Thanks to Nancy Rourke for her recommendations. Here are selected examples of leaders from the Indigenous community. Find more information via CSD re: Indigenous Deaf peoples and organizations. See the video about Onalee Cooper, a Deaf Native American, and her father, Chief Clinton Rickard who fought for the rights of Native Americans to cross to and from Canada and New York. There is a statue of him in Buffalo. Another resource is Turtle Island Hand Talk.
There is a list of Deaf Native artists compiled by Nancy Rourke (herself a Deaf Native American) and Patti Durr. We have a few artworks in our collections such as a beaded portrait of a Deaf Native American woman by Sarah Young Bear-Brown. Another artist, Tony McGregor, does gourds and woodcuts. Richard Clark Eckert has a business with his soapstone carvings etc and is in Rochester, and examples are in Deaf Studies Archive.
Ganongadon in Victor has a museum and replica of long houses, forest trails, and events. There are books at the museum that explain how Native Americans affected feminism and women's rights. In addition, the National Women's Rights Museum (Seneca Falls) has profiles of Haudenosaunee women.
We have a few NTID Native Americans such as Jonathan Hopkins, a retired interpreter, Jane Doctor (retired Engineering staff), and Crystal Peloquinm who works for NTID Department of Diversity and Inclusion.
Onalee Cooper is a Rochesterian Native American. It was not until she retired that she learned more about her father, a chief in Buffalo.
Fighting Tuscarora; the autobiography of Chief Clinton Rickard
George Catlin and His Indian Gallery
Movers and Shakers, Deaf People Who Changed the World
The Native American deaf experience : cultural, linguistic, and educational perspectives by Sharon Baker
Deaf Artists in America: Colonial to Contemporary by 
Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost by
Sage Ravenwood is a deaf Indigenous poet whose work deals with the lingering, resurgent trauma of familial violence and the machinations of colonialism. Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost is a poet's response to her place in the wider world, exploring grief, anger, tenderness, and defiance. Ravenwood sheds light on Indigenous issues such as MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) and the Native American boarding schools, but she also makes space to center the natural world and her reverence of it. The poems in this collection are unafraid to name rage and pain as driving emotions yet strive for understanding and a way forward to healing.
Great Deaf Americans
Hand Talk
American Indian nations of the Great Plains and cultural groups bordering this geographic area spoke so many different languages that verbal communication between them was difficult. As extensive trade networks developed and political alliances became necessary, an elegant language of the hands developed that cut across spoken language barriers. Though now endangered, this sign language continues to serve a vital role in traditional storytelling, rituals, legends, prayers, conversational narratives, and as a primary language of American Indians who are deaf.
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