Every organization has a founding story. Most begin with a building, a year, and a founder with a vision. Almost none begin with the people whose land the building stands on, or with the communities who were here long before the first board meeting.
Today, Nov. 1, is the first day of National Native American Heritage Month. It’s worth a few minutes to look at where the month came from, and then at the story your own organization tells about itself.
How the month came to be
The push for national recognition is more than a century old, and Native people led it. According to the official federal site for the month, Arthur C. Parker, a Seneca museum director in Rochester, New York, persuaded the Boy Scouts of America to set aside a day for the “First Americans,” which the Scouts observed for three years. In 1914, Red Fox James, a Blackfoot man, rode on horseback from state to state seeking support for a day honoring Native people, and in December 1915 he brought endorsements from 24 state governments to the White House.
That same year, the American Indian Association, meeting in Lawrence, Kansas, approved a plan for an American Indian Day. Its president, the Rev. Sherman Coolidge (Arapaho), issued a proclamation in September 1915 calling for the day each May. New York became the first state to observe one, in 1916.
National recognition took much longer. In 1990, President George H. W. Bush approved a joint resolution of Congress naming November “National American Indian Heritage Month.” Presidents have issued similar proclamations every year since 1994, under several names. The month we mark today was built by decades of Native advocacy, not handed down.
Whose land, whose story
TRANSCEND is based in Los Angeles. On Nov. 1, 2022, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted a land acknowledgment that recognizes the Tongva, Tataviam, Serrano, Kizh, and Chumash peoples as the region’s First Peoples, names the harms of colonization, and commits the county to truth-telling and lasting relationships with local tribal governments.
I start there because a statement like that is only as strong as what follows it. The Native Governance Center, a Native-led organization, has written plainly that a land acknowledgment on its own can become a performance: words read at the start of a gala, then forgotten until the next one. Their guide, Beyond Land Acknowledgment, asks organizations to pair any statement with a concrete, public plan and to review it regularly.
Most nonprofits and schools I know have the same gaps in their founding stories. The history page skips everything before the first building. The archive has photos of benefactors and none of the people who lived on the land. The curriculum, the gallery wall, or the annual report treats Native people as a chapter in the past, not as neighbors, partners, students, staff, and donors today.
Questions worth asking this month
These aren’t a checklist to finish by Nov. 30. They’re questions to bring to a staff meeting or a board retreat, and to keep asking.
Do we know whose land we are on? Not a phrase copied from another website, but the names of the Native nations and communities near you, and who leads them now.
What does our history page leave out? Read it as a Native neighbor might. Notice what begins with “founded in.”
Who is in the room? Look at your board, your staff, your volunteers, and your donor list. Ask whether Native people are there, and if not, whether you’ve ever asked why.
Where does our money go? The Native Governance Center suggests practical steps: buying from Native-owned businesses, funding Native-led organizations, offering free tuition or admission, and paying fairly for any advice you ask for, rather than expecting free emotional labor.
Are we willing to be told no? Relationships with tribal governments and Native-led groups move at their pace, on their terms. Respect starts there.
Telling an organization’s story more honestly doesn’t erase anyone’s good work. It makes the story true. This month, and long after it, the question is simple and hard: whose story is still missing from ours, and what will we do about it?
– Mary-Ellen
Sources
- About National Native American Heritage Month (nativeamericanheritagemonth.gov)
- Land Acknowledgment (County of Los Angeles)
- Beyond Land Acknowledgment: A Guide (Native Governance Center)
Featured photo: Photo by Josh Withers on Unsplash.
