Native.spirit

In Memory of Graham Greene (1952–2025)
Graham Greene was more than an actor.
He was a storyteller, a cultural bridge, and a quiet guardian of Native American identity.
Through his roles, he gave Indigenous characters something Hollywood had long denied them — depth, dignity, and humanity.
He refused stereotypes. He chose truth.
Whether portraying elders, warriors, fathers, or healers, Graham Greene carried Native presence with respect — reminding the world that Indigenous people are not relics of the past, but living cultures with voices, values, and wisdom.
Beyond the screen, he represented pride without anger, strength without noise, and resistance through integrity.
For many Native youth, seeing him meant seeing themselves — not as myths, but as real, resilient people.
His legacy is not only in films and awards.
It lives in every story told honestly,
every culture represented with care,
and every future generation that knows their identity matters.
Thank you, Graham Greene,
for honoring the ancestors,
for protecting the stories,
and for reminding the world that Native voices belong — yesterday, today, and always.
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Her own brother, the famous Apache chief Victorio, called her his "right hand" and a shield for their people.
This was Lozen, a Chihenne Chiricahua Apache woman born around 1840, who became a legendary warrior and strategist.
In Apache culture, it wasn"t uncommon for girls to be taught how to ride horses and use weapons just like the boys.
This training wasn"t necessarily to make them all full-time warriors, but to ensure they could capably defend their village if it came under attack.
Lozen, however, was exceptional. She transcended the typical roles and became a respected military leader, known for her courage and brilliant battlefield tactics.
Victorio himself said, "Lozen is my right hand... strong as a man, braver than most, and cunning in strategy. Lozen is a shield to her people."
She regularly participated in war parties, not just as a fighter, but as a key voice in strategic planning.
While other women like Dahteste also became known for their prowess, Lozen"s combination of fighting skill, strategic insight, and spiritual guidance made her a true legend.
Her story is a powerful reminder that strength and leadership can come from anyone, regardless of their role.
Lozen"s legacy is preserved in the oral histories of her people, a testament to one of the greatest warriors of the Apache. .

Incredible shot of bison in Yellowstone National Park. 🦬❄️
In the heart of Yellowstone, at -34°F, a bison stands resilient—covered in snow and frost, facing straight into the storm. Bison instinctively know that the fastest way through the storm is to face it head-on.
Bison are the only animal that turn into a snowstorm rather than away from it; because they instinctively know that walking into the storm will get them out of the storm quicker. There may be a life lesson for all of us humans. This courage not only exemplifies resilience and a smart way to power through life’s problems; but also creates a backdrop for truly majestic photos!

𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝐁𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐃𝐞 𝐍𝐢𝐫𝐨🎉- 𝐀 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐚 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.

Robert De Niro was born on August 1943, in New York City, into an artistic family. He began his career in the 1960s and rose to prominence with roles in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973), Mean Streets (1973), and especially The Godfather Part II (1974), which earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
He continued to impress with Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980 – Best Actor Oscar), Goodfellas, Casino, Heat, The Irishman (2019), and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). Beyond acting, he co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival, the global Nobu restaurant chain, and is a vocal advocate for social justice, arts education, and climate action. With over 60 years of dedication, De Niro stands as a living icon of cinematic excellence and civic responsibility.
❤️ Proud to be a Native American 🔥
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THE REAL NORTH AMERICANS WERE INDIANS AND THEIR NAMES ARE NAMED AFTER THE PLACE OF THEIR TRIBE NAME
Half of all US states, 25 to be exact, are named after Native Americans.
We will take a look at some of the 25 states and the meaning of their names. They will be listed in alphabetical order.
1. Alabama: Named after the Alabama tribe, or Alibamu, a Muskogean-speaking tribe. Sources are divided between the meanings "clearers of the thicket" or "gatherers of herbs."
2. Alaska: Named after the Aleut word “alaxsxaq,” meaning “the mainland”
3. Arizona: Named after the O"odham word “al ĭ ṣonak,” meaning “little spring”
4. Connecticut: Named after the Mohican word “quonehtacut,” meaning “place of the long tidal river”
5. Hawaii: Original Hawaiian word meaning “homeland”
6. Illinois: Named after the Illinois word “illiniwek,” meaning “men”
7. Iowa: Named after the Ioway tribe, whose name means “gray snow”
8. Kansas: Named after the Kansa tribe, whose name means “people of the south wind”
9. Kentucky: Origins unclear, may have been named after the Iroquoian word “Kentake,” meaning “in the meadow”
10. Massachusetts: Named after the Algonquin word “Massadchu-es-et,” meaning “big-hill-little-place.”
11. Michigan: From the Chippewa word “Michigama,” meaning “big lake.”
12. Minnesota: Named after the Dakota Indian word “Minisota” meaning “white water.”
13. Mississippi: Named after the river that was named by the Choctaw, meaning “big water” or “father of waters.”
14. Missouri: Named after the Missouri tribe whose name means “those who have dug canoes.”

