Osiyo, tsilugi: Hello and Welcome to Tribalpedia!
The information for each tribe was obtained from various sources including the Tribal websites, Wikipedia, and other educational sites involved in Native Indian history. We have condensed the material from all of these sources to make it easier for you to read. Note that not every tribe is listed. There are records for over 4000 Native American tribes, but only 513 are still recognized by the US Government. This is an ongoing project and information will be added on a continuing basis.
Scroll down for museum exhibitions
For Teachers, there are links to complete Lesson Plans with Answer Keys for the following Tribes:
Mohawk (Sky Walkers), Navajo, Shawnee, Sioux, Zuni
Tribes Located in the United States and Canada (Kwakiutl):
Acoma Pueblo
Anasazi
Apache
Arapaho
Blackfeet
Catawba
Cherokee
Chickasaw
Choctaw
Comanche
Crow
Delaware
Hawaiian
Hopi Pueblo
Iroquois
Kwakiutl
Laguna Pueblo
Lumbee
Lummi
Pawnee
Pequot
Pueblo Indians Part I-The History
Pueblo Indians Part II-The Pueblos
Quileute
S-Z
Seneca
Shawnee
Sioux
Tainos
Tohono O’odham
Wampanoag
Winnebago
Yakama (Yakima)
Zuni Pueblo
Alaskan Tribes: By Regional Organizations
Inuit
Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains By Charles Alexander Eastman (Sioux)
Note: Dowa Yalanne (Zuni: “Corn Mountain”) is sacred to the Zuni people. The mesa is a place for shrines and religious activities, and is closed to outside visitors.
Read more about Dowa Yalanne in our Zuni entry.
As always, thanks to Chuck Houpt
REMEMBERING DR. KING:
~Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ~
January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968
New Smithsonian Post for Kevin Gover
“Kevin Gover, Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, has been named the Smithsonian’s undersecretary for museums and culture, effective next week.
Gover is director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and has served as acting undersecretary since February. The position oversees the Smithsonian’s history and art museums, its cultural centers, the Archives of American Art, exhibits and the National Collections Program.” Jan. 14, 2021
Maxine Noel
Maxine Noel (born 1946) is a Canadian First Nations artist from the Santee and Oglala heritage. She was given the Sioux name Ioyan Mani (“walk beyond”).
She was born on the Birdtail Reserve in southwestern Manitoba. A self-taught artist, she first worked as a legal secretary in Edmonton and Toronto before becoming a full-time artist in 1979. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries across Canada. She works with serigraphy, lithography, etching, painting and cast paper.
Her work is included in the collections of the Canadian Museum of History, the University of Western Ontario, the Canadian Native Arts Foundation in Toronto and the Whetung Ojibwa Centre. Read more about this wonderful Native artist wikipedia
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Roger Sosakete Perkins
Powwow Pop Art’ and Perseverance
Roger Sosakete Perkins, left, and his cousin Jack Martin sit in front of Sosakete Perkins’ Faith Keeper. (Photo courtesy of Sosakete Perkins)
By Nanette Deetz, ICT
“Roger Sosakete Perkins, Mohawk, opens about his unique style, plus struggles he and other artists are facing during the pandemic.
Out of the hundreds of paintings Roger Sosakete Perkins has created, “Faith Keeper” is among his favorites. In the Mohawk tradition, the faith keeper’s job is to ensure the tribe’s young people learn its songs, dances and culture, and to find and encourage their hidden gifts…The pandemic has been hard for artists, especially those like Sosakete Perkins in the highly competitive and expensive San Francisco Bay Area.
The artist best-known for his vivid “Powwow Pop Art” style — in which he “reclaims” old images of Native Americans that were once used in advertising — has kept working, creating new pieces that reflect his concern. But it hasn’t been easy.
Contemporary Sitting Bull digital collage painting printed on canvas. (Courtesy of Roger Sosakete Perkins)
He recently hung 20 paintings for an exhibit at a downtown Oakland, California, property management company.
‘It is a beautiful space, but no one will show up,’ he said…’So many of our families are now suffering terribly from unemployment, lack of food for elders, lack of computers for kids in school who need them in order to study from home,’ he said. ‘This area is one of the most expensive areas in the U.S. in which to live, so many of us are in survival mode. We need our community centers, health centers, and powwows to help us all survive and thrive.’
