Indigenous Knowledge of the Americas

The Knowledge

The ancient knowledge of each people — languages, traditions, treaties, writings, crafts, arts and skills — researched entry by entry, every claim sourced.

• Anishinaabe / Ojibwe"Anishinaabe" (plural Anishinaabeg) is the people's own collective name; "Ojibwe" (also spelled Ojibway / Ojibwa; "Chippewa" in U.S. treaties and statutes) names the largest Anishinaabe grouping, alongside Odawa and Potawatomi in the Council of Three Fires (Warren, 1885, History of the Ojibway People, written by the Ojibwe historian Willi…Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending
• Blackfoot — Niitsí'powahsin (language page)The Blackfoot Confederacy — Siksika, Kainai and Piikani in what is now Alberta, and the Blackfeet Nation in Montana — speaks Niitsí'powahsin. Some 2,900 native speakers were counted in 2016; UNESCO classes the language Definitely Endangered, and the audit record attributes the loss largely to the residential schools (Canada Nations Langua…Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending
• Cherokee / TsalagiToday there are three federally recognised Cherokee governments in the United States — the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band in Oklahoma, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina (Cherokee Nation, n.d.; U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, tribal directory) — and this entry concerns the Cherokee people historically and collectively, not only one government.Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending
• Dene — the languages of Denendeh and the Mackenzie valley (the language doorway)"Dene" names a family of peoples and languages across the Mackenzie valley and the northern plains — Dëne Sųłıné, Dene Zhatıé, Tłı̨chǫ, Dene Kǝdǝ́, Dene Tha' and Gwich'in among them. Each line below carries its own standing; no line borrows another's.Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending
• Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy)The Haudenosaunee — "People of the Longhouse" in the constituent languages, as nation sources render the name — are a confederacy originally of five nations, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca, joined by Tuscarora in the early 18th century as the sixth nation (Onondaga Nation, n.d., "Haudenosaunee Confederacy"; Britannica, "Iroqu…Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending
• Inca / Quechua-AndeanThe Inca state (Tawantinsuyu, "the four parts together" — rendering as printed in standard scholarship) was the largest polity in the pre-invasion Americas, centred at Cusco; Quechua-speaking and other Andean peoples long predate and long survive it, and "Inca" must not be used as a synonym for all Andean peoples (D'Altroy, 2002, The Incas, Blackwell; Bauer, 2004, Ancient Cuzco, University of Texas Press).Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending
• Innu — Innu-aimun (language page)The Innu are the people of Nitassinan — some 24,000 in Québec and 3,500 in Labrador. Their language, Innu-aimun, is one of the strongest in the Canadian set: about 11,000 speakers, and in the strongest communities children still enter school speaking Innu-aimun first.Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending
• Inuit (Canadian Arctic)Documented fact of framing: with limited exceptions in Labrador, Inuit in Canada were not party to the historic numbered treaties; their rights were addressed instead through modern comprehensive land-claims agreements under Canada's post-1973 claims policy (Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada [CIRNAC], comprehensive cl…Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending
• Lakota & Dakota (Oceti Sakowin)The people's own collective name is Oceti Sakowin — "Seven Council Fires" — as printed by the Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center and South Dakota's Oceti Sakowin Essential Understandings (Aktá Lakota Museum, n.d.; South Dakota Department of Education, OSEU).Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending
• Maya"The Maya" are not one polity, past or present: they are many peoples speaking related languages, in what is now Mexico (Yucatán, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Chiapas, Tabasco), Guatemala, Belize, and western Honduras and El Salvador (Smithsonian Magazine, 2025, Mayan Languages Preservation Project report; Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Maya").Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending
• Mexica (Aztec)"Mexica" names the people of Mexico-Tenochtitlan; "Aztec" is a later umbrella term in scholarly and popular use (Lockhart, 1992, The Nahuas After the Conquest, Stanford University Press; Smith, 2003, The Aztecs, 2nd ed., Blackwell). The Mexica were one Nahua people among many; Nahua peoples are living peoples in Mexico today.Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending
• Mi'kmaq — Mi'kmawi'simk (the language doorway)The Mi'kmaq are the people of Mi'kma'ki — the Atlantic coast and interior of what is now Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, the Gaspé, Newfoundland and into Maine. 122,000 people reported Mi'kmaq ancestry in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2021 Census ancestry summary, as carried in this programme's Peoples Register).Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending
• Wolastoqiyik — Wolastoqey / Maliseet–Passamaquoddy (language page)The Wolastoqiyik — the people of the Wolastoq, the Saint John River — live in what is now New Brunswick and Québec, and the Passamaquoddy (Peskotomuhkati) in Maine; one language joins them, Wolastoqey.Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending