• Authority/comment: Public Law 102-188, March
1992
• It took more than 80 years for the nation to
establish National American Indian Heritage
Month
• The Boy Scouts set aside a day for the “First
Americans” in the early 1900s
• On Sept. 28, 1915, the Congress of the American
Indian Association declared the second Saturday
of each May as an American Indian Day
• Since then, several states declared American
Indian days until 1976, when Congress passed a
joint resolution authorizing the President to
proclaim the week of October 10–16 as Native
American Awareness Week
• Days and weeks of different months were set aside
to honor the first Americans until they were given
a month in 1990
• President George Herbert Walker Bush
proclaimed 1992 as the Year of the American
Indian, based on legislation by Congress