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Hundreds of Guatemalans took to the streets over the weekend to protest alleged actions by the country’s attorney general, some judges, and prosecutors to interfere in the upcoming presidential election.

Indigenous protesters are calling for road blockades and a national strike.

Maria Martin reports.

In Guatemala City, protesters carried flowers and played traditional instruments calling for a new Guatemalan democratic spring and end to corruption – what they call an electoral coup.

The grandmothers of the Pocoman Maya Nation, surrounded by dozens of police, burned incense, and held purification ceremonies at the federal court building, praying for Justice Department officials to stop interfering in the electoral process.

Indigenous groups joined labor, student, and other civic organizations to decry the corruption they say is not only trying to eliminate democracy, but has led to increased poverty, marginalization, child malnutrition, and the forced migration of thousands of Indigenous Guatemalans from their homeland.

Several civic and Maya organizations are calling on social media for more protests and work stoppages this week, as Guatemalans continue to fight for their fragile democracy.

After well over a century of use, the historic Red Cloud Indian School will be getting a new name.

However, the name isn’t exactly “new.”

South Dakota Public Broadcasting’s C.J. Keene has more.

The parochial school located on the Pine Ridge Reservation will now be named Maȟpíya Lúta – a Lakota language translation of Chief Red Cloud’s name.

Jennifer Irving is the vice president of communications and marketing at the school.

She says the idea for changing the name didn’t come from an administrator’s office.

“Really, we were inspired by our athletes – who years ago started requesting ‘instead of Red Cloud can we put Maȟpíya Lúta on our jerseys?’ It inspired the rest of us to catch up with our young leadership here. That’s really where that change happened.”

Irving says a lot goes into a name.

“One of the things we were trying to be mindful of was how do we select a name that highlights not just our four schools, but six churches, the heritage center, and some of these broader community programs that we have. So, food sovereignty, truth and healing, we have a lot of work in Lakota language.”

While the school has a deep history, Irving says the decision is about much more than rebranding.

“In a way maybe it was about reclaiming some space, but I think it was really about honoring Chief Red Cloud and really committing further to Lakota language revitalization. How are we moving forward together?”

The rebranding process is already underway and will continue over the coming school year.

Oklahoma tribes are reacting to the state Senate’s vote Monday to override Gov. Kevin Stitt (Cherokee/R-OK)’s vetoes of tribal-state compact extensions involving revenue sharing on tobacco and car tags.

In a statement, Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said it’s a great step forward in preserving the compacts.

He says the compacts have served Oklahoma and the Cherokee Nation well for decades.

The Choctaw Nation said the Senate did the right thing, while the governor called the move illegitimate.

In a statement, Gov. Stitt said he’s trying to protect eastern Oklahoma from turning into a reservation and working to ensure the compacts are best for all Oklahomans.

Tribal leaders are encouraging the House to swiftly complete the veto overrides.

 

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A Wind River-made documentary highlighting missing and murdered Indigenous people won big recently in a film festival.

Wyoming Public Radio’s Hannah Habermann reports.

Who She Is recently won Best Animated Film at the Oregon Documentary Film Festival.

The documentary brings faces and voices to four Indigenous women caught in the MMIP epidemic – Sheila, Lela, Jocelyn, and Abbi.

It aims to humanize the people behind the statistics.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Native American women are murdered at a rate ten times higher than the national average.

Co-producer Jordan Dresser (Northern Arapaho) said the film’s team intentionally chose to make an animated documentary to help bring each woman alive.

“It’s important to know the people who are victims of it and what’s happening to them, like the actual people who get murdered, you know, and actual people who survive it. I think it’s very important that we always allow them to have a space to tell their stories in good ways.”

The film was co-produced by Dresser and Sophie Barksdale, with animation by Ojibwe artist Jonathan Thunder and Casper-based artist Tony Elmore.

Communities across Alaska’s North Slope are mourning the loss of Craig George, who recently died in a rafting accident.

At the age of 70, George was more than just a scientist to the Inupiaq of Utqiagvik – called Barrow when he arrived in 1977.

He would become one of the world’s experts on bowhead whales, and as KNBA’s Rhonda McBride reports, so respected among the Inupiaq, he was made an honorary whaling captain.

Among the many tributes to Craig George on Facebook, you’ll find different recordings of him singing this song, which he wrote to celebrate whaling.

In those videos, you’ll see people singing along in the chorus, to the lines, “Keep, keep on whaling. Keep on Whaling, and paddle that Umiak through. Keep, keep on whaling. Let that big old whale come to you.”

