My tour group at the National Museum of the American Indian

www.oconnorgreentours.com leads in sustainable tourism around NYC. Here are some of my group of Pechanga Native Americans from California, standing at the entrance of the American Indian Museum (formerly the Gustav Heye Collection) at its northern home, the U.S. Customs House of New York. The building is white stone with a copper roof, and Battery Park is right across the street. Oddly, the site was once a Dutch fort meant to repel Indians. Now it belongs to them!
Doing the tour brought its own challenges: the Pechangas wanted a tour that brought in current NYC as well as native American history. So we talked about the early colonies, about this museum and Gustav Heye, and aunt Rosebud Yellowrobe, a Lakota who lived here in New York and wrote traditional children's stories.
NYC is an old-line colonial city which, after the Revolution, sent waves of illegal migrants into the Appalachians, supplanting the Six Nations. Touchy subject!

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