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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

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      ‘Why not me?’: the boot camp giving Indigenous women the tools to run for office

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      ‘Why not me?’: the boot camp giving Indigenous women the tools to run for office Indigenous women are underrepresented in the US Congress and other elected offices. The Native Action Network wants to change thatOn a picturesque island just a 30-minute ferry ride from downtown Seattle, Juanita Perez described losing a recent race for a delegate seat for the Tlingit and Haida tribes:“I didn’t have all the tools to do it the right way,” she said.It was a recent weekend in April and the third day of an advocacy boot camp put on by the Native Action Network, a non-profit in Seattle, Washington. She was sitting in a circle of more than a dozen Native women going over the challenges of running for office as a Native woman and the political positions they were each interested in pursuing. The event, a first for the organization, was designed to help more “Native womxn” run for office at every level.The 20 participants from 17 different tribes had traveled to the meeting space from across Washington state and Oregon. There was a PhD student, a school district board member, a child advocate, a Native American education liaison, real estate brokers and an undergraduate student.Some, like Perez, had already tried their hand in the political realm, while others were still getting acquainted with the prospect.But each one had put their life on hold as they explored the idea of taking a seat at the decision-making table that too often leaves out Native women. And in the process, they had each found a loyal support system in each other.In 2020, the Center for American Women and Politics, which has tracked female political candidacies for 30 years, identified a record 18 women who identified as Native American as running for US congressional seats, with two winning in the House. The center’s figures don’t include Yvette Herrell, who is a member of the Cherokee nation and was elected to the House.The following year, Representative Deb Haaland, an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Laguna, became the first Indigenous cabinet secretary in US history.But American Indian or Alaska Native women account for 1.1% of the population, and yet they, in combination with Native Hawaiian women, still make up just 0.2% of all voting members of Congress.In other words, they continue to be largely left out of the decision-making at the highest levels of the country, despite the fact, as Leah Salgado, chief impact officer for the Native women-led organization IllumiNative, explained it, that their “very existence is a political issue”.Now, as the country heads into the midterm elections, the bootcamp is meant to build on the momentum of past years by creating a space that, unlike many other campaign trainings, was Native specific, said Iris Friday, president and co-founder of Native Action Network.“It makes all the difference when you get all of these women in the room and they have a safe space where they can have open, honest conversations and dialogues,” she said. “It’s just so powerful to see what transpires at the end of the day.”There appear to be nine women who identify as Native American running for US congressional seats in the upcoming elections, said Kelly Dittmar, director of research for the Center for American women and politics, the second highest number to date. That number could still increase, as more than 100 women have registered their candidacy without stipulating their race. Salgado said it’s important to understand the historical context surrounding Native people and the country’s political system. Native people were not granted citizenship in the US until 1924, and then it took more than three decades before they were considered eligible to vote in every state.“Native people stepping into a place where we’re training and putting forth efforts to ensure Native people have access to the political process is necessary and important because we haven’t always had access to it,” she said.Although still fairly rare, she said she has noticed a slight increase in training sessions like this one. But, she said, getting Native women into leadership roles is just one step. It’s also about helping them once they are there.“It also has to be about what are the ways in which we’re making sure that they’re supported through all of this because you don’t get elected and then the racism stops,” she said.In a series of detailed sessions, the boot camp participants were taught about fundraising, Pacs, communication styles and crafting their individual message. They heard from the Washington state senator Mona Das, a Democrat, and the Suquamish Tribe council member Windy Anderson.On Saturday morning, a professional photographer took their headshots. By Sunday, their bags were full of such books as Lead from the Outside by Stacey Abrams and Run for Something by Amanda Litman.Each day the women sat along long wooden tables, sharing meals together. There were spontaneous discussions on Indigenous language revitalization and blood quantum. In the evenings they stayed together in nearby lodges.In the following months, they will have at least three additional training sessions, including one on public speaking in July.Lafaitele Faitalia, 38, who is Tongan and Samoan, is considering a run for the Washington state house. The training taught her about bringing her authentic self, she said, while at the same time it helped her understand Pacs and the daunting prospect of fundraising.