Five globes shaped like human faces, connected by threads.

It’s Time to Rethink the Idea of the “Indigenous”

Many groups who identify as Indigenous don’t claim to be first peoples; many who came first don’t claim to be Indigenous. Can the idea escape its colonial past?
In plane sight: Loadmasters look over Tumon Bay, Guam, during Exercise Cope North.

Guam: Resisting Empire at the “Tip of the Spear”

The Pentagon is increasing its forces on the US territory, but Indigenous residents are fighting back.

Historical Mining and Contemporary Conflict: Lessons from the Klondike

The local indigenous population was most affected by environmental change resulting from mining in the Klondike.
A group of Philippine “Head-Hunters” on display at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.

These Horrifying ‘Human Zoos’ Delighted American Audiences at the Turn of the 20th Century

‘Specimens’ were acquired from Africa, Asia, and the Americas by deceptive human traffickers.
Drawing of a Caribbean sugar plantation.

Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas

A tribal collaborative project that seeks to understand settler colonialism and its legacies through the lens of Indigenous enslavement and unfreedom.

What Became of the Taíno?

The Indians who greeted Columbus were believed to have died out. But a search for their descendants yielded surprising results.

1491

Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe.
Corn in a basket.
partner

Translating Corn

To most of the world, “corn” is “maize,” a word that comes from the Taíno mahizwas. Not for British colonists in North America, though.
Scaffolding around the statue of President Theodore Roosevelt at the American Museum of Natural History as it is prepared for removal on December 2, 2021 in New York City

A New York Museum's House of Bones

The American Museum of Natural History holds 12,000 bodies — but they don’t want you to know whose.
Engraving of Christopher Columbus and a friar on their knees in prayer on the shore of the New World

The Roots of Christian Nationalism Go Back Further Than You Think

To fully understand the deep roots of today’s white Christian nationalism, we need to go back at least to 1493.
An illustration imagining Maura, an indigenous Filipino woman.

Searching for Maura

A Filipino woman died after coming to the U.S. to be put on display at the 1904 World's Fair. A Smithsonian anthropologist likely took part of her brain.
Front entrance of the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The Mütter and More

Why we need to be critical of medical museums as spaces for disability histories.
Boys at Kamloops Indian Residential School, probably before the 1920s.

We Must Not Forget What Happened to the World’s Indigenous Children

Thousands of Indigenous children suffered and died in residential ‘schools’ around the world. Their stories must be heard.
A young girl in profile with syringes looming behind and a reddish, gritty spiral behind

New Docs Link CIA to Medical Torture of Indigenous Children and Black Prisoners

While we may never know the full truth, we owe it to those harmed and killed to illuminate their stories.
Indigenous people brought to Spain by Hernán Cortés play the game patolli.

The Indigenous Americans Who Visited Europe

A new book reverses the narrative of the Age of Discovery, which has long evoked the ambitions of Europeans looking to the Americas rather than vice versa.
Image of a plant within a circular graph.

America’s Lost Crops Rewrite the History of Farming

Our food system could have been so different.
Painting of Patent Office in 1855

A Sea of “Savage Islands”: How Antebellum Americans at Home Imagined the Pacific World

When most U.S. nationals in the early republic thought of the Pacific Ocean, they conjured lands instead.
Illustration of Spanish slaves unloading ice.

Cuba & the US: Necessary Mirrors

Exponentially more enslaved Africans were forced to the lands that now make up Latin America rather than the United States. Where is their story?
1827 Finley Map of the Western Hemisphere

Land that Could Become Water

Dreams of Central America in the era of the Erie Canal.
Franz Boas adopts the pose of a wild Hamat̓sa, crouching with outstretched arms and mouth open.

On the Influence of Indigenous Knowledge on Modern Thought

We often associate dance with art and performance, but it is also a way that humans document, interpret, and create history.