Native American Heritage Month

National American Indian Heritage Month is celebrated each year throughout November. Dr. Arthur C. Parker, a Seneca Indian director of the Museum of Arts and Science in Rochester, New York, persuaded the Boy Scouts of America to set aside a day for the “First Americans” and for three years they adopted such a day. In 1915, the annual Congress of the American Indian Association formally approved a plan concerning American Indian Day. It directed its president, Rev. Sherman Coolidge, an Arapahoe, to call upon the country to observe such a day. Coolidge proclaimed on Sept. 28, 1915, which declared the second Saturday of each May as American Indian Day.

The governor of New York declared the first American Indian Day in a state on the second Saturday in May 1916. Presently, several states have designated Columbus Day as Native American Day, but it continued to be a day observed without any recognition as a national legal holiday. In 1990 President George H. W. Bush approved a joint resolution designating the month of November as National American Indian Heritage Month. Similar proclamations, under variants on the name (including “Native American Heritage Month” and “National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month”), have been issued each year since 1994.

Please check back to find the 2022 Native American Heritage Month calendar of events!