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Photo: Cape Foulweather, Oreg. (Wayne Taylor / Flickr)

In Oregon, a coastal piece of the Siletz Tribe’s ancestral territory has been restored. 

Monday’s announcement coincides with the 47^th anniversary of the tribe regaining federal recognition.

KLCC’s Brian Bull reports. 

Twenty-seven acres of Cape Foulweather on the Oregon Coast have been reacquired by the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians.

The tribe purchased the land from the McKenzie River Trust last month, with a $2 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“It really is an amazing opportunity for us to become stewards again.”

Angela Sondenaa is director of the tribe’s Natural Resources Department.

She hopes to reintroduce cultural burning to the coastal prairie section, to rejuvenate its ecosystem.

“Cape Foulweather is an incredibly diverse and sensitive ecological area.  It’s been a cultural gathering site for millennia.”

Sondendaa says it’s been a good year for the Siletz.

Last December, President Joe Biden signed a bill sponsored by House Representative Val Hoyle, restoring gathering, fishing, and hunting rights to the tribe on their ancestral lands.

“And it will provide direct opportunity for tribal members to gather and resume subsistence harvest in the rocky coastline there.”

The Siletz reservation was established in 1855 by Congress and President Franklin Pierce.  It was further diminished through land cessions.

Conservationists and tribes say they intend to sue the federal government if it doesn’t take steps to protect a rare snail – which is threatened by a lithium mine.

The Mountain West News Bureau’s Kaleb Roedel has more. 

The Kings River pyrg is tiny – about the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen. And it’s found only in an area of Nevada called Thacker Pass, where there are plans to mine lithium, the key ingredient for electric car batteries.

 

Paul Ruprecht is with the Western Watersheds Project.

He says mining will shrink the small springs that the snail relies on. 

“The species is really vulnerable because fluctuations in water availability could really impact its ability to continue to exist in these areas.”

The conservation group had previously petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to list the snail as endangered.

The agency was supposed to make a decision this year, but never did. 

So the nonprofit and several tribes informed the government they intend to sue. 

The People of Red Mountain is a group of knowledge keepers from the Fort McDermitt Paiute, Shoshone, and Bannock Tribes.

They say they have a cultural responsibility to protect native species in the area.

Federal officials now have until mid-January to respond. 

 

 

 

Alaska’s vote counting process will finally come to an end this Wednesday, but Nick Begich III is already declaring victory in his bid to unseat U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola (Yup’ik/D-AK).

KNBA’s Rhonda McBride reports.

Between Friday and Saturday, an additional 24,000 ballots were counted.

Although they closed the gap between Rep. Peltola and her Republican challenger to about 8,300 votes, Begich still maintains a lead of more than 2% against Peltola.

A candidate must have more than 50% of the vote to avoid ranked choice voting in Alaska. That’s when the second-choice votes of other candidates in the race are added to the totals.

Although 318,000 ballots have been cast, Begich so far has failed to meet that threshold, so the race will likely be determined by ranked choice.

Peltola, a Democrat, had a strong well-financed campaign but failed to overcome the coat tail effect of President-elect Donald Trump’s big win in Alaska, which boosted Begich’s campaign.

Meanwhile, a ballot measure that seeks to overturn Alaska’s open primary and ranked choice voting system is passing by the slimmest of margins – by only 2 tenths of a percent point.

In August 2022, ranked choice voting helped Peltola win a special election to fill Rep. Don Young (R-AK)’s seat after his death, making her the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress.

 

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As Republicans and Democrats battle it out for control of the U.S. House, Alaska’s lone Congressional seat appears to be closer to being flipped.

That seat is held by U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola (Yup’ik/D-AK), the first Alaska Native to be elected to Congress.

KNBA’s Rhonda McBride has the latest numbers.

Since election night, Rep. Peltola has trailed her Republican challenger Nick Begich III by about 10,000 votes.

After the Alaska Division of Elections added more than 38,000 votes to the totals late Tuesday night, Peltola cut into her opponent’s lead by a few hundred votes, but the gap between the two candidates remains about the same.

So far, Begich has 49.1% of the vote, not enough to avoid triggering Alaska’s ranked choice voting system on November 20.

If Begich cannot surpass a threshold of 50% of the vote, the second-choice votes for two other candidates in the race will be divided between Begich and Peltola, who will have to get a lion’s share of those votes to pull out ahead.

The next election update comes this Friday.

People on the Wind River Reservation say President Joe Biden’s recent apology for the federal Indian boarding school system needs follow-up.

The schools sought to assimilate Native children and separate them from their languages and communities.

Wyoming Public Radio’s Hannah Habermann has more.

In recent years, both the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes have brought home remains of children who died at the Carlisle Boarding School.

The trauma of the boarding school system still impacts those communities today.  

“I hope they prove it. It’s good for (President) Biden to offer an apology, but that isn’t enough.”

