Coming of age during an era of assimilation and cultural erasure, Tony Tekaroniake Evans was told by his third-grade teacher that Indians no longer exist. How could this be when his grandmother spoke Mohawk in the house? Thus begins a comical, informative, and heartbreaking literary journey in search of his Indigenous identity. From childhood fantasies to altered states of consciousness, studies in cultural anthropology, and travels in Indian Country, Evans takes an uncle’s invitation to learn the deeper significance of his Iroquois traditions, yielding a personal philosophy based on Indigenous values that resist the excesses of consumer culture and could renew the American Dream. Tony Tekaroniake Evans is an enrolled member of the Kahnawake Mohawks of Quebec, and an award-winning reporter and columnist for the Idaho Mountain Express. His stories have also been published in High Country News, A&E Networks’ History.com, Atmos, Mountain Gazette, The Smithsonian’s American Indian Magazine and other publications. He earned a degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Colorado and won the Expatriate Scholarship to the Prague Summer Writer’s Workshop in 1996. He is the author of Teaching Native Pride: Upward Bound and the Legacy of Isabel Bond and other books. His work is supported …
Native American Heritage in the Wood River Valley
Native American Heritage Month’s history started in 1990 when President George H.W. Bush approved a joint resolution for November of that year to be “National American Indian Heritage Month”. Since 1994, the United States has made similar proclamations every year for November. But that’s not where it began. At the beginning of the 20th century, the annual Congress of the American Indian Association meeting approved a plan for a national American Indian Day. Then president Rev. Sherman Coolidge, an Arapahoe, issued a proclamation calling for the second Saturday in May to be American Indian Day. Within that proclamation was the first formal appeal for the United States to recognize natives as citizens. Today, many states recognize Columbus Day as Native American Day, but it is still not recognized as a national legal holiday. Idaho In the state of Idaho, there is a rich history of Native Americans dating back 10,000 years. It is projected that there were over 8,000 people living in the region. 2 distinct groups represented the people, The Great Basin Shoshone and the Bannock tribes of the Shoshone- Bannock, the Shoshone Paiute, and the three tribes from the Plateau region; Coeur d’Alene, Nez Perce, and Kootenai. The …