VOA DEI Indigenous Ppls Day October

VOA DEI Celebrates:

Indigenous Peoples Day All October

For the month of October VOA DEI is celebrating the Indigenous History of the Americas with a special focus on our home state of Georgia. When you click over to the following page you will find a calendar full of interesting facts. All you have to do is click on the dates. For more information or links to refrences click on the headings and graphics provided in the pop-ups.

Ops Shared Services

VOA DEI Celebrates:

Indigenous Peoples

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THD

By Alana Hayes

More Resources:

• Orange Circle Cercle Orange - CAN (this is an HD viva engage community celebrating the history and culture of Indigenous peoples in Canada)

• Tribe Native American ARG - US (this is an HD viva engage community celebrating the culture and diversity of Native Americans in the US)

• Native Americans in Georgia (this is an online library of resources provided by Georgia State Universtity)

• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion - US (Viva engage community for DEI to connect associates with resources across the enterprise)

• American Indian coc (database of content on the history, tribes, culture, and landmarks related to the indigenous peoples of America)

National Museum of the American Indian

This museum is part of the Smithsonian out in Washington, DC and New York City. They are committed to the preservation of Native American culture and history throughout the U.S. as well as persuing social justice for Native peoples. They currently have multiple online exhibitions including:

• Ancestors Know Who We Are

• Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field

• Why We Serve: Native Americans in U.S. Armed Forces

• Americans

• The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire

• El Gran Comina Inka: Construyendo un Imperio

• Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the U.S. & American Indian Nations

• Indelible: The Patinum Photographs of Larry McNeil and Will Wilson

• Circle of Dance

• A Song for the Horse Nation: Horses in Native American Cultures

• Infinity of Nations: Art & History in the Collections of the Museum

• HIDE: Skin as Material & Metaphor

Click on any of the bullets to go to the online exhibit listed or go to the museum's home page by clicking on the title above.

Kolomoki Mounds

The largest Woodland Indian site in the Southeast. The park features the oldest great temple mound, burial mounds, and ceremonial mounds. A unique museum is built around an excavated mound where visitors learn about the culture surrounding this historic site if they choose to visit. The Temple Mound is 56 ft high and 325 ft wide. Mound D is one of 8 visible mounds at the site. 77 burials and ceremonial pottery were discovered here. Researchers have noted that several mounds at this site are aligned according to astronomical events. For more information click the image above.

Fort Mountain

Visit the mysterious wall believed to have been built by Woodlands-era Indians between 500 BC and 500 AD. Fort Mountain. There is also a Cherokee legend of the "Moon-Eyed People" that might incorporate this mysterious wall. If you'd like to learn more about the park click on the title above. If you're interested in learning more about the Woodland Indians watch the video below.

If you'd like to know more about the "Moon-Eyed People" of Cherokee Legend then click here.

Georgia Tribe of Eastern Cherokee

It's a myth that all the indigeounous people in Georgia were removed in 1838. While it was a horrible event in our history the Cherokee people are still alive and well in Georgia. This tribe consists of the descendants of the Cherokee in the Dahlonega area who escaped the “The Trail of Tears”. Calhoun, GA is also the home of the last capital of the Cherokee, New Echota. Many of the Cherokee of the Quall Boundary in NC can still trace their ancestral roots back to Georgia. For more information click on either of the images above to go to the Georgia Tribe of Eastern Cherokee website or the Georgia Council American Indian Concerns page for this tribe.

Cherokee of Georgia Tribal Council

The Cherokee of Georgia received state recognition on March 1, 1988. They currently have 369 members. This tribal council is incoporated and holds a nonprofit status. There mission is to preserve their community, traditions, culture, and history. For more information on this council as well as a look at their online gallery click on the image above to go to their page on the Georgia Council American Indian Concerns site.

The Georgia Council on American Indian Concerns

This council was created by the Georgia General Assembly and is the only state entity specifically authorized to address the concerns of Georgia's American Indians. It is tasked with fostering the cultural heritage of American Indians in Georgia, advising state and local government on issues affecting American Indians, and assisting with American Indian burial protection and repatriation. For more information on this council click on the image above.

