https://www.nativeculturestores.com/

Native American Blood, Dallas, TX (2026)

03/07/2024

The Inuit people can't be imagined without their signature parkas, fashioned from fur and hide of the local wildlife. One of the many reasons why early European voyages into the Arctic circle failed is because they were underprepared for the extreme weather conditions of the north. They wore wool clothing, which kept them hot on the inside, but made them sweat a lot, which made their clothing freeze in the extreme temperatures. The Inuit never faced this problem, as they have been making their parkas from caribou deer or seal hide from as early as 22,000 BC (Siberia). The production of these parkas took weeks, and the tradition of making them was passed down from mother to daughter, taking years to master. Depending on the geographical location of the tribes, the design of the parkas varied according to the types of animals available. Beadwork, fringes and pendants frequently decorated the clothing. Roald Amundsen was the first explorer who outfitted his crew with Inuit clothing, which enabled him to successfully circumvent the North-West Passage in 1906. In the 20th century the use of traditional Inuit clothing declined, but it has seen a recent resurgence, as the Inuit strive to preserve their culture.

03/07/2024

Mary "Te Ata" Thompson Fisher
1895 - 1995
Te Ata Thompson Fisher, whose name means “Bearer of the Morning,” was born Dec. 3, 1895, near Emet, Oklahoma. A citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, Te Ata was an accomplished actor and teller of Native American stories.
She received her early education in Tishomingo, and eventually went to the Oklahoma College for Women. While there, it was evident Te Ata had a natural talent for drama.
Her career as an actor and storyteller spanned more than 60 years. She worked as a storyteller to finance her acting career. She would tell Chickasaw legends, myths and chants, including performing rituals in native regalia.
Te Ata attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for one year. From there, she moved to New York City, where she met and married Clyde Fisher. During the 1930s she performed at summer camps in New York and New England.
In the prime of her career, she performed in England and Scandinavia, at the White House for President Franklin Roosevelt, for the King and Queen of Great Britain, and on stages across the United States.
Although Te Ata worked as an actor and drama instructor, she is best known for her artistic interpretations of Indian folklore, and for her children's book she co-authored on the subject.
Her world-renown talent has won her several honors including induction into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1957, being named The Ladies’ Home Journal Woman of the Year in 1976, being named Oklahoma's Official State Treasure in 1987, and having a lake near Bear Mountain in New York named in her honor.
She is also the subject of a video, God's Drum, the proceeds of which have supported the Te Ata Scholarship Fund for Indian students at her alma mater, the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma in Chickasha, Oklahoma.
Te Ata died Oct. 26, 1995, in Oklahoma City, though her legacy and influence on the Native American storytelling traditions continues to this day

02/27/2024

I don't know why this hasn't received more publicity, but this fifty-foot sculpture was unveiled recently in South Dakota.
It's called 'Dignity' and was done by artist Dale Lamphere to honor the women of the Sioux Nation.

02/27/2024

In the final months before his surrender in 1877, Crazy Horse retreated alone to the Powder River country and pleaded for a vision that would show him how to preserve his people and their homeland.

Compounding the Lakota war chief’s grief during that long winter was the ill health of his wife, Black Shawl. As he fasted and prayed in the hills near the present-day Montana-Wyoming line, a red-tailed hawk, his spirit helper, descended with an eagle.

Crazy Horse took the eagle’s message to holy men and together they created a healing ceremony. Although Crazy Horse was killed within months of his surrender, Black Shawl — thought at the time to have tuberculosis — lived to be an old woman.

The eagle, chief of birds — the one who could fly the highest and carry messages to and from First Maker — was intricately woven into life on the Northern Plains.

Two Leggins, a chief of the River Crow in the last of the buffalo days, was protected by the medicine of an eagle feather painted with six white spots. It gave him the power to direct the wind, he said in his dictated autobiography.
“After the proper ceremony, the wind would blow from the direction pointed by the feather in my hair,” he said. “The six spots meant the owner could cause a sudden hailstorm between myself and a pursuing enemy. Later I used the feather many times and it always worked.”

Who could doubt the spiritual power of such a magnificent bird?

Once, on a hunting trip in the Bighorn Mountains, Cheyenne warrior Wooden Leg watched as an eagle swooped down on a buffalo calf and carried it far up a cliff to its nest.

“Ordinarily a capturing eagle would drop its prey from high in the air, so that it would be killed by the fall to the ground,” Wooden Leg told his biographer Thomas Marquis. “But this did not happen in this case. As long as we stayed there watching, we could see the buffalo calf standing up there on the cliff and wiggling its tail.”

