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    ‘Straight in harm’s way’: can Trump open up Alaska’s 19m-acre refuge for drilling?

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    The Arctic national wildlife refuge (ANWR) is one of the earth’s last intact ecosystems. Vast and little-known, this 19m-acre expanse along Alaska’s north slope is home to some of the region’s last remaining polar bears, as well as musk oxen, wolves and wolverines. Millions of birds from around the world migrate to or through the region each year, and it serves as the calving grounds for the porcupine caribou.Donald Trump has called the refuge the US’s “biggest oil farm”.The first Trump administration opened 1.5m acres of the refuge’s coastal plain to the oil and gas industry, and under Trump’s watch, the US government held its first-ever oil and gas lease sale there.In a few weeks, when Trump takes office again, the refuge – one of the last truly wild places in the world – is awaiting an uncertain future.The president-elect has promised to revive his crusade to “drill baby drill” on the refuge as soon as he returns to the White House in January, falsely claiming it holds more oil than Saudi Arabia. Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for Trump’s second term, calls for an immediate expansion of oil and gas drilling in Alaska, including in the ANWR, noting that the state “is a special case and deserves immediate action”.From his end, Joe Biden is moving to limit drilling in the region as much as his administration can. Experts are debating how much oil and gas there is to gain if Trump were to open up the region for drilling again. But Alaska’s Republican governor and Native Alaskan leaders in the region say they are eager to find out – seeing the potential for a major new source of revenue in the geographically remote region.Other Native leaders and activists have banded with environmental groups that oppose drilling on the refuge – and are gearing up for an arduous battle.“I see it as a David and Goliath fight,” said Tonya Garnett, a spokesperson for the Gwich’in steering committee, representing Gwich’in Nation villages in the US and Canada. “But we are resilient, and we are strong, and we’re going to keep fighting.”‘Sacred place where life begins’Garnett, who grew up in Arctic Village, just south of the refuge’s border, has spent most of her life trying to protect the refuge. Trump’s election has upped the urgency.The Gwich’in call the refuge’s coastal plain Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit – the “sacred place where life begins”. It serves as the breeding grounds for a 218,000-strong herd of porcupine caribou – which the Gwich’in have hunted for sustenance through their entire history. “We don’t even go up there, because we don’t want to disturb them,” said Garnett. “We believe that even our footprints will disturb them.”Environmental concerns go beyond the caribou. Scientists have warned that mitigating the risks drilling will pose to polar bears will be impossible. A 2020 study in PloS One found that the infrared technology mounted on airplanes used to scope for dens are unreliable.Experts have also warned that the trucks and equipment used in even the initial stages of exploration could cause severe damage to the remote tundra, endangering the habitat of the bears and many other sensitive species. With the climate warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet, bears are already struggling to hunt on a landscape that is quickly melting away below them. “Drilling puts the polar bears straight in harm’s way,” said Pat Lavin, the Alaska policy adviser for the non-profit Defenders of Wildlife.All the while, extracting and burning more fossil fuels is guaranteed to accelerate global heating – further degrading the region that is home to not only bears and other wildlife, but also several Alaskan communities.Melting permafrost is releasing mercury, as well as greenhouse gases – and eroding infrastructure as the literal ground beneath many Alaskans feet begins to disintegrate. “It’s a scary thing,” said Garnett.‘This issue has become symbolic’The political zeal to drill in the Arctic has remained strong, despite industry skepticism over how much there would be to gain from drilling the ANWR. The US Geological Survey estimates that between 4.3bn and 11.8bn barrels of oil lie underneath the refuge’s coastal plain, but it remains profoundly unclear how large the deposits are and how difficult it will be to get to them. Its location in the remote, northernmost reaches of the continent, bereft of roads and infrastructure, makes it exceptionally difficult and expensive to even explore for petroleum.“We think there is almost no rationale for Arctic exploration,” Goldman Sachs commodity expert Michele Della Vigna told CNBC in 2017. “Immensely complex, expensive projects like the Arctic we think can move too high on the cost curve to be economically doable.”And yet, Republicans seem determined. Environmentalists have wondered if this zeal is more political than practical. “To some extent, this issue has become symbolic,” said Kristin Miller, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League. “There’s an idea that if they can drill the Arctic Refuge, they can drill anywhere.”The Biden administration is working to limit exploration as much as it can in its remaining weeks in office. After two of the companies who’d bought leases in the first Trump years relinquished them voluntarily, in 2023 the Biden administration cancelled the remaining leases. However, the administration is obligated to hold a final oil and gas lease sale in the refuge as required by Trump-era law. Biden’s team has indicated it will be offering up just 400,000 acres – the minimum required by the 2017 law – with contingencies to avoid habitat for polar pears and the caribou calving grounds.It’s unclear who would bid for these leases. Already, several big banks have vowed not to finance energy development there, and big oil and gas companies have avoided the region – in large part because drilling into this iconic landscape remains deeply unpopular with many Americans.During the first Trump term, only two small private companies submitted bids for leases on the refuge, and later relinquished them. The other main bidder was the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA), a public corporation of the state of Alaska, which is suing the Biden administration over the cancellation of its leases last year.That group has already approved $20m to potentially bid again on leases for oil exploration in the region, even amid growing scrutiny of the extraction-focused group’s use of taxpayer funds, and its failure to meet its mandate of encouraging economic growth.The group did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on how it plans to proceed.‘We’re ready to fight’Garnett said she sees the unending drive to drill into this land as a form of colonization. The Gwich’in have built their livelihoods and culture around the porcupine caribou, and by disrupting the caribou’s habitat, oil industrialists will destroy the Gwich’in’s history and way of life, she said.“We’re ready to fight, to educate, and to go with a good heart,” she said. “Because that’s what we have to do.” The Gwich’in tribes have urged the Biden administration to establish an Indigenous sacred sight on the coastal plain in the coming weeks.Not all Native groups in the region agree on that plan. Iñupiaq leaders on the North Slope have said the petition infringes on their traditional homelands, and threatens oil and gas development that could benefit the Iñupiaq village of Kaktovik, the only community located within the refuge boundaries.In an October op-ed, Josiah Patkotak, mayor of the North Slope borough, which includes Kaktovik, said that the territory in question “has never been” Gwich’in territory”.“This is not about the protection of sacred sites” he wrote in response to news that the administration would consider designating the site. “It is about a federal government that thinks it knows better than the people who have lived on and cared for these lands since time immemorial.”Nathan Gordon Jr, the mayor of Kaktovik, said he’s excited about the incoming administration, and its openness to renewing oil and gas exploration. “We would be able to provide more for the community, more safety regulations and infrastructure,” he said.Gordon said he disagrees with the argument that oil and gas exploration would decimate the caribou, noting that residents in Kaktovik, too, rely on the herd for sustenance hunting. “We wouldn’t do anything to hurt our own herd,” he said. “I don’t see the main negative effects that everybody else sees.”One thing he has in common with tribal members on the other side of this issue, is that he too has spent years advocating on the issue. “I’ve been working on this ever since I’ve been a tribal councilmember,” he said. “We want to be able to use our lands.” More