The Mississippians

The Mississippians were the last major prehistoric cultural development in North America, lasting from about 700 ce to the time of the arrival of the first European explorers. Their culture spread over a great area of the Southeast and the mid-continent, in the river valleys of what are now the states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. They arrived in Gerogia in around 900 CE and pushed out the existing Woodland culture. They are responsible for mounds like the Ocmulgee Mounds.

For more information click the image above to go to nps.gov or click here to go to Britannica.com

Chickasaw

The Chickasaw nation is recognized by the Federal government. Their traditional territory was in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky. Their language a member of the Muskogean language family. The Chickasaw Nation is currently present in Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. They had interaction with French, English, and Spanish colonists during the colonial period. The United States considered the Chickasaw one of the Five Civilized Tribes of the Southeast. They are believed to be descended from the Plaquemine culture.

For more information click the image above to go to their official site or click here to go to Britannica.com.

Georgia Museums For Indigenous Art & History

• Funk Hertiage Center

• Museum of Southeastern Indians

• Booth Western Art Museum

• Indian Springs Hotel Museum

• Seven Springs Museum

• Atlanta History Center

• Cherokee County History Center

Click on any of the bullets to go to that musuem's website and learn more about what they showcase and where they are located in GA.

The History of The 5 Civilized Tribes

The 5 "civilized" tribes are the Cherokee, Choctoaw, Chiasaw, Creek, and Seminole nations. They were referred to as "civilized" because they assimilated and developed economic ties with the European settlers that came to America.

For more information on the history of these tribes and why they were referred to as 'The 5 Civilized Tribes', click on the title above.

Iroquoian Languages

Iroquoian languages are a group of indigenous languages spoken in North America. The languages include Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora, Huron-Wyandot, Petun, Cherokee, and a few lesser-known languages. Only seven of these languages are still spoken today. The Iroquoian languages belong to two branches, a southern one composed of Cherokee, and a northern branch that includes the Erie, Neutral, Wenro, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Petun and St. Lawrence Iroquoians. For more information click on the title above or watch the video by clicking below.

Ocmulgee Mounds

Welcome to Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park. This park is a prehistoric American Indian site, where many different American Indian cultures occupied this land for thousands of years. American Indians first came here during the Paleo-Indian Period hunting Ice Age mammals. Around 900 CE, the Mississippian Period began, and people constructed mounds for their elite, which remain here today. Check out the National Parks website by clicking the image above.

Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration

Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park and the Ocmulgee Mounds Association are hosting the 32nd annual Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration on September 14 and 15, 2024, from 10 am to 5 pm. at Ocmulgee Mounds National Historic Park here in Georgia. The Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration is one of the largest celebrations of Southeastern Native American culture and provides visitors an opportunity to learn from the people whose ancestors were on this site of the Ocmulgee Mounds thousands of years before the city of Macon was founded. The event features traditional cultural crafts, storytelling, live demonstrations, music, and dance. A variety of Native American artisans and vendors will be in attendance. Fun activities for kids, like pottery making, will be available. For more information click on the title.

Track Rock Gap

Chattahoochee National Forest preserves a significant site of rock art created by Creek, Catabwa and Cherokee people. The petroglyphs at Track Rock Gap are more than one hundred symbols that cover six table-sized soapstone boulders in the gap between Thuderstruck Mountain and Buzzard Roost Ridge. Native Americans used one of two techniques to carve into the rocks: pecking or incising. To peck into the stone, they used hard rocks, or hammer stones, to make the shapes with repeated blows in the same spot until the design was created. For incising, the carver rubbed a hard stone back and forth to create the design. Click on the image above to go to the national forest's official site.

Etowah Indian Mounds

This is a State Historic Site in Georgia near the Etowah River. Etowah is a Muskogee word derived from italwa, meaning "town". From 1000–1550 CE, during the Mississippian culture era, Etowah was occupied by a series of chiefdoms over the course of five and a half centuries. The historic Muscogee Creek formed in this region and occupied this area. They were later pushed out by the Cherokee, who migrated from eastern Georgia and Tennessee to evade European-American pressure. For more information on this historic site go to the national park's official website by clicking the image above.

