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Confederated Salish and Kootenai cultural leader Tony Incashola died this week at the age of 76.  Montana Public Radio’s Aaron Bolton has this remembrance.

Incashola was a key figure in the cultural revival on the Flathead Reservation in the 1970s. He served on the Séliš-Ql̓ispé cultural committee for decades and held the role of committee director since 1995.

CSKT Tribal Chairman Tom McDonald says Incashola’s time on the committee and as a tribal councilman in the 1980s touched every part of the tribe’s work, including the tribe’s takeover of the Salish Kootenai Dam and the expansion of the natural resources department.

“Every time we put together educational material, there was Tony being able to talk about the importance of this plant or this animal, talk about the importance of the landscape of a particular site.”

Incashola’s cultural knowledge also helped foster the Nkwusm Salish Language School in Arlee. Language Teacher Gene Beaverhead says Incashola was always there to answer questions and was instrumental in preserving many oral stories. But Beaverhead says like the passing of any elder, some of Incashola’s cultural knowledge will likely be lost.

“We’ve lost so many elders these last few years, we’ve lost so much. We still have some, but not like what we had. The stories they had were just irreplaceable.”

Beyond his cultural work, Incashola was a Vietnam War veteran and was known as a fierce community member, always calling youth sports games in his hometown of St. Ignatius. 

He left behind his wife Denise, their four children, eight grandchildren, and two great grandchildren. 

Services will be held in St. Ignatius Friday.

The Washington State Supreme Court has temporarily halted evictions for seven households on Nooksack Tribal Land.

The court granted the injunction this week while it decides if it will take up the case, the Cascadia Daily News reports. The households involved are part of a group disenrolled from the Nooksack Indian Tribe and have been facing eviction for months.

Their attorney Gabe Galanda told KNKX his clients are Filipino and Native, and are being singled out for their mixed identity. He hopes the residents will be able to stay in their homes this summer.

The tribe wants the housing for enrolled tribal members, and in a statement said the tribe owns the land, housing, manages the properties and is the landlord. A decision from the court could come as early as next week.

For the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Congress of American Indians is holding an in-person conference. NCAI’s mid-year gathering kicks off this weekend in Anchorage, Alaska, with the theme “Thinking Beyond Self-Determination.”

Tribal leaders from across the country will discuss top issues facing their communities.

Alaska is home to nearly half of the more than 570 federally recognized tribes in the U.S. The conference agenda is influenced by the Alaska Region.

Mike Williams is chief of the Akiak Native Community and NCAI Alaska region vice president.

“We look forward to engaging conversation about the Violence Against Women’s Act and implementing the Alaska pilot project to enhance the safety of our communities, land into trust issues to reacquire and protect our homelands, and environmental sustainability to secure our ways of life for future generations.”

The packed agenda includes a youth track. The NCAI Youth Commission has tailored activities and sessions to help develop the next generation of leaders.

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Celebration, the every-other-year gathering of Indigenous people in Southeast Alaska, kicked off Wednesday in Juneau.

Through Saturday, Lingít, Haida, and Tsimshian people will participate in dances, arts markets, and cultural demonstrations.

This year’s theme is “Celebrating 10,000 years of cultural survival.”

Sealaska Heritage Institute President Rosita Worl says the theme recognizes the many environmental, colonial and, more recently, pandemic-related challenges their people have overcome.

“We knew that we were going to survive that. I know our people suffered highly from it, but we still had the strong belief that we were going to survive and sure enough, here we are 10,001 years later, and prospering.”

Indigenous people were disproportionately affected by COVID-19 in Alaska, accounting for nearly a third of the deaths from the virus. That included many elders and some of the last remaining Native speakers for several languages.

X̱’unei Lance Twitchell says more action is needed at the state level to help preserve Native languages.

“There’s probably 19 languages that are still going right now. And I think in about ten years it will be down to maybe ten, unless we do something.”

Official events began with the dedication of the institute’s new Arts Campus.

Worl says the facility will host classes aimed at preserving cultural practices and serve as the focal point of Northwest Coast Arts.

“We’ve already had basket training classes there, we’ve had tanaa training classes there, we’ve also had the box drum training. So, it’s not even formally open but our people are so anxious to use it that they’ve run in there, pushed things aside. And that’s just the beginning.”

There’s also a new 360 degree totem pole. Worl says it’s the first of its kind in Alaska and represents the cultural values of the three main Alaska Native groups of Southeast Alaska.

