This Native American Heritage Month, we are celebrating the "firsts" in a blog series called, "Celebrating the Firsts: Shining a Light on Trailblazing Artwork by Native Artists." This blog features the first novel by a Native American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize. The novel is called House Made of Dawn and was written by N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa).

This year, we are celebrating Native American Heritage Month and Native American Heritage Day with a blog series called Celebrating the Firsts: Shining a Light on Trailblazing Artwork by Native Artists. This blog post is the third in the series and focuses on Tribal Force, a comic book by writer Jon Proudstar (Yaqui/Mayan) and artist Ryan Huna Smith (Chemehuevi/Navajo). Published in 1996, this work moved the needle forward as America’s first comic to feature a team of Native American superheroes.

This Native American Heritage Month, we are celebrating the "firsts" in a blog series called, "Celebrating the Firsts: Shining a Light on Trailblazing Artwork by Native Artists." This blog features the first painting by a Native American artist acquired by the National Gallery of Art. The painting is called I See Red: Target and is by Juane Quick-to-See Smith (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation).

This year, we are celebrating Native American Heritage Month and Native American Heritage Day with a blog series called Celebrating the Firsts: Shining a Light on Trailblazing Artwork by Native Artists. In this four-part series, we are recognizing five indigenous creators who have participated in our copyright system and enriched our culture. Join us on a […]

On a trip to Washington state earlier this fall, I visited Chief Sealth’s (c.1780-1866) final resting place on the Kitsap Peninsula. Chief Sealth (also referred to as Si’ahl or Seattle) was a Suquamish and Duwamish leader who is the namesake for the city of Seattle. Although he inherited the position of Chief of the Duwamish […]

November is Native American Heritage Month, when we recognize and celebrate the first peoples of this continent and their science, art, accomplishments and traditional knowledge. The Law Library collects primary source law, codes, and regulations of sovereign Indigenous nations and tribes, and commentary on Indigenous law as well. We recognize the importance of Indigenous law […]

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo continues to earn praise for her work in the position. On October 26th at its annual convention, the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries., and Museums (ATALM) presented one of its Guardians of Culture and Lifeways International Awards to the Library of Congress and Harjo for “Living Nations, Living Words,” her signature project as the nation’s first Native American poet laureate. Her project features a sampling of work by 47 Native American poets through an interactive Story Map and a newly developed Library of Congress audio collection. Each location marker reveals a Native poet and features an image, biography and link to hear the poet recite and comment on an original poem. Read more about it in this blog post!

The winter counts created by some Native American peoples chronicle centuries of their history in pictures: battles fought, treaties struck, buffalo hunts, meteor showers, droughts, famines, epidemics. The counts — painted mostly on buffalo hides until the species was hunted to nearextinction in the late 19th century — served as a way for tribes of […]

The Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums has presented one of its most significant awards to the Library and former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo for “Living Nations, Living Words,” Harjo’s signature project during her 2019 to 2022 term. Harjo, the first Native American to hold the nation’s poet laureate position, was honored with […]

The following is a guest post by Nikki Werner, a former intern with the Digital Resources Division of the Law Library of Congress. She is an MLIS graduate from the University of Maryland iSchool On May 9, 2016, President Obama signed the National Bison Legacy Act, Pub.L. 114-152, designating the American bison as the National Mammal […]