Hello /r/IndianCountry! Welcome to our final installment of the Community Discussions for our celebration of Native American Heritage Month. We want to thank you all for joining us here.

• Following the same pattern for the other Community Discussions, this post has a few words of my own to help generate discussion. The goal, as will be discussed, is to show why we value Indigenous histories, why they're important to us, and what we can learn from them. How do you feel about Indigenous history?

For this week's discussion, we want to focus on Indigenous history. What do we mean by that? Well, this discussion was inspired by this post from several months ago. The history of our peoples, of our nations, and of our communities is a very real history(ies). Oral stories, traditions, and beliefs have all informed us of what our history is and who we are, where we come from, and how things work. These are just as valid as other interpretations of the past, of how things were and are.

For my part, I want to bring this understanding to more people. One way I accomplish this is from my role as a moderator and contributor to /r/AskHistorians. One of my first posts was for a feature known as "Monday Methods" in where I talked about a theoretical framework that has Indigenous origins that can be used to approach history as a discipline. I wanted to make this post because despite what those of the dominant society, one birthed from colonialism and Western thought, say about the validity of our ways, the methods we use and the thoughts we develop are worthy of being used for understanding the world and how things are seen.

The histories of our people are, in my opinion, one of the very core elements that makes up the spirit of ourselves and our people. Many of us who are connected with our cultures (or who are currently getting connected) know that much of what we learn is often based on times of the past. My people, the Nez Perce and Yakama, talk about the time before humans were here and when the animals dominated the landscapes, where they could talk, walk, and interact with the natural world as is. And when the humans came, they helped to prepared things for us, even sacrificing their lives to be the very food we eat.

We hear of the times from before the coming of the colonizers, the missionaries, and the Indian Agents, where our diets, our languages, and our institutions were the means of growing, communicating, and learning - the means of survival. Where our word counted for much more before everything had to be down in writing, where our views were not marginalized, but transcended the physical. Many of things have been hurt or are even gone. They've been attacked, abolished, neglected, exterminated, terminated, exiled, alloted, diluted, red taped, and ignored. We are no longer within our world, but often have to walk in, even between, multiple worlds.

And yet... We are still here. We have persisted as peoples. We have persisted in many of our ways, despite some adversities. And many of us have seen this persistence manifested in those who carry the knowledge of the past. They are the elders of our communities and nations, our parents, our families. Even our non-human relatives continue to persist in these ways and to carry the knowledge we need for our very survival.

We need not think we are stuck in the past. While our ways might be based on things of long ago, we are not shy to newer items, inventions, innovations, revelations, or conclusions. We know that there is a future ahead, that we must consider those who will come after us.

I believe that our ancestors did this. Whether consciously or subconsciously, the things that they helped form the basis to have now become the cornerstone for us to build upon with our lives, our experiences, and our thoughts. Therefore, when we become the ancestors, we will be able to pass on the same appreciation for our histories as our ancestors had for theirs.

This is what I mean by appreciating Indigenous history.