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This week, federal officials hosted a public meeting in Flagstaff, Ariz. over a proposed national monument near the Grand Canyon.

As Arizona Public Radio’s Ryan Heinsius reports, for years supporters, including tribal leaders, have advocated for added protections on more than a million acres of public land.

Tribal members, conservationists, elected leaders, and others voiced their support of the proposed Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon National Monument.

The tribally driven effort would make a moratorium on new uranium mining claims in the area permanent and protect sacred sites and water resources.

Leaders from nearly a dozen local tribes spoke in favor of the plan.

Timothy Nuvangyaoma is the chairman of the Hopi Tribe.

“It’s a coalition that sees the real need to protect this area from a holistic, spiritual standpoint. This is coming from our elders and those that came before them.”

Supporters want President Joe Biden to make the monument declaration through the Antiquities Act. But several northern Arizona ranchers worry more federal protection of the area could disrupt the livelihoods of those who’ve worked the land for generations.

Representatives from the uranium industry also oppose the monument proposal along with some Mohave County elected officials.

Bureau of Land Management Director Tracy Stone-Manning and other federal agency leaders listened to the nearly four hours of comments.

On Tuesday, legislation was also introduced in the US House and Senate by members of Arizona’s congressional delegation to designate the proposed national monument near the Grand Canyon.

In May, Interior Sec.Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) visited the Grand Canyon area to meet with tribal leaders and others about the monument proposal.

Kayla Desroches / Yellowstone Public Radio

Crow Nation teachers in Montana are working to preserve the Crow language for generations to come, starting inside their classrooms.

Yellowstone Public Radio’s Kayla Desroches talked with several educators at a recent language summit in Crow Agency where they shared ideas, debated vocabulary words, and helped shape a Crow language e-learning program.

“Say these guys are kids okay. Hey you guys act like kids…”

Little Big Horn College instructor Vance Crooked Arm jokes around with a classroom of teachers. 

“Children children!”

It’s the 11th year of the Crow Summer Institute and teachers here are pooling their knowledge to help create lesson materials. 

“Crow was my first language,” said Reva Little Owl.

63-year-old Reva Little Owl has been a teacher for more than 30 years.

“Speaking Crow is part of my identity. And I believe that children need that identity to be successful.”

46-year-old college instructor Vance Crooked Arm says he first noticed at the beginning of his career that children he taught did not speak Crow.

“And I was sad, I was kind of scared we were going to lose our language, and I said, man I better do something ‘cause if nobody does anything we’re gonna lose it.”

Crooked Arm along with other educators, linguists and organizations in Montana and elsewhere are rushing to document and share the language with younger generations.

“Some words are so old that we can’t translate them. So, it’s really important. Like, do or die.”

Paiute Tribes say they’re devastated over the recent news that at least six children are likely buried on the grounds of the former Panguitch Indian Boarding School in southeast Utah, reports the Mountain West News Bureau.

The findings are from a Utah State University survey.

Ground penetrating radar was used to discover the graves.

The school operated between 1904 and 1909.

The tribes say boarding schools were intended to strip Native children of their language and culture – and students were taken at very young ages.

Students were also forced into manual labor to maintain the facilities.

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The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) in northwest Montana are planning to build a local meat processing plant to expand services for local hunters and ranchers.

Montana Public Radio’s Aaron Bolton has more.

The tribes are applying for a $7.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help build a processing plant on the Flathead Reservation.

CSKT Planning Director Janet Camel says many local ranchers can’t keep cattle through the winter and are forced to sell animals out of state when local processors are too busy.

“So they sell to brokers in the fall and don’t get as much money as they believe they should be getting.”

Camel says the processing plant would also provide services for tribal substance hunters, who struggle to find meat processing services.

The tribes plan to harvest bison from the National Bison Range when managers need to thin the herd.

That meat would be distributed through tribal food programs.

Camel says the tribes are reliant on the USDA grant to launch the project.

The USDA is set to announce awards for tribal projects across the country this fall.

Ho Chunk Village (Photo: Jerry L Mennenga / Ho-Chunk, Inc.)

The Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska’s Ho-Chunk Village housing development is one of nine recipients of a 2023 Honoring Nations All-Star award from the Harvard Kennedy School Project on Indigenous Governance and Development.

Deborah Van Fleet has more.

The Village is a project of the tribe’s economic development corporation. Lance Morgan, founder and CEO of Ho-Chunk, Inc., says a unique type of planning has gone into Ho-Chunk Village.