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      ‘Disenfranchised and demobilized’: Native Americans face ballot box barriers in Arizona

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      The calls started coming in to the Arizona Native vote election protection hotline around 6am on election day.Voters in Apache county, where a sizable chunk of the population is Diné, also known as Navajo, were seeing problems at the polls. One location was locked and several others were having trouble printing ballots, according to an affidavit filed in state court. As the day went on, voters reported hours-long waits and observers reported that people were leaving. A local judge would eventually agree to extend voting in nine precincts in the county by two hours.“It was just a mess from what we could tell and from our folks,” said Jaynie Parrish, the executive director of Arizona Native Vote, a nonprofit civic engagement organization focused on Native communities.While delays in opening polling sites and glitches that lead to long lines are not uncommon, they can be particularly acute in Native communities, where voters can travel hours to get to the polls and face other unique barriers, like non-traditional addresses and language access issues. Taken together, those barriers result in a significant gap between turnout among those living on tribal lands and those who live off of them, according to a new study from the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit that studies voting rights and elections.“There are systemic issues that prevent Natives from getting to the ballot box – some intentional,” said Samantha Blencke, a staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund, which had poll watchers in six states this election. For a voter who travels a far distance to cast a ballot, a polling place not opening on time could make a big difference, she said. “That’s it,” she said. “That’s their one shot to vote.”Native American voters are an influential voting bloc in Arizona, where they comprise 5% of the population. Both Republicans and Democrats courted Native voters this year. Election results analyzed by the New York Times showed that Donald Trump gained in many counties where Native Americans comprise a majority of the population.In addition to long travel times, Native voters also face a litany of unique hurdles. Many lack traditional addresses, making it more difficult to vote by mail. Tribal identification cards can get rejected at the polls. And there can be significant issues in translating ballots into Native languages.Turnout among those living on tribal lands was on average 11 points lower than turnout among people living off them between 2012 and 2022, according to the Brennan Center’s study. In presidential elections, the gap was 15 points.Tribal lands that had the highest share of Native voters also had the lowest turnout rates, the study found. And those who live on tribal lands were also less likely to use mail-in voting than those who lived off them.“These findings demonstrate that Native Americans living on tribal lands are uniquely disenfranchised and demobilized from participating in federal elections,” the report says.This year, after election day, Navajo voters sued Apache county again. Arizona gives voters five days after election day to address any issues with mail-in ballots. But county officials had delayed making public the number of voters who had problems with their ballots until two days before the deadline, the lawsuit said. With just two days left, they notified that there were 182 people who needed to cure their ballots, setting off a scramble to contact them.A judge rejected the request after elections employees said they had made a reasonable effort to contact anyone who was at risk of having their ballot rejected.For years, Leonard Gorman, the executive director of the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission has been concerned about the way ballots have been translated into Navajo. Translation is required under the Voting Rights Act, and accurately describing things like ballot measures on abortion and fentanyl can be immensely challenging, Votebeat reported earlier this year. Navajo is a historically oral language, and translators come up with audio that those who are not proficient in English can listen to at the polls, according to Votebeat.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOver the years, Gorman said he’s heard glitches and poorly worded audio. And when he showed up at a polling location in Apache county in late October, the machine that offered the audio translation wasn’t working, he said.“It only said in literal translation or interpretation: ‘If you want to listen to the ballot, press any button,’” he said. When he pressed a button, the instruction would simply repeat. “That was the worst experience I’ve ever had.”Apache county election officials did not respond to an interview request.Chelsea Jones, a researcher at the Brennan Center who co-authored the nonprofit’s study, said its findings showed that people who live on tribal lands face unique barriers that haven’t thus far been addressed by federal laws. A piece of legislation, the Native American Voting Rights Act, that would address many of the systemic challenges Native voters face, has stalled in Congress.“Any of these common ways that we participate in elections have really layers of barriers for people who live on tribal lands,” Jones said. “Each of those numbers represent hundreds of thousands of people who are not able to or have a harder time participating. And so that’s what’s the hardest for us to grasp is that this many people are being left out of what is a fundamental right for all Americans.” More

