Honoring Indigenous communities around the world
In collaboration with long-standing Google Arts & Culture partners including the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and Honoring Nations, among others, we’re spotlighting extraordinary stories of Indigenous art and culture. Dive into existing content from partners across the Americas – from the historic work of the Native American Code Talkers in the U.S. to the masters of the Totonac Spiritual Cuisine in Mexico – and celebrate the past and present of Indigenous cultures with a tour of the dizzying dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park and a look at contemporary Inuit ceramics.
If you’re interested in learning more about the rich culture and history of Native American communities, simply say “Hey Google, give me a fact about Native American Heritage” on any Google Assistant-enabled smart speaker, display or phone. When you do, you can explore some of the many contributions of Native Americans and hear about significant events in our shared history. There’s something new to discover every day throughout the month of November, including facts about the first Native American to earn an Academy Award nomination and how the Iroquois Confederacy influenced the U.S. constitution.
Keeping a global perspective
This year, U.S. Search Trend traffic for the term “Indigenous” surpassed searches for “Native American” and “American Indian” for the first time, demonstrating a growing interest in Indigeneity. You can learn more about Search Trends related to Indigenous topics on our Native American Heritage Month Search Trend feature.
Earlier this year, we partnered with the National Congress of Americans (NCAI) to share Inclusive Marketing Guidelines for Indigenous people, which consist of recommendations and learnings to prevent stereotypes and promote authentic portrayals in marketing.
While November is when we celebrate Native American Heritage Month in the U.S., we are always celebrating Indigenous culture around the world. In Canada, we honored the life and efforts of Mary Two-Axe Early, a Kanien’keháka (Mohawk) woman who fought for more than two decades to challenge sex discrimination against First Nations women embedded in Canada’s Indian Act. We also continue to actively support the Indigenous Mapping Workshop, a collaborative effort across Indigenous communities to decolonize geographic resources and promote Indigenous rights and interests.
In Canada, Indigenous Peoples remain largely underrepresented in the technology workforce, so to begin to address this disparity, we have also invested in Indigenous education through a Google.org grant to ComIT, a tech-focused charity that provides IT training for Indigenous students and early career professionals facing employment barriers.
I am thankful that this month I am in Onyota’a:ka (Oneida) to celebrate with my family. I will have many bowls of o·nʌ́steˀ (Oneida White Corn) soup, one of our traditional crops that have been in the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) diet for hundreds of years. If you are looking for ways to honor Indigenous people this month, I encourage you to take a moment to explore some of the stories we’ve shared today or learn about the people that are Indigenous to the land you are on today.