“It’s designed to be a walkable community for health purposes. But making it a denser community is helpful from the affordability standpoint. We have a lot of units overlain over a very small amount of infrastructure, which is very unusual in a rural community.”

Morgan says having a master plan for the Village has allowed them to “fill in the pieces” to create a cohesive community over time, as funding has become available.

Phase two of the Village is now underway.

The Ho-Chunk corporation has built a few hundred new housing units to date.

When tribal members buy a single-family home, they’re given the lot and down payment assistance, and the house is built at cost.

Morgan explains because the tribe has bought the land for the building lots – removing it from federal trust status – homeowners have a greater opportunity to build generational wealth.

“We have a system that is pushing all levels of housing – from home ownership to low-income to elder housing, to young college professional-type – everything. We run the gamut.”

Morgan feels theirs could be a model, both for tribal and non-tribal communities.

Jonathan Taylor agrees.

He’s a research affiliate at the Kennedy School Project on Indigenous Governance and Development and site visitor for Honoring Nations award candidates.

“Ho-Chunk Village stands out for pioneering a walkable, multi-use development on an Indian reservation.”

Taylor says Ho-Chunk Village is a lot more than a housing development.

“The Village provides critical infrastructure for reversing Winnebago ‘brain drain’ in ways not possible relying on federal housing programs, and permits the tribe’s growing middle class to live near where they work and contribute to community life.”

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina will vote this fall on whether or not to expand marijuana beyond medical use on tribal lands for people 21 and older.

The Associated Press reports, at a recent meeting, the tribal council agreed to put it on the ballot for voters to decide.

The tribe decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana in 2021 and formed a business plan to grow and sell cannabis at a dispensary still under construction.

The tribe’s election is set to take place in September.

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The Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service are set to hold a meeting regarding a proposed national monument near the Grand Canyon.

Tribal leaders are among those advocating for protections of the area.

The Mountain West News Bureau’s Murphy Woodhouse has details.

Among other things, the proposed 1.1 million-acre monument would make permanent a 20-year moratorium on mining already in place for the area.

The National Monument proposal’s official name is the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni.

Stuart L.T. Chavez is a former tribal council member for the Havasupai, one of about a dozen tribes in a coalition pushing for the designation.

Chavez says the name is made up of Havasupai and Hopi phrases meaning, respectively, where our ancestors roamed and our footsteps.

“It’s not going to just be the Havasupai alone. This is a protection for the environment for everyone to be conscientious about.”

The proposal has faced some pushback, with a Mohave County supervisor recently saying it would have negative economic impacts.

The BLM and Forest Service are meeting in Flagstaff Tuesday afternoon and several high-ranking officials will be on hand.

Those who are unable to attend can email or send comments within a week of the meeting to the BLM’s Arizona State Office in Phoenix.

Courtesy Bernardo Arévalo de León / Facebook

The electoral drama continues in Guatemala with protests against Justice Department officials seeking to disqualify an anti-corruption party certified for a run-off election next month.

As Maria Martin reports, he recently campaigned in heavily Indigenous communities in the western highlands of the country.

Meanwhile, support is growing for the party’s embattled candidate including among the more than 40% of people who identify as Indigenous.

Speaking before thousands gathered in the largely K’iche’ Maya community of Totonicapan this weekend, Bernardo Arévalo said it was time to end not only corruption, but centuries of racism and discrimination in Guatemala.

Arévalo’s message of change is resonating with many voters, like 24-year-old Maya Kakchikel weaver Melissa.

She says she and her friends in the Indigenous community of San Antonio Aguas Calientes are looking forward to casting their vote for Arévalo.

They like his experience and his background as the son of the first democratically elected Guatemalan president, she says.

Analysts say they’ve never in recent memory seen such as surge of popular enthusiasm for a political candidate, and some believe the massive campaign of legal blacks and social media attacks against the Semilla Party and Arévalo may have actually helped to spike their popularity.

U.S. Sens. Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) and Susan Collins (R-ME) have reintroduced legislation intended to protect Native children.

The Native American Child Protection Act would authorize three programs to help tribes prevent, investigate, and prosecute child abuse and neglect.

The programs were first authorized in 1990.

According to the senators, the programs were never truly funded and have not been reauthorized.

They say reauthorizing and modernizing the programs will help tribes develop and strengthen services to respond to child abuse and neglect in their communities, including by establishing a single service center to provide technical assistance and training, and establish treatment programs and culturally appropriate services for victims.

