American Indian Monday

We do not have a National holiday in America to celebrate the American Indian. So in honor of all American Indians, I am starting American Indian Mondays.

The picture at the top is of an Arikara medicine man cloaked in the skin of a bear he has slain to acquire its powerful spirit and to symbolize his membership in the tribe's bear clan. (picture

from the 1800's)

( American Indian Authors)

In Vine Deloria Jr.s book, Custard Died For your Sins, Deloria tells of how every treaty that has ever been made with the American Indian has been broken.That is a lot of treaties.

Sherman Alexie writes with a newness that makes me want to create new material every time I read him, His honesty can be brutal for whites and Indians alike. But then he softens it all in the next line.

Some of his books: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, The Summer of Black widows, I would steal Horses For You.

Wes Studi , a Cherokee actor with numerous film and TV credits, serves

as a spokesman for the Indigenous Language Institute, a Sante Fe based non-profit agency that supports the revitalization and preservation of Native languages threatened with extinction. Of an estimated 500 American Indian languages that existed when Columbus arrived, only 175 remain. Of these, 40% have nearly disappeared.