Native Nation Rising

Wooden Leg. Cheyenne. 1927. Photo by Thomas B. Marquis

Gray Hawk. Lakota? Early 1900s. Photo by F.B. Fiske. Source - State Historical Society of Nebraska.

O-o-be (aka Oyebi). Kiowa. circa 1894

A Navajo smile. 1904. Photo by Edward Curtis

Ellie Ganado. A Navajo (Diné) woman. 1906. Photo by Fred Harvey.

John Williams, a Tonkawa man. 1898. Photo by F.A. Rinehart

Vash Gon. Jicarilla Apache. 1904. Photo by Edward S. Curtis. Source - Library of Congress

Crow riders watering their horses. Montana. Early 1900s. Photo by Richard Throssel. Source - University of Wyoming, American Heritage Center.

Chief Left Hand Bear. Oglala Lakota. ca. 1899. Photo by Heyn Photo.

Blackfoot man. Early 1900s. Photo by Edward S. Curtis. Source - Library of Congress

Chief Little Wound and family. Oglala Sioux. 1899. Photo by Heyn Photo.

Tsianina Redfeather. 1900. Tsianina was a Muscogee singer, performer, and Native American activist, born in Eufaula, Oklahoma, then within the Muscogee Nation. She was born to Cherokee and Creek parents and stood out from her 9 siblings musically. From 1908 she toured regularly with Charles Wakefield Cadman, a composer and pianist who gave lectures about Native American music that were accompanied by his compositions and her singing. He composed classically based works associated with the Indianist movement. They toured in the United States and Europe.

She collaborated with him and Nelle Richmond Eberhart on the libretto of the opera Shanewis (or "The Robin Woman," 1918), which was based on her semi-autobiographical stories and contemporary issues for Native Americans. It premiered at the Metropolitan Opera. Redfeather sang the title role when the opera was on tour, making her debut when the work was performed in Denver in 1924, and also performing in it in Los Angeles in 1926.

After her performing career, she worked as an activist on Indian education, co-founding the American Indian Education Foundation. She also supported Native American archeology and ethnology, serving on the Board of Managers for the School of American Research founded in Santa Fe by Alice Cunningham Fletcher.