“The apology needs to go deeper than just the boarding school issue. It needs to deal with physical genocide, extermination, decimation of the buffalo.”

“Increased funding for tribal nations to be able to regain everything that was lost because of the boarding school policy.”

That was Northern Arapaho member Cherokee Brown, former Eastern Shoshone Business Council chairman John St. Clair, and Northern Arapaho Business Councilwoman Karen Returns to War.

Federal officials announced a new round of funding to help tribes access clean drinking water.

As Alex Hager reports for the Mountain West News Bureau, that includes nearly $35 million for tribes in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming.

Across the country, nearly half of all tribal homes do not have access to reliable clean drinking water.

This money, which comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, is part of a federal effort to change that.

The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in Colorado and the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona are among those getting money to plan, build, and maintain pipelines and water treatment plants.

The Biden Administration says this pool of money will help it stay on track with a goal to give 40% of its climate spending to marginalized communities.

This comes as tribes in the Southwest are asking for a bigger say in talks about how to use the Colorado River.

They’ve been largely excluded from negotiations about the river since the earliest days of its management.

The Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma and Prime Video have teamed up to bring the Cherokee language to viewers through dub and subtitles on select titles in Prime Video’s library.

It’s part of the tribe’s efforts to preserve the Cherokee language.

The first production was The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

The episode premiere during a recent special screening in Tahlequah.

All season one episodes of the series are being translated and expected to be available in Cherokee by the Spring of 2025.

 

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Federal officials announced a new round of funding to help tribes access clean drinking water.

As Alex Hager reports for the Mountain West News Bureau, that includes nearly $35 million for tribes in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming.

Across the country, nearly half of all tribal homes do not have access to reliable clean drinking water.

This money, which comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, is part of a federal effort to change that.

The Ute Mountain Ute tribe in Colorado and the San Carlos Apache tribe in Arizona are among those getting money to plan, build, and maintain pipelines and water treatment plants.

The Biden Administration says this pool of money will help it stay on track with a goal to give 40% of its climate spending to marginalized communities.

This comes as tribes in the Southwest are asking for a bigger say in talks about how to use the Colorado River.

They’ve been largely excluded from negotiations about the river since the earliest days of its management.

Alaskan winters are some of the coldest winters in the world.

With record breaking snow falls and temperatures reaching the negatives, Alaskans prepare months ahead of time for the long, cold winter months.

For some people, even staying warm becomes a challenge and is the reality for many veterans living in Alaska, including Native veterans.

Jessy Lakin is a combat veteran, who served two deployments in Iraq.

After his service, he moved to Alaska and started volunteering for organizations, such as the National Wild Turkey Federation, and created a non-profit called Battle Dawgs, helping veterans suffering with PTSD and addiction.

A few years after Lakin moved to Alaska, he spoke with an Alaska State Trooper, who said he had just delivered fire wood to a veteran, and told him of the dire situation many veterans face in Alaska.

“He said that he had responded to four deaths at that point, that he knew were veterans, and he was telling me that he was frustrated because there wasn’t really anything in place to help seniors, with snow removal, and fire wood, and the problem was, that we found, was veterans like to isolate. They don’t have anybody checking on them.”

Lakin says the four veterans who died, all showed signs of struggle when they were found.

They had burned all of their wood furniture, and their oven doors were found open, indicating they tried to warm their homes with the oven.

He said he knew he had to do something.

“There was no real tracking system here in the state, nobody is really paying attention to that, and there was no kind of program designed to support them. So, we got proactive, we started thinking about how to help. And we created the Mat-Su winter project.”

The project started out small, with Lakin and some veteran friends reaching out to other veterans, to deliver firewood, and remove snow from by their home.

He soon changed the name to the Alaska Warrior Partnership.

Here is Lakin talking about one of his experiences.

“When we found him, he was barely moving, he had his dog inside of his jacket, and then I think every piece of clothing on him possible. Hadn’t had fire in three days and it was negative 40 degrees.”

But the story has a happy ending.

“We took care of him, and then got him off the program, got him moved into a better house in town that had electric heat. Got him connected to other services as well.”

Lakin says he’s responded to many residences in similar situations.

More information about the program is posted on the America’s Warrior Partnership Facebook page.

 

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In October, U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola (Yup’ik/D-AK) predicted that her race could come down to dozens of votes.

So far, the margin isn’t that close – but still, pretty close.

Rep. Peltola was the first Alaska Native to be elected to Congress. But as KNBA’s Rhonda McBride reports, the Democrat is trailing behind her Republican challenger, Nick Begich.

Alaskans expected Donald Trump to win their state.

The question was: What would be the coattail effect for Nick Begich III?

So far, Begich has just under half of the vote, about 10,500 votes more than Peltola.

His uncle, former U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, is a Democrat and supports Peltola.

Although there’s only about a dozen precincts left to count, these are in predominantly rural and Alaska Native communities with votes that will likely go to Peltola.