It would also reauthorize grants for child abuse prevention and investigation.

According to the senators, these grants are the only tribal-specific child abuse prevention and treatment programs for Native children.

Yet, they say Congress has only appropriated $5 million since enactment more than 30 years ago.

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The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the commission’s South Dakota advisory committee have been hard at work probing voter access in the state.

South Dakota Public Broadcasting’s C.J. Keene has more on the report that found voter access gaps – particularly on reservations.

The bipartisan, 11-member commission has spent the last two years questioning the state’s voting access from a civil rights perspective.

Travis Letellier is an economist and chair of the state advisory committee.

He says after careful consideration, they have an answer.

“Sometimes if you live on a tribal area or a reservation, your local polling place might be a county seat that might be prohibitively far to drive to vote. Then when you try to do an early vote – what if you have a nonstandard address? Where you live on tribal land, and you don’t actually have a post office?”

Difficulty with voter ID regulations proves not every access challenge is geographic in nature.

“One of the recommendations the committee said was what if the South Dakota Secretary of State published a simple, one page infographic that could go out to county auditors’ offices and polling locations that was just ‘showing up to vote? Here’s what you need to bring.’ ‘Don’t have an ID? That’s okay, here’s what you do.’ It might cost a little money to print them off, but the gain to the average voter outweighs the cost of printing an infographic.”

These recommendations aren’t legally binding.

Federal civil rights analyst Mallory Trachtenberg says these findings will now be shared with lawmakers and federal officials.

But that doesn’t mean the end of the discussion.

“They’re emotionally charged topics, and civil rights is really challenging to continue to have conversations about these days. I will highlight that people could walk away from these conversations. Continuing to have those conversations – it can be really painful, but the fact they’re still here and there are so many active committees doing this – it’s pretty impressive.”

Every state and territory in the country has a similar advisory committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

Weavers Liana Wallace, left, Hannah Watts, and Lilly Hope. (Courtesy The Raven’s Tale Studio)

“Weaving Our Pride” is a year-long blanket weaving project in Juneau, Alaska to celebrate the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, led by master Lingít weaver Lily Hope.

Rhonda McBride from our flagship station KNBA and Bostin Christopher from our member station KTOO tell us more.

So, who can be a part of the project?

“Every person who wants to be part of something bigger,” said Lily Hope.

Hope says the project gives youth of all identities and supportive adults – a chance to sit side-by-side – to create a shared work celebrating pride, community, and self.

Over the next year, a team of six weavers will be spend several days a week at the Zach Gordon Youth Center, to assist in making two blankets – one in the traditional Raven’s Tail style and the other in the more modern, Chilkat style.

Single Chilkat robe. (Courtesy Sealaska Corporation)

“We’re going to do bands of rainbow color and do a follow-the-leader kind of deal. So, the mentor weaver will weave one row, and the student will come behind and weave exactly the same row.”

Next summer, dancers will wear them for the first time at Celebration, a biennial Southeast Native dance festival held in Juneau.

After Celebration, the robes will remain at the youth center, to be worn for special ceremonies that include new names and coming out parties, as well as significant Pride events.

Only young people can wear them.

“The cool thing is that three of these six mentor weavers identify as queer. One mentor weaver has queer children. And the space that’s being held by these weavers is safe, healing, affirmative, inspiring.”

Hope believes projects like “Weaving our Pride” can bring positive, lasting change to the community.

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The Gros Ventre and Assiniboine Tribes of north-central Montana are closing in on a bipartisan deal to settle their water rights in Congress.

The more than $1 billion policy comes after decades of negotiation and would close out a century of tribal water disputes in the state.

Montana Public Radio’s Austin Amestoy reports.

Fort Belknap President Jeffrey Stiffarm told a committee of U.S. senators Wednesday his community made great sacrifices to strike the deal.

“We ceded a lot of land away that we wanted — that was rightfully ours, that was taken from us. We put that aside, and we thought, you know, ‘Water is more important.’”

The Fort Belknap Reservation is home to the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine Tribes.

It’s the last of seven reservations in Montana without a water compact.

More than a hundred years ago, the tribes were at the center of a 1908 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found water rights were implied in tribal treaties.

U.S. Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) thanked Stiffarm and Montana politicians for negotiating the compromise agreement.

