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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

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      Wildflowers, eagles and Native history: can this California ridge be protected?

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      Molok Luyuk, a 11-mile (18km) rocky ridge just north of San Francisco, is a rare, idiosyncratic landscape. Purple and yellow wildflowers bloom against green and brown hillsides. Dark rock formations extend against lush cypress groves.Located along California’s inner coast ridge, “it’s a beautiful area, secluded from development,” said James Kinter, tribal secretary of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation. “And for us, it’s more than just a natural environment.”Now, the Yocha Dehe and local environmentalists are asking Joe Biden to add 13,700-acres (5,500 hectares) of the ridge to the Berryessa Snow Mountain national monument. Legislation introduced in Congress is also proposing tribal co-management of an expanded monument.“It’s a great opportunity to work with the federal government, the state government and local governments to protect this habitat and history,” Kinter said.Molok Luyuk means “condor ridge” in Patwin, and tribes in this region have always referred to the area that way. Though development, hunting, lead poisoning and DDT contamination have decimated the California condor population over the decades, the ridge is still a home to bald eagles, golden eagles and peregrine falcons, as well as more than 30 species of rare plants.Kinter has driven his family across the ridge many times. “It’s kind of a long drive,” he said laughing. “But, you know, it’s important to explain to them what is out there.”For thousands of years, the ridge served as a key trade route for northern California Indigenous nations, and was a meeting place for the Yocha Dehe, as well as the Cachil Dehe and Kletsel Dehe, said Kinter. A number of village sites and gravesites, and petroglyphs remain on the landscapeFrom the summit, there’s a clear view of the state’s most iconic peaks and mountain ranges – there’s Mount Diablo to the south, the Sutter Buttes and Sierra Nevadas to the east, Mount Shasta to the north. “You can see so much of California from just one place, from this one point,” said Sandra Schubert, executive director of local conservation group TuleyomeIt’s a botanical wonderland, said Nick Jensen, conservation program director at the California Native Plant Society. “One of the things that makes this place special is the diversity of environmental conditions, the diversity of habitats,” he said. “You have oak woodland, right next to a patch of grassland underlaid with clay soils, right next to serpentine chaparral.”The patches of clay soil are fertile grounds for delicate pink adobe lilies. And the harsh, serpentine soils – low in calcium and other minerals most plants need, and high in heavy metals like chromium – spark deep burgundy blooms of Hoover’s lomatium.This spring, after an especially wet, rainy winter, Molok Luyuk’s foothills were alive with fields of sweet butter-coloured creamcups and California goldfields, bird’s-eye gilia, and blue dicks.The ridge is also the largest habitat for MacNab cypress in California. Its small, tightly closed cones only open when they’re exposed to the high heat of a wildfire. “When a fire sweeps through a grove, the mother plant is almost always killed,” said Jensen. “And then what happens afterwards is this grand process of rebirth where you have thousands upon thousands of seedlings sprouting from the burn.”In 2015, Barack Obama designated Berryessa Snow Mountain, but only included a small portion of Molok Luyuk within its borders. Adding the rest of the ridge, the tribe and local environmentalists say, will ensure a protected wildlife corridor between Berryessa and the Mendocino national forest to the north.The Yocha Dehe would like to work with the local and federal agencies to reintroduce indigenous land stewardship practices to the area, including the use of prescribed burns in a landscape that has evolved with fire. “Here, this is an awesome opportunity to show some of the Indigenous knowledge of how to take care of the land,” Kinter said.And eventually, Kinter said, the tribe would like to help reintroduce California condors, so they can once again soar over this stretch.Last year, senators Alex Padilla and Dianne Feinstein, along with California representative John Garamendi, introduced legislation to add about 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) of the ridge to the Berryessa monument, and officially change its name from “Walker Ridge” to Molok Luyuk.Lawmakers reintroduced the legislation this year, as well. But nearly 10,000 acres (4,000 hectares) of the ridge, however, were excluded from that legislation, after Colusa county supervisors asked those areas be left out of the monument.A monument designation would increase the bureaucracy and consultation required for fire management, logging and other activity in the area, said Gary Evans, vice chair of the Colusa county board of supervisors. “I’m one with the whole nature thing but it’s gone off the deep end,” he said. “We’re going overboard with the touchy feely thing.”In a letter to Padilla