Indigenous Culture https://www.thesunmagazine.org/rss en-us Ancestors Some African harmonic traditions and histories may have been redacted, but they’re not lost. In New Orleans, specifically among the tribes, they made sure to hold on to those histories and the skeleton keys of those expressions.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28967 Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:45 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/605-ancestors 605-4-campbell-preview.jpg 605 - Campbell - Cohen Mad to Live When my children began to tattoo their skin, / even modest images scared me. / I winced at each new embellishment, / wishing them innocence, not scars.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28833 Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/mad-to-live-dane-cervine-poem-597 Crossroads The South is made to carry the nation’s slop jar. That’s deliberate, because then the United States doesn’t have to actually contend with all of its violence. We just put the blame on that region where bad stuff happens and where those backward people are. I don’t think it’s incidental, either, that it is the Blackest region culturally (and demographically) speaking. So it is at once seen as the most racist and the Blackest.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28612 Tue, 31 Dec 2024 12:00:14 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/589-crossroads 589-4-amberg-preview.jpg 589 - Amberg - Martin Sunbeams

History is a very tricky thing. To begin with, you can’t get it mixed up with the past. The past actually happened, but history is only what someone wrote down.

A. Whitney Brown

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28586 Thu, 31 Oct 2024 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/587-sunbeams 587-49-day-preview.jpg 587 - Day - Sunbeams Returning The fact is, “green” is the way we buried our dead over 150 years ago in the US. It’s the way many Indigenous peoples in North America have cared for their dead. This other, more recent, method is the anomaly.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28528 Wed, 31 Jul 2024 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/584-returning 584-6-morgan-preview.jpg 584 - Morgan - Askey A Seat at the Table wyattww@gmail.com The terrible emotions I was filled with are the truth of what it means to be alive. When you live, something else dies. Even if you only eat plants, animals die for you to be able to eat. We do not talk about that often enough.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28502 Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/568-a-seat-at-the-table 583 - Egevang - Williams - 01 - Preview 583 - Egevang - Williams - 01 La Diáspora People of sub-Saharan African descent have lived in what is today Mexico since the early days of Spanish colonization. . . . Today there are only a handful of communities left with large Black Mexican populations. The Costa Chica, the coastal region of southern Guerrero and northern Oaxaca, boasts the greatest number. . . . My experience in Juárez and the relative scarcity of information about Mexico’s Black communities made me curious to visit the Costa Chica myself. So a few years later I did. I ended up staying there for six months, forming friendships and documenting the residents’ daily life. This is a selection of photos from my time there.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26961 Sun, 31 Dec 2023 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26961-la-diaspora Burning Questions A fire manager making a decision may look like they’re in a position of power, but often they really have only one choice: to suppress the fire. If they don’t, they are opening themselves up to a Russian roulette of consequences depending on how the wind blows, quite literally.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22365 Tue, 31 Oct 2023 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22365-burning-questions No Small Wonder Emotions aren’t discrete bubbles. They are blending into each other all the time. You might be feeling awe and wonder at the miracle of life, and also realizing that we all die, which perhaps moves you closer to terror. In our work we try to find what’s true in it all.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27584 Thu, 31 Aug 2023 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27584-no-small-wonder Speaking Of Tongues This is an extremely creative and spontaneous moment for language. There are whole sociolects that you and I don’t even know about, because we’re too old or we don’t belong to the communities of people who have come up with them. Emoji are fascinating because they’re a return to the ideographic sources of a lot of writing.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25634 Sun, 30 Apr 2023 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25634-speaking-of-tongues Defending The Roof Of The World The Chinese empire is fragile, because it is built upon oppression. . . . If the oppression is too great, it may all come apart. If the empire were to break up, I think democracy might be possible in the smaller entities that would remain. . . . This is where Tibetans must keep up the fight and prepare for the long haul. We can prevail if we are able to keep our culture intact.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24636 Thu, 27 May 2021 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24636-defending-the-roof-of-the-world The Quiet Room She read a brief passage in a small, clear voice that will live on in my memory. Fluent in sounding out words she didn’t know, she gleaned tones from everyday verbs that I’d never dreamed they possessed, and conferred a strange new life on faded old nouns, as one might draw a hidden thread of some brilliant color from an old rug.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26915 Thu, 29 Apr 2021 04:10:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26915-the-quiet-room Salt Of The Earth I was drawn to quite the opposite: curiosities, anachronisms, misfits, innocents, and angels. They quickly became my family. They gave me something my blood relatives could not, something fresh and immediate, accepting and nonjudgmental.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22854 Tue, 19 Jan 2021 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22854-salt-of-the-earth January 2021 Featuring Bill McKibben, Rebecca McClanahan, Derrick Jensen, and more.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24723 Thu, 17 Dec 2020 17:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24723-january-2021 Tuvalu Tuvalu is in danger of disappearing due to sea-level rise. The ocean around it is rising about one inch every five years, twice the global average. It’s estimated that an eight- to sixteen-inch increase will be enough to make the country uninhabitable.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23348 Sat, 07 Nov 2020 17:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23348-tuvalu Sunbeams

