As we, the American public, hack through thickets of politically enhanced blogoshere-distributed demonstrations and debates about who we are -- A people who embrace or reject others? A people weaned on vengeance or compassion? A people divided against others? Among ourselves? -- most of us overlook one factor: the buffalo...

Don't let this spoil your parade, picnic, or extended weekend.

The following I offer as part of my one-woman attempt to nudge fellow non-Native Americans into basic understandings, should they need some, via overlooked bits of Americana. Some of the 3,231 responses to my last Huff-posting, about the...

When I moved to San Francisco decades ago, I was invited to any number of July 4th gatherings. They all had two things in common.

First, they were freezing. What was with this fog?

Second, at someone's suggestion - I think mine, but...

About a week ago, I participated in a series of talks my local church sponsored called, "Gutsy Women of Faith." My assignment was to go through my just-published book, "Indian Voices: Listening to Native Americans," choose a number of Native women who had spoken to me about faith and discuss...

According to the Lakota/Navajo cultural coordinator at the American Indian Center of Chicago, this is not only American Indian Heritage Month, aka Native American Awareness Month, but, as he put it, Rent-an-Indian Month.

And this coming Thursday? In some circles, it is commemorated as Thankstaking.

Serious...

By now, news of the death of Freya von Moltke this month in her adopted state of Vermont at age 98 -- more than twice the age of her husband Helmuth when the Nazis executed him -- has reached the world, if headlines in at least a dozen languages are...

Cyra offered her silk long johns, Carol lent her camera, another Carol knit me mittens and a scarf, and Liz, Leah, and Kristi delivered into my arms a variegated bouquet of gowns and gown-like contenders -- the trying on of which made me grateful my home has no hidden camera....

Is anyone else having this problem?

Barack Obama is messing up my work. In my case, a book. True, I'm not the speediest interviewer/researcher/writer, but after The Thin Man (as my husband fondly refers to him) announced in that topcoat in the land of Lincoln that he was running for...

Enough, already. It is time to deconstruct the disaffected.

As the Obama campaign continues to court Hillary Holdouts, not to mention Her and Him, and as her supporters continue to express resignation, anger, pique, sadness, whatever, one element seems oddly lacking in the public discussion about...

In the months since I wrote "My Hillary Problem" for this space -- a pondering that moved hundreds of readers to toss bouquets or vitriol, often toward one another - the Democratic presidential race has narrowed itself to three candidates (Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Bill Clinton), the war...

By many measures, I should be wild about Hillary.

We have so much in common. We both are about the same age, both grew up as white Protestant Republican daughters in correspondingly mono-culture neighborhoods, hers in Illinois, mine in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Thanks to our parents and...