In 1875, at the end of his grueling vision quest on Otter Creek in southeastern Montana, the 17-year-old warrior was presented with an eagle wing bone flute by his father.

“It was to be worn about my neck, suspended at the mid-breast by a buckskin thong during times of danger,” Wooden Leg said. “If I were threatened with imminent harm I had but to put it to my lips and cause it to send out its soothing notes. That would ward off every evil design upon me. It was my mystic protector. It was my medicine.”

Warriors sought the courage and protection of the eagle in battle and wore eagle feathers as a testimony of honors earned. Each tribal group had its own traditions.

“An eagle’s feather worn in the hair was a mark of distinction and told the world that the wearer had counted coups,” Crow Chief Plenty Coups said in his biography by Frank Linderman.

If a Crow warrior was wounded counting coups — a lesser honor than returning from the field of battle without a scratch — the feather would be painted red to show that he bled, Plenty Coups said.
Four eagle feathers were attached to the shield given to Sitting Bull by his father after exploits against the Crow at Powder River. The four feathers boasted of his success in all four directions.
Warriors couldn’t just claim to have counted coups. The deeds had to be witnessed and attested before the right to wear an eagle feather was earned.
Even after intertribal warfare ceased and tribes have been relegated to reservations, the eagle continues to hold its power.
Joseph Medicine Crow, a Crow historian and World War II veteran, wrote in “Counting Coups” that before he went to war, a Shoshone sun dance chief gave him a white eagle feather. When battle loomed, he stuffed it inside his helmet. He credits the feather with protecting him during the bloody invasion of Germany.
Then he passed the feather on to one of his cousins.
It was carried by members of Medicine Crow’s family to Africa, Germany, Italy and later to Korea.

Photo: Crow Chief Plenty Coups in eagle feather headdress.

02/25/2024

SAY WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR ...
Positivity changes a mind,
A kind word lifts many burdens,
A good deed makes a heart heal,
A gentle voice lifts many broken hearts,
Always say something nice,
Always say something with care,
Always say something in kindness,
Always say something genuine concern,
Always say something with compassion,
Always lift someone up,
Always give what you've got,
Always extend an out reached hand,
Always try to patch, mend broken hearts,
Always do something to heal shattered souls,
What goes around,
Eventually comes full circle,
What's unleashed is delivered,
Someday,
You might be needing,
To hear echoes of yourself ...
NEMESIS
The warrior
The messenger
Copywritten by Larry John Adams
From 2 pages that I've created called
Native/ inuit Canadian poetry writer
And
Thoughts poems songs and writings

02/25/2024

"Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men,
we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents.
Without a prison, there can be no delinquents.
We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves.
When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket,
he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift.
We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property.
We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being
was not determined by his wealth.
We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians,
therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another.
We were really in bad shape before the white men arrived and I don't know
how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things
that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society."
- John (Fire) Lame Deer, Sioux Lakota - 1903-1976

02/07/2024

Rebecca Ketcher Neugin was the last survivor of the Cherokees’ removal to Indian Territory. Pictured here with a small child in an undated photo, Neugin was a child herself in 1838 when she made the difficult walk from Georgia with her family. Her daughter, Kate Rackleff, shared in a 1937 interview for the Indian-Pioneer Papers: “Mother did not have the opportunity to attend school and always signed her name by mark; she helped with the family’s spinning and weaving, made her own dresses and helped to dry and preserve the fruits and berries for winter use.”
Neugin died in 1932.
Image courtesy of the Cherokee National Archives

02/07/2024

Russell Charles Means (November 10, 1939 – October 22, 2012) was an Oglala Lakota activist for the rights of Natives, libertarian political activist, actor, writer and musician, who became a prominent member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) after joining the organization in 1968 and helped organize notable events that attracted national and international media coverage.

Means was active in international issues of indigenous people, including working with groups in Central and South America and with the United Nations for recognition of their rights. He was active in politics at his native Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and at the state and national level.

Beginning an acting career in 1992, he appeared on numerous television series and in several films, including "The Last of the Mohicans" and released his own music CD. He published his autobiography "Where White Men Fear to Tread" in 1995.

In August 2011, Means was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. His doctors told him his condition was inoperable. He told the Associated Press that he was rejecting "mainstream medical treatments in favor of traditional Native remedies and alternative treatments away from his home on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation". In late September, Means reported that through tomotherapy, the tumor had diminished greatly. Later, he said that his tumor was "95% gone." On December 5 of that year, Means stated that he "beat cancer," that he had beat "the death penalty."

The following year, however, his health continued to decline and he died on October 22, 2012, less than a month before his 73rd birthday. A family statement said, "Our dad and husband now walks among our ancestors''.

