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I haven't really found many fossils here but maybe I will someday while looking for arrowheads. Do you ever do any arrowhead hunting down in Texas? From what I hear, Texas is loaded!
I've known a few people who do. Some people with a lot of land find them regularly on their own property.
I grew up in southern Oklahoma, which has the highest per capita native population in the lower 48, but I think the bulk of them didn't move until the trail of tears. It's not particularly desirable land. There are still plenty of artifacts though. There's a decommissioned civil war fort (it was actually used by both sides during the war) near where I grew up and they hold festivals where they sell stuff like arrowheads, but I suspect the bulk of them are replicas
Damn, that's rad. I mean, not the trail of tears stuff, but the artifact stuff. It's a shame the Natice American history is mostly forgotten about.
Some of the tribes have a pretty decent cash flow (yes, casinos are a big part of it, but they have other revenue streams too). Fortunately, this affords some of the tribal nations to have some museums that are way bigger and better than you'd expect in the small towns that they are in (really, they're good by any standard). They also take excellent care of tribal members. Being in a right wing part of the country, you hear people complain about how they're envious at all the benefits they get, which is hilarious because socialism is a dirty word around here. The tribes actually put their money back into the people: medicine, education, housing, general financial support, and they even treat their employees well too in terms of pay/benefits, tribal member or not. Basically everything that scares republicans, the tribes do.
Most of the people that spoke native languages a first language have died off, at least in this part of the country. I was actually hired to catalogue interviews (about general life experience as a Choctaw) with the last surviving original enrollees years ago, and some of the interviews were conducted in Choctaw, but I'm sure all of those people are dead by now.
The "reservations" are more or less indistinguishable from the rest of the state, which is not great for preserving culture, but there's a decent chunk of people that learn the Choctaw/Chickasaw language to keep it alive.
If you ever have the chance to go to a pow wow, go. The ones I've been to are fascinating. Traditional dress and dance with people performing traditional music live. They'll have competitions for different styles of dance. They actually last a few days, but here's footage from last year's pow wow in my hometown.
https://www.youtube.com/live/ykrMxlgCNt0 skip about to 16 minutes in to see the traditional dress, but about 40 minutes in is where it looks like it starts to get really interesting
Wow that was fantastic! I vaguely remember watching something very similar (on a much much smaller scale) when I was in boy scouts. I imagine the cultural presence is much higher out where you are but here in the rural Midwest, things like a pow wow are almost unheard of. Although, maybe it's because I live about 1.5 hours from a major city.