The Pechanga Resort Casino in Temecula, CA is bringing cast and crew of the Peacock series “Rutherford Falls” to its casino on Thursday.

The event is for the Native community with a focus on Native youth. More than 100 Native youth from across Southern California are expected to attend. They’ll be able to walk the red carpet and get a sneak peek of episodes before the new season premieres next week.

Youth will also hear from actors, directors, and writers. Pechanga Tribal Chairman Mark Macarro says the event gives young people an opportunity to learn about the television and film industry.

“To be able to engage cast and crew members on both sides of the camera and talk about career opportunities, have Rutherford on the rez, and engaging youth to do a Q and A that was something that really appealed to us.”

“Rutherford Falls,” a comedy about two friends, features Native actors, writers, and producers. Macarro says Native representation matters.

“That can take a narrative that is not distorted and really begin to take and craft a narrative that is more in line with how I believe Indian tribes think the narrative should be when they’re talking about Indian people, Indian communities, tribes across the country.”

The second season of “Rutherford Falls” premieres on June 16.

This week, the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa Indians in Minnesota celebrated the return of reservation land.

The Band purchased more than 28,000 acres from the Conservation Fund. According to the Band, it’s the largest restoration of its reservation since the allotment era.

The land was taken by the federal government more than 100 years ago and sold to timber companies and homesteaders.

Plans are underway for the Band to manage and conserve the land while balancing economic and cultural benefits for the Band and its members.

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Wild rice is in decline, so some members of the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe in Wisconsin are turning toward another traditional crop for sustenance – flint corn. WXPR’s Erin Gottsacker visited the Golden Eagle farm, where a community corn garden is in the works.

Flint corn, also known as calico corn or Indian corn, has multi-colored kernels of deep purple, red and gold. It’s the type of corn cultivated by American Indian people hundreds of years ago to make hominy. In Lac du Flambeau, the Ojibwe tribe used flint corn to supplement a diet of wild rice and venison. Greg Johnson is a Lac du Flambeau tribal member, cultural teacher, and artist.

“If you went back 150 or 200 years, our people didn’t have pantries, they had birchbark baskets and they had both corn and wild rice.”

He says few tribal members still grow flint corn and make their own hominy.

But with climate change disrupting wild rice growth, he’s trying to bring the staple back.

“We’re all facing the same dilemma when it comes to wild rice. Wild rice is in decline, so I thought back to what my ancestors would have done. Just trying to provide food for our families and replace that wild rice that has always sustained us.”

Johnson and a dozen tribal members planted more than 40 rows of flint corn at the tribe’s Golden Eagle farm. When the corn is harvested in the fall, it’ll be braided and hung up over the winter, then boiled with maple ash in the spring to enrich the corn and turn it into hominy.

It’s a practice that dates back centuries, but one Johnson hopes can help tribal members deal with the more recent challenge of climate change.

Native cast members of the new television series “Dark Winds” say the show is providing an opportunity to showcase more Native talent both on camera and behind the scenes.

The drama follows tribal police on Navajo land in the 1970s, based on books by the late-non-Native author Tony Hillerman.

Zahn McClarnon, lead actor, says Native people adapted this latest TV version of Hillerman’s work from a Native lens and taking control of the narrative.

“We put together a team of Native writers, Native producers, Native directors, and Native crew. And Native consultants. So we were kind of telling Tony Hillerman’s stories from a different perspective…I think it’s a great step towards seeing Natives in their experience as normal allowing the public, the audience to see that Native culture is American culture, it is American history, control of our stories is important.”

Fellow actor Jessica Matten agrees and points to “Reservation Dogs” and “Rutherford Falls,” as other productions with Native representation in the mainstream.

“We’ve kicked down the doors and now I feel there’s this responsibility to make sure that those doors stay open, that this isn’t just a trend in a moment in time, but that we actually through the exposure we’re getting now, we’re able to humanize Native people in a global way. We are still a small population in comparison to other cultures who get more exposure whether that’s in cinema or television or in any other facet.”

The “Dark Winds” production crew included two Navajo cultural consultants, used a Native-owned studio, and filmed on Pueblo lands in New Mexico.

The series premieres on AMC on June 12th and this Friday, Native America Calling devotes the full hour to “Dark Winds”.

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The Cherokee Nation and the U.S. Mint celebrated the release of the Wilma Mankiller quarter Monday in Tahlequah, OK.