This striking image of a Native warrior riding into battle is a powerful declaration: "We are not a chapter in history books. We are the living heartbeat of this land still breathing, still resisting, still rising." Despite centuries of colonization, violence, and cultural erasure, Indigenous peoples continue to rise, resist, and fight for their rights and recognition.

The message is clear—Native communities are not a relic of the past; they are alive, thriving, and continuing their struggle for justice. The resilience of Indigenous peoples is a testament to their strength and determination. Their culture, traditions, and voices are still very much alive, pushing back against attempts to erase their history.

As we reflect on the past, we must remember that Indigenous communities are not just a part of history—they are a living, evolving force in the present and future. Standing in solidarity with Native peoples and amplifying their voices is key to supporting their ongoing fight for sovereignty and justice.

🎂The beloved actor Sam Elliott was born in Sacramento, California on this day in 1944. He turns 82 today! 🤠 🎉
Samuel Pack Elliott (born August 9, 1944) is an American actor. He is the recipient of several accolades, including a Screen Actors Guild Award and a National Board of Review Award.
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He has been nominated for an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Emmy Awards. Elliott was cast in the musical drama A Star Is Born (2018), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the corresponding prizes at the Critics' Choice Movie Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards. He also won a National Board of Review Award. Elliott starred as Shea Brennan in the American drama miniseries 1883 (2021–2022), for which he won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie.
Elliott is known for his distinctive lanky physique, full mustache, and deep, sonorous voice. He began his acting career with minor appearances in The Way West (1967), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), season five of Mission: Impossible, and guest-starred on television in the Western Gunsmoke (1972) before landing his first lead film role in Frogs (1972). His film breakthrough was in the drama Lifeguard (1976). Elliott co-starred in the box office hit Mask (1985) and went on to star in several Louis L'Amour adaptations such as The Quick and the Dead (1987) and Conagher (1991), the latter of which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film. He received his second Golden Globe and first Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Buffalo Girls (1995). His other film credits from the early 1990s include as John Buford in the historical drama Gettysburg (1993) and as Virgil Earp in the Western Tombstone (also 1993). In 1998, he played the Stranger in The Big Lebowski.
In the 2000s, Elliott appeared in supporting roles in the drama We Were Soldiers (2002) and the superhero films Hulk (2003) and Ghost Rider (2007). In 2015, he guest-starred on the series Justified, which earned him a Critics' Choice Television Award, and in 2016 began starring in the Netflix series The Ranch. Elliott subsequently had a lead role in the comedy-drama The Hero.
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In the harsh mountains of the American West, allies and enemies alike knew his name. By the time he died in 1900, he would become the only Native American leader ever laid to rest with full United States military honors.

Chief Washakie of the Eastern Shoshone was a man shaped by conflict but guided by principle. He was a warrior when survival demanded it, yet a diplomat by conviction, choosing restraint when others chose bloodshed.

Born around 1804 in what is now Montana, Washakie came of age as the world around him began to transform. Wagon trains creaked westward along the Oregon Trail, and the old balance between peoples, land, and power began to fracture.

Many leaders of the era were forced into stark choices: resist until annihilation, or surrender completely. Washakie refused both extremes.

He chose a third path—one rooted in honor, consistency, and deliberate peace.

In 1857, the U.S. Army approached him with a request. They wanted Shoshone warriors to help fight Mormon settlers moving through the region. Washakie declined without hesitation. He had already given his word to those settlers. He had guided their wagons, protected their families, and helped recover stolen livestock.

To him, a promise mattered more than politics.

He saw their hardship. He saw their children. He saw them as human beings, not enemies to be traded away for favor. His refusal earned him rare respect, even from those who held power over his land.

President Ulysses S. Grant later honored him with a silver-mounted saddle, a gesture of respect from one leader to another who understood duty and restraint.

Yet Washakie’s greatest struggle was not on the battlefield. It was guiding his people through the painful transition to reservation life. He knew the world his ancestors had known was slipping away, and that survival now required adaptation rather than resistance alone.

In his later years, he found strength in faith. Baptized into the Episcopal Church by his friend Reverend John Roberts, Washakie embraced education and diplomacy as tools for the future. He urged his people to learn, to prepare, and to demand fair treatment through negotiation rather than war.

Until his final days, he fought for Shoshone rights—not with weapons, but with resolve.

Washakie’s legacy endures because it was built on character, not conquest. He showed that leadership is measured not by how many enemies you defeat, but by how faithfully you keep your word.

He was a guardian of his people, and a man who proved that integrity can be a form of strength greater than force

This was written by Chief Dan George, in 1972..

"In the course of my lifetime I have lived in two distinct cultures. I was born into a culture that lived in communal houses. My grandfather’s house was eighty feet long. It was called a smoke house, and it stood down by the beach along the inlet. All my grandfather’s sons and their families lived in this dwelling. Their sleeping apartments were separated by blankets made of bull rush weeds, but one open fire in the middle served the cooking needs of all.

