Internet Resources
Native America



National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar
Saddleback College
Summer 1997

Alannah Orrison, PhD
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Saddleback College

The following is an annotated list of internet resources for Native America. I hope it will give a good introduction to the wealth and diversity of resources available, and that it will be especially helpful to instructors seeking assistance in bringing Native America to the classroom.

In order to promote brevity and tractability, this list favors (but is not strictly limited to) other lists. That is, rather than list thousands of pages here, I list many sites that themselves refer to -- or perhaps contain -- those pages. Of course, bias always exists, and this page has its share of it, with personal and perhaps little-known favorites listed among the oft-referenced and famous.

Because this page relies so heavily for its usefulness on links to other sites, I ask visitors to tell me of any problems encountered in the links, such as changes in addresses, pages that are not on the list but should be (especially new ones), or pages that are no longer maintained. I will attempt to check on the links myself, and keep them current, but the Web changes so often that it is difficult to do so without assistance. Thank you!

Indexes and Mega-Sites
Special Topics
Museums
Magazines and Journals
Personal Favorites

Last revision: 12/97



Indexes and Mega-Sites


The Indian Health Service maintains one of the most excellent and comprehensive pages of Native American links, a page one might not expect to find in such a site! In an organization ideal for repeat visitors, the new pages are always listed on top. The list is well organized under helpful categories, and the entire page is constructed in a way that makes it easy to move around the list from place to place. Less surprisingly, the site provides comprehensive information on health care resources. The IHS, which is an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, states its goal to be "to raise the health status of American Indians and Alaska Natives to the highest possible level."

Address: http://www.tucson.ihs.gov/


Index of Native American Resources on the Internet is a comprehensive site of links to hundreds of other Native American sites. Because of its excellent organization, which divides its referenced sites into subject areas in an easy-to-read table form, it is an excellent place to start Internet research on Native America, and an indispensable "bookmark" for anyone interested in Native America. A plain text version of the page is available.

Address: http://hanksville.phast.umass.edu/misc/NAresources.html


Native American Indian Resources is a gateway to over 300 pages written by the late Paula Geise. This site has won multiple awards. If you have a slow connection, be patient; the page may load slowly, but is worth it: dancing people and changing moons decorate the main page, and all pages are filled with great information. Links take you to etexts of stories from various cultures. Other special features: games and "edutainments" for children, book reviews, astronomy, school pages, an index to web resources for Canada's First Nations, and a post-Disney Pochahontas forum. This site is also the home of an annotated list of official and unofficial tribal home pages. A memorial to Paula Geise has been written by Karen Strom, webmistress of the Index of Native American Resources on the Internet.

Address: http://indy4.fdl.cc.mn.us/~isk/mainmenu.html


Native American Sites, Lisa Mitten's award-winning site out of the University of Pittsburgh, is an exceptionally comprehensive collection of site addresses. One special feature of this site is its list of home pages of individual nations; another is its list of native businesses. Special attention is paid also to performers and Native American music. The site is very easy to get around, as the home page breaks down the sites into helpful categories. An important consideration for web-surfers with slow connections: Mitten's pages have some graphics to enhance the pages, but all the pages are very fast-loading.

Address: http://info.pitt.edu/~lmitten/indians.html


Native Net seeks to use the web "as a means of constructing and strengthening coalitions of people and organizations working for the benefit of aboriginal people and to promote increased understanding between Natives and non-Natives." Supported by the computer resources of Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College in Minnesota, the site itself attempts to foster worldwide collaboration toward its goals. It maintains mailing lists, archives, and a list of Internet references. Of special interest is its catalog of sites regarding "struggles, disputes, protests and ongoing issues," which can be reached on its reference page.

Address: http://niikaan.fdl.cc.mn.us/natnet/refs.html


NativeWeb is one of the most dynamic sites of any kind on the Web. NativeWeb's own info page says it best: "Our purpose, as an internet community, is not to 'preserve,' in museum fashion, some vestige of the past, but to foster communication and community among people engaged in the present and looking toward a sustainable future for those yet unborn." The site is organized into a "Resource Center," a "Community Center," and a list of ongoing projects that include a Native American Calendar and a Native American Newsletter.