02/05/2024

For centuries before the arrival of European settlers, the Blackfeet lived across the upper Great Lakes region. But by the 1910s, they had been forcibly relocated to northern and central Montana, where many of them lived in utter poverty. During this time, photographer Roland W. Reed sought to depict members of the nation in portraits that showed them as they once were — before their way of life was all but stamped out forever. In this photo, three men wear traditional ceremonial clothing in defiance of the U.S. government's policy of assimilation.

02/05/2024

CLEGHORN, MILDRED IMOCH (1910–1997).
Traditional doll maker, schoolteacher, and Fort Sill Apache tribal leader, Mildred Imoch (En-Ohn or Lay-a-Bet) was born a prisoner of war at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, on December 11, 1910. Her grandfather had followed Geronimo into battle, and her grandparents and parents were imprisoned with the Chiricahua Apache in Florida, Alabama, and at Fort Sill. Her family was one of only seventy-five that chose to remain at Fort Sill instead of relocating to the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico in 1913.
Mildred Cleghorn attended school in Apache, Oklahoma, at Haskell Institute in Kansas, and at Oklahoma State University, receiving a degree in home economics in 1941. After she finished her formal education, she spent several years as a home extension agent in Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, and then worked for sixteen years as a home economics teacher, first at Fort Sill Indian School at Lawton and then at Riverside Indian School at Anadarko. Later, she taught kindergarten at Apache Public School in Apache. She was married to William G. Cleghorn, whom she had met in Kansas, and their union produced a daughter, Peggy. In 1976 Mildred Cleghorn became chairperson of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, newly organized as a self-governing entity. Her leadership in that government revolved around preserving traditional history and culture. She retired from the post at age eighty-five in 1995.
Cleghorn's many awards and recognitions included a human relations fellowship at Fisk University in 1955, the Ellis Island Award in 1987, and the Indian of the Year Award in 1989. She also served as an officer in the North American Indian Women's Association, as secretary of the Southwest Oklahoma Intertribal Association, and as treasurer of the American Indian Council of the Reformed Church of America.
Above all, Mildred Cleghorn was a cultural leader. She spent a lifetime creating dolls authentically clothed to represent forty of the tribes she had encountered in her teaching career. Her work was exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Her life ended in an automobile accident near Apache on April 15, 1997.

