Finding Native American Culture on The Net

November is a very important month for Native American culture, not just because it is an official history month but also because many people think of Thanksgiving and associate it with Native Americans. Many students are now learning about Native Americans for the first time or having Native American history related projects in the works. To help foster this learning, appreciation and respect for America's first peoples, parents can point students in the right way, in the form of informative websites. Websites provide an interesting way of learning, especially for middle school children and tend to hold their attention longer than a textbook. Pages can always be printed out and saved for further reading later as well. The key is finding helpful, correct websites... and believe me there are many out there. Many of which are produced by native peoples themselves. Native American's are said to be the most Internet savvy of all ethnic groups and the most Internet connected. Because of this, there are tons of worthwhile, informative spots on the net to check out.

Most native peoples will agree, one of the best is Native Tech by a non-native woman named Tara. Her site features extensive links to some of the best Native American interactive content including messageboards, usenet/newsgroups, chat rooms, discussion lists, etc. and provides a great wealth of informative articles mostly dealing with the artistic endeavors of Native American's including weaving, basketry, etc.

The Smithsonian in NY runs the National Museum of the American Indian and it's very interesting website of the same name. Along with providing information on it's exhibits and ongoing cultural programs, it has many useful links to further reading.

Many students need information on specific tribes or notable people. For this, they can use Native Search, a completely Native American search engine which contains hundreds of informative resources including that of tribal websites, produced by reservations and native societies. You can be sure this information is very correct and have the opportunity to gain information from a Native American prospective. While many teachers are looking for information gleamed from provided textbooks, students will many times get better grades for including both sides of the story and these websites allow for this.

Students should be encouraged to learn about Native American's of the Hawaiian Islands and South America as well in addition to Eskimo's and those of the upper America's. Many people dwell only on plains Indian's and miss out on all the rich Native cultures out there! One note to remember though is, unless a website clearly states "School Project Questions Welcome" or the like, do not e-mail the webmaster of the site with school related questions. Leaving questions on messageboards or usenet is another story of course but e-mailing the webmaster with a broad native American question isn't fair or respectful to the persons time. Students can get a great deal of information from the website itself and if they do enough searching, their specific questions will be answered.

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