Moving Forward Together: Recognizing the Gifts That We All Have for the Earth
November is National Native American Heritage Month, a time to recognize the traditions, languages, and stories of the Native American and Alaska Native communities. It is also a time to celebrate the diverse cultures and heritage of Indigenous peoples who deeply enrich and support their communities and New York —including the many Native American veterans who sacrificed so much to defend this country.
The quest for national recognition of Native American heritage began in 1900 through the efforts of Dr. Arthur Caswell Parker, a member of the Seneca Nation who was born in 1881 on the Cattaraugus Reservation. He pushed for a “First Americans Day” through Boy Scouts of America and was an archaeologist, historian, and the director of the Rochester Museum in New York from 1924 to 1945 (now the Rochester Museum and Science Center).
Dr. Parker’s activism came on the heels of two centuries of countless harmful acts and policies heavily affecting Indigenous peoples, cultures, and ways of life. Indigenous communities were removed from their North American lands and relocated to reservations, and their Cayuga and Onondaga lands were granted to American soldiers in payment for their service without waiting for treaties and boundary settlements. They were excluded from citizenship when the Constitution was ratified, and the 14th Amendment explicitly excluded "Indians not taxed.” It wasn't until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 that all Native Americans were granted U.S. citizenship, with mixed support from communities. However this still did not grant them full citizenship with voting rights, which were denied by individual states until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
More information: Removing Native Americans from their Land | Native American | Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress and Mapping the Dispossession of the Haudenosaunee: a chronology.
It wasn’t until the 1970s that Congress enacted legislation commemorating the Nation's American Indian and Alaska Native heritage, with subsequent presidents issuing annual proclamations designating a day, a week, or a month to celebrate. By 2009, legislation established the Friday following Thanksgiving Day of each year as "Native American Heritage Day." Finally, in 2010, November became designated as “Native American Heritage Month” by presidential proclamation.
DEC’s Office of Indian Nation Affairs helps lead the ongoing collaboration with between the agency and federally recognized Indigenous Nations to uphold protections for the environment and ensure inclusivity within DEC programs and initiatives.
In one recent example of the opportunities created by this collaboration, DEC published an article in the June/July 2024 issue of The Conservationist magazine titled “Sharing the Waters” that was co-authored by Spencer Lyons, an Onondaga Nation member, and Neil Patterson Jr., a Tuscarora Nation member. They shared the message that for countless generations, the Haudenosaunee have lived in harmony with the waters and lands of New York State, guided by the Great Law of Peace and traditional “conservation” principles that emphasize gratitude, balance, and sustainability. Despite centuries of broken treaties and dispossession, their enduring teachings—embodied in agreements like the One Dish and Two Row Wampum treaties—continue to influence modern conservation efforts and reaffirm Indigenous stewardship of ancestral lands and waters.
This past summer, DEC staff co-hosted the Lenape Nations homelands visit at Norrie Point Environmental Center in Staatsburg, which provided an opportunity to interact with the Lenape-Delaware-Munsee-Mohican community and gain an increased knowledge into their wonderful culture and insight into our shared programs.
DEC looks forward to future opportunities to participate in activities in support of Indigenous communities as we continue moving forward together to recognize the contributions they have made in enriching our New York lands.
In recognition of NAHM, the DEC Library put together the below recommended reading list.
Native American Heritage Month Bibliography 2025
Ballenger, Amber. 2025. “Whispers of the Canyon: Climate Change and a Diné Connection to the Land.” In Unmoored Yet Unbroken, 1st ed., edited by Susan Bodnar, Chrystal L. Dunker, and Jean Kayira. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781394346059.ch28.
Chong, Katherine, and Niladri Basu. 2024. “Contaminated Sites and Indigenous Peoples in Canada and the United States: A Scoping Review.” Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management 20 (5): 1306–29. https://doi.org/10.1002/ieam.4869.
Craig, John Pierre, Jo Billows, Nicole Franklin, Eve Tuck, and Fikile Nxumalo. 2025. “Learning with Lands and Waters: Visiting as an Indigenous Feminist Practice in Climate Education.” The Journal of Environmental Education, September 15, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2025.2558540.