The quarter is one of five designs in the American Women Quarters Program. The program is highlighting the accomplishments and contributions of trailblazing American women, including in areas of civil rights and government.

Chief Mankiller was the first woman elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. During the event, current principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, Chuck Hoskin Jr., talked about Chief Mankiller’s legacy.

He says she helped lead the way in work to improve health care, address racial justice, and advocate for women’s rights.

“If Chief Mankiller’s legacy was summed up simply by what she did, my friends it would be enormous, but her legacy grows because her work continues to make an impact and I see it every single day. She keeps changing the world every time our tribe helps an elder, every time neighbors join together to make their Cherokee community a safer and better place to live, every time a kid applies to college or starts learning the Cherokee language.”   

T.V. Johnson with the U.S. Mint told the crowd the work they do at the Mint is connecting America through coins. He says the Cherokee Nation has been featured on dollar coins, but not on a quarter.

“This will be the first time a Cherokee member will be featured on a quarter. A coin that changes hands over and over again prompting anyone who sees it, not in the know, to say who is this? And, perhaps inspire a little girl or boy to become inspired about Wilma Mankiller and her remarkable perseverance contributed so much to the Cherokee people and people worldwide.”

The coin’s design depicts Mankiller looking to the future, wrapped in a shawl and the seven-pointed star of the Cherokee Nation. The inscriptions are in English and in the Cherokee syllabary.

The release of the Mankiller quarter is the third coin in the program.

Before U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg tested positive for COVID, he was scheduled to travel to the Cherokee Nation on Tuesday. Instead, Deputy Secretary of Transportation Polly Trottenberg will go in his place.

The tribe and federal agency are signing a compact and funding agreement to plan and oversee road construction and transit projects without having to seek federal permission and oversight.

While the deputy secretary takes the planned tour a road project and discusses electric vehicle initiatives undertaken by the tribe, Sec. Buttigieg is working remotely per CDC guidelines while he self-isolates and recovers from his mild symptoms.

Montana tribes later this year will receive the first round of federal funding for water and sewer projects on tribal land.   Montana Public Radio’s Aaron Bolton reports, the money comes from Congress’ bipartisan infrastructure bill passed last year. 

Montana tribes will receive just shy of $2 million this year for construction of new wells and lift stations as well as other improvements for tribal water and sewer systems.

Projects on the Crow Agency, Blackfeet, Flathead, Fort Belknap, and Northern Cheyenne reservations will be funded this year.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, tribes across the nation will receive a total of $3.5 billion dollars for water and sewer projects by 2025.

Outdated water and sewer infrastructure has hampered the Blackfeet Nation in particular. The tribe has been unable to build a new drug treatment center and other sorely needed services because Browning’s water and sewer system is maxed out. The tribe isn’t receiving federal dollars to update that system during this first wave of funding. 

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A large datacenter could be built near Polson, MT in the coming years. As Aaron Bolton reports, the proposal was pitched during a technology summit last week. 

Entrepreneur Brian O’Leary, also known as Mr. Wonderful on the TV show “Shark Tank,” announced at the summit held in Bozeman his investment firm is working with the bitcoin mining company Bit Zero and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) to potentially build the datacenter.

“The demand for these centers is insatiable all around the world and the states that have figured this out have wind, have hydro, have solar. This is the future.”

O’Leary said the center could provide services to bitcoin miners and data storage for other web-based services. Most of the power to the facility would come from the Salish Kootenai Dam south of Polson on the Flathead Reservation.  

CSKT tribal council secretary Martin Charlo says the tribes are interested in the jobs the center could provide for locals.

“Our tribes have always been a people of vision and I believe that Kevin and Mr. Daines, Governor Gianforte, and Akbar are bringing this great vision to us.”

While the tribes say they haven’t committed to the project, they’ll continue looking into the datacenter to see if it’s a viable business opportunity.  

A candlelight vigil is planned Monday night in front of the White Mountain Apache Police Department in Arizona for fallen officer Adrian Lopez who was killed last week on the Fort Apache reservation.

According to police, Lopez was conducting a traffic stop Thursday night when an altercation occurred between the officer and the person operating the vehicle. Lopez was fatally shot during the altercation.

The suspect then took his police vehicle and fled the scene. The suspect was pursued by police and was involved in a gun battle where the suspect was killed.

