Image via Complex Original
Americans usually learn about the most well-known Native American tribes in school, but that doesn't mean we understand their cultures.
To hear about the Native American customs we weren't taught about in elementary school, EditorialComplex asked Reddit, "Native Americans and First Nations of Reddit, what's something cool about your tribe's traditions and culture that outsiders might not know about?"
The results may dispel some stereotypes you have and teach you a thing or two.
Here are some of the coolest Native American customs from the thread that you probably haven't heard before:
1. The Pawnee were astronomers
"Pawnee here. Our tribe's lifestyle is based off of celestial observation," Redditor potatoloco wrote.
The Skidi Pawnee tribe of the Nebraska plains were advanced astronomers, charting the night sky to keep track of time, according to SF Gate.
One of the most famous artifacts from the tribe is the "Skidi star chart," a map of the cosmos drawn on buffalo skin, according to American Indian Quarterly. Evidence suggests that the tribe has been mapping celestial bodies since as early as 1500.
2. Native Hawaiians once had the territory's highest literacy rate
"Hawaiian here: Like many native cultures, we had no written language pre-contact," kkaallaaee said. "However, the value of language itself was highly regarded, and the intricacies and poetic nature of our language was of utmost importance to our people."
They went on to explain:
When English and the Roman alphabet was introduced to our people in the 18th and 19th centuries, we basically ate it up: to have another way to express one's language was a huge deal. So much so that throughout the 19th century, Hawaiians were literally the most literate (in English and Hawaiian) culture in the world with an adult literacy rate of over 90 percent.
The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism confirms that native Hawaiians had the highest literacy rate on the Hawaiian islands when the U.S. annexed the territory in 1893.
According to the Hawaiian Cultural Center, Hawaii's King Liholiho led a literacy initiative in the 1820s that distributed books with the pīʻapā, the Hawaiian alphabet, throughout the islands.
3. First Nations tribes have special etiquette around touching hair
"My girlfriend's Odawa-Ojibwe and said that random people can't touch her hair because her tribe believes that hair has special magic to it," Redditor arcoolka said. "Only people close to the person with the hair can touch it."
Odawa and Ojibwe are both First Nations tribes that originated near the U.S.-Canada border.
In 2009, the family of a First Nations boy in Ontario pressed charges against a teacher for cutting his hair in school, though they were dropped, according to The Globe and Mail. "The hair is a symbol of our strength, our heritage, and the culture of our family," the boy's mother told the publication.
"No one touches my hair but my aunties, important women in my life, and my partner. There's power to our hair, but it also carries all our memories and feelings," shkinikwe wrote.
4. A Comanche woman set the precedent for Brown v. Board of Education
"My great grandmother was Dorothy Sunrise Lorentino, the first Native American to attend a public school," Redditor JoyceCarolOatmeal of the Comanche tribe in Oklahoma wrote.
They continued:
Her father sued the local school district for not letting her attend, and after they won, her case was presented as precedent in several similar cases in the following decades and in Brown v. Board of Education, the SCOTUS decision that desegregated schools for black students.
According to The Oklahoman, Lorentino went on to earn a bachelor's and master's in education, and became a teacher. She was inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame in 1997.
In the aftermath of colonization, much of the indigenous people's history has been erased. But as the surviving members of Native American tribes can teach us, their cultures gave the rest of the country so much more than we typically give them credit for.
