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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.
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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