Another officer was shot and transported to a Phoenix hospital for treatment.

A memorial has been set up for Lopez in front of the White Mountain Apache Police Department.

Lopez started with the department in January. His family flew to Arizona from California over the weekend and told ABC 15 they’re grateful to the community for their support and plan to take Lopez home to the LA area.

Meanwhile, the Navajo Nation is providing law enforcement assistance to the tribe. Ten Navajo Police Officers took the oath of office from a White Mountain Apache judge last week, which allows them to patrol and perform public safety duties on the Fort Apache reservation while the tribe mourns the loss of Officer Lopez.

The tribe is also receiving city, county, state, and federal support. 

The Cherokee Nation and the U.S. Mint are hosting a public event Monday to celebrate the release of the Wilma Mankiller quarter.

The quarter is one of five designs for the first coins in the American Women Quarters Program.

The four-year program features coins with reverse designs to highlight the accomplishments and contributions of trailblazing American women, including in areas of civil rights, government, humanities, science, space, and the arts. 

Mankiller was the first woman elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma and a well-known advocate for Native American and women’s rights.

The coin’s design depicts Mankiller with a resolute gaze, wrapped in a shawl and the seven-pointed star of the Cherokee Nation.

The coin’s inscriptions in English are “United States of America,” “Wilma Mankiller,” “Principal Chief.”

The coin also includes the inscription “Cherokee Nation,” which is written in the Cherokee syllabary.

The release of the Mankiller quarter is the third coin in the program. The celebration is taking place in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

The U.S. Mint and the National Women’s History Museum will hold a film screening and panel discussion on Mankiller in Washington, D.C. on Friday.

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau traveled to central Alberta this week for a historic signing of a land claim settlement. As Dan Karpenchuk reports, the government is paying out one of the largest settlements made to a Canadian First Nation.

The Siksika First Nation, east of Calgary, lost about half of its land in a fraudulent deal with the Canadian government more than a century ago.  That, after the government broke a Blackfoot Treaty promise.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau says the signing this week, which includes $1.3 billion, is to right a wrong from the past.

“This allows us now to move forward on solid-er footing having undone a little bit of the broken trust of many years of recognizing the harm that we did generations ago, but understanding as well as large as the settlement is it can’t undo the loss, the trauma, the intergenerational impacts of what was done by Canada.”

For his part, Siksika Chief Ouray Crowfoot says it’s now about moving forward.

“It’s about renewing that treaty, you know, the treaty took place 145 years ago a lot of the promises in the treaty were broken, but now it’s about having that relationship rebuilding, that understanding.”

Crowfoot says the settlement won’t make up for past wrongs, but it will make a difference in people’s lives and provide opportunities that they didn’t have before.

Each member of the First Nation will receive $20,000 from the settlement. Money will also be spent on issues that are important to the reserve such as policing on the First Nation.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is using the Navajo language to draw attention to unsolved homicide and missing person cases on the Navajo Nation. 60-second radio ads have aired across Navajo land seeking information on a cold case, offering a reward and giving out a toll-free tip phone number.

In 2020, field offices in Albuquerque and in Phoenix issued posters in the Navajo language and later started including audio clips with them.

Raul Bujanda is FBI Special Agent in Charge.

“The initiative was really to try and reach the communities a little bit better than we’ve done in the past. So, what we’re trying to focus on is trying to get the communication out there in a form that made sense. We’re great about talking and putting things together, putting messages out as far as an organization, but we knew we were missing the one piece, which is that we weren’t writing in the Navajo language and we weren’t communicating in the Navajo language. So, our primary focus was to do just that.”

Bujanda says the ads were not successful in gathering information, but says the FBI will try again in its efforts to solve cold cases on the Navajo Nation.

The ads aired in April and May on Navajo-language radio station KTNN-AM.

Tribal leaders from New Mexico met with top state officials Thursday in Albuquerque. They took part in an annual tribal summit to discuss issues facing their communities.

Indian Affairs Cabinet Secretary Lynn Trujillo says the state is closely working with tribes, collaborating on policymaking and strengthening government-to-government partnerships.

The agenda reviewed accomplishments and looked at future needs, including an outlook of the summer-water, drought and wildfires.

The summit was established in 2009 under the State-Tribal Collaboration Act to ensure tribes are included in policymaking and funding priorities. It provides a framework for the state and tribes to work together to develop services and programs to serve the Native American community.

