Native American Studies

An overview of health issues that affect American Indians and Alaska Natives.

The AIFG presently contains over 450 non-fiction films that document Native lifeways from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego, with a large concentration on peoples of the Southwest. The films range from a 1922 silent newsreel to recent footage of pow-wows and political meetings in 2011. The majority of the films date to the golden age of U.S. educational and sponsored filmmaking, after World War II up to the advent of portable video. Interestingly, the video age marks a shift in the collection from films about Native peoples to films by Native peoples. This historical span, then, allows for study of Native representation from outside and inside indigenous communities across the Americas over nearly a century. As such, it is an incomparable teaching and research tool for examining historical attitudes, representations, and understandings of indigenous populations across the Americas.

Indian Affairs (IA) is the oldest agency of the United States Department of the Interior. Established in 1824, IA currently provides services (directly or through contracts, grants, or compacts) to approximately 1.9 million American Indians and Alaska Natives. There are 574 federally recognized American Indian tribes and Alaska Native Villages in the United States. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is responsible for the administration and management of 55 million surface acres and 57 million acres of subsurface minerals estates held in trust by the United States for American Indian, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives. Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) provides education services to approximately 42,000 Indian students.

This guide is a compilation of many of the resources on the Indians of North America available at the Library of Congress as well as selected resources outside the Library. They are organized by format. The purpose of this guide is to present researchers with selected sources through which they can begin and expand their scope of study of the Indians of North America. It is not meant to serve as an exhaustive source for Indians of North America sources accessible through the Library of Congress.

This Web portal is a collaborative project of the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

An online exhibit housed by the University of Georgia. Contains primary sources concerning events from the American Indian Movement.