Lower Muscogee Creek Tribe

This tribe is descended from the Creek Nation and the Mississippian indigenous culture that developed along the Tennesse River and which spanned Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. The Lower Muskogee Creek Tribe was recognized in Georgia state law. Their mission is provide support to their community and ensure the protection of their heritage for the future. For more information on them click on the image above to go to their page on the Georgia Council American Indian Concerns site or go to their website at: http://www.lowermuskogeetribe.com/

National Congress Of American Indians (NCAI)

Since their founding, in 1944, NCAI has served as the unified voice for American Indian and Alaska Native issues. The NCAI is the oldest, largest, and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native organization serving the broad interests of tribal governments and communities. They work to:

• protect and advance tribal governance and treaty rights
• promote the economic development and health and welfare in Indian and Alaska Native communities
• educate the public toward a better understanding of Indian and Alaska Native tribes.

For more information on the NCAI click on their logo above.

Paleo Indian Culture

The current view of the Paleo Indian period envisions bands of hunters entering the North American continent around 17,000 years ago (15,000 BCE) by crossing a land bridge that connected eastern Siberia with Alaska. The land bridge was exposed during the Late Pleistocene by continent-sized glaciers, which, when created, drew water from the oceans, lowering sea levels by some 120 meters. The initial human settlement of Georgia took place during this period.

For more information on this period of early Native American history click on the image above to go to nps.gov or click here to check out the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

Seminole

The Seminole Tribe of Florida is a federally recognized tribe. The word "Seminole" is derived from the Creek word simanó-li. This has been variously translated as "frontiersman", "outcast", "runaway" and "separatist". The Seminole people emerged in a process of ethnogenesis from various Native American groups who settled in Spanish Florida beginning in the early 1700s, most significantly northern Muscogee Creeks from what are now Georgia and Alabama. Historically the Seminoles spoke Mikasuki and Creek, both Muskogean languages.

To learn more about them click on the title to go to their official website or click here to go to their page on Britannica.com

Choctaw

The Choctaw Nation is the third-largest Indian nation in the United States, with over 225,000 tribal members and 12,000-plus associates. The first tribe over the Trail of Tears, historic boundaries are in the southeast corner of Oklahoma. The Choctaw Nation’s vision, “Living out the Chahta Spirit of faith, family and culture,” is evident as it continues to focus on providing opportunities for growth and prosperity. Click on the image to go to the Choctaw Nation official website.

Algic Languages

Also known as Algonquian this is an Indigenous language family of North America. Most Algic languages belong to the Algonquian subfamily, dispersed over a broad area from the Rocky Mountains to Atlantic Canada. The other Algic languages are the Yurok and Wiyot of northwestern California. All of these languages descend from Proto-Algic, a second-order proto-language estimated to have been spoken about 7,000 years ago. There are 44 Algic languages in total. For more information on this language family click the title above or watch the video by clicking below.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs

Is a 200 year old United States federal agency and the oldest bureau in the Department of the Interior. Their mission is to enhance the quality of life, promote economic opportunities, and to carry out the federal responsibilities entrusted to them to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians and Alaska Natives. This is accomplished by directly empowering Tribal governments through self-governance agreements. This agency manages over 55 million acerns of reservations that are held in trust by the U.S. federal governement for indigenous tribes. It also rednders services to 2 million indigenous Americans across the 574 federally recognized tribes. The roots of this agency can be traced all the way back to the Committee on Indian Affairs which was established by Congress in 1775. For more information on this agency click on the image above.

Lamar Culture

Archeological evidence of Lamar culture can still be found today at the Ocmulgee Mounds. The Lamar Culture blanketed Georgia and portions of five neighboring states from about 1300 CE until at least 1650 CE. This particular site was established by 1350 CE. The Lamar village was set up near the river. Here the people built two mounds for their temples, facing each other across a central plaza. Lamar’s spiral mound is unique in all of America. The ramp to the summit of the mound circles counterclockwise in four complete traverses. Large numbers of the Lamar people were decimated by diseases introduced to the Americas by European settlers. Their descendeds are the modern day Muscogee Creeks.

For more information go to nps.gov by clicking the title or click here to go Dekalb History Center.

Woodland Indians

They are the Indigenous peoples of North America whose traditional territories were east of the Mississippi River and south of the subarctic boreal forests. The Woodland Indians made several crucial advancements in their society that helped them flourish from 1,000 BCE – 900 CE. One major advancement was creating permanent settlements. Up until the Woodland Period, people lived nomadically as they followed their food sources of mammoths in the Paleo Indian period and deer in the Archaic period.