There are 23 tribal nations in New Mexico.

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This story is part of a partnership that includes Montana Public Radio, NPR and KHN.

The Blackfeet Nation’s Plight Underscores the Fentanyl Crisis on Reservations

BROWNING, Mont. — As the pandemic was setting in during summer 2020, Justin Lee Littledog called his mom to tell her he was moving from Texas back home to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana with his girlfriend, stepson, and son.

They moved in with his mom, Marla Ollinger, on a 300-acre ranch on the rolling prairie outside Browning and had what Ollinger remembers as the best summer of her life. “That was the first time I’ve gotten to meet Arlin, my first grandson,” Ollinger said. Another grandson was soon born, and Littledog found maintenance work at the casino in Browning to support his growing family.

But things began to unravel over the next year and a half. Friends and relatives saw Littledog’s 6-year-old stepson walking around town alone. One day, Ollinger received a call from her youngest son as one of Littledog’s children cried in the background. He was briefly unable to wake Littledog’s girlfriend.

Ollinger asked Littledog whether he and his girlfriend were using drugs. Littledog denied it. He explained to his mom that people were using a drug she had never heard about: fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is up to 100 times as potent as morphine. He said he would never use something so dangerous.

Then, in early March, Ollinger woke up to screams. She left her grandchildren sleeping in her bed and went into the next room. “My son was laying on the floor,” she said. He wasn’t breathing.

She followed the ambulance into Browning, hoping that Littledog had just forgotten to take his heart medication and would recover. He was pronounced dead shortly after the ambulance arrived at the local hospital.

Littledog was among four people to die from fentanyl overdoses on the reservation that week in March, according to Blackfeet health officials. An additional 13 people who live on the reservation survived overdoses, making a startling total for an Indigenous population of about 10,000 people.

Fentanyl has taken root in Montana and in communities across the Mountain West during the pandemic, after formerly being prevalent mostly east of the Mississippi River, said Keith Humphreys of the Stanford-Lancet Commission on the North American Opioid Crisis.

Montana law enforcement officials have intercepted record numbers of pale-blue pills made to look like prescription opioids such as OxyContin. In the first three months of 2022, the Montana Highway Patrol seized over 12,000 fentanyl pills, more than three times the number from all of 2021.

Nationwide, at least 103,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2021, a 45% increase from 2019, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 7 of every 10 of those deaths were from synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl.

Overdose deaths are disproportionately affecting Native Americans. The overdose death rate among Indigenous people was the highest of all racial groups in the first year of the pandemic and was about 30% higher than the rate among white people, according to a study co-authored by UCLA graduate student and researcher Joe Friedman.

In Montana, the opioid overdose death rate for Indigenous people was twice that of white people from 2019 to 2021, according to the state Department of Public Health and Human Services.

The reason, in part, is that Native Americans have relatively less access to health care resources, Friedman said. “With the drug supply becoming so dangerous and so toxic, it requires resources and knowledge and skills and funds to stay safe,” he said. “It requires access to harm reduction. It requires access to health care, access to medications.”

The Indian Health Service, which is responsible for providing health care to many Indigenous people, has been chronically underfunded. According to a 2018 report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, IHS per patient expenditures are significantly less than those of other federal health programs.

“I think what we’re seeing now is deep-seated disparities and social determinants of health are kind of bearing out,” Friedman said, referring to the disproportionate overdose deaths among Native Americans.

Blackfeet Tribal Business Council member Stacey Keller said she has experienced the lack of resources firsthand while trying to get a family member into treatment. She said just finding a facility for detoxing was difficult, let alone finding one for treatment.

“Our treatment facility here, they’re not equipped to deal with opioid addiction, so they’re usually referred out,” she said. “Some of the struggles we’ve seen throughout the state and even the western part of the United States is a lot of the treatment centers are at capacity.”

The local treatment center doesn’t have the medical expertise to supervise someone going through opioid withdrawal. Only two detox beds are available at the local IHS hospital, Keller said, and are often occupied by other patients. The health care system on the reservation also doesn’t offer medication-assisted treatment. The nearest locations to get buprenorphine or methadone — drugs used to treat opioid addictions — are 30 to 100 miles away. That can be a burden to patients who are required by federal rules to show up each day at the approved dispensaries to receive methadone or must make weekly treks for buprenorphine.

Keller said tribal leaders have requested assistance from IHS to build out treatment and other substance use resources in the community, with no results.

