President Trump proposes to cut the Indian Health Service budget by $300 million, and the head of the IHS had trouble justifying that 6 percent cut at a Senate hearing Wednesday. Senators on both sides of the aisle say they’re outraged at the state of affairs at IHS, and it goes beyond the budget cut.

An Alaska Native weaver of Chilkat blankets has received one of the nation’s top awards recognizing traditional folk art. The National Endowment for the Arts’ director of folk and traditional arts, Clifford Murphy, says his organization is honoring 62-year-old Anna Brown Ehlers for her outstanding weaving.

“National Heritage Fellowships are the highest national honor in folk and traditional arts. So this is really a lifetime recognition for mastery of traditional arts,” Murphy said. 

Randy Phelan, vice president of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, was among governors, mayors and stakeholders meeting with the Trump administration this week to discuss how to improve U.S. infrastructure, which included energy talks. The tribe has been working on oil and gas development for the last nine years. The reservation sits in the heart of Bakken oil and gas reserves. Phelan met with the president, vice president and senior administration officials at the White House.

Talks among Dakota elders, Walker Art Center officials and artist Sam Durant will result in the dismantling and burning of a controversial art installation. Officials with the renowned art center in Minneapolis delayed the grand re-opening of its outdoor sculpture garden scheduled for this weekend after Native community members voiced concerns the scaffolding piece emphasizes a painful history for the Dakota people.

A year after the abduction and death of a girl on the Navajo Nation, Congressional leaders are taking steps to ensure funding for the AMBER Alert system for tribal communities. Members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs heard comments from tribal leaders, law enforcement officials and others.

Congressional Republicans maintain that the American Health Care Act (AHCA), which narrowly passed Thursday in the U.S. House of Representatives, will not significantly affect those in the Indian health system.

Republican U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a member of the Cherokee Nation, says the bill entirely preserves the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, a decades-old law that commits federal funding to tribal health care across the country.

“This doesn’t make any change to Indian Health Services. In fact, the whole section on IHS was left completely alone,” said Rep. Mullin.

The Nebraska Supreme Court says it will hear an appeal by four Whiteclay liquor stores forced to close by the state’s Liquor Control Commission. The Omaha World Herald reports the decision means the ultimate ruling over the closures will come sooner rather than later. It’s the latest in a back-and-forth legal battle playing out even as the stores in the tiny town on the edge of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation were forced to clear their shelves over the weekend.

The families of 17 Standing Rock Sioux veterans are receiving Congressional Gold Medals in honor of the men’s service as code talkers during World War I. The men were among those fighting in the trenches along the Western Front in France seven years before Native Americans were granted citizenship by the United States government.

Following the massive, months-long protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, lawmakers in South Dakota enacted laws curtailing protests in that state. The legislation is in anticipation of demonstrations against the Keystone XL pipeline. Now that it’s in effect, the bill stiffens penalties for protesters, expressly restricts blocking highways, and allows the governor to establish temporary ‘safe zones’ where access is limited.