“If you’re not exposed to the political systems in the US; if you don’t know what that looks like, [or about] navigating these systems, but you want to make change and you want to run for office, it’s going to be intimidating,” said Faitalia, who is a chief in Samoa and serves on Washington state’s commission on Asian Pacific American affairs.Lisa Young, 59, who is Tlingit and Navajo, has spent 15 years working as a finance director for city government, but is now considering a campaign for city council in her small home town of Redmond, Oregon. She said she wants to give a voice to its small Native population, along with its other minorities, as well as immigrants.“[Being] here allowed me to re-energize and say I can be that person of service even though I know there’s going to be barriers,” she said. “I think these women strengthened me a little bit. Enough to say, OK, I’m less afraid today than I was before.”Claudia Kauffman, vice-president and co-founder of Native Action Network, is very familiar with what it’s like running for political office as a Native woman. In 2007, she was sworn in as the first Native woman elected to the Washington state senate.But, she said, it was a moment more than 25 years ago, when she was working for the Indigenous activist Bernie Whitebear, that helped to spur her to run. They were at the state capitol in Olympia, meeting with lawmakers to try to get funding for afterschool programming for Native children.“They’re just people just like you and me,” he told her.She remembers thinking, “If they’re just people, then why not me?”Now, through this advocacy boot camp, she is trying to have a similar impact on these Native women, no matter what type of position they may be seeking.“Our job, our duty, is to cultivate future leaders, the next generation of leaders that we have within our community that we know are strong and resilient and committed,” she said.By the third day of the training, when organizers asked the group whether they were inspired to run for office, six women raised their hands, with two others saying they wanted to explore getting seats on boards and commissions.Perhaps just as important was how quickly the women had become each other’s steadfast supporters.On that final day of the bootcamp, when Perez described losing the race, within seconds participants responded with messages of support.One encouraged her to go bigger if her tribal community wasn’t receptive to her. Another said she had connections at the tribe, and offered to help. Then a third told her: “You’re not alone.”TopicsNative AmericansIndigenous peoplesUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      California plan would give $100m to Indigenous leaders to buy ancestral lands

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      California plan would give $100m to Indigenous leaders to buy ancestral landsProposal is part of Gavin Newsom’s pledge to preserve one-third of the state’s land and coastal waters by 2030 Governor Gavin Newsom on Friday proposed giving California’s Indigenous nations $100m so they can purchase and preserve their ancestral lands.The proposal is part of his pledge to make sure nearly one-third of California’s land and coastal waters are preserved by 2030. But rather than have the government do all of that, Newsom said Indigenous leaders should have a say in what lands get preserved.“We know that California Native peoples have always had an interdependent relations with land, waters, everything that makes up the state of California,” Newsom said. “Unfortunately we also know that the state has had a role in violently disrupting those relations.”‘It’s a powerful feeling’: the Indigenous American tribe helping to bring back buffaloRead moreThe money is one piece of Newsom’s $286.4bn budget proposal. The state legislature would have to approve the spending before it could happen.The funding would not function like a traditional state grant program, where the state decides who gets the money and how they can spend it. Instead, natural resources secretary Wade Crowfoot said the administration is “committed to developing a structure or a process where tribes are deciding where these funds are going”.“There’s so much that we need to learn, obviously, from the tribal communities about how to do this,” Crowfoot said. “We’ve disconnected ourselves from all the tribal ecological knowledge that we need to heal and care for the lands.”He added, “We heard loud and clear in our consultations with more than 70 different California Native American tribes a strong desire from tribal governments to play a leading role in restoration and conservation efforts that benefit tribal communities and honor their connections to the lands and waters.”The proposal comes amid a growing Land Back movement to return Indigenous homelands to the descendants of those who lived there for millennia before European settlers arrived.Aside from buying land, nations in California could also use the money for programs that address climate change and workforce development.Crowfoot spoke during a meeting of the California Truth & Healing Council, established by Newsom in 2019 to “clarify the record” of the “troubled relationship between tribes and the state”.Indigenous leaders were enthusiastic about Newsom’s proposal, but worried how it would work in practice. In some cases, nations have competing claims over the same land. Deciding who will get the money to purchase that land would be difficult.Kouslaa Kessler-Mata, a member of the Truth & Healing Council, said the state needed to have a policy in place to resolve those conflicts “so that we don’t just wake up one day and say, ‘Oh, guess what? Right now, that land that you thought was in your ancestral territory is now being acquired by someone else.”Caleem Sisk, chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, noted some nations – like hers – are not recognized by the federal government and have few resources of other nations that are federally recognized.