sent in June, county officials also opposed the renaming of Walker Ridge, and said doing so would require changing maps, and would confuse law enforcement and fire response teams that work in the area. The name Walker Ridge is “just fine”, said Evans. “I just hate rewriting history.”The Bureau of Land Management supported the expansion in testimony to congress, though the office said it could not comment further on pending legislation. The expansion “aligns with the administration’s conservation goals,” Mark Lambrecht, assistant director of the National Conservation Lands and Community Partnership, testified.Regardless of whether the legislation passes, local environmental groups are also petitioning the Biden administration to designate the entirety of Molok Luyuk under the Antiquities Act. The administration has so far named three new national monuments, and restored three monuments that the Trump administration reduced.“We just want to make sure we’re protecting our cultural sites and also protecting the natural habitat,” Kinter said. “It’s not just for tribal folk. It’s American history, California history right there.”Periodic proposals to develop wind energy projects in the area have been denied, but a monument designation would ensure that key habitats and archaeological sites across the ridge are protected in perpetuity.A national monument designation would come with additional resources and funding to improve trails and access routes, and the ability to better preserve some areas, while also opening up others for recreation and tourism, said Schubert, whose group organises hikes and wildflower tours on the ridge. In consultation with tribes, the federal government could help create more opportunities for hiking, mountain biking, off-roading and camping, she said. “You could have art classes and science classes up here,” she said.“It’s a very auspicious area,” said Eddie “EJ” Crandell, a supervisor in Lake county, and former chairman of the Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians of California. “And if it’s marked as such, I think people will really take a liking to it.” More

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      Biden denies reports that Alaska oil drilling project has been approved

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      Biden denies reports that Alaska oil drilling project has been approvedSigning off on the Willow plan would place the president’s political career in conflict with climate-minded DemocratsThe Biden administration has denied reports that it has authorized a key oil drilling project on Alaska’s north slope, a highly contentious project that environmentalists argue would damage a pristine wilderness and gut White House commitments to combat climate crisis.Late Friday, Bloomberg was first to report citing anonymous sources that senior Biden advisers had signed off on the project and formal approval would be made public by the Interior Department next week.The decision to authorize drilling on the north slope, if correct, would amount to one of the most symbolically important climate decisions of Biden’s political career and place his administration in conflict with the climate-alert left wing of the Democratic party.But that pressure is countered by unions and some Indigenous communities in Alaska who say approval of the project would provide economic security in the state beyond the borders of the 9.3m-hectare (23m acres) area of the north slope that is considered the largest tract of undisturbed public land in the US.But after reports were published, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said “no final decisions have been made” on the project and “anyone who says there has been a final decision is wrong”.Earlier on Friday, former vice-president Al Gore said it would be “recklessly irresponsible” to allow the project to proceed. “The pollution it would generate will not only put Alaska native and other local communities at risk, it is incompatible with the ambition we need to achieve a net zero future,” he said.Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski said on Friday that a decision was “imminent”. The Republican senator previously called the size of the project “minuscule” and that it has been “meticulously planned” to avoid harm to the environment.Biden has come under intense pressure from lawmakers and the courts, and high energy prices that have dogged his first term as president after he vowed “no more drilling on federal lands, period” during his campaign.But White House policy to oppose new oil leases and discourage domestic shale-oil drilling, has also forced its hand in other areas. Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia last year to urge increases in Saudi production came at a high political cost and was broadly fruitless.White House approval of “the Willow Master Development Plan”, a multi-billion ConocoPhillips project to drill oil inside the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska would serve as a substantial win for the oil-and-gas industries.ConocoPhillips has said the Willow plan could provide more than $17bn in revenue for federal, state and local governments and create over 2,800 jobs. It could suck an estimated 600m barrels of oil from beneath the permafrost and, at a projected 180,000 daily barrels of oil, would produce approximately 1.6% of current US production.Under those figures, the project would also contribute 280m tons of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere when the oil was processed and used across fossil-fuel dependent economy.Unlike other, small oil and gas leases approved by the White House it would also be one that Biden approves without the force of court or congressional orders.The oil giant, which reported profits of $18.7bn in 2022, double the previous year, originally requested permits to drill on five locations but later scaled back to three.ConocoPhillips has said it cannot comment on the decision until it has a formal record.The Interior Department has previously said it has “substantial concerns” about the Willow project’s impact upon the climate and the subsistence lifestyle of native Alaskan communities – but has completed an environmental review of the development that it said would improve it.A wave of opposition to the Willow project has included rallies in Washington DC and an online #StopWillow campaign that has garnered more than 3m signatures.Siqiniq Maupin with the Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic has warned that the project would threaten subsistence lifestyle of native communities that rely upon the migration of caribou.“President Biden continues to address climate change during high-profile speeches and events but his actions are contradictory,” Maupin said.TopicsBiden administrationAlaskaOilClimate crisisIndigenous peoplesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden declares Arizona floods a federal disaster for Havasupai tribe

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      Biden declares Arizona floods a federal disaster for Havasupai tribeThe declaration provides funds and federal assistance for emergency and permanent infrastructure The White House has made a federal disaster declaration for the Havasupai Native American tribe that mainly lives deep inside the Grand Canyon in Arizona, as the community prepares to reopen tourist access to its famous turquoise waterfalls next month.Last October, the village experienced drastic flooding which damaged extensive parts of the reservation.The floods “destroyed several bridges and trails that are needed not only for our tourists, but for the everyday movement of goods and services into the Supai Village”, the tribe said.The Havasupai is now readying itself to receive tourists again from 1 February on its reservation, which sits nine miles down narrow trails between spectacular red rock cliffs deep within the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. Tourists must apply for permits to enter the reservation.It is the first time that tourists have been allowed to return to the reservation not only since the flooding, but in almost three years, since tourism was closed off early in 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic spread across the US. The canyon community has very limited health care resources on site.The tribe is one of North America’s smallest and is the only one based inside the canyon, where the community has lived for more than 800 years, despite being driven off much of its original, much wider, territory by armed settlers in the 19th century.On 31 December the White House announced that Joe Biden had approved a disaster declaration for the Havasupai. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), such a declaration provides a wide range of federal assistance programs for individuals and public infrastructure, including funds for emergency and permanent work.The tribe grows crops and keeps farm animals on a thin ribbon of land inside the canyon, alongside the naturally occurring, vividly hued streams and falls. Havasupai means the people of the blue-green water.The tribe issued a statement last month, reflecting on last fall’s flooding, saying: “This has been a trying experience for all involved … However, there are many positive things as a result. While you may see downed trees on the trails where the flood crashed through, you will also see flourishing flora and fauna and new waterfall flows.”The White House noted that: “Federal funding is available to the Havasupai tribe and certain private non-profit organizations on a cost-sharing basis for emergency work and the repair or replacement of facilities damaged by the flooding,” the statement continued.In December, the tribe noted that it had been in a dispute with the third-party tourism operator it had normally worked with and had switched to another operator in preparation of the 2023 tourism season.Last month, the tribe also reported fresh uranium mining activity in the Grand Canyon region where the tribe’s water source originates, which it has long claimed is an existential threat.“It is time to permanently ban uranium mining – not only to preserve the Havasupai tribe’s cultural identity and our existence as the Havasupai people but to protect the Grand Canyon for generations to come,” the tribal chairman, Thomas Siyuja Sr, said in a statement reported by Native News Online. “With recent activity observed inside the mine fence, it is clear that the mining company is making plans to begin its operations.”The legacy of uranium mining has long threatened Native American communities, including the Havasupai tribe. From 1944 to 1986, close to 30m tons of uranium ore were extracted from neighboring Navajo lands. During the cold war, companies extracted millions of tons of uranium in those territories to meet the demands for nuclear weapons, causing environmental blight.TopicsArizonaNative AmericansIndigenous peoplesFloodingUS politicsJoe BidennewsReuse this content More

