Sublime

There were children, and then there were the children of Indians, because the merciless savage inhabitants of these American lands did not make children but nits, and nits make lice, or so it was said by the man who meant to make a massacre feel like killing bugs at Sand Creek, when seven hundred drunken men came at dawn with cannons, and then agai

That was the first time we performed being Indian for the white people. Some of us danced and drummed and sang—painted and feathered. I watched all the white people gather around us with that strange mix of disgust and astonishment. Later Pratt compared us to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows. Said we “out Buffalo Billed Mr. Cody.” More performances h

Captain Richard Henry Pratt’s guiding principle for Indian education, as summed up at the nineteenth annual National Conference of Charities and Correction held in Denver, Colorado, in 1892: “Kill the Indian in him and save the man.” This principle resulted in a policy now widely recognized as the embodiment of cultural genocide.

generic, though gendered, Native.

Called “natural-born musicians,” Hawaiians were considered critical to military success.19

We will wrap him in bright colors. I do not know the ways of our people. I was too young when they took me, and then the school meant to make what I knew a sin. Everything I have left to share, to pass down to you will have to be good enough. All I have to tell you about being Cheyenne came from my mother, before she died, and because she was dying

Hawaiians' authenticity as an autochthonous people was and is often tied to their relationship to land and ocean.