“For years, we’ve talked about moving this settlement forward, and this Congress, we’ve got a real shot.”

If Congress approves the compact, the tribes would receive federal dollars to repair and improve an aging irrigation project that provides water to more than 120 thousand acres of farmland.

Lt. Gov. Kristen Juras (R-MT) told committee members her state’s legislature passed the Fort Belknap compact in 2001.

“And yes, President Stiffarm, it is, after a century, time to close this circle and grant this Tribe the water rights that were intended for them.”

Committee chair U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) said lawmakers would work to pass the policy as “expeditiously as possible.”

Karluk Spit and village of Karluk, Alaska. (Courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Fishing, camping, kayaking, and a year of all expenses paid living; that’s off a poster from the Karluk Tribal Council that went viral late last month. They’re looking to pay two families with four children each to move to the village in an effort to get state funding and re-establish a school.

As KMXT’s Brian Venua reports, since then, the Tribe has received thousands of inquiries from around the world.

Within a week, between four and five thousand people responded to the poster.

Kathryn Reft is the Karluk Tribal Council’s secretary and treasurer. She says they never could have anticipated the response.

“We just figured we tried to do something like this just to see if we get any kind of attention. We never knew it was gonna blow up to be this huge!”

The Native Village of Karluk is on the southwest end of Kodiak Island and has 37 year-round residents.

The State of Alaska only funds a school if a village has ten children.

The school there closed in 2018 due to low enrollment and now there’s only two kids in the community.

Reft says the Tribe is willing to pay families to move there including housing, utilities, and even a food stipend for a year in the hope of getting a new school.

“We had our feelers out there. We tried going through agencies and we just couldn’t find any interest and then somebody brought up ‘Why don’t we get a poster out there?’ and that’s what we did.”

The Tribe has heard from families across the country as far as Florida and even internationally from Canada and the Philippines about its ad.

The Kodiak Island Borough has kept up the former school building’s heat and electricity. With some maintenance, it could reopen and host classes again.

Cyndy Mika is the Kodiak Island Borough School District superintendent. She says the district was caught off-guard by the poster, but is open to helping the village.

“If they make those ten students, we’ll have to do something. But at this point, it’s going to be very difficult staffing at this late of a date and it’s not part of this budget at all.”

KIBSD struggled to fill rural positions last year and faced huge budget cuts last month.

Mika says she understands it’s difficult for the community to grow without a school for their kids.

The clock is ticking, though. The state counts student populations for schools in October.

Reft, the Tribe’s secretary and treasurer, says they hope to bring new families soon.

We’re going to try to get families here before the end of August, before the school year, have them settled in their house, and ready for school.

The Tribal Council will sort through applicants in the next few weeks.

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Since the US Supreme Court struck down affirmative action practices at public and private universities, Alaska Native leaders have been assessing the impacts.

As Rhonda McBride from our flagship station KNBA found out, the court’s decision has left them with a lot to consider.

Alaska’s regional Native corporations, all twelve of them, have a lot riding on affirmative action.

Since their formation 50 years ago, they have collectively invested more than 100 million dollars in scholarships. And that doesn’t include village corporations on the North Slope, like the Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation.

Its president and CEO, Pearl Brower, says the corporation has grown to 60 companies.

“We employ about 3,600 people in almost every state in the nation.”

Many of those are Alaska Natives, and include executives who have attended prestigious colleges.

Brower says affirmative action has improved Native hire and helped companies succeed.

“At the core, what all of this does is provide more opportunity for everyone.”

Brower and others like Rosita Worl (Tlingit), president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute, worry the ruling could unravel decades of hard work.

“To me, it’s just so unfathomable that the Supreme Court did that.”

But Worl is pleased with the court’s other decision last month – to uphold the Indian Child Welfare Act.

“And the individuals who brought the case were saying that it was racial discrimination. But the Supreme Court ruled, no, it wasn’t racial discrimination because the rights that we hold are political rights.”

Political rights, she says, that could have bearing in the court’s affirmative action ruling.

Worl says Sealaska attorneys have begun an intensive legal review, one she calls urgent for hundreds of Sealaska students currently on scholarships. But that argument is yet to be tested.

In Guatemala, Indigenous groups are among those protesting government action to block the results of a June 25 election, in which a center-left, anti-corruption candidate came in second to qualify for a run-off.

Now election results still hang in the balance, despite a court ruling saying a court ordered vote review did everything according to the law.

Maria Martin reports.

