiefs and elders to tears when news reached them at a scientific conference on ocean health in the Great Bear Rainforest.

Shaking with anger, their voices trembling with emotion, native leaders brought the conference to a standstill Tuesday as they spoke of their dismay over the decision – and of their commitment to fight to stop the project from ever getting built.

“Pretty shocking … it’s a tough, tough piece of news,” said Wigvilhba Wakas, a hereditary chief of the Heiltsuk Nation.

“We see this all over the world, where corporate interests are overriding the interests of the people,” said Guujaaw, past president of the Council of Haida Nation and one of the top political leaders among native people in B.C.

“It’s way out of control and it’s probably going to take decisions like this for people to stand up [together]. I think this is a test of humanity now to stand up and fight back,” he said.

Wickaninish, former president of the Nuu-Chah-nulth Tribal Coucil, said the federal government had made “an ominous decision” that he hoped would unite native and non-native people in a common cause, as the battle over Clayoquot Sound did in his traditional territory on Vancouver Island, where mass arrests stopped logging near Tofino.

“This is not just an Indian fight … it’s all the people,” he said.

Wahmeesh, vice-President of the Nuu-Chah-nulth, said he felt an emotional blow when he heard the decision, which spread around the conference as participants read the news bulletins on their smartphones.

“My heart kind of sank, like I’d lost somebody. Like a death in the family,” he said.

Wahmeesh said he was going to return to the Nuu-Chah-nulth, a large collection of 14 tribes on the west coast of Vancouver Island, for an urgent meeting on the pipeline project. And he promised that the chiefs would be united in pledging support to those tribes along the pipeline route across Northern B.C.

“This is probably the biggest decision this government will ever make in my lifetime [affecting First Nations],” he said, struggling to find a way to describe the magnitude of the decision.

Wahmeesh echoed those who urged a coalition between native and non-native people to fight the pipeline.

“We’ll stand together as Canadians,” he said.

Margaret Edgars, an elder from the Haida Nation, was in tears as she spoke to the gathering of scientists and native leaders from Alaska, B.C., Washington, Oregon and California who had gathered for a conference to discuss the resurgence of sea otters on the West Coast.

“I was hurt a bit when I heard it,” she said of the news of Ottawa’s support for the project. “But with everyone speaking out about it here I’m feeling a little stronger. … I think we’ve had enough of what they’re doing. It’s time to stand together united. … We have to continue with the fight.”

After Alaskan delegates had reminded the gathering of the long, enduring impacts of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Ms. Edgars said tankers pose too great a risk to coastal B.C.

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The Chickasaw Migration Story

The Chickasaws and Choctaws once were one people, according to the Chickasaw migration story. This understanding is common to the accounts of English trader James Adair in 1775 and the 20th century Chickasaw activist, Jess Humes.

There are other versions in between. They all involve people making a lengthy journey from the west, following a sacred leaning pole, and a complication that resolves when the people split into two groups.

In the Chickasaw versions, one group stays put at the behest of a leader named Chata. The other, much smaller group, follows his twin brother, Chikasa, as they continue heading east. Was this a simple yet profound difference of opinion on this one matter? A case of sibling rivalry? Or had the seeds for the split already been planted, possibly through differences among clans?

Before these highly spiritual people separated, a prophet may have foreseen the eventual warfare between them, and warned that it would be caused by a greedy and hateful alien race. Such a premonition would have added even more distress to the parting.

Whatever, that moment of separation marked the emergence of two distinct peoples. Before they split up, the migrants had a name we will never know. Afterward, they adopted the names of their respective leaders and became the Choctaws and Chickasaws.

When the division occurred is a mystery that will never be solved. But the point is that the break up was permanent.

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10 of the Cutest Kids in Pow Wow Regalia

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