Conversations on Native American Cultural Sovereignty
by Brian Oaster
Confused about what’s happening on the Klamath? Dams, salmon, irrigation and more.
Source: Klamath River issues explained
Brian Oaster (they/them) is an editorial intern at High Country News and a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. They are an award-winning investigative journalist living in the Pacific Northwest.
Take a multimedia tour of the proposed #AviKwaAme Nat’l Monument (NV) through this NEW story map! 👀 It’s time to protect #publiclands in #Nevada that are a source of life and place of origin for many Tribes. Take the tour and sign the petition today.
Source: Avi Kwa Ame
On June 25 and 26, 1876, warriors of the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho nations defeated Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer and the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Americans have always remembered the battle. What we often forget are the difficult decisions tribal leaders made afterward to ensure the safety of their people. The values that guided them then—generosity, perseverance, bravery, and wisdom—continue to serve the Lakota people today.
Source: 144 Years after the Battle of Little Bighorn, Lakota Values Endure
Federal recognition provides tribes with critical healthcare and education. What happens to the tribal nations that the U.S. refuses to recognize?
Source: The ‘slow-motion genocide’ of the Chinook Indian Nation
Aleut family members will return the remains of one child to Saint Paul Island in Alaska, and Rosebud Sioux descendants will take nine children back to a tribal veteran’s cemetery in South Dakota or to private family plots.
Source: US Army to return remains of 10 Native American children to families | WITF
from Indian Country Today
Hopi Tribe, Acoma Pueblo, Zia Pueblo, and Zuni Pueblo ancestors and associated funerary items repatriated and reinterred at Mesa Verde National Park
Thanks to George Toth for this link!
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. House Assistant Speaker Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), and U.S. Representatives Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), Don Young (R-Alaska), and Tom Cole (R-Okla.) reintroduced the bipartisan Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act, a bill to prohibit the exporting of sacred Native American items and increase penalties for stealing and illegally trafficking tribal cultural patrimony. U.S. Senators Martin Heinrich (D-N.M), the lead author of the legislation, and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) introduced the companion bill in the Senate.
Source: Members of Congress, Senators Introduce Bipartisan, Bicameral STOP Act To Safeguard Tribal Items
from The Washington Post
Tribe Chairman Ron Allen, standing at the site of the proposed opioid treatment center in Sequim, wants to be “part of the solution” to the opioid epidemic in his community. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
A classic ‘not in my backyard’ fight has erupted in the Pacific Northwest over a recovery center for an area hit hard by addiction and overdose deaths.
In May 2019, the members of our Humanities Without Walls team for the project “Indigenous Art and Activism in Changing Climates: The Mississippi River Valley, Colonialism, and Environmental Change” met for the second time. We visited sites in Chicagoland, focusing on the tributaries of the Mississippi and their vast reach from the homelands of the Three Fires Confederacy (Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatami), as well as from the lands of the Menominee, Miami, and Ho-Chunk nations, which remain home to many Native peoples. We listened to Dr. Ashley Falzetti (Miami) and Dr. John Low (Potawatomi), who discussed Miami and Potawatomi alluvial histories, before viewing a Ralph Frese birchbark canoe and then going on the water at Skokie Lagoons. Dr. Margaret Pearce (Potawatomi) conducted a mapping workshop with us, and we also visited with Indigenous futurist artist Santiago X (Coushatta/ Chamoru) at one of the sites for his two earthwork projects in Chicago that he is creating in partnership with the American Indian Center. Drawing on this meeting as well as the previous one in Minneapolis, the graduate student team members came up with keywords that reflect the processes and methodologies we are engaging with and thinking through as this project continues.
In the next few posts on The Repatriation Files, we will share these keywords and use them to gesture toward how we see the project’s next steps unfolding. Shaped by the input of the artists/activists/scholars we’ve encountered, the keywords represent our take on concepts that have guided our understanding of Indigenous art and activism in the Mississippi River Valley. The accompanying digital maps help visualize the concepts of collaboration, place-based learning, and remapping on the one hand, and give visibility to Indigenous art and activism by highlighting the Native Midwest on the other.
Stephen Groves
Associated Press
PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota Democrats called foul on Friday after the Republican-dominated House shot down their efforts to allow Native Americans use their tribal IDs to register to vote.
