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President Joe Biden and members of his administration may be packing up their offices, but at this week’s Tribal Nations Summit, they also made some announcements of historic importance to Indian Country.
Matt Laslo reports from Washington.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) is, admittedly, biased, but she says there’s no debating that President Joe Biden “has been the best president for Indian Country in” her lifetime.
“And I felt the best way for us to acknowledge that was with a blanket. This is an eighth-generation blanket from a tribally owned business, and I’ve had it embroidered – it says, ‘Joe Biden, champion for Indian Country, 2021 to 2024.’”
President Biden just wishes he had the blanket at the White House last week.
“I could have used that blanket when I was lighting that Christmas tree — both of us were freezing. Thank you, Secretary Haaland.”
Biden used the summit to announce he’s taking further steps to enshrine his recent apology for America’s past Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative.
First, he’s establishing Pennsylvania’s Carlisle Indian Industrial School as a new national monument.
It was the nation’s first off-reservation federal Indian boarding school that housed some 7,800 children from more than 140 tribes.
“Stolen from their families, their tribes and their homelands. It was wrong. Making the Carlisle Indian School a national monument we make clear that what great nations do, we don’t erase history, we acknowledge it, we learn from it and remember it so we never repeat it again.”
Boarding schools like Carlisle were meant to erase the heritage of Native Americans and Alaska Natives, which is why Biden also announced he’s instituting a new 10-year plan to revive Native languages.
“It’s a vision that works with tribes to support teachers, schools, communities, organizations, in order to save Native language from disappearing. This matters. It’s part of our heritage. It’s part of who we are as a nation. It’s how we got to be who we are.”
Biden is hoping Indian Country is remembered as a part of his legacy.
“This is my final White House Tribal Nations Summit as your president. It’s been an overwhelming honor, I mean this sincerely, an honor of a lifetime, to usher in a new era of tribal sovereignty and self-determination. A new era grounded in dignity and respect that I’ve seen and experienced in many ways.”
(Courtesy North Dakota Historical Society)
The North Dakota State Historical Society obtained a collection of original lithographs depicting life among Indigenous peoples of the Dakotas.
What was once hidden in a San Francisco arthouse are now part of the group’s permanent collection.
South Dakota Public Broadcasting’s C.J. Keene reports.
In 1832, Swiss artist Karl Bodmer and German Prince Maximillian embarked on a journey throughout the American Interior West.
One of the results of that expedition were the paintings of dozens of lithographs depicting Indigenous life in the region before widespread colonization of the plains.
Less than five years later, a smallpox epidemic would devastate the local Indigenous population depicted in these paintings.
Kara Haff is the public information officer for the North Dakota State Historical Society.
“The expedition stayed at Fort Clark, they were down in South Dakota, up near Fort Union. Along the way, a number of significant portraits of different Native American chiefs were a part of it, but the daily life too were documented through Bodmer’s artwork.”
Haff says it’s a rare collection of originals to see, let alone acquire for a state historical society.
“Bodmer was working on turning the sketches, paintings, and drawings to transfer those artworks onto plates to be stamped or lithographed. They don’t come up to auction very often, or come even in a complete set very often.”
The 1830s originals will be placed into rotation at the North Dakota Historical Society soon.
The collection, featuring over two dozen total works, was acquired via a donation from Sam McQuade Jr., with an earmark for fine art purchases.
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