First Nations People:
Their Musical Instruments and Instrumental Music
By John Sarantos

Who are the First Nations or American Indians?

Today we are going to start our unit on Native Americans or First Nations People. Over the next few weeks we will be learning about the past and present of whom they are, where they live, and what they do in their daily life. We will give special attention to their games and instrumental music-- the games they played and still do, the stories they told and still tell, and the songs and music they created with instruments that they made and still do. Also, we will examine why some of us as non-natives are not very proud of how some of our ancestors treated them.

I mentioned that we are now beginning to use the name, First Nations People instead of native Americans. One reason for this is because anyone born in any country is native to that country. Therefore, each of you who were born in the United States is a Native American. The name, First Nations people refers to the people who were living on the land that we now call the United States of America and Canada before there was a Untied States and Canada. Many of my closest friends who are people of the First Nations use the term "Indians". In fact, I have never heard them use the old term, Native Americans or the new term, First Nations people. Therefore, I will be using the name Indian along with First Nations people.

The first peoples or original ethnic groups of the Western Hemisphere think of themselves first as members of families, clans, bands, and tribal ethnic groups and also as belonging to a larger general group. As a general term in the United States, Native American gained temporary popularity during the late 20^th century whereas “American Indian” has endured in the United States and elsewhere in this hemisphere. “First Nations” people is the common term now used widely in Canada whereas “ indigenous people” is the comparable term in Latin America.

To help us understand a little more about Indians, lets compare the name, First Nation's people with the word, "food". There are a lot of different kinds of food, just like there are a lot of different kinds of people in the world. If we go into a grocery store, we will see that the store is divided into different sections. There is a section where we can buy meats, one for milk, one for fruits and vegetables, another section for bread, and even a section for drinks. Like the grocery store, our country was also made up or divided into sections of where Indians lived.

Across North America, there were nine cultural area known as:

1. The Southwest (approximate Arizona and New Mexico)
2. The Southeast (approximate area south of Ohio river and east of Mississippi river)
3. The Northeast
4. The Northwest Coast (approximate coastal region, north of California and south of Alecetion Islands)
5. California
6. The Arctic (approximate coastal region along Arctic Ocean)
7. The Sub-arctic (inland region south to the
8. The Great Basin
9. The Plains

We are going to specialize on the people of the Southwest and the Plains. Not all the Indians in the Southwest were the same. Not all the Indians of the Plains were the same. Not all of us it this room are the same. We are alike in some ways and different in other ways. It's like when you go to the bread section of the grocery store; there are many different types of breads, some are different colors, some are different sizes, some have raisins in them, some are sliced and some aren't, yet they are all known as "bread".

Discussion questions:

• Who can tell use some of the ways that we are different in this room?

• How are we the same?

• How do you think the Indians were alike?

• How might they have been different?

• Do you think there are any Indians alive today? Why or why not?

The most important thing to remember from today's introduction is that people all over the world are the same in some ways and different in other ways. Sometimes we divide or classify people into cultural groups to make it easier to learn about their history. When we say, "First Nations People", or "Indians" we are classifying the people who lived on the land before the non-Indians came to live in what we now call Canada and the United States which we will talk about tomorrow.

Tohono O’odham singers with gourd accompaniment in Arizona, 1990

Marquette University Libraries, Tekakwitha Conference Records