The month of November is National Native American Heritage Month. Child Care Action Council honors and acknowledges the Indigenous communities across the country. Indigenous people are the first people of this land. Join us in acknowledging and celebrating the Tribes and cultures of the Olympic Peninsula and the region in which CCAC works, including: the Chehalis, Chimacum, Cowlitz, Hoh, Lower Elwha Klallam, Port Gamble S’Klallam, Jamestown S’Klallam, Makah, Nisqually, Quileute, Quinault, Skokomish, Squaxin, and Suquamish.

To find out the ancestral homelands you are on, visit: https://native-land.ca/.

Learn more about the Tribes in our region:

• The Tribes of Washington – Washington Tribes

• Squaxin Island Tribe – People of the Water

• Nisqually Indian Tribe Home Page (nisqually-nsn.gov)

• Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe

• Skokomish Indian Tribe – A website for the Skokomish Tribe and its people

• Official site of Quinault Indian Nation

• Quileute Tribe | (quileutenation.org)

• Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe – The Strong People – Blyn, WA (jamestowntribe.org)

• The Chehalis Tribe – People of the Sands

• Hoh Tribe | Chalá·at: People of the Hoh River (hohtribe-nsn.org)

• Makah (Neah Bay)

Below are resources to learn more about Native American history, culture, and ways to incorporate these learning into teachings for children:

Native American Heritage Month Website

Burke Museum: Helpful Native American Heritage Month Teaching Resources

DHHS: A Guide to Build Cultural Awareness

DSHS Children’s Administration Video, All My Relations

Teacher’s Guide: American Indian History and Heritage (National Endowment for the Humanities)

National Day of Mourning — November 26, 2020 | National Today

Events:

DCYF Sponsored Native American Heritage Month Events

Daughter of a Lost Bird – Film

The Office of Tribal Relations has paid for access to the film, Daughter of a Lost Bird available throughout the month of November. This film will only be accessible between Nov. 1-30 using the following password: lostbird922

“Lost birds” – a term for Native children adopted out of their tribal communities. Right after the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 became the law of the land, Kendra Mylnechuk Potter was adopted into a white family and raised with no knowledge of her Native parentage. This beautiful and intimate film follows Kendra on her journey to find her birth mother April, also a Native adoptee, and return to her Lummi homelands in Washington State. With a sensitive yet unflinching lens, director Brooke Swaney (Blackfeet/Salish) documents Kendra and April as they connect with relatives and navigate what it means to be Native, and to belong to a tribe from the outside looking in. Along the way, Kendra uncovers generations of emotional and spiritual beauty and pain and comes to the startling realization that she is a living legacy of U. S. assimilationist policy. By sharing a deeply personal experience of inherited cultural trauma, the film opens the door to broader and more complicated conversations about the erasure of Native culture and questions of identity surrounding adoption.