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      This Diné leader is using horses to bring ‘the greatest Native turnout ever’ to the polls

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      In Diné, or Navajo, culture, the horse symbolizes strength and resilience, as well as a connection to the earth. Cowboy culture is so relevant to Native communities, that horseback trail rides are used to draw awareness to issues within the community including suicide prevention, and alcohol and drug use, said Allie Young, a 34-year-old Diné grassroots organizer. This fall, Young has harnessed the trail ride to engage Diné voters for the presidential election: her group’s voter-registration events will culminate with 100 Indigenous voters riding on horseback to a polling station in Arizona on election day.“When one mounts a horse and is in rhythm with the horse, that reconnection happens,” Young, founder of the Indigenous-led civic engagement program Protect the Sacred, told the Guardian. “So when we’re connected with the horse, we’re then reconnected to Mother Earth and reminded of our cultural values and what we’re fighting for, what we’re protecting.”Native American turnout is especially critical in the upcoming election, when tribal sovereignty could be threatened by the conservative blueprint Project 2025, which states that fossil fuel drilling should be facilitated on tribal lands. Political representation that brings needed resources into Native communities is particularly important on tribal lands, where 75% of roads remain unpaved. In part due to Young’s advocacy, Native American voters are credited with flipping the historically red state of Arizona to Democrat during the 2020 election. That year, up to 90% of the roughly 67,000 eligible voters in the Navajo Nation voted for Joe Biden, according to data.Young said she hopes that the success of the Ride to the Polls campaign in 2020 and 2022 will encourage “the greatest Native turnout ever” in the upcoming election. This year, the campaign has extended its reach with events such as skateboarding and bull-riding competitions, heavy metal and country music concerts.View image in fullscreen“We’re trying to communicate to our community that we need to protect our tribal sovereignty,” said Young, “and with that, protect our sacred sites, protect our lands, our cultures, our languages, our traditions.”Young launched the Ride to the Polls campaign in 2020 in response to the rapid spread of Covid-19 infections in the Navajo Nation, where some counties saw the highest death rates per capita in the nation. She wanted to ensure that her community filled out the US census to receive the funding they deserved and to elect politicians who prioritize the concerns of Native communities.“Our nation and many tribal nations across the country were devastated by the onset of Covid-19 because our system is being chronically underfunded,” said Young, “which revealed to the rest of the world what we already know: that the government is not honoring our treaty, which says that we are to receive good healthcare and education.” She began creating culturally relevant initiatives so that young Diné citizens who felt disenfranchised would see voting as a tool to “rebuild our power as a community”.The campaign’s goal in 2024 is to register 1,500 new voters during their in-person initiatives and more than 5,000 voters through online efforts. So far, they have registered 200 new voters and checked or updated the registrations of about 400 people.On 12 October, the actor Mark Ruffalo will join Ride to the Polls to help mobilize Native voters and to mark the 100th anniversary of Native Americans being granted the right to vote. Ruffalo and Indigenous voters wearing traditional clothing will walk three miles to vote early at a community ballot drop box in Fort Defiance, Arizona – the site where the forced removal called the Long Walk of the Navajo began in 1863.View image in fullscreen“Indigenous people have only been able to fight for their future at the ballot box for 76 years,” Ruffalo said in a statement. “Now we’re seeing a massive movement of young Indigenous folk exercise their power at the polls … I hope their resilience will inspire other young Indigenous folks from all communities to do the same.”While US citizenship was granted to most Native Americans under the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, some state constitutions continued to block the voting rights of Native Americans who lived among their nations. In Arizona, pollsters required English literacy tests to cast a ballot. All Native Americans were finally granted the right to vote under the federal voting rights act of 1965.Still, barriers have remained that make it difficult for Diné to register to vote and cast ballots, including a lack of residential addresses since many people on the Navajo Nation use post office boxes. It also can take up to an hour to drive to a polling location, said Young. And this summer, the US supreme court ruled that Arizona can enforce a state law requiring prospective voters to include proof of US citizenship in registration forms, which Young said was a “slap in the face to Native Americans, who are the first peoples of this land, to be asked to prove their citizenship”.To help address some of those hurdles, Protect the Sacred is partnering with the Indigenous-led voter-engagement non-profit Arizona Native Vote. Indigenous organizers register voters and help residents find their addresses by locating their houses on Google Maps. “A key talking point when we talk to voters is letting them know that voting and registering to vote should not be this hard,” Jaynie Parrish, executive director of Arizona Native Vote, said. “For example, the form itself – what will take five minutes or less from someone in Flagstaff or Phoenix or in a city that has a physical address or town, that’s not what happens here.”During a six-stop trail ride to register Diné citizens throughout the Navajo Nation in mid-September, Indigenous organizers discussed with voters the importance of casting ballots in every election. They served citizens stew and frybread while explaining to them that county elections can determine how local government operations are funded. Young said: “I believe that we started a movement around the power of the Native vote.” More

