November is National Native American Heritage Month, an annual celebration of the culture, heritage, and history of American Indians and Alaska Natives. Efforts to institutionalize a time to honor Indigenous peoples go back over a century.
In 1916, the first American Indian Day was declared by the State of New York. Over the course of the 20th Century, a number of states declared similar holidays. In 1990, President George H. W. Bush first issued a proclamation designating November as National Native American Heritage Month.
National Native American Heritage Month is an opportunity for celebration, but it's also an important opportunity to reflect on the dispossession and displacement faced by Indigenous peoples now and in the past, and all of the resilience and activism done to ensure the continuance of Indigenous culture and community today.
Washington D.C., seat of the federal and D.C. governments and home to AFGE headquarters, sits on the traditional ancestral land of the Piscataway people, including the Nacotchtank (or Anacostan) peoples.
Before the arrival of Europeans, the Piscataway were one of the predominant Indigenous groups living along the tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay. They were made up of several small bands living throughout what is now Washington D.C., Southern Maryland, and the area between the Potomac River, Patapsco River, and the Chesapeake Bay.
Despite everything wrought by English colonization, groups of Piscataway survived and maintain their presence in this area today. In 2012, after years of advocacy and activism, the Piscataway Indian Nation and Piscataway Conoy Tribe became the first two American Indian groups indigenous in Maryland to be formally recognized by the state.
Learn more about the traditional Piscataway territory here, through this searchable map of Native territories, languages and treaties, developed by Native Land Digital, an Indigenous-led nonprofit. To better understand the traditional Indigenous lands you live and work on, check the map out here.
In honor of National Native American Heritage Month, the Women’s and Fair Practices Departments are hosting On Piscataway Land: A Native American Heritage & History Webinar on November 29th from 7-9pm ET. This program will feature a guest speaker Anjela Barnes (Piscataway), the Vice President & Chief Operating Officer of the Accokeek Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting and preserving Piscataway lands in Maryland. Our panel will focus on Indigenous identity and heritage. Register for our webinar on 11/29 to learn more about Native American culture, heritage, and history.
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