Address: http://www.nativeweb.org/

Back to Page Table of Contents


Special Topics


Art and Film
Ableza, a Native American Arts and Film Institute, runs an excellent website. It is presented in frames, so your browser has to be up to that. It has interesting but fast-loading graphics. Of special interest to educators is the special section on Native American art in education, which includes an insightful guideline page for faculty seeking to pursue the goals of Voices and Dreams. The page, entitled Do's and Don'ts for Teachers: When Teaching About Native American Peoples . . . , is based on, but expands, Oyate Press' list. This site also maintains a page of links to other sites of interest.

Address: http://www.ableza.org/


Authors/Bookstore
Native Authors advises, "Stop learning about Native Americans and start learning from them!" This site, which takes a while to load but is well worth it, allows easy searches by title, author, subject, or author's tribal affiliation. Alphabetical indexes make it possible even to search for the author whose name you "almost" know how to spell, or the title you "almost" remember. Author biographies and work synopses are presented. Clicking on the tribal affiliation of an author brings you to a page of other works by authors from the same tribe. Publisher and price information is available, and book orders can be done online, with a portion of the profits going to support Native American cultural and literary foundations. (Those who don't like online shopping can e-mail for a free paper catalog.)

Address: http://nativeauthors.com/


Authors/Storytellers
Storytellers and Native American Authors Online: The sculpture "Turtle Storyteller" by Randy Chitto welcomes you to this site, which provides links to biographies, photos, and/or exerpts from the work of Native American authors such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Carter Revard, Gerald Vizenor and many, many others. (Some sites are "unofficial.") The site also links to book reviews of the authors' work and a calendar of readings and appearances by the authors. It also provides a link to "related sites" for further exploration. This is one of the sites maintained by Karen Strom, who also maintains the Index of Native American Resources on the Internet. I have listed the storyteller site separately from the others because of its special focus and extent.

Address: http://hanksville.phast.umass.edu/poems/poets/index.cgi


Health
The Indian Health Service, which is an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, states its goal to be "to raise the health status of American Indians and Alaska Natives to the highest possible level." This site provides a wealth of information on health data of, and resources available to, Native Americans.

Address: http://www.tucson.ihs.gov/


History
The Native American History page of the Mississippi State Historical Archive is an invaluable online resource for history instructors. (The Archive itself is a vast and extremely impressive collection of resources for instructors of history in all areas.) The Native American archive pages contain material written especially for the Archive, links to original sources such as treaties, and links to secondary source material as well. The page emphasizes the U.S. but does cover the entire Western hemisphere. An excellent resource here is a list featuring links to many online texts on Native American history.

Address: http://www.msstate.edu/Archives/History/amerind.html


History
This Week in American Indian History, created by Phil Konstantin, has been rated one of the "Top 1000 World Sites" by WebSideStory, Inc. Eight weeks are available at a time, with events listed on a day-by-day basis. The site is wonderful for augmenting U.S. history classes. By using your browser's "find" command, you can trace the history of a particular group or issue over time. The site is almost graphics-free so it loads quickly and would print easily, but be aware it is copyrighted.

Address: http://members.tripod.com/~PHILKON/


Law
The Emory Law Library's page for Native American Law links to the texts of many primary documents, such as constitutions and treaties, but it also contains links to other legal organizations of interest to Native American studies.

Address: http://www.law.emory.edu/FOCAL/nativeam.html


Media
The Native American Journalists Association has three goals: "to improve media coverage of Native Americans," "to offer training and support to Native Americans already in the field," and "to increase the number of Native journalists." Its website connects to its newsletter, its special projects, and a list of websites of interest to journalists.

Address: http://www.medill.nwu.edu/naja/


Media
The Native Media Resource Center provides links to Native American media facilities and organizations. Special feature: the site provides a map of -- and links to -- Native American private and public radio stations.

Address: http://www.wco.com/~berryhp/nmrc.html


Repatriation
The Native American Repatriation Review Committee of the Smithsonian Institution maintains an excellent site with both detailed information about repatriation and moving photographs, such as those of the ceremonial burial of the Cheyenne victims of the Sand Creek Massacre. The site offers executive summaries of repatriation reports, summaries of ethnographic objects in the Museum of Natural History, and documentation from the Physical Anthropology Laboratory established in 1991 to assist with the repatriation effort.

