Since the 1980s, November has been designated as a time for the celebration of the “profound, many-sided, and lasting impact of American Indians and their forebears on our Nation, history, and way of life.”
The history of this yearly commemoration is explored in depth in the Law Library’s research guide, National American Indian Heritage Month: A Commemorative Observances Legal Research Guide. On the History and Overview page, users can find a short summary of the evolution of the celebration, from its origins as “American Indian Week” to its current month-long iteration. The Legislative Branch Documents page provides links to the legislation passed by the U.S. Congress that has either directly designated the time for the commemorative observance, or has requested that the President do so through a proclamation. The Executive Branch Documents page, which has been recently updated, now lists all the published presidential proclamations for this commemoration, along with links to either the Code of Federal Regulations or Federal Register pages where the proclamations can be found, either on the Government Publishing Office’s GovInfo website, or the Law Library’s Digital Collections pages.
One might note that recent proclamations have designated November as “National Native American Heritage Month” rather than “National American Indian Heritage Month”—the Law Library follows the public law designation of the commemorative observance when naming its guides, which in this case, was last named by Public Law 103-462, 108 Stat. 4805 (1994), as “National American Indian Heritage Month.”
To learn more about this commemorative observance, and find links to additional resources, we hope that you will visit National American Indian Heritage Month: A Commemorative Observances Legal Research Guide this November (and throughout the year).
Subscribe to In Custodia Legis – it’s free! – to receive interesting posts drawn from the Law Library of Congress’s vast collections and our staff’s expertise in U.S., foreign, and international law.