“We’re not in any position to really compete with them for a grant,” she said.Crowfoot said he did not have a “quick and easy answer” to some of the council’s concerns. He said ultimately the state will need “some sort of consultative body to help us shape this funding to be able to work through that”.Newsom signed an executive order in 2020 directing that 30% of California’s land and coastal waters be preserved by 2030. He has called that goal a “mandate”, saying it is important for California to reduce the effects of climate change.Crowfoot echoed that sentiment Friday, saying preserving land would allow more plants and soil to “actually absorb that pollution from the atmosphere and store it in the land”.“Nature is needed in this effort to combat climate change,” he said.Under Newsom’s budget proposal, the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) would manage the new Indigenous funding commitment.This year, CNRA and its entities have awarded funds for various projects such as the Ocean Protection Council which funded $1.3m to the Wiyot Tribe for the purchase and restoration of 48 acres of its ancestral land. The funding also helps to strengthen coastal resiliency across the Humboldt coastline.Other CNRA-funded projects include youth access grants worth up to $773,000. The grants were distributed to the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians, and the Wiyot Tribe.In January, a group of ten nations residing on the northern California coast reclaimed parts of their ancestral land, including ancient redwoods. Save the Redwoods League, a nonprofit conservation group transferred more than 500 hectares (1,200 acres) on the Lost Coast to the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council.The group has since been responsible for protecting the land dubbed Tc’ih-Léh-Dûñ, or “Fish Run Place” in the Sinkyone language.TopicsCaliforniaIndigenous peoplesConservationNative AmericansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Why Indigenous voters who helped elect Kyrsten Sinema feel betrayed

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      Why Indigenous voters who helped elect Kyrsten Sinema feel betrayed The Arizona Democrat supports a filibuster that could kill legislation to counter assaults on voting rightsIndigenous leaders who mobilized Arizona voters to help elect Senator Kyrsten Sinema say the centrist Democratic lawmaker can no longer count on their support, as communities feel betrayed.Sinema was elected in 2018, halfway through Trump’s term, amid growing alarm at the rollback of voting rights and environmental protections that disproportionately affect tribal communities. Sinema entered the Senate after six years in Congress, having beaten her Republican opponent with 50% of the vote, thanks in part to the large turnout among Indigenous Americans in Arizona.Private equity’s dirty dozen: the 12 US firms funding dirty energy projectsRead moreTwo years later, another record turnout among the state’s 22 tribes was crucial in flipping Arizona from red to blue and securing Biden’s path to the White House.But Sinema’s record as a senator is under mounting scrutiny after she and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin sided with Republicans to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, effectively killing legislation designed to counter an onslaught of voting rights restrictions in states across the country.The sweeping voting rights reforms include the Native American Voting Rights Act (Navra) , which would allow tribes to determine the number and location of voter registration sites, polling places and ballot drop boxes on their reservations.Navra is widely supported by tribal nations, but if the filibuster remains intact Democrats need 10 Republicans to vote in favor of the bill.Sinema supports the voting rights legislation, but it has no chance of passing unless the filibuster – the Senate tradition designed to allow the minority party to prolong debate and delay or prevent a vote – is removed.Jonathan Nez, president of the Navajo nation, the largest tribe in the US, told the Guardian: “We’re disappointed in the senator. She’s on the national stage due to the Native American vote and large turnout among Navajo people. If she doesn’t deliver on what’s important to us, I’m sure there’s another candidate who will.”Nez added: “There is much frustration among voters, the Native American voting rights act is very important to us given the way the state of Arizona has been chipping away at our voting rights.”Nationally, there are 574 federally recognized American Indian tribes and Alaska Native Villages, accounting for about 1.5% (4.5m) of the total population.This includes 22 tribes in Arizona, including the Tohono O’odham nation, the Hopi tribe, three Apache tribes and the Navajo nation, whose territory extends into Utah and New Mexico. Just over 27% of Arizona is governed by tribal sovereignty.The political culture varies from tribe to tribe – and some in Arizona have publicly voiced support for Sinema – but those in Indigenous communities are less likely to be registered to vote than other groups due to a number of historical barriers. Indigenous Americans did not have the right to vote until 1948. Longstanding structural obstacles, including poor roads, scarce public transit options and limited postal and translation services, have restricted their participation in elections.In recent years, Arizona and several other states have passed laws and regulations that make voting even harder for Indigenous Americans – and other underserved communities who tend to vote Democrat. This includes restrictions on early-voter locations, mail-in ballots and ballot collection drives, which legal experts say disproportionately affect ruralIndigenous voters.The US Senate has also thwarted two bills Republicans had previously blocked four times with a filibuster – the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.Navra, which does have some bipartisan support, would ban states from closing or merging polling sites on reservations without tribal consent, and would require states with voter identification laws to accept tribal ID.Sinema’s support of the filibuster has undermined a mammoth effort by grassroots activists to mobilize Indigenous voters, according to Tara Benally, field director of the Rural Utah Project, a nonprofit that mobilizes underrepresented voters in rural Arizona and Utah.Benally said: “Our community outreach workers spent hours upon hours registering and gaining the trust of voters in the run up to the 2018 and 2020 elections after decades of being pushed aside at the local, state and federal level.