National Park Service: Native American Heritage

feature imagewith eastern mounds and western pueblos with modern and historic native people images

See For Yourself
There are hundreds of sites of our native past to include a mound city in Georgia, and an ornate 19 room cliff dwelling in Arizona.

National American Indian Heritage Month

For Teachers
Learn more about California's Chumash Indians with an interactive program that explores different parts of cultures and it is for all ages!

Image ofOp at Satwiwa, Santa Monica Mountain National Recreation Area

Inside Story
Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site was established to enhance public understanding, and minimize similar incidents in the future.

Image of John Muir impersonator at Yosemite NP

People
Navajo war veterans are honored at War in the Pacific National Historic Park. After Pearl Harbor, the U.S. faced war with Japan across the broad Pacific and the need for an unbreakable code again became urgent. In 1942, a WWI veteran and Navajo speaker Philip Johnston proposed to the United States Marine Corps the idea of a code within the Navajo language. More people...

cover image for Indian Mounds of Mississippi

Places
The National Register of Historic Places recognizes Native American Heritage and hosts Indian Mounds of Mississippi. Eight hundred years ago, the lower Mississippi Delta was home to highly organized societies. There were roads, commerce, and cultural centers anchored by awe-inspiring earthen monuments. .More places...

Stories
The Coso Rock Art District, a National Historic Landmark deep in the U.S. Navy's testing station at China Lake, contains one of America's most impressive petroglyphic and archeological complexes. The 20,000 images already documented surpass in number most other collections, and the archeological resources are remarkably undisturbed. More stories...

image of pueblo buildings painting from Bandelier National Monument

Collections
The Bandelier National Monument
Collections include objects made by Ancestral Pueblo people over 400 years ago and neighboring modern Pueblo peoples; paintings by Pablita Velarde and Helmut Naumer Sr.; and Civilian Conservation Corps tinware and woodwork made in the 1930s. More collections...

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Preservation
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) provides a process for museums and Federal agencies to return certain Native American cultural items -- human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony - to lineal descendants, culturally affiliated Indian tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations. . More preservation...

Intricate and complex designs carved into sea shells were one of the many art forms of the Native people of middle Georgia 1000 years ago. Meanings and symbolism of images such as this spider reach out to us through time from these ancient artists and crafts people.