Indigenous organizations have been among the most vocal groups protesting a court ordered review of Guatemala’s June 25 election, which some say is akin to an election coup.

The Indigenous authorities of the prominent 48 Cantones de Totonicpan group said the court action was illegal and placed the August run off election in jeopardy.

That election was to have been between former First Lady Sandra Torres and the surprise second-place winner Bernardo Arevalo, the anti-corruption candidate of the Semilla (Seed) Party.

A spokesperson for the 48 Cantones called on the court to revoke their order for a vote review and to respect the will of the people.

They also said that if the electoral authorities don’t complete their review of contested results, they’ll call for road blockades and other protest actions across Guatemala.

Indian Industrial School, located in the eastern part of Genoa, Neb., now operated as a museum. (Photo: Ammodramus via Wiki CC)

Nebraska archeologists are searching for remains at a former Indian boarding school in Genoa.

3 News Now reports above ground technology was used months ago to identify grave sites at the Genoa Indian Industrial School.

Now, excavation is underway at the school.

The team hopes of find some answers about the children who passed away at the school.

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The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and a major shoe company have joined forces to open opportunities for Indigenous students.

This summer, two students were chosen to intern for the company in an unprecedented collaboration between the college and Nike.

Hannah Bissett (Dena’ina woman) from our flagship station KNBA has more.

The tribal college in Santa Fe, N.M. is helping bring Indigenous people into the global conversations with a large international brands.

IAIA has partnered with the well-known footwear and apparel maker to have internships within its departments for Indigenous students.

Felipe Colón (Laguna Pueblo) has worked for IAIA for around 12 years.

He has worked to bring commercial opportunities to the college for students to bring their Indigenous perspective into more global conversations in large companies and vice versa.

“We oftentimes represent a perspective that is becoming increasingly relevant to contemporary existence. We bring our values; we bring our understandings of the world into an industry who can really grow from that.”

IAIA is one of 36 tribal colleges nationwide.

Over the past 60 years of the establishment of the college, one of the main focuses has been to give students more opportunities in their desired fields.

“For Indigenous people to really grow their careers, to become very much self-sustainable often times for their families for their communities and to do that again not to negate their Indigen-ality but instead really considers that very much an asset.”

The eventual goal with the partnership is to have various options for the length of an internship, some being a few months to a year at Nike’s corporate location in Oregon.

“The students are really excited to embrace, to be the forefront, to be the leaders and go out there and show the world what Indigenous people can do, and how Indigenous people can shape our future.”

This summer two interns were chosen to work under Nike and will have a student showcase in August to show their work.

Matt Gilbert (Gwich’in) is from Arctic Village and grew up living with his grandparents.

Gilbert was always very driven, even at a younger age attending schools in the Native Village of Fort Nelson. But one thing that really stuck with him, and that he realized early on is that he wanted to be a writer.

“Since I was seven years old I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I think I got it from my great grandmother Maggie, she was the last Gwich’n story teller

Gilbert would graduate in 2005 from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks majoring in English Literature.

It was at that time his first opportunity struck when the University of Arizona came out with an ad for Native Authors.

“I responded, and I wrote out the elder stories.”

Those stories would be testimonies from the elders in his community talking about climate change.

He named his memoir The Gwich’in Climate Report and says there were things he learned from his elders that he hadn’t learned in all years he attended college.

“They gave such brilliant interesting knowledge about meteorology, ecology, all the subtle changes the climate is doing to the earth. Stuff you don’t hear in the climate change movement.”

After he published his non-fiction book, Gilbert said it got him excited about returning back to a sci-fi trilogy Chandera he created in high school.  

“It’s basically Lord of the Rings with a brown Native man in the lead. He’s Gwich’in. They’re coming back from a mining planet, interstellar age where the milky age is colonized by humans and lived on. It’s like the expanse. They get attacked and they get warped somewhere into another galaxy.”

Gilbert is spending a majority of his time these days working on the sci-fi trilogy.

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Vice President Kamala Harris visited the Gila River Indian Community last week.

This was the first-time in the tribe’s history a sitting vice president had been to the community.

Harris expressed the administration’s commitment to Arizona’s 22 federally recognized tribes including Gila River.

“President Joe Biden and I believe the bonds between our nations are sacred. And we believe we have a duty to safeguard and strengthen those bonds. To uphold our trust and treaty obligations to honor tribal sovereignty. And to ensure tribal self-determination. President Biden and I also believe we have a duty to address the deep disparities that persist across Indian country.”

