Native American Heritage Month: ‘Appreciating what was here already’

November is designated as Native American Heritage Month, with the Friday after Thanksgiving observed as a federal holiday commemorating the contributions that Native Americans have made to American history.

History Professor Christopher Miller said Native American Heritage Month is similar to Women’s History Month and Hispanic Heritage Month.

“It’s a way as a country [to try and] understand how different populations within the American experience both share and contrast in their historical experience,” Miller said.

History Professor Thomas Britten told The Rider that Native American Heritage Day and Native American Heritage Month are relatively new events in American history. 

“We haven’t always celebrated them,” Britten said. “It’s just a time when we as a people think about Native American contributions to our history and to our culture, and consider the contributions of Native Americans overall to American society.”

The first celebration took place in 1990 when then-President George H.W. Bush declared November as Native American Heritage Month, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which oversees diplomatic relations between the United States and Native American Nations.

“One thing that has changed overall is that our national government has finally hit upon an appropriate policy on its dealings with Native Americans,” Britten said. “That policy really stresses self-determination and Indian rights, and recognizing tribal sovereignty.”

The holiday and the month both celebrate the contributions that Native Americans have made to American society. Miller cites an article published by Native American historian James Axtell in the “American Historical Review” to explain that without the presence of Native Americans, European settlement of the Americas would have been akin to settling Mars today.

“When Europeans came over here, they had no clue on how to survive,” Miller said. “Without the Indians to show them what was edible, what wasn’t edible, what animals could you trust, which ones can’t you trust, they would’ve died instantly.

“Axtell makes the point as he moves forward that throughout the colonial period and throughout the period of Western expansion, that role just continued. And it continued into the modern period. So, you can’t really understand American history or the formation of American culture without appreciating what was here already.”

Britten said Native Americans are the smallest minority in the country and are often forgotten about.

“Native American Heritage Day and Month [are] designed to make sure that we celebrate their culture just like we do others,” he said.

Miller said it is important to celebrate Native American Heritage as it helps us understand how the various elements of American society came together.

“With the exception of Native Americans, we are a society of immigrants,” he said. “Our culture is a combination of various elements that have been borrowed from different populations that have come here, settled here, intermixed and found solutions to everyday problems and so, understanding who the first ones were is really pretty important. 

“Just as I think it’s important to understand what contributions Asian Pacific people have made, what contributions Latinos … have made, and so on. In order to understand what we’re doing, we need to understand where we came from.”