Summer is a great time to star-gaze, thanks to the normally comfortable night-time temperatures. If you find yourself near Stanton, North Dakota, this week, stop by the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site and you can gain some insights into how Native Americans interpreted what they saw overhead.

This Tuesday, July 24, Dr. Barbara Handy-Marchello will be at the historic site's visitor center to discuss the stars overhead beginning at 7 p.m.

The program features a few well-known constellations and the stories that associated with them by the ancient Greeks and American Indians who lived on the northern Great Plains.

Dr. Handy-Marchello is a historian who taught American History at the University of North Dakota before retiring in 1996. She has researched and written about the North Dakota night sky for the State Historical Society of North Dakota.

“The night sky offers a side of Northern Plains Indian culture that is rarely told," says Knife River Superintendent Wendy Ross. "The stories of the people who once lived along the Missouri River are still alive, giving us a glimpse into the cosmology of the past.”