Dhillon, Carla M. 2022. “Indigenous-Settler Climate Change Boundary Organizations Contending with U.S. Colonialism.” American Behavioral Scientist 66 (7): 937–73. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642211013389.
Earsom, Stephen D. 2024. “Striking before the Iron Is Hot: How Tribes in the East Can Assert Their Winters Rights to Protect Tribal Sovereignty & Mitigate Climate Change.” Virginia Environmental Law Journal 42: 47. https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/velj42&id=51&div=&collection=.
Evans, Jane, and Nadine Badets. 2024. What We Learned: Discussions with Four First Nations about the Administration and Enforcement of Their Laws and by-Laws. Department of Justice Canada = Ministère de la Justice Canada.
Giacomini, Giada. 2025. “Indigenous Peacebuilding and Environmental Restorative Justice.” In Ecological Integrity and International Law. Routledge.
Grabowski, Zbigniew Jakub, Katinka Wijsman, Claudia Tomateo, and Timon McPhearson. 2022. “How Deep Does Justice Go? Addressing Ecological, Indigenous, and Infrastructural Justice through Nature-Based Solutions in New York City.” Environmental Science & Policy 138 (December): 171–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2022.09.022.
Haaland, Deb. 2024. “Environmental Justice Is a Civil Rights Issue.” New Mexico Law Review. 54: 1. https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmlr/vol54/iss1/2.
Islam, Faisal Bin, Lindsay Naylor, James Edward Bryan, and Dennis J. Coker. 2024. “Climate Coloniality and Settler Colonialism: Adaptation and Indigenous Futurities.” Political Geography 114 (October): 103164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2024.103164.
Lavia, Blake, Tzintzun Aguilar‐Izzo, and Leanne M. Avery. 2024. “The Watersheds Speak: The Voice of Ecosystems in Northern New York’s Environmental Movements☆.” Rural Sociology 89 (S1): 684–731. https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12560.
Lindschouw, Camilla. 2024. “Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Upholds the Onondaga Nation’s Right to Challenge Illegal Land Acquisition.” Indigenous Policy Journal 34 (2): 328. https://openurl.ebsco.com/contentitem/gcd:177305644?sid=ebsco:plink:crawler&id=ebsco:gcd:177305644.
Maracle, Stafford, Jennifer Maracle, and Stephen Lougheed. 2025. “Understanding Indigenous Knowledge of Conservation and Stewardship before Implementing Co-Production with Western Methodologies in Resource Management: A Focus on Fisheries and Aquatic Ecosystems.” Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development 14 (1): 75–86. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2025.141.024.
Parry, Darren. 2024. “Indigenous Perspective to Climate and Environment.” UC Davis Law Review 58: 2569. https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/davlr58&id=2569&div=&collection=.
Pirie, Emma, Marsha Serville‐Tertullien, Mary‐Claire Buell, Barbara Moktthewenkwe Wall, and Chris Furgal. 2025. “Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Research and Monitoring within the Laurentian Great Lakes Basin: A Systematic Map.” Ecological Solutions and Evidence 6 (3): e70102. https://doi.org/10.1002/2688-8319.70102.
Rine, Holly A. 2025. “Onondaga Lake in New York State: Seventeenth Century Origins of a Superfund Site.” Environment and History 31 (3): 300–304. https://doi.org/10.3828/whpeh.63861480327362.
Thapa, Keshab, Melanie Laforest, Catherine Banning, and Shirley Thompson. 2024. “‘Where the Moose Were’: Fort William First Nation’s Ancestral Land, Two–Eyed Seeing, and Industrial Impacts.” Land 13 (12): 2029. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13122029.
Tran, Thi Mai Anh, Valoree S. Gagnon, and Chelsea Schelly. 2025. “A Review of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Resilient Livelihoods and Forest Ecosystems: Lessons for Restoration Sciences and Practices.” Forests, Trees and Livelihoods 34 (1): 27–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/14728028.2024.2408725