The IHS’ Alcohol and Substance Abuse Program consultant, JB Kinlacheeny, said the agency has largely shifted to appropriating funds directly to tribes to run their own programs.

The Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council, a consortium of Montana and Wyoming tribes, is working with the Montana Healthcare Foundation on a feasibility study for a treatment center operated by tribes to build capacity specifically for tribal members. Tribes across both states, including the Blackfeet, have passed resolutions supporting the effort.

Blackfeet political leaders declared a state of emergency in March after the fentanyl overdoses. A short time later, some of the tribal council chairman’s children were arrested on suspicion of selling fentanyl out of his home. The council removed Chairman Timothy Davis from his position in early April.

The tribe has created a task force to identify both the short- and long-term needs to respond to the opioid crisis. Blackfeet tribal police investigator Misty LaPlant is helping lead that effort.

Driving around Browning, LaPlant said she plans to train more people on the reservation to administer naloxone, a medication that reverses opioid overdoses. She also wants the tribe to host needle exchanges to reduce infections and the spread of diseases like HIV. There’s also hope, she said, that a reorganization of the tribal health department will result in a one-stop shop for Blackfeet Nation residents to find drug addiction resources on and off the reservation.

However, she said resolving some of the underlying issues — such as poverty, housing, and food insecurity — that make communities like the Blackfeet Nation vulnerable to the ongoing fentanyl crisis is a massive undertaking that won’t be completed anytime soon.

“You could connect historical trauma, unresolved traumas in general, and grief into what makes our community vulnerable,” she said. “If you look at the impact of colonialism and Indigenous communities and people, there’s a correlation there.”

Marla Ollinger is happy to see momentum building to fight opioid and fentanyl addiction in the wake of her son’s death and other people’s. As a mother who struggled to find the resources to save her son, she hopes no one else has to live through that experience.

“It’s heartbreaking to watch your children die unnecessarily,” she said.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.

A new mural is underway that will show Oregon’s original Indigenous residents, the Kalapuya people, harvesting and using native plants. From KLCC in Eugene, Brian Bull reports.

The 64-foot long mural depicts Native people gathering camas and other plants. It was done in consultation with Kalapuya elder, Esther Stutzman. Susan Applegate is the designer and artist, who’s putting the mural on the east side of the Dr. Edwin Coleman Junior Community Center.

“The community should know that these are just not weeds or something, but they had special relationship with the people, special meaning. It also informs the general population about the people who lived here before white settlement.” 

The mural, titled “Willamette Wetlands of the Kalapuya”, will be done ahead of a July 9th honoring ceremony featuring songs, stories, and Eugene Mayor Lucy Vinis.

It’s part of a larger project sponsored by Beyond Toxics and the Friendly Area Neighbors Equity Action Team.

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Three South Dakota agencies have violated the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.  That’s the opinion released last week in response to a lawsuit filed by the Rosebud and Oglala Sioux Tribes.

A Federal District Judge has found that the Secretary of State, the Department of Social Services, and the Department of Public Safety all failed to uphold a federal law designed to make it simpler for people to register to vote, as Victoria Wicks reports.

When the Native American Rights Fund filed this lawsuit in September 2020, then-NARF attorney Natalie Landreth said the complaint focused on a complex law with a simple purpose.

“It’s supposed to be easy to register, and it’s supposed to be offered to you when you interact with the state at a number of different points.”

Landreth said in 2004, when the state followed federal law, 7,000 voter registration applications originated from public agencies. But 12 years later, that number dropped to 1,100, when the state no longer complied.

“As a result, you’re seeing a significant decline in voter registration in South Dakota.”

In his recent opinion, Federal District Judge Lawrence Piersol found that South Dakota’s Departments of Social Services and Public Safety both violated federal law in several ways.

One example is that agencies asked applicants to opt in for voter registration assistance, but they are required to offer those services routinely unless the client wants to opt out. 

Another example: If someone does not have a Social Security number, a state ID card, or a driver’s license, state agencies are required to assign a voter identification number. Instead, state employees were sending those clients to the county auditor, even in rural areas and in Indian Country where it might be a long trip to the county seat. Judge Piersol placed the blame for these and other problems mainly on the Secretary of State, in this case Steve Barnett.

The judge noted that Barnett chairs the State Board of Elections and is responsible for enforcing the federal act. He said Barnett had failed to provide proper training and oversight and had given out inaccurate information to state employees.