For more information click on the image above to go to nps.gov or click here to go to Britannica.com

Apalachee

From at least A.D. 1000, a group of farming Indians known as the Apalachee lived in northwest Florida. Their territory extended from the Aucilla River to the east and the Ochlockonee River to the west, and from what is now the Georgia state line to the Gulf of Mexico. Prior to European contact, there were at least 50,000-60,000 Apalachees. Their descendants are the Talimali Band of the Apalachee Indians currently living in Lousianna go to their official site by clicking the image above. For more information click on any of the links below:

• Apalachee People (Britannica.com)

• The Spirit of the Apalachees (FSU)

• Apalachee Tribe (Legends of America)

Federally Recognized Tribes

There are currently 574 federally recognized tribes in the U.S. that are legally recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). On a smaller scale there are on 63 tribes in the country with state recognition. There are also 326 federally recognized Indian Reservations. Of these federally recognized tribes there are 6 in Georgia, but only 3 with state recognition. There are six federally recognized Native American tribes in Georgia: the Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Yuchi, Koasati, and Natchez. The state has three recognized tribes: the Cherokee Indians of Georgia, Georgia Tribe of Eastern Cherokee, and Lower Muscogee Creek Tribe. For more information check out the links bellow.

• See the size of the Native American population in Georgia (Stacker.com)

• Exploring Georgia's Native American Tribes: History & Culture (Native Tribe Info)

Day of The Dead Traditions in Indigenous Communities

In honor of Halloween let's talk briefly about some of the traditons of celebrating/mourning the dead that Indiegenous American communities participate in. Probably one of the most well known celebrations is Dia De Los Muertos which is the Day of the Dead celebration that takes place largely in Mexico during Novemeber and can trace it's roots back to the Aztecs. For most other Native American communties rituals and celebrations surrounding death can be wide and varied. For the most part they will follow a succession of steps though: preperation of the body, the burial, a mourning period, feasting, and wailing. These traditions can vary but are important when honoring a person's life and ushering their soul to the afterlife. For more information click on the title.

Muskogean Languages

Muskogean languages, family of perhaps six North American Indian languages spoken or formerly spoken across much of what is now the southeastern United States. In the 16th century Koasati (Coushatta) and Alabama were probably spoken in what is now northern Alabama, and Creek (Muskogee) and Mikasuki were spoken in Alabama and Georgia. Some extinct languages from this family include: Apalachee, Houma, and Hitchiti. The Seminole language is considered a dialect of Muscogee. For more information click on the title above or watch the video by clicking below.

The 9 Major Native American Language Families

According to the Indigenous Language Institute, there were once more than 300 indigenous languages spoken in the United States, and approximately 175 remain today. Those languages can be divided into 42 language families and 31 isolated languages that do not belong to any other Native American language families. The 9 major Native American language familes are Algic (Algonquian), Athabaskan, Eskimo-Aleut, Iroquoian, Mayan, Muskogean, Sialishan, Siouan, and Uto-Aztecan.

For more information and Indigenous languages and the history of these language families check out the ILI by clicking the image above or click here to go to Babbel.

Indigenous Peoples Day

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day! In case you weren't aware this holiday is celebrated in the U.S. every year on the 2nd Monday in October. Indigenous Peoples Day was instituted in Berkeley, California, in 1992, to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Columbus in the Americas on October 12, 1492. For More information click on some of the links below.

• Indigenous Peoples Day (Wikipedia)

• What Is Indigenous Peoples' Day? (History.com)

• Here's what Indigenous Peoples' Day means to Native Americans (NPR)

• Indigenous Peoples' Day, Explained (NY Times)

• 5 things to know about Indigenous Peoples Day (PBS)

Click on the title above for a cute video!

Indian Removal Act

This act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830, authorizing the president to grant lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands within existing state borders. During the fall and winter of 1838 and 1839, the Cherokees were forcibly moved west by the United States government. Approximately 4,000 Cherokees died on this forced march, which became known as the "Trail of Tears." However it is important to note that not all Cherokees that came out of Georgia went on the trail of tears. Many of the Cherokee still in this state can trace their roots back to the orginal Cherokee tribe that lived here and escaped the trail of tears either by hiding or by virtue of being from mixed families where the head of the household was most likely of European descent.

For more information on the Indian Removal act click the title to go to History.com or click here to go to the Library of Congress site.