Read her full speech

Harris was also brought up to speed about GRIC’s water pipeline project, which will help ensure communities receive reliable access to clean water and reduce Colorado River usage.

She expressed her concern of climate change affecting Native communities. 

“And in order to create enduring solutions to the climate crisis, we must then rely on the knowledge and experience of the Native communities. And that is why we are investing billions of dollars to help fund Native-led, not Native-consulting, Native-led climate resilient infrastructure projects. Like the projects you are leading here at Gila river.” 

The tribe’s water pipeline project is expected to be completed in 2024.

Last week in California, tribal leaders, law enforcement, and state lawmakers gathered to learn how a new tool – the Feather Alert – will work to help law enforcement quickly notify the public about missing Native Americans.

This tool was authored by State Rep. James Ramos (Serrano/Cahuilla/D-CA) in January. 

In April, the Round Valley Indian Tribes declared a State of Emergency after two of their members were found murdered, the Yurok Tribe issued a similar declaration last year. 

In a statement, Rep. Ramos said: “It gets too easy to cite these staggering statistics.”

He’s gratified that the governor approved the bill to help stop violence afflicting California’s Native American communities. 

Ramos went on to say the Feather Alert will aid law enforcement and families in getting the word out quickly when a Native individual is missing or endangered by alerting the public in a broad and effective manner. 

He says creating an alert or advisory system was a top recommendation from tribal leaders last year for dealing with the disproportionate number of missing Native Americans, particularly women and girls.

During the gathering, it was explained how to activate the Feather Alert, and the criteria to be met in order to activate it.

The missing person needs to be an Indigenous person.

The local law enforcement agency also must determine that the person has gone missing under unexplained or suspicious circumstances and the person is believed to be in danger because of age, health, or mental or physical disability – or is in the company of a potentially dangerous person.

In California, the Feather Alert joins the Amber Alert, which is used when children 17 and younger are missing or abducted; the Blue Alert, an alert that notifies the public when a suspect in the assault or killing of a police officer remains at large and the search is active; and the Silver Alert, which notifies the public of elderly, developmentally, or cognitively-impaired persons that go missing and are determined to be at-risk. 

These other special notifications overseen by the California Highway Police.

The Red Lake Nation in Minnesota is gearing up for the 25th Annual Anishinaabe Spirit Run, formerly called the sobriety run.

This year, the event focuses on healing, wellness, and recovery.

It’s sponsored by the Red Lake Chemical Health Programs.

The Leech Lake chemical dependency unit and the Mash-Ka-Wisen Treatment Center in Sawyer, Minn. will also co-sponsor the event on August 2-5.

The 200-mile journey will begin with an opening ceremony and remarks.

The runners will carry eagle staffs into the sobriety powwow arena at the Mash-Ka-Wisen Treatment Center.

Using the Native American medicine wheel as a guide, this year’s participants will carry a message of running for 25 years to raise awareness of healing, wellness, and recovery.

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The South Dakota tribal relations committee discussed the Indian Child Welfare Act at its latest meeting.

South Dakota Public Broadcasting’s Zadya Abbott reports.

The committee’s third meeting comes shortly after the Supreme Court ruling upholding the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).

The act aims to keep more Native children with their tribes and communities in adoptions and fostering situations.

BJ Jones is the Chief Judge for Sisseton Wahpeton.

He is thinking about what the Supreme Court ruling means for representatives in Pierre.

“There’s a lot of areas in South Dakota that are ripe for some good state legislation. Just because the Supreme Court has ruled that ICWA is constitutional. Which is a great relief, and most tribes believe that to be the case, doesn’t mean there aren’t issues that can be clarified by state statutes.”

Judge Jones says a South Dakota bill could address concerns about legal responsibility between the Department of Social Services and Tribal Courts.

Two bills codifying ICWA into state law were introduced last legislative session, but they were voted down.

Opponents said they wanted to wait for the Supreme Court ruling before enacting anything.

Mickey Divine is the Program Director of Child Protective Programs on the Lake Traverse Reservation and a member of the tribal state coalition.

She told committee members the group plans to push for legislation supporting ICWA.

“I am asking for legislation because we are gonna continue with that state ICWA law. Because those challenges to this, the challenges to our sovereignty are still coming and we need to be prepared. We want to care for our own children. We want to care for our own families here. We live here.”

