#native history

[uwmspeccoll]

Native Wisconsin

Native People of Wisconsin by Ojibwe scholar and journalist Patty Loew (b.1952), published in 2003 by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press in Madison, Wisconsin, is a book for young readers about the twelve Indian Nations that live in Wisconsin, including my tribe, the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans. The book also includes the history of the First People in Wisconsin and the impact of European arrivals on Native culture.

Patty Loew, a Wisconsinite and member of the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Ojibwe tribe, is a journalist, professor, author, community historian, broadcaster, documentary filmmaker, academic, and advocate. This children's book is a testament to her work, showcasing tribal narratives that encompass different methods through which Indigenous communities preserve their history. With a particular emphasis on oral tradition, this work is a valuable resource for educators and individuals interested in Native American history and will surely captivate young readers.

View other posts from our Native American Literature Collection.

View more from our Historical Curriculum Collection.

-Melissa (Stockbridge-Munsee), Special Collections Graduate Intern

[yourdailyqueer]

Norval Morrisseau (deceased)

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Bisexual

DOB: 14 March 1932  

RIP: 4 December 2007

Ethnicity: First Nation (Ojibwe)

Nationality: Canadian

Occupation: Artist

Note: Widely regarded as the grandfather of contemporary Indigenous art in Canada

[mimi-0007]

Lucinda Davis (c. 1848-after 1937) was a slave who grew up in the Creek Indian culture. She spoke the Muskogee Creek language fluently. The main information source was from an interview in the summer of 1937, at which time she was guessed to be 89 years old. Lucinda's parents were owned by two different Creek Indians. Being enslaved so young without her parents, she never found out her birthplace, nor the time of her birth. Her mother was born free in African when she escaped her captors either by running away or buying back her freedom, the white enslaver, who was also the mother's rapist and father of Lucinda, sold their child to Tuskaya-hiniha. Lucinda was brought up in The way the Creeks treated slaves was considered a much different and kinder form of slavery than the way the white Americans, Cherokee, or Choctaw went about it. Families could work under different slave owners and did not have to live on the same property as whom they worked for. The slaves worked quite hard and were paid, but had to give most of their pay to their owners, being allowed to keep a small amount. Lucinda was treated as a family member and did her duties. Her responsibility was taking care of the baby, amongst being an extra hand for cleaning and cooking here and there. She was not beaten or disrespected. It was understood what was needed of her, and she followed along.

[hersheysmcboom]

Please sign below👇

[ojibwa]

Indigenous couple, circ. early 1930′s

[ID: Antique photograph of a young Indigenous couple, a man and a woman, standing beside a lake. The woman faces the man, smiling, holding a woven basket. The man is dressed in traditional regalia, including a feathered headdress. End ID]

[baebeylik]

Comala Dog Effigy

Precolumbian Mexico. Colima Culture. 100-400 CE.

Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

[butchjeanmoreau]

it’s indigenous history/awareness month, you should all send me $100 x

[matan4il]

Hello. This is a rather mundane question considering all the things, but I got curious. Does Hebrew have accents? How do they vary in and out of Israel?

I understand if you choose not to reply as this is a difficult time for you. In any case, take care🩷🩷🩷

Hi Nonnie! No, don't worry, all questions that are truly interested in Jewish culture are welcome! ^u^

TBH, something to remember about Hebrew is that it has quite a unique history. To the best of my knowledge, it is the only language that was used on a daily basis as the lived in language of a native population, then "died" as a result of Jews being exiled. As they found themselves in other countries, they had to speak the local language. They didn't abandon Hebrew, but it stopped being the langauge in which they lived their daily lives. Hebrew became the language of prayer, of scripture study, and terms from it bled into the local languages Jews spoke, creating Jewish versions of these languages (Yiddish being the Jewish version of German, Ladino being the Jewish version of Spanish, Yevanik being the Jewish version of Greek, and there are also Jewish versions of Arabic and other languages, too), so Hebrew still had an impact on Jews, and they were still connected to it... but it was no longer a "living" language. It was closer to what Latin is today. A language in which religious ceremonies are conducted, that theologians study, but not a language that anyone conducts their daily life in.

Then, as a part of the project of reclaiming and reviving the Jewish native life in Israel that came to be known as Zionism, people set out to revive our native language, too. There was a realization that it had to be adapted to modern life, give it terms for things that didn't exist 2,000 years ago, so it would be useful for people who wanted to conduct their daily lives in Hebrew again. And that's how the last of the Canaanite languages became the only "dead" language to be revived, and return to be the lived in language of its native people.