02/04/2024

I REMEMBER well. None of us who were there could forget. I was almost eighteen that summer. Never before or since that time did my people gather in such great numbers. Our camp on the Greasy Grass [Little Bighorn] stretched four miles along the river -- six great camp circles, each a half mile across, with thousands of Lakota fighting men and their families.
In that long-ago time none of my people knew more than a thousand numbers. We believed no honest man needed to know more than that many. There was my own tribe, the Miniconjou. There were our cousins, the Hunkpapa, the Sans Arc, the Two Kettles, the Sihasapa [Blackfoot Sioux], the Brulé, and the Oglala -- all our Seven Council Fires. There were many of our eastern relatives, too -- the Yankton and the Santee. And our kinsmen from the north were there -- the Yanktonai and the Assiniboin. Our friends and allies the Cheyenne were there in force, and with them were smaller bands of Arapaho and Gros Ventre. It was a great village and we had great leaders.
Hump, Fast Bull, and High Backbone led my tribe. Crazy Horse headed the Oglala. lnkpaduta [Scarlet Tip] led the Santee. Lame White Man and Ice Bear led the Cheyenne. But the greatest leader of all was the chief of the Hunkpapa -- Sitting Bull. As long as we were all camped together, we looked on him as head chief. We all rallied around him because he stood for our old way of life and the freedom we had always known. We were not there to make war, but, if need be, we were ready to fight for our sacred rights. Since the white man's government had promised our leaders that we could wander and hunt in our old territory as long as the grass should grow, we did not believe the white soldiers had any business in our hunting grounds. Vet they came to attack us anyway.
I slept late the morning of the fight. The day before, I had been hunting buffalo and I had to ride far to find the herds because there were so many people in the valley. I came back with meat, but I was very tired. So when I got up, the camp women were already starting out to dig for wild turnips. Two of my uncles had left early for another buffalo hunt. Only my grandmother and a third uncle were in the tepee, and the sun was high overhead and hot. I walked to the river to take a cool swim, then got hungry and returned to the tepee at dinner time [noon].
"When you finish eating," my uncle said, "go to our horses. Something might happen today. I feel it in the air."
I hurried to Muskrat Creek and joined my younger brother, who was herding the family horses. By the time I reached the herd, I heard shouting in the village. People were yelling that white soldiers were riding toward the camp.
Iron HaiI climbed Black Butte for a look around the country. I saw a long column of soldiers coming and a large party of Hunkpapa warriors, led by Sitting Bull's nephew, One Bull, riding out to meet them. I could see One Bull's hand raised in the peace sign to show the soldiers that our leaders only wanted to talk them into going away and leaving us alone. But all at once the soldiers spread out for attack and began to fire, and the fight was on. I caught my favorite war pony, a small buckskin mustang I called Sung Zi Ciscila [Little Yellow Horse] and raced him back to camp to get ready for battle.
I had no time to paint Zi Ciscila properly for making war, just a minute or so to braid his tail and to dab a few white hail spots of paint on my own forehead for protection before I galloped out on the little buckskin to help defend the camp. I met four other Lakotas riding fast. Three were veteran fighters, armed with rifles; the other was young like me and carried a bow and arrows as I did. One of the veterans went down. I saw my chance to act bravely and filled the gap. We all turned when we heard shooting at the far side of the village nearest the Miniconjou camp circle and rode fast to meet this new danger. I could see swirls of dust and hear shooting on the hills and bluffs across the river. Hundreds of other warriors joined us as we splashed across the ford near our camp and raced up the hills to charge into the thickest of the fighting.
This new battle was a turmoil of dust and warriors and soldiers, with bullets whining and arrows hissing all around. Sometimes a bugle would sound and the shooting would get louder. Some of the soldiers were firing pistols at close range. Our knives and war clubs flashed in the sun. I could hear bullets whiz past my ears. But I kept going and shouting, "It's a good day to die!" so that everyone who heard would know I was not afraid of being killed in battle.
Then a Lakota named Spotted Rabbit rode unarmed among us, calling out a challenge to all the warriors to join him. He shouted, "Let's take their leader alive!" I had no thought of what we would do with this leader once we caught him; it was a daring feat that required more courage and much more skill than killing him. I dug my heels into my pony's flanks to urge him on faster to take part in the capture.
A tall white man in buckskins kept shouting; at the soldiers and looked to be their leader. Following Spotted Rabbit, I charged toward this leader in buckskins. We were almost on top of him when Spotted Rabbit's pony was shot from under him. Zi Ciscila shied to one side, and it was too late.
Miniconjou named Charging Hawk rushed in and shot the leader at close range. In a little while all the soldiers were dead. The battle was over.
The soldier chief we had tried to capture lay on the ground with the reins of his horse's bridle tied to his wrist. It was a fine animal, a blaze-faced sorrel with four white stockings. A Santee named Walks-Under-the-Ground took that [Custer's] horse. Then he told everyone that the leader lying there dead was Long Hair; so that was the first I knew who we had been fighting. I thought it was a strange name for a soldier chief who had his hair cut short. [Note: Lazy White Bull said the Santee who got Custer's horse was named Sound the Ground as He Walks which is also sometimes translated as Noisy Walking.]
Our attempt to save Long Hair's life had failed. But we all felt good about our victory over the soldiers and celebrated with a big scalp dance. But our triumph was hollow. A winter or so later more soldiers came to round us up on reservations. There were too many of them to fight now. We were split up into bands and no longer felt strong. At last we were ready for peace and believed we would have no more trouble.
Putinhin aka WasuMaza. Dewey Beard.

02/04/2024

OUR PEOPLE ARE NOT POOR.....THEY BEEN ROBBED....
I did some research on gold mining in the Black Hills (Khe Sapa).
There was approximately 31,207,892 ounces of gold taken from the Black Hills up to 1965. The value of gold has fluctuated over the years but today it’s valued at about $1,204.50 an ounce.
That equates to $37,589,905,914 (thirty-seven billion five hundred eighty-nine million nine hundred five thousand nine hundred fourteen dollars) worth of gold that was taken from the Black Hills by today’s market value. That’s also not counting gold that was taken after 1965. I bet it’s in the trillions.
Reminder: under the Fort Laramie treaty (and treaties are the supreme law of the land according to the U.S. Constitution), the Black Hills belong to the Oceti Sakowin (Great Sioux Nation) and the Supreme Court of the United States held in U.S. vs. Sioux Nation of Indians that the theft of the Black Hills from the Oceti Sakowin was a wrongful taking without just compensation.
I never want to hear another person question why our reservations are so poor again. Poverty was absolutely imposed upon us. Another realization- this theft likely propped up the U.S. economy for decades.
pic: Blackfoot Couple

Native American Blood

03/07/2024

03/07/2024

02/27/2024

02/27/2024

02/25/2024

02/25/2024

02/07/2024

02/07/2024

02/05/2024

02/05/2024

02/04/2024

02/04/2024

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Featured

Share

Category