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      Native tribes on banning Kristi Noem from reservations: ‘She’d be charged with trespassing’

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      While sifting through his work emails one February afternoon, Clyde Estes saw a message that dismayed him.“I started reading it and was just shocked,” recalled Estes, chairman of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. “It’s something you don’t expect to see.”It relayed what Kristi Noem said at the state legislature just a few days prior. In her address at the state capitol, the second-term South Dakota governor blasted US immigration policy, saying that “invasion is coming over the southern border”. In that same speech, Noem pronounced: “Make no mistake, the cartels have a presence on several of South Dakota’s tribal reservations.”Noem alleged that tribal leaders in South Dakota were profiting off drug cartel activity. These remarks, and her controversial comments about Native children, have been met with staunch condemnation from Indigenous leaders, and have dredged up a bitter history between the tribes and the state.As a result, all nine of South Dakota’s federally recognized tribes, which cover more than 12% of the state, have now banned Noem from their reservations.After initially deciding against banning Noem in April, the tribal leaders of Lower Brule Sioux voted in May to go ahead. “There were a couple of fellow tribal council members who wanted an apology first, so we were holding out hope and got no reply from her at all,” said Estes.If the governor attempts to enter the reservation, Estes said that tribal law enforcement would notify county sheriffs and ask her to voluntarily leave the reservation.“She would be charged with trespassing,” said Estes, calling the situation “very, very unfortunate”.“We’re going to stand up to defend our people.”A vocal ally of Donald Trump, Noem was once considered a possible pick for Trump’s vice-presidential running mate. But her path to that role now seems more complicated following her revelation in her recent memoir that she killed her dog. Some see Noem’s focus on reservations as a political tactic.“She’s clearly trying to raise her profile as somebody who’s tough on the border, tough on crime,” said Chase Iron Eyes, a Lakota activist and attorney who is a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. “She’s trying to use tribal nations as ploys for her political ambition.”The Oglala Sioux were the first tribe to ban Noem in 2019, the same year she began serving as South Dakota governor. Many tribes in the state, including the Oglala Sioux, had protested against the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a controversial project that would transport oil from Canada to the United States while crossing major waterways that Indigenous tribes in South and North Dakota rely on. The protests, largely led by Native Americans, resulted in 761 arrests in a six-month period.Noem subsequently signed anti-riot legislation aimed to quash public protest, although it was later blocked. The Oglala Sioux Tribe said it felt targeted by the new law and it was “particularly offended” that Noem consulted with the pipeline company rather than the tribes.In February this year, the Oglala Sioux reissued a ban following her recent comments linking drug cartels to tribes in South Dakota. In March, Noem accused tribal leaders of “personally benefiting” from cartels.“If she claims to have evidence of tribal leadership involved in cartel activity, then make that evidence known,” said Iron Eyes.“None of the council or myself are aware of any relationship with any cartel,” said Estes.Frank Star Comes Out, president of the Oglala Sioux, has stated in the past that he believes cartels are active on tribal land. But tribes object to Noem’s suggestion that they are tied to the cartels – and say instead that the government is failing in its historic obligation to help tribes battle crime.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Standing Rock Sioux, for instance, say tribes “ceded vast lands and resources” to the US in the 19th century in exchange for help providing law enforcement, among other things. Today, however, “on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, seven police officers patrol an area the size of two small states and serve a community of more than 12,000 tribal members and residents, needing at least 20 more officers to be fully staffed,” a tribal spokesperson said in a statement.Noem did not respond to questions about these issues from the Guardian, but her spokesperson shared a recording of a May press conference in which she said, in part: “Instead of working with me, many of them [tribes] have chosen to banish me, and I will ask them right back, why have they not banished the cartels? Why have they focused their attention on me, who has only offered them help, and not gone after those who are perpetuating violence against their own people?”She says the help she has offered includes a law enforcement course designed to train tribal officers and a law enforcement summit next week. The governor has also asked for audits of all federal funds given to South Dakota’s tribes to “verify the need for additional law enforcement resources”.