Address: http://www.nmnh.si.edu/anthro/repatriation/

Back to Page Table of Contents


Museums

This section does have a regional bias toward California and Arizona. It also includes all the local museums that were of assistance or contributed resources to the NEH seminar.


The Autry Museum of Western Heritage, of Los Angeles CA, focuses on the history of the American West and not Native America per se. Its site provides an overview of the educational, research and exhibit facilities of the museum. One unique aspect of the museum is its "Spirit of Imagination" gallery, which features exhibits of how the West and its peoples have been viewed by media, especially film media, of the 20th century. Of interest to primary school instructors is the Children's Discovery Gallery.

Address: http://zeus.questorsys.com/autry-museum/


The Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, in Santa Ana CA, has as its mission "to build a bridge between the increasingly diverse population of Orange County and the world." Its collection features Native American, pre-Columbian, Asian, African and Pacific Island cultures. Pages provide detail of permanent, temporary and future exhibits, as well as an online floor plan that can be invaluable to instructors planning field trips. (Note for field trip planners: no "cafeteria" exists, but the museum's Topaz Cafe is a restaurant of exceptional quality -- not just for a "museum restaurant," but any restaurant.) The Bowers also operates a "Kidseum" a block away from the main site.

Address: http://www.bowers.org/


The Heard Museum, in Phoenix AZ, seeks "to promote appreciation and respect for Native people and their cultural heritage, with emphasis on the traditional cultures of the Greater Southwest and on the evolving Native American Fine Art Movement." The site provides resources for instructors both in and away from the Phoenix area, gives information on the Heard library and archives, and offers pages for each of its continuing and special exhibitions.

Address: http://www.heard.org/


The Southwest Museum, in Los Angeles CA, has as its primary emphasis the native peoples of the West from Alaska to Mesoamerica. Now in its 90th year, the Southwest Museum supports research and educational programs with its extensive collection, archives and library resources, including the Braun Research Library. The site covers exhibits, programs, and facilities, offering detailed information and interesting photographs.

Address: http://www.southwestmuseum.org/


The National Museum of the American Indian, of the Smithsonian Institution, maintains an excellent site covering exhibits, film and video, publications and recordings, educational resources, details about research using its collections, a calendar of events and an archive of exhibits. In addition, the site links to the museum's "Conexions" pilot project, which seeks to use "Webcasts" to share the resources of the museum over the Internet. (This site employs many back-to-itself, very-temporary cookies, so if you have a cookie interceptor on your browser you may get a lot of irritating messages.) To reach the NMAI site without loading the graphics-heavy but zero-information cover page, use the address http://www.si.edu/cgi-bin/nav.cgi.

Address: http://www.si.edu/nmai/

Back to Page Table of Contents


Magazines and Journals

In the interest of brevity, these selections tend either to have extensive sites or be online journals. For lists of journals that have only editorial and subscription information available, visit the sites listed in Indexes and Mega-Sites section above.


The American Indian Quarterly is a peer-reviewed paper journal edited in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma and published by the University of Nebraska Press. According to the journal's welcome page, it supports Native American studies done in a "Native context" rather than an "academic, disciplinary context." Information available from the site includes a history of the journal, submission and peer review guidelines, and other editorial information. The site also provides an annotated bibliography and links to other journals of interest.

Address: http://www.uoknor.edu/aiq/


Gohweli: A Journal of Native Literatures is a new, peer-reviewed online journal of American Indian and Alaskan Native literatures. The information page states that "Goweli" (go-WHALE-lee) is a Cherokee word meaning "writing," and that the name was chosen in honor of Sequoyah. The journal includes fiction as well as non-fiction. The first issue is scheduled for Fall 1997.

Address: http://www.uwm.edu:80/People/mwilson/journal/


Indian Country Online is the online version of Indian Country, the largest American Indian newspaper. The site offers etexts of all the headline stories of each week's edition. The main pages are easy to read, but the etexts are purple on aqua; you may prefer to print them out. Nevertheless, this is an excellent way to keep current on major stories.