I mention this unique history, because modern Hebrew isn't the same as biblical Hebrew (though about 60% of modern Hebrew IS biblical). It means if there were different Hebrew accents during biblical times, we don't know it for sure.

At the same time, the fact that Jews were spread out in the diaspora, and their pronunciation of Hebrew (as a dead language) came to be influenced by the local languages they spoke while in exile. So a Jew who returned to Israel from the diaspora in Germany, a Jew who returned to Israel from the diaspora in Argentina, and a Jew who returned to Israel from the diaspora in Yemen do not have the same accent when speaking Hebrew.

But these are not considered regional accents of Hebrew in the same way that you can find different regional accents of English when traveling across England... If we put aside the accents of Jews returning to Israel, and instead we look at the accents of Jews born in Israel, the ones born into speaking modern Hebrew, there's a myth of a Jerusalem accent. I say myth, because you'll hear all over Israel people swearing, that Jerusalemites pronounce a few words differently. The most common example is the word 'mataim' (which means two hundred), and many Israelis insist Jerusalemites pronounce it ma'ataim, with the first vowel prolonged and emphasized. I have lived in Jerusalem since 2002 and I have never heard it. I think in this sense, regional accents are usually, at least in part, a product of geography. It determines how far apart people live, how much they interact, how much they hear others speaking the same language as they do. The smaller a country, and the easier travel in it is, the fewer accents it's likely to produce. And I think that's the main reason why there aren't really accents in Israel (other than those of people who came to speak Hebrew as a second language), because it's a very small country, and because today, it's pretty easy to travel in it (you can cross it from the most northern point to the most southern one in slightly over 5 hours).

I hope that kind of answers it? Thank you for the kind words, I hope you're well, too! xoxox

[crazycatsiren]

The exciting part is, there's no end to my learning about the history of my people.

I can devote the rest of my life to it and never run out of things to do.

Maybe I'll try to learn our language. There's got to be historians around who can help me out with that.

[estera-shirin]

Serpent labret—Mexica (modern central Mexico), 1325-1521 CE

I want to note that although the Met description uses the term "Aztec," the preferred term is Mexica according to what I have read from Mexica people.

According to the Met: "Superbly crafted in the shape of a serpent ready to strike, this labret—a type of plug inserted through a piercing below the lower lip—is a rare survival of what was once a thriving tradition of gold-working in the Aztec Empire. Gold, in Aztec belief, was teocuitlatl, a godly excrement, closely associated with the sun’s power, and ornaments made of it were worn by Aztec rulers and nobles. Historical sources describe a variety of objects made of gold, including a serpent labret sent by Hernán Cortés as a gift to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, yet nearly all of these objects were melted down at the time of the Conquest and shortly thereafter, converted to gold ingots for ease of transport and trade.

The serpent���s head features a powerful jaw with serrated teeth and two prominent fangs. Scales are represented in delicate relief on the underside of the lower jaw. A prominent snout with rounded nostrils rises above the maw of the serpent, and the eyes are surmounted by a pronounced supraorbital plate terminating in curls. On the crown of the head, a ring of ten small spheres and three loops rendered using the technique of false filigree represents a feather headdress with beads. The bifurcated tongue, ingeniously cast as a moveable piece, could be retracted, or swung from side to side, perhaps moving with the wearer’s movements. The sinuous form of the serpent’s body attaches to a cylinder or basal plug ringed with a band of tiny spheres and a band of wavelike spirals. The plain, extended flange would have held the labret in place within the wearer’s mouth.

Labrets, called tentetl in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, were manifestations of political power. The Codex Ixtlilxochitl, an early colonial-period manuscript now in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, includes a portrait of the ruler Nezahualcoyotl in full warrior attire, complete with a gold raptor labret (fol. 106r). Nezahualcoyotl was the lord of Texcoco, one of the three cities that formed the Triple Alliance, the union at the core of the Aztec Empire formed by the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, the Alcolhua of Texcoco, and the Tepaneca of Tlacopan. The Aztec title for the royal office was huey tlahtoani, or "great speaker," and the adornment of the mouth was highly symbolic. According to Patrick Hajovsky, a scholar of Aztec art, labrets were the visual markers of the eloquent, truthful speech expected of royalty and the nobility. Crafted from a sacred material, a labret such as this would have underscored the ruler’s divinely sanctioned authority, and asserted his position as the individual who could speak for an empire. Not surprisingly, therefore, the insertion of a labret was part of a ruler’s accession ceremony.

