Indigenous. Native americans. Native American. Native Americans: Wampanoag History and Culture (Massachusett, Natick, Massasoit, Nantucket, Pokanoket) Native American Languages Native American Culture What's new on our site today! As a complement to our Wampanoag language information, we would like to share our collection of indexed links about the Wampanoag people and various aspects of their society. The emphasis of these pages is on American Indians as a living people with a present and a future as well as a past.
Wampanoag history is interesting and important, but the Wampanoags are still here today, too, and we try to feature modern authors as well as traditional folklore, contemporary artwork as well as museum pieces, and the issues and struggles of today as well as the tragedies of yesterday. Suggestions for new links are always welcome. Our Wampanoag Websites Wampanoag Language: Information and language learning materials from the Wampanoag Indian language. Wampanoag Facts for Kids: Questions and answers about Wampanoag culture. Wampanoag Legends: Collection of Wampanoag Indian legends and folktales. Tribal and Community Links Squanto. Native Americans: Algonquian Indians (Algonkian tribe, Algonquians, Algonkians) The Drum as Icon and Teacher in D/Lakota Life.
By Jonathan Ritter, UCLA Among the Dakota and Lakota (D/Lakota), the drum occupies a position of great cultural and symbolic power. Regarded as a living entity, it is simultaneously understood as a spiritual guardian and a musical instrument, a living tradition and a reference to a past way of life. Consequently, the continued spiritual, ceremonial, and musical duties of those who play the drum, attendant to both the larger community as well as the living instrument itself, have encourage the use of music and dance as an integral part of current D/Lakota cultural education and identity.
In this article, I first argue that the drum should be understood as an icon of D/Lakota worldview, examining how circular symbols find meaning in multiple spheres of D/Lakota thought. Second, I look at how the drum's dynamic cultural role has been adapted to the contemporary urban Indian classroom as a unique form of cultural education and D/Lakota resistance to assimilationist pressures. Notes 1. 2. 3. Thunderbird and Trickster. By Steve Mizrach Introduction The Thunderbird is one of the few cross-cultural elements of Native North American mythology.
He is found not just among Plains Indians, but also among Pacific Northwest and Northeastern tribes. He has also become quite a bit of an icon for non-Indians, since he has also had the honor of having automobiles, liquors, and even a United States Air Force squadron named after him. In this paper, moreover, I want to examine how the myths and legends of the Thunderbird tie into the sacred clowning/trickster ritual complex of Plains tribes such as the Lakota.
Plains Indians myth and folklore In order to understand Plains Indians folklore, we have to realize that their myths were not just "just-so" stories to entertain, divert, or make inadequate efforts at naturalistic explanation. Some have looked at the Thunderbird myths through the same lens of understanding applied to European mythology. Still, the Indians were not merely "mythmaking" in the pejorative sense. Kachina. Drawings of kachina dolls, from an 1894 anthropology book. Kachina dancers, Shongopavi pueblo, Arizona, sometime before 1900 A metal statue signifying a kachina dancer at the Carefree Resort in Carefree, Arizona, US. A kachina (/kəˈtʃiːnə/; also katchina, katcina, or katsina; Hopi: katsina /kətˈsiːnə/, plural katsinim /kətˈsiːnɨm/) is a spirit being in western Pueblo cosmology and religious practices.[1] The western Pueblo, Native American cultures located in the southwestern United States, include Hopi, Zuni, Tewa Village (on the Hopi Reservation), Acoma Pueblo, and Laguna Pueblo.
The kachina religion has spread to more eastern Pueblos, e.g., from Laguna to Isleta. The term also refers to the kachina dancers, masked members of the tribe who dress up as kachinas for religious ceremonies, and kachina dolls, wooden figures representing kachinas which are given as gifts to children. Kachinas are spirits or personifications of things in the real world. Origins[edit] Zuni kachinas[edit]