In houses like these, throughout the tribe, people learned to live with one another; learned to respect the rights of one another. And children shared the thoughts of the adult world and found themselves surrounded by aunts and uncles and cousins who loved them and did not threaten them. My father was born in such a house and learned from infancy how to love people and be at home with them.

And beyond this acceptance of one another there was a deep respect for everything in Nature that surrounded them. My father loved the Earth and all its creatures. The Earth was his second mother. The Earth and everything it contained was a gift from See-see-am… and the way to thank this Great Spirit was to use his gifts with respect.

I remember, as a little boy, fishing with him up Indian River and I can still see him as the sun rose above the mountain top in the early morning…I can see him standing by the water’s edge with his arms raised above his head while he softly moaned…”Thank you, thank you.” It left a deep impression on my young mind.

And I shall never forget his disappointment when once he caught me gaffing for fish “just for the fun of it.” “My son” he said, “The Great Spirit gave you those fish to be your brothers, to feed you when you are hungry. You must respect them. You must not kill them just for the fun of it.”

This then was the culture I was born into and for some years the only one I really knew or tasted. This is why I find it hard to accept many of the things I see around me.

I see people living in smoke houses hundreds of times bigger than the one I knew. But the people in one apartment do not even know the people in the next and care less about them.

It is also difficult for me to understand the deep hate that exists among people. It is hard to understand a culture that justifies the killing of millions in past wars, and it at this very moment preparing bombs to kill even greater numbers. It is hard for me to understand a culture that spends more on wars and weapons to kill, than it does on education and welfare to help and develop.

It is hard for me to understand a culture that not only hates and fights his brothers but even attacks Nature and abuses her. I see my white brothers going about blotting out Nature from his cities. I see him strip the hills bare, leaving ugly wounds on the face of mountains. I see him tearing things from the bosom of Mother Earth as though she were a monster, who refused to share her treasures with him. I see him throw poison in the waters, indifferent to the life he kills there; as he chokes the air with deadly fumes.

My white brother does many things well for he is more clever than my people but I wonder if he has ever really learned to love at all. Perhaps he only loves the things that are his own but never learned to love the things that are outside and beyond him. And this is, of course, not love at all, for man must love all creation or he will love none of it. Man must love fully or he will become the lowest of the animals. It is the power to love that makes him the greatest of them all… for he alone of all animals is capable of [a deeper] love.

My friends, how desperately do we need to be loved and to love. When Christ said man does not live by bread alone, he spoke of a hunger. This hunger was not the hunger of the body.. He spoke of a hunger that begins in the very depths of man... a hunger for love. Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it because without it we become weak and faint. Without love our self esteem weakens. Without it our courage fails. Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world. Instead we turn inwardly and begin to feed upon our own personalities and little by little we destroy ourselves.

You and I need the strength and joy that comes from knowing that we are loved. With it we are creative. With it we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others. There have been times when we all wanted so desperately to feel a reassuring hand upon us… there have been lonely times when we so wanted a strong arm around us… I cannot tell you how deeply I miss my wife’s presence when I return from a trip. Her love was my greatest joy, my strength, my greatest blessing.

I am afraid my culture has little to offer yours. But my culture did prize friendship and companionship. It did not look on privacy as a thing to be clung to, for privacy builds walls and walls promote distrust. My culture lived in big family communities, and from infancy people learned to live with others.

My culture did not prize the hoarding of private possessions, in fact, to hoard was a shameful thing to do among my people. The Indian looked on all things in Nature as belonging to him and he expected to share them with others and to take only what he needed.

Everyone likes to give as well as receive. No one wishes only to receive all the time. We have taken something from your culture… I wish you had taken something from our culture, for there were some beautiful and good things in it.

Soon it will be too late to know my culture, for integration is upon us and soon we will have no values but yours. Already many of our young people have forgotten the old ways. And many have been shamed of their Indian ways by scorn and ridicule. My culture is like a wounded deer that has crawled away into the forest to bleed and die alone.

The only thing that can truly help us is genuine love. You must truly love, be patient with us and share with us. And we must love you—with a genuine love that forgives and forgets… a love that forgives the terrible sufferings your culture brought ours when it swept over us like a wave crashing along a beach… with a love that forgets and lifts up its head and sees in your eyes an answering love of trust and acceptance..."

~Chief Dan George was a leader of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation as well as a beloved actor, musician, poet and author. He was born in North Vancouver in 1899 and died in 1981. This column first appeared in the North Shore Free Press on March 1, 1972.

𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝐁𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐃𝐞 𝐍𝐢𝐫𝐨🎉- 𝐀 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐚 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.
Robert De Niro was born on August 17, 1943, in New York City, into an artistic family. He began his career in the 1960s and rose to prominence with roles in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973), Mean Streets (1973), and especially The Godfather Part II (1974), which earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He continued to impress with Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980 – Best Actor Oscar), Goodfellas, Casino, Heat, The Irishman (2019), and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). Beyond acting, he co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival, the global Nobu restaurant chain, and is a vocal advocate for social justice, arts education, and climate action. With over 60 years of dedication, De Niro stands as a living icon of cinematic excellence and civic responsibility.
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A"HO