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      Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma could get first delegate to Congress in 200 years

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      Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma could get first delegate to Congress in 200 yearsThe tribe’s right to representation is detailed in the 1835 Treaty of New Echota, which forced them from their ancestral land The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma moved a step closer on Wednesday to having a promise fulfilled from nearly 200 years ago that a delegate from the tribe be seated in Congress.Chuck Hoskin Jr, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, was among those who testified before the US House rules committee, which is the first to examine the prospect of seating a Cherokee delegate in the US House. Hoskin, the elected leader of the 440,000-member tribe, put the effort in motion in 2019 when he nominated Kimberly Teehee, a former adviser to Barack Obama, to the position. The tribe’s governing council then unanimously approved her.Trump for 2024 would be ‘bad mistake’, Republican says as blame game deepens Read moreThe tribe’s right to a delegate is detailed in the Treaty of New Echota signed in 1835, which provided the legal basis for the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation from its ancestral homelands east of the Mississippi River and led to the Trail of Tears, but it has never been exercised. A separate treaty in 1866 affirmed this right, Hoskin said.“The Cherokee Nation has in fact adhered to our obligations under these treaties. I’m here to ask the United States to do the same,” Hoskin told the panel.Hoskin suggested to the committee that Teehee could be seated as early as this year by way of either a resolution or change in statute, and the committee’s chairman, the Massachusetts Democrat James McGovern, and other members supported the idea that it could be accomplished quickly.“This can and should be done as quickly as possible,” McGovern said. “The history of this country is a history of broken promise after broken promise to Native American communities. This cannot be another broken promise.”But McGovern and other committee members, including the ranking member, Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, acknowledged there are some questions that need to be resolved, including whether other Native American tribes are afforded similar rights and whether the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma is the proper successor to the tribe that entered into the treaty with the US government.McGovern said he has been contacted by officials with the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the Delaware Nation, both of which have separate treaties with the US government that call for some form of representation in Congress. McGovern also noted there were also two other federally recognized bands of Cherokee Indians that argue they should be considered successors to the 1835 treaty: the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians based in North Carolina, both of which contacted his office.The UKB selected its own congressional delegate, the Oklahoma attorney Victoria Holland, in 2021. Holland said in an interview with the Associated Press that her tribe is a successor to the Cherokee Nation that signed the 1835 treaty, just like the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.“As such, we have equal rights under all the treaties with the Cherokee people and we should be treated as siblings,” Holland said.Members of the committee seemed to be in agreement that any delegate from the Cherokee Nation would be similar to five other delegates from the District of Columbia, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands. These delegates are assigned to committees and can submit amendments to bills, but cannot vote on the floor for final passage of bills. Puerto Rico is represented by a non-voting resident commissioner who is elected every four years.TopicsNative AmericansOklahomaIndigenous peoplesHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Native American elders recall abuse at US government boarding schools

