Native American Heritage Month occurs every November with Native American Heritage Day being honored every year the day after Thanksgiving. It is a time to celebrate the cultures, contributions, strength, and resiliency
of Native American tribes and their members while also acknowledging historical injustices.
In this blog post, we will be discussing a brief history of Native American Heritage Day and why it still matters today.
The history
This year, the theme for Native American Heritage Month is “Weaving together our past, present and future.” In honor of the efforts to understand and address the effects of the past, we are exploring the history of Native
American Heritage Day itself.
Early advocacy to develop a Native American Heritage Day started in the 1910s, but Native American Heritage Day as we know it wasn’t established until 2009.
1911: Arthur Caswell Parker, a Cattaraugus Seneca historian, helped launch the Society of American Indians.
1912-1915: The Boy Scouts of America recognized “First Americans Day” after being convinced by Parker.
1914-1915: Reverend Red Fox James of the Blackfeet tribe petitioned to establish a national day for Native Americans, but President Woodrow Wilson did not comply, even after 24 governors endorsed the petition.
1916: New York became one of the first states to establish their own observance.
1924: Congress finally passed the Indian Citizenship Act, granting U.S. citizenship to Native Americans born in the U.S.
1976: President Gerald Ford designated a Native American Awareness Week.
1983: Reagan established a Native Indian Day.
1990: The federal recognition was expanded to last a month with Congress passing a joint resolution for Native American Indian Heritage Month.
2009: Native American Heritage Day as we know and celebrate it now was established when President Barack Obama signed the “Native American Heritage Day Resolution,” which designated the Friday
after Thanksgiving as Native American Heritage Day.
Why it still matters
Native peoples have faced a long history of colonization, genocide, and erasure. As a result of this troubled history, for generations, Native voices were suppressed and excluded from historical accounts, leading to misrepresented stereotypes
and biased ideas about the role Native Americans have played in shaping the U.S.
Centuries later, the damage of events like the federal Indian boarding schools still affects Native peoples today with many experiencing intergenerational trauma, barriers in uncovering and holding onto
familial and cultural traditions, and pervasive income inequality. According to a study from the Joint Economic Committee (JEC):
Across their lifetime, Native Americans are more likely to live in poverty than individuals of other minority groups with more than 25% of children living in poverty
This increased likelihood of poverty negatively affects health and education, which in turn increases poverty.
Wealth-building is challenging with net worth significantly lower than White counterparts and a lower rate of homeownership.
While financial struggles are real for many Native American people both due to historical inequities and modern-day policy issues that prevent populations on tribal lands from having access to resources, there is still hope.
According to Ned Blackhawk, a professor of history and American studies at Yale, in an interview on NPR’s Morning Edition:
“...The last few generations have witnessed an incredible rise in the sovereign authority of Native nations in ways that we haven’t seen in contemporary American history. It’s difficult
celebrating these subjects in a kind of simplified way, but if we can understand the rising tide of Indigenous sovereignty that has made Native nations self-governing, economically viable, even... attractive as tourist destinations,
we can envision a kind of more inclusive and heterogeneous vision of America.”
Self-Help believes in ownership and economic opportunity for all. Native peoples are often left out of the narrative around economic injustice while being some of the most deeply impacted populations. Native
peoples have been an important part of our culture in the U.S. We hope you spend time this Native American Heritage Day learning about the contributions of Native peoples and honoring the past, present, and future that they are weaving
together.