Labrets were also closely associated with military prowess. Specific types of labrets were awarded to warriors based on certain achievements. Gold ornaments, however, appear to have been restricted to royalty and the highest ranks of the nobility, although on occasion gold ornaments could be given by the king as gifts to provincial rulers. Because of its imperviousness to decay, gold would have been an appropriate material to suggest the enduring power of rulers. Such labrets would not have been worn on a daily basis, but rather as part of ceremonial or battle attire donned on specific occasions. Worn on ritual occasions and on the battlefield, this labret, like its wearer, a serpent ready to strike its prey, would have been a terrifying sight.

Serpents have been a favored subject in Mesoamerican art from at least the second millennium B.C. As creatures that could move between different realms, such as earth, water, and sky, they were considered particularly appropriate symbols for rulers and mythological heroes such as Quetzalcoatl, the legendary "feathered serpent." The combination of the curled eyebrow and snout, along with the feathered headdress, may mark this creature as Xiuhcoatl, a mighty fire serpent conceived of as an animate weapon of the Aztec sun god, Huitzilopochtli. Stylistically, this labret has much in common with works in other media, from monumental stone sculptures to a turquoise mosaic double-headed serpent pectoral now in the British Museum (AOA AM 94-634).

Although gold working developed relatively late in Mesoamerica (after AD 600), metalsmiths developed innovative approaches in different regions and produced works of great artistry and technical sophistication. Oaxaca, one of the major sources for gold, was also long considered one of the primary centers for the production of gold objects. Recent research by Leonardo López Luján and José Luis Ruvalcaba Sil, however, has revealed an important gold working tradition in the Basin of Mexico. Small cast gold bells and ornaments of hammered sheet metal have been excavated at Mexico City’s Templo Mayor, or Great Temple, the sacred center at the heart of the Aztec Empire. The finds there include a bifurcated tongue fashioned from sheet gold, and cast-gold bells that once adorned a wolf and an eagle, animals that were sacrificed and placed in one of the Templo Mayor’s dedicatory caches.

Outside of the Templo Mayor finds, the majority of the Aztec works in gold that have survived—including this labret—are ornaments for the royal or noble body. Most Aztec labrets are plain obsidian or greenstone plugs (see, for example, MMA 1979.206.1090-1092), although exceptional examples were made in the form of raptors such as eagles (MMA 1978.412.218; Saint Louis Art Museum 275:1978; Museo Civico di Arte Antica, Turin; see also one in jadeite, MMA 02.18.308). Another serpent labret, possibly from Ejutla, Oaxaca, is now in the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. (18/756).

This serpent labret, perhaps the finest Aztec gold ornament to survive the crucibles of the sixteenth century, is an exceedingly rare testament to the brilliance of ancient Mexican metalsmiths. Monumental sculpture in stone, ceramic vessels, and other more durable forms of cultural production shed light on key aspects of Aztec ritual and daily life. But gold, in its infinite ability to be transformed, melted and re-worked, could always be remade to suit current needs, and thus rarely survives from antiquity. Though small, this masterpiece opens a window into Aztec culture at the very highest level, a world almost entirely obliterated when Hernán Cortés arrived on the shores of Mexico in 1519."

[camilakalis]

claim now

[mimi-0007]

My family Chickasaw Freedmen.

[cobwebgf]

While you’re out celebrating the “holidays”, please remember the genocide that comes with this holiday.

Remember the Natives torn from their land, the land western society claims their own.

Remember the thousands of bodies of children found and still not found underneath assimilation, Native American boarding schools.

Remember the natives the were killed for fun, killed trying to keep their sacred practices, killed for just trying to exist.

[maxellminidisc]

Still wild to me that despite being in the state of Texas, and originally based in Fort Worth (aka "where the west begins"), the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum (formerly known as the Cowboys of Color Museum) cannot find steady funding or support. Tons of money gets poured into the Stockyards of Fort Worth for tourist trapping, but god forbid the one foundation trying to shed light and focus on providing a fuller picture with inclusion of the lives of Black, Native, Asian, and Latines in the US during the founding of "the American West" get any help. They've had to keep moving locations cause they can't make rent, and they JUST moved again this January to a location in Arlington. It cut cost on rent, but their display space is also now cut.

I hope if you're ever in the DFW, you pay the museum a visit and contribute with your ticket sale. And if you know of anyone who's able to afford it and willing to contribute to their ongoing 100 for $1000 campaign due to relocation and new preservation needs, send them this graphic or this link.

[ojibwa]

Kaw-u-tz, an Indigenous Caddo woman, circ. 1906

[ID: Antique photograph of a young Indigenous woman wearing traditional beaded jewelry. End ID.]