Judge Piersol did not grant summary judgment to the plaintiffs on certain factual matters where witnesses need to be called and evidence presented. Those issues can continue to be litigated.

The Biden administration has released a new tool for tribes to help them navigate investments in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Officials from the departments of Health and Human Services, Environmental Protection Agency, Interior Department, and the White House announced the Tribal Playbook Tuesday during a press call.

The playbook is intended to help tribal governments access benefits from the infrastructure law, which includes more than $13 billion for Indian Country. Bryan Newland, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, says the Bureau of Indian Affairs sought feedback from tribes.

Newland says tribal leaders expressed the need for more information for funding, capacity building, and technical assistance – and for speeding up the permitting process. Newland says along with the playbook, the BIA is expanding its work to help tribes. 

“We’re creating an Infrastructure Law Interagency Coordinator Position here within Indian Affairs so that we can help Indian Country navigate these resources. We’ve issued a national policy memo directing the Bureau of Indian Affairs to prioritize permitting for any infrastructure projects so that these critical dollars can reach Indian Country as quickly as possible.”

Infrastructure law investments for the Interior Department includes funding for water rights settlements, dam safety, climate change, and orphaned wells.  Funding for other agencies address transportation, sanitation, broadband, drinking water, and other areas.

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The owner of the Grand Gateway Hotel in Rapid City, SD was arrested last week after a confrontation with demonstrators from the Native community.

The Rapid City Journal reports Connie Uhre was arrested Friday on three counts of simple assault for allegedly spraying a cleaning product on demonstrators.

The group NDN Collective has been leading picket line boycott events at the hotel three times a week for the last six weeks. The boycott events follow comments Uhre made on social media earlier this spring to ban Native Americans from the hotel.

In a video from NDN Collective of Friday’s event, Uhre appears to approach demonstrators holding a can of Pledge and then sprays a demonstrator.

“You just sprayed me in the face…You sprayed all of us in the face…She’s spaying in the face.”

In the video, Uhre also appears to spray herself with the aerosol can before walking away from the demonstrators.

In a statement, NDN Collective President/CEO Nick Tilsen called Uhre’s behavior racist, violent, disgusting, and illegal. Tilsen says the incident will be added to the federal civil rights discrimination lawsuit filed by the group in March against owners of the hotel.

Judge Lawrence Piersol (Photo: Koncurrentkat via Wikipedia)

A federal court last week found that South Dakota failed to provide voter registration services required under federal law. As Aaron Bolton reports, tribes brought the lawsuit saying it disenfranchised Native American voters.

U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Piersol found that South Dakota Secretary of State Steve Barnett’s office failed to provide proper training to state agencies, like DMVs, that are required to help residents register to vote under the National Voter Registration Act.

The Oglala Sioux Tribe and Rosebud Sioux Tribe, along with tribal members brought the suit, are arguing the noncompliance with the law specifically disenfranchised Indigenous voters, which make up 9% of the population.

The Native American Rights Fund said the ruling removes one more barrier to vote for American Indian people in the state.  

A new suspension bridge was dedicated recently near the coastal town of Yachats, OR. As KLCC’s Brian Bull reports, the event also recognized the displacement and genocide of Native Americans in the area.

The 142-foot long bridge replaces one destroyed by a landslide in 2015.  It spans a forested grotto which contains a statue of Amanda DeCuis, a Coos Indian forced to give up her daughter and march the craggy shores to the Alsea sub-agency in the 1860s.

Joanne Kittel owns the land with the statue and bridge. For her, this latest piece of the Amanda Trail is the culmination of years of activism and community support. Kittel says she often feels Amanda’s spirit in the grotto.

“Amanda’s around all the time. And many people feel the spiritual connection to her, it’s a very powerful area for a lot people. She is very much a part of everyone who’s worked there, even the construction crew from Redmond who built the bridge ended up feeling her presence.”

Kittel wants people to enjoy the bridge and scenery, but also to reflect on the death and sorrow Native Americans endured during colonization.

The Cowlitz Indian Tribe has announced David Barnett, general council chairman, died unexpectedly over the weekend of an apparent heart attack at his home in Shoreline, WA.

The chairman served as leader of the tribe since he was elected in June 2021.

Following the tribe’s succession plan, Barnett will be succeeded by the vice-chair. 

Services are being planned and will be shared with the public forthcoming. 

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