For George, bowhead whales were more than about research.

“It’s hard to measure the complete impact that Craig had on our lives.”

Richard Glenn, an Inupiaq whaler and longtime friend, says he admired George’s holistic approach to science, that he learned about seals, birds, everything connected to the world of the whale – and that included people.

“I think the world has yet to realize after a career of 50 years almost, what we feel.”

George was part of a group of scientists who challenged the status quo – and went on to prove that Native whalers had a better understanding of how to accurately track the whale population than Western science.

“When the world might have been focused against them. These gentlemen spent their careers corroborating traditional knowledge about the movement of animals and the population — and they backed their work up with real science and world class science.”

George would often say that he received more from the Inupiat than he could ever possibly give back.

“And yet we know he’s given back so much, taken our traditional knowledge and science to the world stage and defended it many times successfully. For that reason alone, we owe him a lot of gratitude.”

Richard Glenn says Craig George left a body of knowledge that will help North Slope whalers, now and into the future, do just what his song says, “Keep on Whaling.”

No remains were found at a former Indian boarding school in Genoa, Neb., after a two-week archeological dig, the Associated Press reports.

The team, lead by the state’s archeologist, will now examine data and consider next steps.

They also plan to hold a virtual meeting this week with tribal representatives from across the U.S.

 

 

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Tribal leaders and conservationists working to block construction of a lithium mine along the Nevada-Oregon line lost the fight in court this week, when a three-judge panel at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected their arguments to overturn federal approval of the project.

Christina Aanestad has more.

The judges rejected claims that permitting the Thacker Pass mine violates environmental laws and would destroy sacred lands to the Pauite, Shoshone, and Washo people, who’s ancestors were massacred there more than 150 years ago in 1865.

Max Wilbert, co-founder of Protect Thacker Pass, says they will continue fighting.

“Under American law, mining is the highest and best use of public lands. It’s more important than sacred sites, it’s more important than wildlife, it’s more important than water. I think we’re gonna have to step this up in all kinds of different ways.”

They could appeal the decision.

A second separate lawsuit is also challenging the lithium mine.

The conflict has pitted environmentalists and Native Americans against President Joe Biden’s plans to combat climate change and reduce reliance on fossil fuels, since the lithium mine would produce a key mineral used in green technology like electric cars.

“We all wish the transition away from fossil fuels could bring us to some utopian future right away, but we have to recognize that whether you’re producing an electric car, or a fossil fuel powered car, there are raw materials, there’s extraction involved with that, there’s pollution and unless we can reduce driving, reduce the consumption of cars, reduce how much energy we need and so on, then we’re really just going to be tinkering around the edges.”

On Thursday, we brought you the voices of Crow Nation teachers in south central Montana collaborating on Crow language lesson materials.

Today, we have more on the resources those educators are helping to create.

Among existing Crow language materials are children’s books, a dictionary, and a digital database of words – with more planned.

Yellowstone Public Radio’s Kayla Desroches reports.

“If you click on it… so if you say ‘young’ …”

This app Crow language instructor Vance Crooked Arm pulls up on his phone features more than 10,000 words and audio recordings.

“So if you say “young” it says the word for you.”

This is one of the products created by the Crow Language Consortium, a network of schools, colleges, and educators committed to preserving Crow, or Apsáalooke.

Crow tribal member Janine Pease sits on the consortium board.

She says, more than a decade ago, the Crow Nation found fewer than 15% of preschoolers spoke fluent Apsáalooke.

“And it was extremely alarming.”

They’ve been working to reverse that trend.

For the past eight years, Pease says young Crow Nation students have been taking language immersion classes as part of a still-evolving program to increase Apsáalooke fluency.

“The schools will progress through our materials and we’re very anxious to have all the building blocks that children can use. To acquire vocabulary and to construct conversations.”

She says ongoing written projects geared toward students in kindergarten through 4th grade include reading materials on Crow Nation leaders and major moments in Crow history.

A dictionary for children is also due for publication in the fall.

The Native American Basketball Invitational (NABI) is celebrating 20 years at this year’s tournament, which kicked off this week in Phoenix, Ariz.

144 teams are taking part in the tournament.

Boys and girls ages 14-19, representing more than 120 tribal communities from across North America, are competing.

NABI also features an educational summit, and a college and career fair.

Championship games will take place on Sunday.

 

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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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

“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.”

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.

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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