There is no human failure greater than to launch a profoundly important endeavor and then leave it half done. This is what the West has done with its colonial system. It shook all the societies in the world loose from their old moorings. But it seems indifferent whether or not they reach safe harbor in the end.

Barbara Ward

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26096 Fri, 01 May 2020 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26096-sunbeams May 2020 Featuring Medicine Story, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Julia Butterfly Hill, and more.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27905 Fri, 01 May 2020 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27905-may-2020 The Four Invasions Indigenous people are protecting the earth’s lungs and liver. Without us, civilization would be even farther down the road to its own destruction.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24680 Fri, 01 May 2020 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24680-the-four-invasions December 2019 Featuring Bill McKibben, M.C. Richards, Helena Norberg-Hodge, and more.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22475 Sun, 01 Dec 2019 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22475-december-2019 Tipping Point In a rational world, we would be devoting every resource to making a difference in the short amount of time we have left. Past a certain point, we won’t be able to.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24259 Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24259-tipping-point Sunbeams

Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. . . . We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.

Martin Luther King Jr.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22077 Thu, 01 Aug 2019 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22077-sunbeams August 2019 Featuring Tim Wise, Vine Deloria Jr., Sun Bear, and more.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21565 Thu, 01 Aug 2019 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21565-august-2019 <em>from</em> Dwellings The whole world was a nest on its humble tilt, in the maze of the universe, holding us.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23585 Thu, 01 Aug 2019 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23585-em-from-em-dwellings Rumors Of Our Demise http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25797 Thu, 01 Aug 2019 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25797-rumors-of-our-demise Geronimo’s Cadillac I suggest that a powerful antidote to the manufactured past now being created for us is the secret history of Indians in the twentieth century. Geronimo really did have a Cadillac and used to drive it to church, where he’d sign autographs.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25303 Thu, 01 Aug 2019 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25303-geronimo-s-cadillac Our Fellow Americans To see the full picture of Indians — as people who have had a continuing, complex relationship with all aspects of American culture — is just too much for some people. They want to put Indians in a box.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27153 Thu, 01 Aug 2019 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27153-our-fellow-americans Ancient Skies Photographer Marc Toso has been exploring remote areas of the Southwest ever since he left Pennsylvania to go to college in New Mexico more than two decades ago. The photographs on these pages are the result of countless hours he has spent roaming the desert after dark with only a headlamp or the moon to light his way.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28008 Wed, 01 Jun 2016 17:03:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28008-ancient-skies Sunbeams

Scientific principles and laws do not lie on the surface of nature. They are hidden, and must be wrested from nature by an active and elaborate technique of inquiry.

John Dewey

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23570 Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23570-sunbeams Two Ways Of Knowing leathtonino@gmail.com I prefer to ask what gifts the land offers. Gifts require a giver, a being with agency. Gifts invite reciprocity. Gifts help form relationships. Scientists aren’t comfortable with the word gifts, so we get ecosystem services instead. These terms arise from different worldviews, but both recognize the way the land sustains life.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22248 Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22248-two-ways-of-knowing Keep Off The Grasslands I do think conservationists are starting to realize that any land worth conserving — because the biological diversity is high, the soil is fertile, and the original endemic species are still there — exists only because native human populations have been good stewards of it. The trick is to preserve the land and leave the stewards there.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25106 Thu, 01 Aug 2013 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25106-keep-off-the-grasslands