‘Attacking Native children is wrong’Noem has criticized tribes on other fronts. “Not only is she impugning the reputations of tribal council members and elected leadership, she says that Native children are hopeless,” said Estes.In remarks during a March town hall in Mitchell, South Dakota, Noem alleged that Native children “don’t have any hope”, in the context of commenting on limited access to education and jobs on reservations. She added: “They don’t have parents who show up and help them.”For some, Noem’s comments about Native American children touch on a fraught history.Thirty federal boarding schools operated in South Dakota between 1819 and 1969 that separated Native children from their parents, forced cultural assimilation and punished kids for speaking Indigenous languages.“My mom went to one of these boarding schools. A lot of abuse took place there, a lot of forced removal of children,” said Iron Eyes. “In South Dakota, boarding school was a euphemism for a place where they erase who you are as a Native person.”The South Dakota governor has since doubled down on her comments about cartels on tribal lands on social media.“Instead of apologizing, she seems to be convincing herself that what she’s doing is not wrong,” said Chase Iron Eyes. “That attacking Native children is not wrong, saying they’re hopeless is not wrong.”There have been no publicly reported accounts of Noem attempting to enter reservations, which have their own law enforcement, in the wake of the bans. When asked what state police would do in such a situation, a South Dakota highway patrol spokesperson said: “We decline to answer a hypothetical question.” More

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      Kristi Noem banned from seven Native American reservations in her own state

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      The governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, is no longer allowed to step foot on large swaths of her state after another Native American tribe banished her from its reservation in response to comments she made about tribal leaders benefiting from drug cartels.The Crow Creek Sioux Tribe on Tuesday confirmed that the tribe had voted to ban the Republican governor from its reservation in central South Dakota. It is the latest development in a widening rupture between Native American tribes in South Dakota and the state’s governor.Noem, an ally of Donald Trump, has embraced his hardline rhetoric on immigration and in recent months has repeatedly linked drug cartels with crime on the reservations in the state.“We do not have cartels on the reservations,” the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe chairman, Peter Lengkeek, told NPR following Tuesday’s vote.“We have cartel products, like guns and drugs. But they pass over state highways getting to the reservation,” he continued. “So, putting us all together like that and saying that all tribes are involved in this really shows … the ignorance of the governor’s office.”The action comes a week after the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe voted to banish the governor and the Yankton Sioux Tribe recommended a ban against Noem. The governor is now unwelcome on seven of the nine reservations located in South Dakota, amounting to roughly one-fifth of state territory.“Banishing Governor Noem does nothing to solve the problem,” a spokesperson for the governor’s office said in a statement. “She calls on all our tribal leaders to banish the cartels from tribal lands.”In a social media post last week, Noem implored tribes to partner with her office to help “restore law and order” on tribal land and blamed the situation on the Biden administration’s failure to address migration at the southern border.In statements, several tribal members have accused Noem, once considered a potential running mate for Trump, of political opportunism and called her comments disrespectful and dangerous.“Our people are being used for her political gain,” the president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Frank Star Comes Out, recently told the Associated Press.This is not the governor’s first clash with some of the tribes in her state. She was previously banned by the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council after she backed anti-riot legislation in response to the 2016 Dakota Access pipeline protests and again during the Covid-19 pandemic when some tribes implemented checkpoints to control the spread of the disease on their reservations.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This decision does not come after one or two incidents but after years of witnessing the governor’s harmful and aggressive actions against tribes,” members of the Yankton Sioux Tribe’s business and claims committee said, announcing their support for banning Noem, whom they called “anti-tribe”.The controversy comes as Noem, once considered a vice-presidential contender, reels from revelations in her memoir No Going Back that she shot and killed her family dog, Cricket, after it misbehaved after a pheasant-hunting trip. Facing bipartisan blowback over her actions, and withering ridicule, Noem defended her actions on a book tour, arguing that the dog had shown threatening behavior and needed to be put down.She was also forced to remove an anecdote from the book in which she claims to have met the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, after experts disputed the claim. More