Fourteen states have passed legislation in support of the Indian Child Welfare Act.

That includes North Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, and Wyoming.

Listen to the full committee session

The Bureau of Indian Education recently extended a five-year contract of a program that provides additional mental health resources for tribal youth.

Emma VandenEinde of the Mountain West News Bureau reports on how it impacts more than 100 tribal schools in the Mountain West region.

The Behavioral Health and Wellness program allows for both Indigenous students and staff from schools and universities to access resources. That includes telehealth counseling, a 24/7 crisis hotline, and on-site crisis support.

Teresia Paul works for the Bureau and is the program lead.

She said the majority of their clinical team are Indigenous people who know these communities well.

“We’re able to really engage in those types of interventions with people who are from the communities and who know how to do those interventions respectfully. You know, you can’t just tap someone to step into that role. It has to be folks that, you know, have gained that respect.”

The program is crucial for many American Indian and Alaska Native students.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among eight to 24 year-olds in that demographic.

Paul said it’s their duty to protect their most sacred citizens – their kids.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-South Pacific Division and Navajo Nation signed an agreement intended to improve USACE’s support to Navajo Nation at Window Rock, Ariz. this week.

Services and any goods which the Corps may provide to the Navajo Nation under this agreement include full or partial services in the areas of planning, design, engineering, consultation, technical support and training, and construction activities.

According to the Army Corps, the purpose of the agreement is to establish a mutual framework governing the respective responsibilities of the Parties for the provision of goods and services for Navajo Nation projects.

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A stretch of highway running through the center of the Blackfeet Nation has been renamed to honor the late Blackfeet Chief Earl Old Person.

Montana Public Radio’s Ellis Juhlin reports from Browning at the highway’s dedication ceremony.

A group of more than 200 people gathered alongside the section of U.S. Highway 89 that now bears Chief Old Person’s name.

(Courtesy State Sen. Susan Webber)

As the new road sign was unveiled, drummers played one of the chief’s favorite songs, used to celebrate a victory.

Several dozen friends and family of Old Person got up to share their favorite memories of the beloved Blackfeet leader, along with members of Congress.

State Sen. Susan Webber (Blackfeet/D-MT 8th) carried the bill to rename this stretch of road.

“And it feels really good, it’s done, we did our best towards our chief, his name will always be here, it’ll always be on the map.”

Old Person led the tribe for 40 years, before he died in 2021.

The renaming ceremony is part of the first day of the Blackfeet Nation’s North American Indian Days, an annual celebration which will run through the weekend.

The rate of Indigenous women that died during or shortly after pregnancy more than doubled in recent decades.

Montana Public Radio’s Aaron Bolton reports that’s according to a new study.

The study published in the Journal of the American Medicine Association showed that maternal mortality rates for Native American and Alaska Native women increased by nearly 110% between 1999 and 2019. That was the largest increase among all racial groups.

Deaths among Indigenous women were especially high across the Great Plains.

Northern mountain states like Montana were also found to have high maternal death rates among all races.

Researchers say it’s hard to determine what drove the spike in deaths among Native American pregnant women because death records across the country can vary widely.

Causes of maternal mortality include suicide, substance abuse, excessive bleeding, and infection among many other conditions.

Researchers say racial disparities among pregnant women can in part be attributed to systemic and interpersonal racism.

Photo: Asociación Comunicarte / Facebook

Guatemala celebrated the holiday known as the Day of the Army this week, while many Indigenous groups marched to commemorate what they called the March of Memory to remember the thousands of largely Indigenous lives lost at the hands of the military forces during that Central American country’s decades long civil conflict.

Maria Martin reports.

Members of the organization Hijos, made up of the children of war victims and their supporters, took to the streets of Guatemala City and carried pictures of their murdered and disappeared loved ones – to honor the thousands of lives lost during the long civil war that began in the wake of a CIA-sponsored military coup in 1954.

The so-called March for Memory has taken place annually since 1999, three years after the signing of peace accords ending the 36 year-old civil conflict in which the government attempted to crush guerilla uprisings to change this deeply unequal society.

The annual commemoration also takes place in opposition to the celebration of the annual holiday known as Army Day – some in the march call that celebration an insult to the victims of the conflict.

It was the military, according to the United Nations, that was responsible for more than 90% of the 200,000 killed and disappeared during one of the longest civil wars in the Americas, in which hundreds of massacres took place and some 400 Indigenous villages were destroyed.

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