“Senator Sinema has completely undermined what we did and betrayed her voters. I highly doubt people will vote for her again unless by some miracle she changes her values and stops working against those who elected her.”About 10,000 new Indigenous voters were registeredin Arizona ahead of the last presidential election – which Biden won by just over 10,000 votes. In 2020, voter turnout on the reservations ranged from 41 to 71% compared to 29 to 57% in 2016.Torey Dolan, an Indigenous fellow at the Indian Law Clinic at Arizona State University, said: “Sinema got the lion’s share of the votes on the reservations; they played a significant role in getting her and Biden elected. Her opposition to removing the filibuster means a death knell for Navra, and that has left a sour taste in a lot of people’s mouths here.”She added: “[Going forward] it will be hard to encourage people to register when they don’t see their votes fulfilling the hopes and promises placed on them.”Sinema voted with Donald Trump 63% of the time as a member of the House (2016 to 2018) and 26% of the time as a senator (2019 to 2021), according to FiveThirtyEight. Voting for the filibuster was the first time she voted against her party since Biden took office.In addition to voting rights, Biden’s $1.75tn sweeping economic recovery and social welfare spending initiative is also in serious trouble.The Build Back Better (BBB) bill includes funding for affordable housing, healthcare, nutrition, education grants and child support – basic services which are disproportionately lacking in tribal communities due to the US government’s failure to comply with treaty obligations. Unlike towns and cities, tribes cannot raise money through property taxes as reservation lands are held in trust by the federal government.The BBB also includes $550bn to tackle greenhouse emissions, the country’s largest ever climate crisis investment. It builds on other major infrastructure investments, such as the American Rescue Plan, that have benefited tribal communities.Unlike Manchin, who outright opposes the bill, Sinema has signaled support for the White House’s BBB framework but has not committed to voting for it in its current form.Hannah Hurley, Sinema’s spokesperson, said: “Kyrsten remains laser-focused on delivering lasting solutions for tribal communities across Arizona, and thanks to strong partnerships with tribal leaders she’s delivered historic investments improving tribal roads and bridges, ensuring cleaner water, deploying broadband, helping tribes tackle climate change challenges, and strengthening health care resources. She will continue to work with tribal communities in Arizona expanding economic opportunities and ensuring the federal government honors its obligations.”But Eric Descheenie, former Arizona state house representative for the district which includes the Navajo nation, said Sinema faces a major trust issue.“The climate change agenda needs help from senators like Kyrsten Sinema, who represents some of the most influential tribes in the land, and needs to do a better job heeding the wisdom of our people … The problem is, no progressive can trust her,” Descheenie said.TopicsUS politicsIndigenous peoplesNative AmericansArizonaDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Why is the right suddenly interested in Native American adoption law? | Nick Estes

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      OpinionUS politicsWhy is the US right suddenly interested in Native American adoption law?Nick EstesA 1978 law tried to remedy adoption practices created to forcibly assimilate Native children. Now conservative lawyers are arguing that the law constitutes ‘reverse racism’ Mon 23 Aug 2021 06.23 EDTLast modified on Mon 23 Aug 2021 12.05 EDTGeorge Armstrong Custer of the Seventh Cavalry was infamous during the 19th-century Indian wars for riding into the enemy camp, holding Native women, children and elders hostage at gunpoint, and forcing the surrender of the tribe. He systematically attacked and captured civilians to crush Indigenous resistance, which is partly how he defeated the Cheyenne at the Battle of Washita River in 1868. Cheyenne, Lakota and Arapaho warriors later killed Custer as he fled after trying the same hostage-taking ploy at the Battle of Greasy Grass in 1876.Attacking non-combatants, especially children, to enable the conquest of land by destroying the family, and therefore Indigenous nations, wasn’t unique to Custer or the US military.There’s a reason why “forcibly transferring children” from one group to another is an international legal definition of genocide. Taking children has been one strategy for terrorizing Native families for centuries, from the mass removal of Native children from their communities into boarding schools to their widespread adoption and fostering out to mostly white families. It’s what led to the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978, touchstone legislation that aimed to reverse more than a century of state-sponsored