Address: http://www.indiancountry.com/


Native Americas: Akwe:kon's Journal of Indigenous Issues is available online from Cornell University's American Indian Program for subscribers with a user name and password. Non-subscribing browsers can still check out a Table of Contents of current and recent issues, a page of press releases on Native American issues, the "Hemispheric Digest," and a letter from the editor, which discusses some current articles. The journal focuses on issues of concern to native peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Address: http://nativeamericas.aip.cornell.edu/


Red Ink is a Native American student journal from the University of Arizona's American Indian Studies Program. The site requires frames; first you reach the main AISP site, then scroll down the icons at left to "Red Ink Journal." Alternatively, skip the frames by going directly to the journal (but then you miss the rest of UA's program information, which is excellent). The journal is not online, but subscription information is available. Some links were empty at my last visit. Some text of the pages is difficult to read because of the vivid background. Bonus: you can order Red Ink T-Shirts.

Address: http://w3.arizona.edu/~aisp/


Tribalectronics is "An Intertribal Online Journal." The site is very new, under construction, and a little behind their stated deadlines, but the organization that is visible has great promise. Submission information is available on the site.

Address: http://flamestrike.hacks.arizona.edu/~twohorse/

Back to Page Table of Contents


Personal Favorites


Hotevilla is a very traditional Hopi village trying to maintain its culture and privacy in the face of difficulties posed by interested and curious, but sometimes disruptive, visitors. The site has Visitors, Issues, Archives, Art, Opinions, and Letters pages. Visiting this site gives a significant insight into the struggle of these people to protect their privacy and the peace of their community.

Address: http://www.infomagic.com/~hoatvela/


Jack Gladstone (Blackfeet) is a songwriter and performer whose work includes -- but isn't limited to -- folk songs covering the history of the West from a Native perspective. He maintains a heavy schedule of appearances featuring his music in a multimedia format. Many of these appearances have been at educational institutions. His work, including his latest collection, Buffalo Cafe, is available on CD and cassette. The graphics can be slow-loading; this site's ranking as a "personal favorite" comes from the music, not the pages themselves.

Address: http://www.hawkstone.com/jack/


American Indian Literature and Culture at Reed College in Summer 1997 must have been a phenomenal course. I hope the web site, at least, stays up forever. Laura Arnold, who received her PhD in English from UCLA, has constructed a highly informative set of websites for the class, which used as its main texts Neidhart's Black Elk Speaks, Silko's Ceremony, Erdrich's The Bingo Palace, Sarris' Mabel McKay, Alexie's Reservation Blues, Lesley's Winterkill, and finally Harper's Anthology of Native American Poetry. Web pages are dedicated to each of these works, their authors, and relevant issues. This is an invaluable site for anyone considering teaching Native American literature, and is a wonderful resource for anyone interested in these works. One gripe: the page reverses the usual web protocol in that visited links on this page are blue, and unvisited ones purple, making you wonder for a few seconds where you've really been.

Address: http://web.reed.edu/academic/departments/english/courses/English558/


The Getty Center's educational site about the battle of Little Big Horn shows artistic representations of the battle from both Native American and white perspectives. This site is one of the Getty Center's many online offerings in their extensive attempt to use internet technology to improve access to and appreciation of art and culture.

Address: http://www.gii.getty.edu/faces/hscurric.htm


The Unofficial Choctaw Nation Home Page has some little-known and fascinating historical information. For example, it relates the story of the recent "repayment" of debt from Ireland to the Choctaw Nation, whose people donated money in 1847 -- just 16 years after thousands of Choctaws died on the Trail of Tears -- toward relief of the Irish famine. Also on the site is a history of the almost completely unsung Choctaw "Code Talkers" of World War I. (The USMC maintains a page dedicated to the better-known Navajo Code Talkers.) The Choctaw site also contains texts of four treaties (1786, 1805, 1830 and 1861) between the Choctaw Nation and the United States.

Address: http://numa.niti.org/users/tushka/choctaw/

Back to Page Table of Contents

Voices and Dreams Home Page Saddleback College Home Page