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      Man in Maga hat charged over shooting of Indigenous activist at statue protest

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      An Indigenous justice activist is fighting for his life after a man wearing a hat with the Donald Trump slogan “Make America great again” allegedly shot him during a protest against the reinstallation of a statue honoring a Spanish conquistador in New Mexico.Jacob Johns was shot on Thursday morning in the northern New Mexico city of Española while demonstrating against plans to again erect a Juan de Oñate statue that previously had been taken down and put in storage. First responders flew Johns to a hospital in Albuquerque by helicopter after he was wounded.By Friday, he was recovering from emergency surgery, said a message on an online GoFundMe campaign set up in his support.The suspected shooter – 23-year-old Ryan Martinez – was arrested on charges of attempted murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. On Friday, a judge ordered Martinez held without bond through at least the weekend.Johns was part of a crowd who had gathered at the Rio Arriba county annex building to celebrate officials’ postponement of plans to re-erect a statue of Oñate there. The conquistador and his Spanish compatriots carried out a 1599 massacre of hundreds of members of a pueblo tribe in what is now New Mexico.Crews had torn down Oñate’s statue from a spot in the community of Alcalde and had taken it into storage in 2020 amid racial justice protests ignited by a Minneapolis police officer’s murder of George Floyd weeks earlier. But there were plans to stand the statue back up near the county annex, though protests forced officials to delay the monument’s reintroduction.A cellphone video posted on social media showed that a fight broke out near where a crowd was celebrating the postponement. At one point, the video showed the man identified as Martinez jump over a waist-high barrier and try to grab another man.Two more men then grappled with Martinez, who is seen leaping back over the barrier, grabbing a pistol from his waistband and aiming the weapon at those with whom he was tussling as voices yell, “Let him go!”Martinez, clad in a turquoise hooded sweatshirt, appeared to fire once. A voice shouted in pain, and Martinez ran toward a parking lot, according to the video. The recording then showed the driver of a white car speed away, honking the horn.In the moments before the shooting, the video in question captured a red hat getting knocked off Martinez’s head as he struggled with other men during the confrontation.Still images of Martinez taken earlier in the day showed that hat bore the “Make America great again” slogan.Additionally, according to the Daily Beast, a social media profile matching Martinez’s details featured the phrase “Fuck Joe Biden”. The profile also declared “Trump won”, echoing the false conspiracy theory that the former president was denied re-election by fraudsters.Police in Española later arrested Martinez and booked him into jail.Martinez’s arrest came after the second shooting surrounding a face-off of protesters and counter-protesters near the Oñate statue. In June 2020, during a rally calling for the statue’s removal, Steven Baca shot Scott Williams and was arrested on a count of aggravated battery with great bodily harm.Baca pleaded guilty to unlawful carrying of a deadly weapon as well as aggravated battery for pulling a protester down by her hair. Prosecutors dismissed the charge pertaining to the shooting, the Albuquerque Journal reported.The GoFundMe for Johns, the victim of Thursday’s shooting, described him as being a Hopi Native American.A photo from the Albuquerque Journal showed Johns – of Spokane, Washington – holding up a sign that read “Do Not Resurrect Oñate” next to a speaker before the shooting that wounded him in the upper torso. In that photo, Johns and the speaker stood before another pair of signs that read: “Not today Oñate.”Johns’s GoFundMe campaign described him as a climate activist, artist, musician and father to a teenage daughter. As of Friday, the campaign had raised more than $31,000 that organizers said were meant to help cover his medical bills as well as other family needs during what would “likely be a very lengthy recovery period”. More

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      Indigenous burial mounds in Ohio become Unesco world heritage site

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      A network of Native American ceremonial and burial mounds in southern Ohio have been added to the list of world heritage sites of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco). The move places what the organization describes as “part cathedral, part cemetery and part astronomical observatory” on the same cultural plane as the Acropolis, Machu Picchu, the Taj Mahal, Stonehenge and the Great Wall of China.The recognition of the Hopewell ceremonial earthworks was announced by Unesco’s world heritage committee during a meeting in Saudi Arabia.The US Department of the Interior had last year proposed adding the earthworks to the world heritage sites list after a lengthy campaign by Indigenous tribes – many with ancestral ties to the state – and preservationists.The Ohio history connection, a state agency, said the earthworks were exceptional for their “enormous scale, geometric precision and astronomical alignments” and described them as “masterpieces of human genius”. They encompass eight sites spread over 90 miles (145km) in southern Ohio.Two years ago, the state’s supreme court heard a challenge over access to one part of the earthworks – a set of 2,000-year-old Octagon mounds – after an earlier ruling that the Ohio history connection could reclaim the site from a local golf club.Chief Glenna Wallace, of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, said she greeted the Unesco designation for the mounds with “pure excitement and exhilaration”.“Tears came to my eyes, and exhilaration turned into reflection, knowing that the world will now see and recognize the commitment, spirituality, imaginative artistry and knowledge of complex architecture to produce magnificent earthworks,” she said in a statement.“Our ancestors were not just geniuses – they were uncommon geniuses,” she added.The Hopewell site near Newark, Ohio, is part of eight large earthen enclosures built in a central and southern area of the state between about AD1 and AD400. They are considered to be the largest set of geometric enclosures in the world.Other sites included under the new designation are the Fort Ancient earthworks in Oregonia and the Great Circle earthworks in Heath and five sites within the Hopewell Culture national historical park in Chillicothe: the Mound City group, the Hopewell mound group, the Seip earthworks, the High Bank earthworks and the Hopeton earthworks.“Inscription on the World Heritage List will call international attention to these treasures long known to Ohioans,” Megan Wood, executive director and CEO of the Ohio history connection, said in a statement to the Columbus Dispatch.The Octagon earthworks are believed to follow an 18.6-year moon cycle, with the central axis of the earthworks aligning with the northernmost rising of the moon, and other walls aligning with different moonrises.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn the 1970s, Ray Hively and Robert Horn, two professors at Ohio’s Earlham College, rediscovered the alignments and said the walls of the Octagon “define the most accurate astronomical alignments known in the prehistoric world”.It is believed that the earthworks were host to ceremonies that drew people from across the US, based on archaeological discoveries of raw materials brought from as far west as the Rocky Mountains.Earlier this year, Mike DeWine, the Ohio governor, called the anticipated Unesco designation “a big deal”.People, he said, “will recognize that Ohio’s people – even in ancient times – played a pivotal role in transforming what is now Ohio into a sophisticated and prominent trading center”.Audrey Azoulay, the Unesco director general, said the earthworks’ inclusion on the heritage list “will make this important part of American history known around the world”.The addition of Hopewell comes just three months after the US rejoined Unesco. Azoulay said that the US now has 25 heritage sites on the world heritage list, “which illustrates the richness and diversity of the country’s cultural and natural heritage”. More

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      Colorado mountain honoring governor who led Indigenous massacre renamed

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      Federal US officials renamed a Colorado mountain that was previously named after a disgraced governor of the state who led a massacre against Indigenous people.Members of the US Board on Geographic Names voted to change the name of Mount Evans to Mount Blue Sky, at the request of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.The new name was approved on Friday during a Council of Geographic Name Authorities board meeting in Oregon, according to a press release from the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.The new name holds significance for both tribes. The Arapaho are known as the Blue Sky people, and the Cheyenne Tribe hold an annual ceremony that is called Blue Sky, the Associated Press reported.The mountain, a nearly 15,000ft peak in south-west Colorado, was previously named after John Evans, the notorious state governor who resigned in 1865 for his role in the Sand Creek massacre, when more than 200 Arapaho and Cheyenne people were killed in a south-eastern region of Colorado.Most of those killed were women, children and people who were elderly, the AP reported.The governor of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, Reggie Wassana, celebrated the renaming as an important part of the “healing process”.“It is a huge step, not only for the Cheyenne and Arapaho people, but also for the Ute Mountain Ute tribe, Southern Ute tribe, Northern Arapaho tribe, Northern Cheyenne tribe, and other allies who worked diligently to begin the healing process, bringing honor to a monumental and majestic mountain,” Wassana said in a statement published by the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal Tribune.Both tribes are now working to have the name of the Mount Evans wilderness area, which sits adjacent to the peak, changed to the Mount Blue Sky wilderness area.The name change would require congressional action, the Associated Press reported.While the new Mount Blue Sky name has garnered widespread support, some descendants of Evans have disapproved of the renaming, the Colorado Sun reported.The Northern Cheyenne Tribe also did not approve of the name, noting that “Blue Sky” refers to a sacred ritual and that the renaming “would be considered exploitation”.Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado, requested in March that the federal naming board approve the peak’s renaming. The Colorado Sun reported that Polis’s request was part of a greater push to address violence and discrimination facing Indigenous people in US history. More