family separation.Yet the spirit of Custer still haunts the fate of Native children even today. The fight has shifted from battlefield to courtroom.In the new season of the This Land podcast premiering this Monday, Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagle shows how corporate lawyers and rightwing thinktanks like the Cato Institute have teamed up with non-Native families to not only dismantle the ICWA but the entire legal structure protecting Native rights. And so far, they’ve made small but important victories.Last April, an appeals court upheld parts of a federal district court decision, in a case called Brackeen v Haaland, that found parts of ICWA “unconstitutional”. The non-Indian plaintiffs contend that federal protections to keep Native children with Native families constitute illegal racial discrimination, and that ICWA’s federal standards “commandeer” state courts and agencies for a federal agenda. Put plainly, the mostly white families wanting to foster and adopt Native children are claiming reverse racism and arguing that federal overreach is trampling states’ rights – two codewords frequently associated with dismantling anti-racist policies.According to this upside-down logic, ICWA – monumental legislation consciously designed to undo genocidal, racist policy – is racist because it prevents mostly non-Indians from adopting Native children. The thinking is as old as the “civilizing” mission of colonialism – saving brown children from brown parents.Native child welfare in practice, however, is quite different, and, as Nagle shows in story after heartbreaking story, it very often works against the interests of Native children and families and in favor of families like the plaintiffs in Brackeen.Court records show that two of the three non-Indian families in Brackeen have successfully fostered or adopted Native children despite ICWA protections and with tribes agreeing to the adoption. But they still claim discrimination.A mountain of evidence suggests that Native families, particularly poor ones, are the real victims.In two studies from 1969 to 1974, the Association on American Indian Affairs found that 25-35% of all Native children had been separated from the families and placed in foster homes or adoptive homes or institutions. Ninety percent were placed in non-Indian homes.ICWA aimed to reverse this trend. Today, Native children are four times more likely to be removed from their families than white children are from theirs. And according to a 2020 study, in many states Native family separation has surpassed rates prior to ICWA. This is mostly due to states ignoring or flouting ICWA requirements.A common cause for removal is “neglect”, a form of abuse and a highly skewed claim especially when the Native families most targeted are poor. Failure to pay rent, for example, can result in eviction and homelessness and the placement of a child in state foster care system because of unstable living conditions. Some state statutes may provide up to several thousands of dollars a child per month to foster parents, depending on the number of children in their care and a child’s special needs.Why doesn’t that money go towards keeping families together by providing homes instead of tearing them apart?And there’s the dark side of foster care.Much like the boarding school system which preceded it, foster care is rife with stories of sexual and physical abuse, neglect and forced assimilation into dominant, white culture. To say nothing of the lifelong trauma of being torn from one’s family and nation during the formative years of childhood.So why are corporate law firms like Gibson Dunn – which has represented Walmart, Amazon, Chevron and Shell and is a former employer of the far-right Arkansas senator Tom Cotton – showing up at custody battles to square off with poor Native families and tribes? Are they really interested in the welfare of Native children?It’s foolish to think Custer had the best interests of Native children in mind when he captured them at gunpoint to slaughter and imprison their parents or that the Indian boarding school system, which disappeared thousands of children and raped, tortured, and traumatized countless more, was about “education”.Powerful conservative forces want to bring Brackeen v Haaland to the supreme court not just to overturn the ICWA but to gut Native tribes’ federal protections and rights. Like their counterparts the anti-critical race crusaders, anti-ICWA advocates use the language of “equality” to target Native nations. The collective tyranny of the tribe, the thinking goes, violates the rights of the individual.It’s the libertarian spin on the genocidal logic of Richard Henry Pratt’s nineteenth century maxim to justify child removal: “Kill the Indian, save the man.” The “Indian” is the tribal consciousness; the collective rights of a nation and its sovereignty must be weakened or destroyed to gain access to its lands and resources.Without the tribe, there is no Indian. When there is no Indian, there’s no one to claim the land.White congressmen from western states used the same reasoning to terminate tribes in the 1950s, making the argument that the collective rights of tribes shouldn’t trump individual rights of US citizens. The results were catastrophic. The legal abolition of dozens of tribes led to the privatization of their lands for the benefit of white settlers and businesses.Indigenous people are trying to drag the people of this land into the twentieth-first century by advocating for the protection of healthy water and land, the very elements necessary for all life, a true universal aspiration for a future on a livable planet that benefits everyone. And Native journalists like Rebecca Nagle reveal how nefarious corporate interests are trying to undermine that project by attacking the most precious among us – our children.