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      Native American elders recall abuse at US government boarding schoolsElders testify in Oklahoma about beatings, whippings and sexual abuse at institutions that sought to assimilate Native children Native American tribal elders who were once students at government-backed Indian boarding schools testified Saturday in Oklahoma about the hardships they endured, including beatings, whippings, sexual assaults, forced haircuts and hurtful nicknames.They came from different states and different tribes, but they shared the common experience of having attended the schools that were designed to strip Indigenous people of their cultural identities.Trump considers waiving Bannon’s executive privilege claim, reports sayRead more“I still feel that pain,“ said 84-year-old Donald Neconie, a former US Marine and member of the Kiowa Tribe who once attended the Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, about 80 miles south-west of Oklahoma City. “I will never, ever forgive this school for what they did to me.“It may be good now. But it wasn’t back then.’As the elders spoke, US secretary of the interior Deb Haaland, herself a Laguna Pueblo from New Mexico and the first Native American cabinet secretary in US history, listened quietly. The event at the Riverside Indian school, which still operates today but with a vastly different mission, was the first stop on a year-long nationwide tour to hear about the painful experiences of Native Americans who were sent to the government-backed boarding schools.“Federal Indian boarding school policies have touched every Indigenous person I know,“ Haaland said at the start of the event, which attracted Native Americans from throughout the region. “Some are survivors. Some are descendants. But we all carry the trauma in our hearts.“My ancestors endured the horrors of the Indian boarding school assimilation policies carried out by the same department that I now lead. This is the first time in history that a cabinet secretary comes to the table with this shared trauma.”Haaland’s agency recently released a report that identified more than 400 of the schools, which sought to assimilate Native children into white society during a period that stretched from the late 18th century until the late 1960s. Although most closed their doors long ago and none still exist to strip students of their identities, some still function as schools, albeit with drastically different missions that celebrate the cultural backgrounds of their Native students.Among them is Riverside, which is one of the oldest.Riverside, which opened in 1871, serves students from grades four through 12 these days, offering them specialized academic programs as well as courses on cultural topics such as bead-working, shawl-making and an introduction to tribal art, foods and games.Currently operated by the Bureau of Indian Education, it has nearly 800 students from more than 75 tribes across the country, and the school’s administration, staff and faculty are mostly Native American.It is one of 183 elementary and secondary schools across the country funded by the Bureau of Indian Education that seek to provide education aligned with a tribe’s needs for cultural and economic wellbeing, according to the bureau’s website.But Riverside also has a dark history of mistreating the thousands of Native American students who were forced from their homes to attend it.Neconie, who still lives in Anadarko, recalled being beaten if he cried or spoke his native Kiowa language when he attended Riverside in the late 1940s and early 1950s.“Every time I tried to talk Kiowa, they put lye in my mouth,“ he said. “It was 12 years of hell.“Brought Plenty, a Standing Rock Sioux who lives in Dallas, recalled the years she spent at Indian boarding schools in South Dakota, where she was forced to cut her hair and told not to speak her Native language. She recalled being forced to whip other girls with wet towels and being punished when she didn’t.“What they did to us makes you feel so inferior,“ she said. “You never get past this. You never forget it.“Until recently, the federal government hadn’t been open to examining its role in the troubled history of Native American boarding schools. But this has changed because people who know about the trauma that was inflicted hold prominent positions in government.At least 500 children died at such schools, but that number is expected to reach into the thousands or tens of thousands as more research is done.The interior department’s report includes a list of the boarding schools in what were states or territories that operated between 1819 and 1969 that had a housing component and received support from the federal government.Oklahoma had the most, 76, followed by Arizona with 47 and New Mexico with 43. All three states still have significant Native American populations.Former students might be hesitant to recount the painful past and trust a government whose policies were to eradicate tribes and, later, assimilate them under the veil of education. But some welcome the opportunity to share their stories for the first time.Not all the memories from those who attended the schools were painful ones.Dorothy WhiteHorse, 89, a Kiowa who attended Riverside in the 1940s, said she recalled learning to dance the jitterbug in the school’s gymnasium and being taught to speak English for the first time. She also recalled older Kiowa women who served as house mothers in the dormitories who let her speak her Native language and treated her with kindness.“I was helped,“ WhiteHorse said. “I’m one of the happy ones.“But WhiteHorse also had some troubling memories, including the time she said three young boys ran away from the home and got caught in a snowstorm. She said all three froze to death.“I think we need a memorial for those boys,“ she said.TopicsUS newsUS politicsOklahomaDeb HaalandIndigenous peoplesReuse this content More