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      The supreme court made a surprising ruling for Native American rights | Nick Estes

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      A white couple in Texas felt racially discriminated against when facing barriers to adopting a Navajo child. Backed by powerful corporate interests and other non-Native families, the Brackeens brought their grievance to the US supreme court and attempted to overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA. The “rights” of individuals thereby stood against the collective rights of entire nations of people who were here first in a legal system not of their own making. The Brackeens argued that the law privileges Indians as a race over others, including white families, and is, therefore, unconstitutional. The argument reeked of “reverse racism”, a bogus notion that measures taken to protect marginalized people end up harming white people.The ICWA, however, was designed to reverse a sordid history of Native family separation that benefited white families seeking to adopt Native children. More importantly, the law guarantees that federally recognized tribes have a say in their children’s futures by keeping them with Native families. Those determinations are not based on race but on the political status of tribes and the rights of their members.Indian country blew a huge sigh of relief on Thursday when the rightwing-majority court ruled against the Brackeens and upheld the ICWA. A decision otherwise would have had dire consequences for tribes. Beyond removing protections for their children, it could have changed tribes’ status, which precedes the existence of the United States and its constitution, to that of racial minorities whose remaining lands, histories and identities would, without thought, be absorbed into the American melting pot.The 7-2 decision should be celebrated as a clear sign that not only is tribal sovereignty a constitutional reality, but it is also here to stay. Sadly, the supreme court, throughout its history, has more often done harm to Native sovereignty than protected it. “Often, Native American tribes have come to his court seeking justice only to leave with bowed heads and empty hands,” admitted Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, in his concurring majority opinion. His opinion offers a rich history of Indian child removal, examining the transition from federal Indian boarding schools to state welfare systems and adoption agencies that engaged in Native family separation.Gorsuch also writes of a 19th-century court that created the foundations of federal Indian law, upon which today’s justices draw. The court made those decisions during a time of great horror for Native people – often providing legal justification for Indigenous genocide and land seizures. In the 1823 case Johnson v M’Intosh, Chief Justice John Marshall argued that the United States inherited its right to Native lands from previous European powers. “Conquest gives a title which the courts of the conqueror cannot deny,” he wrote. The right to take lands from non-Christians and non-Europeans derived from 15th-century papal bulls known as the “doctrine of discovery”.That principle of racial and civilizational superiority hasn’t gone away and today infects the minds of jurists of all stripes. As recently as 2005, the supreme court invoked the doctrine in a ruling against a land claim by the Oneida Indian Nation. Writing against tribal sovereignty, the liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned against “rekindling embers of (tribal) sovereignty that long ago grew cold”.Last March, after the tireless advocacy of Indigenous peoples, the Vatican “repudiat(ed) those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery’”. That rejection, however, didn’t undo the centuries of terror against Indigenous peoples and their children taken from them to be “civilized” according to Christian principles. It didn’t return the land or property the Catholic church stole from Indigenous peoples. And it didn’t overturn the fundamental premise upon which federal Indian law still rests – European conquest.In his concurring opinion in Haaland v Brackeen, Gorsuch makes a strong case defending tribal sovereignty against the overbroad powers of Congress to curtail tribal sovereignty and the overreach of states in his concurring opinion. Liberal justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor joined Gorsuch in his opinion. But they didn’t concur with his assertion that the principle that Congress has “plenary power” to divest tribes of their sovereignty conflicts with the original understanding of the constitution. Gorsuch argues that the constitution doesn’t grant the authority to limit tribal sovereignty. Yet Congress has used its powers to terminate federally recognized tribes and divest tribes of criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians.Gorsuch’s concurring opinion shows he is the most serious about engaging federal Indian law and history. How far his call for aligning Indian law with original understandings of the constitution will go is anyone’s guess. His sympathies with tribal sovereignty also show that getting good legal outcomes for tribal nations is like rolling the dice with unelected judges who hold so much sway over the survival and existence of tribal nations.But the victory in keeping ICWA and upholding tribal sovereignty doesn’t lie with Gorsuch. Leading up to this decision, tribes and activists led an effective political campaign to teach the public. Since ICWA’s passage in 1978, 14 states passed their own state versions of the law. In anticipation of ICWA being overturned, several states (including several Republican-majority state governments) recently passed protections to uphold it.The popular sentiment is on the side of tribal sovereignty. It’s now a question of what actions must be taken to ensure the collective rights of tribes are guarded against the individual and corporate desires to lay claim to Native lands, identities and children.
      Nick Estes is a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and an assistant professer of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is a journalist, historian and the host of the Red Nation Podcast. He is the author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance More