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A Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Council Member has been indicted by a grand jury in Colorado for 12 counts of alleged sexual abuse and assault that took place on the reservation.
Chris Clements of KSJD has more.
In a special meeting held on Saturday, the Council moved to place Lyndreth Hemp Wall on unpaid administrative leave indefinitely if he doesn’t quickly resign.They also removed Wall from his appointments to boards and commissions and issued a formal reprimand.Wall is a former Montezuma-Cortez school board member and a well-known figure in the area.If he’s convicted of a felony, he could be removed from the Council by a two-thirds vote that would also bar him from serving on it again.The Cortez Journal reported on Sunday that Wall told his four victims he was a healer experienced in traditional healing practices during the alleged sexual acts.
After a nationwide search for a range of diverse applicants, the First Alaskans Institute, a nonprofit to advance Alaska Native voices in a variety of leadership roles, has hired Apagzuk/Apagruk Roy Agloinga as the new president and chief executive officer.
KNBA’s Hannah Bissett has more on the new president.
After Liz Medicine Crow (Haida/Tlingit) announced her departure as president of First Alaskans Institute in 2023, the nonprofit began a months-long search for the next leader. She served 15 years in the position.
The nonprofit hired Roy Agloinga (Iñupiaq).
“The opportunity to continue so much of the great work that First Alaskans does, and the tremendous ability that an organization like this has in unifying our community and programming, and this gives me a great opportunity to have that statewide impact.”
Agloinga has a diverse background in nonprofit management with an emphasis on rural health, policy, Inupiat language preservation, and child welfare.
Regarding his most recent experience, he spoke about what he did at the Rasmuson Foundation.
“In the last part of my work at Rasmuson, my focus was on bringing national funders to Alaska with a lot of our nonprofits and bringing a lot of support to the organization and to our communities.”
In his new role as president, he will lead the organization’s day-to-day operations while strategizing ways to continue the company’s mission of “progress for the next 10,000 years.”
The stack of to-dos for the new president is long, but one of the larger things on the list is looking over the assessments and surveys from a variety of partners, and using that data to create a new strategic plan for FAI.
Agloinga says that First Alaskans Institute should be a conduit for voices of elders and youth, and is an integral part of the nonprofit’s future.
“I think that there’s so much important work to be done across Alaska, and many times our youth and our elders know very intimately what that work is. Because they’re the ones who are living in our communities and are seeing some of the challenges that happen.”
He says that the future programming of First Alaskans aids in some of these statewide challenges, whether it be funding or training, and he says that these types of opportunities are priceless for the statewide Indigenous community.
A number of Indigenous films are being featured at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
The racial and social justice organization IllumiNative has a watch list of seven Indigenous-led films featured in six different categories.
The films include stories about unmarked Indian residential school graves, Native language preservation, and healing.
The organization debuted the Indigenous House at the 2023 festival as a gathering place to recognize and celebrate Native creatives, artists, and industry leaders who are helping to advance Native representative in film and television.
The Sundance Film Festival began Thursday and runs through January 28.
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