Sosakete Perkins graduated from the American Indian Institute of Arts, and relocated to Northern California in 2006.
In 2013, he graduated from Berkeley City College after studying digital arts with an instructor who challenged students to literally create their own art movements.
That’s where he achieved his unique Powwow Pop Art style, which incorporates painting with vintage photos.
‘I use lots of imagery from companies and corporations who have used Native American images in order to sell their products,’ he said. ‘Basically, I am reclaiming our images that they expropriated without our permission, and reframing them in my own way.’
Sosakete Perkins’ artwork can be viewed on his Facebook page
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National Museum of the American Indian
November 16, 2019–Fall 2021
New York, NY
“Since 1940, many Native artists have pushed, pressed, and expanded beyond narrow, market-driven definitions of American Indian art. Drawing from the National Museum of the American Indian’s rich permanent collection, Stretching the Canvas presents nearly 40 paintings that transcend, represent, or subvert conventional ideas of authenticity.”
Dick West (1912–1996, Southern Cheyenne), Spatial Whorl, 1949–1950. Oil on canvas. Gift of Dwight D. Saunders, 2004. (26:5102)
Some Featured Artists:
Tony Abeyta (Navajo, b. 1965)
Rick Bartow (Mad River Wiyot, 1946–2016)
Acee Blue Eagle (Muscogee [Creek]/Pawnee, 1909–1959)
Julie Buffalohead (Ponca, b. 1972)
Woody Crumbo (Potawatomi, 1912–1989)
Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee, b. 1972)*
Joe Hilario Herrera (Cochiti Pueblo, 1920–2001)
G. Peter Jemison (Seneca, b. 1945)*
Fred Kabotie (Hopi Pueblo, 1900–1986)
Dick West (Southern Cheyenne, 1912–1996)
*Works by these artists will be featured in later phases of the exhibition.
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T.C. Cannon: At the Edge of America
April 6, 2019–September 16, 2019
New York, NY
One of the most influential, innovative, and talented Native American artists of the 20th-century, T.C. Cannon embodied the activism, cultural transition and creative expression that defined America in the 1960s and 1970s…At the Edge of America celebrates Cannon’s creative range and artistic legacy through numerous paintings and works on paper, as well as his poetry and music.
Jeffrey Veregge: Of Gods and Heroes
New York, NY
This exhibition will feature a new narrative creation by the Salish artist known for his bold blend of Northwest Coast form line and pop-culture figures. This site-specific work will include an epic battle between Marvel characters and aliens invading the streets of New York City.
Taíno Perseverance NYC exhibit at National Museum of the American Indian
“The Indigenous peoples of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean are not extinct and they never were. ‘Todavía estamos aquí (we are still here)’: this is the powerful message of the modern Taíno movement and the foundation of “Taíno: Native Heritage and Identity in the Caribbean,” a new exhibition presented by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and the Smithsonian Latino Center.
“The term Taíno most directly refers to the diverse Arawak-speaking peoples of the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico) and their descendants.
Though the Indigenous peoples’ numbers greatly dwindled upon contact with European colonizers, they survived disease, enslavement and brutality. Currently, a Native heritage movement involving Taíno descendants is growing throughout the Greater Antilles and in diasporic Caribbean communities in the United States, such as the region around New York City.

The Moxum family have mixed Native roots. Mr. Norman Moxum is of Arawak-descent, and his wife, Yolanda Moxum, comes from a Miskito community in Honduras. Photo Credit- John Homiak.
These diverse groups have established robust networks that continue the proud legacies of their Native ancestors, and “Taíno: Native Heritage and Identity in the Caribbean” provides a framework for understanding the growth of this movement in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and the United States.”
The exhibition is presented in English and Spanish
“Taíno: Native Heritage and Identity in the Caribbean” begins with an overview of Taíno cultures before European contact, where visitors encounter emblematic objects associated with aspects of Native political and spiritual life that would drastically change after European colonization. One particularly important series of objects identified in the exhibition are cemís. Considered living objects by Taíno peoples, cemís are stone, wooden or cotton artifacts used in ceremony to connect with deities, ancestors and forces of nature. In all, 31 objects from the museum’s collection serve as focal points for the exhibition, 19 of which date back to pre-contact (ca. A.D. 800–1500). The exhibition demonstrates how archaeological objects from the ancestral past inform and inspire the present-day Taíno movement.”
For more information, including associated events, visit The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian