Mission
Our Mission
News from Native California is a quarterly magazine devoted to the vibrant cultures, arts, languages, histories, social justice movements, and stories of California’s diverse Indian peoples. We strive to preserve the cherished knowledge of an older generation, provide opportunities for a younger generation making a place for Indian ways in the modern world, and illuminate the beauty of Native cultures to all of California.
Our History
News from Native California, a quarterly magazine published by Heyday and devoted to California’s indigenous peoples, was founded by Malcolm Margolin, David Peri, and Vera Mae Fredrickson as a bi-monthly magazine in March 1987. In October 1989 we converted News from Native California to a quarterly magazine and continue to publish quarterly to this day.
The Magazine
Regular features, such as our calendar, announce and report on Native events. Feature articles range from ceremonial regalia and traditional use of tobacco to environmental issues and California archaeology, all emphasizing Native Californian points of view, historic and contemporary. We also regularly feature poetry, short stories, plays, and literary non-fiction by California Indian writers. Regular columns address California Indian languages, the arts, books, skills & technology, law, and more.
Berkeley Roundhouse
Along with News from Native California, Heyday has published more than fifty books devoted to California Indian culture and history, we’ve sponsored scores of events, we’ve launched two museum shows that traveled the state, and we’ve collected an archive of books, photos, oral histories, and artwork.
In Heyday’s forty-five years of publishing, California’s Indian world has gone through dramatic changes. More than thirty years ago, News from Native California was meant to be an elegy for dying cultures—instead it has recorded its rebirth. Languages once thought extinct are being revived from wax cylinder recordings. Where once native cultures were only written about by non-Native scholars, vibrant Indian communities now represent their own cultures in traditional and new media.
We celebrate these changes. Launched in 2012, the Berkeley Roundhouse has brought Heyday’s Native publishing, outreach, and events into one consolidated, expanded program committed to furthering these revitalizations.
[A] full-fledged magazine focusing on the arts, education, the law, culture, language, [and] botany…, [News] probably has the widest literacy range of any periodical in the Western Hemisphere.
—Los Angeles Times
The first and only journal for California Indian peoples, a network where we can talk with one another about our individual and common political concerns, News from Native California has been and continues to be our intertribal hotline.
—Greg Sarris, Tribal Chair, Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria
An excellent magazine.
—Native Peoples Magazine
A remarkable publication. Its articles run an amazing gamut — from scholarly to gossipy, from lyrical to gritty.
—San Francisco Chronicle
Staff
General Manager:
Gayle Wattawa
Founders:
Malcolm Margolin, David W. Peri, Vera Mae Fredrickson
Editor:
Terria Smith
Contributing Editors:
Tiffany Adams, Lindsie Bear, Brian Bibby, Marina Drummer, L. Frank, Jeannine Gendar, Leanne Hinton, Julian Lang, William Madrigal Jr., Meyo Marrufo, Vincent Medina, Beverly R. Ortiz, Stanley Rodriguez, Sage Romero, Ernest Siva, Paula Tripp-Allen, Linda Yamane
Graphic Design:
Tima Link
Proofreading:
Kim Hogeland