      Nick Estes is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. He is a journalist, historian, and 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 (Verso, 2019)
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      US to investigate ‘unspoken traumas’ of Native American boarding schools

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      The US government will investigate the troubled legacy of Native American boarding schools and work to “uncover the truth about the loss of human life and the lasting consequences” of the institutions, which over the decades forced hundreds of thousands of children from their families and communities.The US interior secretary, Deb Haaland, has directed the department to prepare a report detailing available historical records relating to the federal boarding school programs, with an emphasis on cemeteries or potential burial sites.“The interior department will address the inter-generational impact of Indian boarding schools to shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past, no matter how hard it will be,” Haaland said in a secretarial memo. “I know that this process will be long and difficult. I know that this process will be painful. It won’t undo the heartbreak and loss we feel. But only by acknowledging the past can we work toward a future that we’re all proud to embrace.”Haaland announced the review on Tuesday in remarks to the National Congress of American Indians during the group’s midyear conference.Starting with the Indian Civilization Act of 1819, the US enacted laws and policies to establish and support Indian boarding schools across the country. For more than 150 years, Indigenous children were taken from their communities and forced into boarding schools that focused on assimilation.Haaland talked about the federal government’s attempt to wipe out tribal identity, language and culture and how that past has continued to manifest itself through long-standing trauma, cycles of violence and abuse, premature deaths, mental disorders and substance abuse.The recent discovery of children’s remains buried at the site of what was once Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school has magnified interest in that legacy in Canada and the US.In Canada, more than 150,000 First Nations children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools as part of a program to assimilate them into society. They were forced to convert to Christianity and were not allowed to speak their languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused, and up to 6,000 are said to have died.After reading about the unmarked graves in Canada, Haaland recounted her own family’s story in a recent opinion piece published by the Washington Post.“Many Americans may be alarmed to learn that the United States has a history of taking Native children from their families in an effort to eradicate our culture and erase us as a people,” she wrote. “It is a history that we must learn from if our country is to heal from this tragic era.”She continued: “I am a product of these horrific assimilation policies. My maternal grandparents were stolen from their families when they were only eight years old and were forced to live away from their parents, culture and communities until they were 13. Many children like them never made it back home.”Haaland cited statistics from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, which reported that by 1926, more than 80% of Indigenous school-age children were attending boarding schools that were run either by the federal government or religious organizations. Besides providing resources and raising awareness, the coalition has been working to compile additional research on US boarding schools and deaths that many say is sorely lacking.Officials with the interior department said aside from trying to shed more light on the loss of life at the boarding schools, they would be working to protect burial sites associated with the schools and would consult with tribes on how best to do that while respecting families and communities.The report from agency staff is due by 1 April.During her address on Tuesday, Haaland told the story of her grandmother being loaded on a train with other children from her village and being shipped off to boarding school. She said many families had been haunted for too long by the “dark history” of these institutions and that the agency has a responsibility to recover that history.“We must uncover the truth about the loss of human life and the lasting consequences of these schools,” she said. More