The Department of the Interior announces National Native American Heritage Month, an annual celebration held each November.

This November and every month, we celebrate the culture and heritage of these remarkable Americans who deeply enrich the quality and character of our Nation, said a spokesman for the Interior Department.

We celebrate Indian Country with its remarkable diversity of American Indian and Alaska Native cultures and peoples while remembering and honoring our veterans who have sacrificed so much to defend our Nation.

Our theme is Weaving together our past, present and future. We will focus on the failed policies of the past with a focus on the Federal Indian Boarding Schools and moving into the present and the work being done to address the intergenerational trauma Native people still face.

In partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Smithsonian Institution, we are working to record the lasting impacts of that era and share that information with all Americans.

As Indigenous people, our past, present and future are all connected.

For almost one hundred years, Americans, both Indian and non-Indian, have urged that there be a permanently designated place on the calendar to honor the contributions, achievements, sacrifices, and cultural and historical legacy of the original inhabitants of what is now the United States and their descendants: the American Indian and Alaska Native people.

The quest for a national honoring of Native Americans began in the early 20th Century as a private effort. As far back as the late 1970s, Congress has enacted legislation, and subsequent presidents have issued annual proclamations designating a day, a week, or a month to celebrate and commemorate the Nation’s American Indian and Alaska Native heritage.

In 2009, Congress passed, and the President signed legislation establishing the Friday following Thanksgiving Day of each year as “Native American Heritage Day.”