On December 16, 2021, Charles F. “Chuck” Sams III was sworn in as the Director of the National Park Service on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (above). Director Sams, who is enrolled Cayuse and Walla Walla with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, was sworn in by Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and the United States’ first Native American cabinet member.
The word 'Potomac' in Algonquin, the native language of the Indigenous people to this area, meant 'peaceful trading waters' and that Native Americans from as far as New York would come to trade and fish.
Arrowheads, shells and other Native American tools were found while building the Washington Monument. The collection was catalogued in the 1880s is at the National Museum of the American Indian located on the National Mall.
In writing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson was inspired by the participatory democracies many Native Peoples had been using, yet the freedoms outlined in the Declaration were not afforded to them.
Virginia Avenue, in NW Washington DC, is home to several statues of revolutionary Indigenous People from South America, including the Benito Juarez Memorial, the Benardo de Galvez Memorial Park, the Jose de San Martin Monument, the General Jose Gervasio Artigas Memorial, and the Liberator Simon Bolivar Memorial.
A greater percentage of Native Americans served in World War I, World War II, Korean War, and the Vietnam War compared to other ethnicities.
