Native America

Discover how resistance, survival and revival are revealed through an empire of horse-mounted Comanche warriors, secret messages encoded in an Aztec manuscript and a grass bridge in the Andes that spans mountains and centuries.

How the Aztecs used color to represent the aftermath of colonialism.

Archaeologist Severin Fowles re-imagines Native religion as Native science. So many of what have been traditionally described as “beliefs” are actually profound scientific methods for acting in the world.

Horses continue to be an important part of Comanche identity and tradition.

Art historian Diana Magaloni illuminates the extraordinary measures Aztec artists took to preserve their culture in the Florentine Codex. Using colors and materials that possessed energies from the natural world, they imbued their paintings with a special symbolic life force.

Valentin Lopez, the Chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band of California, reflects on how reviving ancient environmental practices is helping to revive his peoples culture. Although nearly lost, through oral traditions and new collaborations with archaeologists, he and his people can save the California forests and keep ancient traditions alive.

In Peru, people still build traditional Inca grass bridges.

Archaeologist Severin Fowles, with the help of tribal cultural consultants, finds evidence of the illusive Comanche. Hundred of images etched into rocks sheds a whole new light on perhaps the most successful post-contact Native empires.

Spaniards built a Catholic Church on top of an Aztec holy site, but resistance begun by Aztec builders continues through today.

Discover the cosmological secrets behind America’s ancient cities. Scientists explore some of the world’s largest pyramids and 3D-scan a lost city of monumental mounds on the Mississippi River; native elders reveal ancient powers of the sky.

Archaeologists investigate Cahokian human sacrifice.

Choctaw scholar Ian Thompson reflects on the bitter chapter of history commonly called the Trail of Tears. From a deeply personal perspective he recounts one of US history’s most notorious injustices against Native peoples who were actually allies of the US.