Sen. Begich says, although her path to victory is narrow, it’s still there.

He recalled election night in his own race in 2008 against the late Senator Ted Stevens.

“Everyone counted me out. Even the senators back east counted me out, because I remember calling them. I mean, in my election against (U.S. Sen.) Ted Stevens, I was down 3,700 votes election night. Then I won by 3,800 votes.”

Former State Rep. Charisse Millett (Iñupiaq/R-AK) says she’s hoping Peltola will pull through.

Rep. Millett served as Republican House Majority leader.

“We’ll see. I’m hopeful. As a Native woman, I’d like to see Mary prevail.”

But Millett says it won’t be easy.

“I think there’s a path for her to prevail, but it’s really an uphill battle. Everything in the stars has to align in order for her to prevail.”

Begich needs more than 50% of the vote to avoid triggering the next step in Alaska’s ranked choice voting system on November 20. That’s when the votes for two other candidates in the race would be divvied up between Begich and Peltola, depending on who voters ranked as their second choice.

If Begich wins, he would hold the House seat that his grandfather and namesake held, before he died in a plane crash in 1972.

 

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It is another term for U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids (Ho-Chunk/D-KS). Rhonda LeValdo has more.

With her fourth victory, incumbent Rep. Davids won her reelection with 53% of the vote to Prasanth Reddy’s 42%.

Rep. Davids talked about the hurdles she overcame to get things done for Kansas.

“We have faced so many challenges, rising costs, divisiveness. I mean, there are things like attacks on our basic rights. Things that have made the last few years not easy for a lot of folks. But through it all, we have seen people push forward, pushed toward their solutions, taking the commitment that we have to each other, and our shared commitment for our state, and shared commitment for our country, and doing everything we can.”

While the crowd watched the presidential election results, Haskell student Jacob Curtis (Cherokee citizen) talked about why he drove all day back to Oklahoma to vote as a young person as the crowd cheered to incoming results.

“It is important to vote in our Native communities.“

At the end of Rep. David’s speech, she stated that there is more work to be done in the State of Kansas and hope everyone can work together and get over the divisiveness.

 

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While many votes are still being tallied and election outcomes finalized, NPR reports that in 25 states, voters had the chance to elect or re-elect an Indigenous candidate.

Using data collected by Indian Country Today and the group Advance Native Political Leadership, at least 170 Native American, Alaskan Native, or Native Hawaiians were on the ballots.

And while there have been gains in Indigenous representation, recent data shows Native elected officials made up less than 0.1% of the roughly 519,000 elected offices across the U.S.

To achieve parity based on the Native population in the country, Indigenous people would have to hold 17,000 offices.

Watch our Native Vote 2024 Election Night special anchored by Antonia Gonzales and Shaun Griswold

Across Canada, tributes and condolences are pouring in after the death of a key Indigenous leader.

Murray Sinclair was the former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and considered a pioneer for Indigenous rights.

Dan Karpenchuk has this remembrance.

“When I was asked to chair the truth and reconciliation commission, I thought that I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. My experience as a lawyer, as a judge, as the co-chair of the aboriginal justice inquiry of Manitoba in the early 1990’s had given me a considerable amount of information about what Indigenous people had experienced here in Canada.”

That’s Murray Sinclair from an interview in 2021.

Sinclair went on to say the stories of survivors of the residential schools proved to be horrendous.

He took part in hundreds of hearings across Canada and heard testimony from thousands of residential school survivors.

Tributes came from Native leaders across the country, and from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who said Canada lost a giant.

“The deep convictions and immovable strength he brought to bear on such extraordinary challenges were an inspiration to all of us.”

PM Trudeau also said Sinclair challenged us all to confront the darkest parts of our history because we could learn from them and be better for it.

The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs said he broke barriers and inspired people to pursue reform and justice with courage and determination.

In 2016, he was appointed to the Canadian senate.

He retired from that role in 2021. And in recent years he limited his public engagements due to poor health.

He had congestive heart failure and nerve damage forced him to rely on a wheel chair.

The father of five died peacefully yesterday in a Winnipeg hospital.

He was 73.

Many states are turning to dental therapists to serve tribes.

But, some aren’t so sure adding another mid-level position is the way to tackle dental care deserts.

The Mountain West News Bureau’s Hanna Merzbach reports.

Dental therapists are a relatively new position. They can do things like cleanings, fluoride treatments, and even simple fillings, says dentist and researcher Donald Chi.

“Put out small fires in a community with lots of dental care needs, and so then the dentist can come in and put out the big fires.”

He says dental therapists are often focused on tribes, since about half of Indigenous people live in areas without enough dentists.

Initiatives have been particularly successful in Alaska, but there are few training programs for dental therapists in the lower 48.

And Tanna Nagy with the Wyoming Dental Association says she’d rather see resources go toward existing programs for dentists, hygienists and assistants.

“Instead of trying to find faculty for new programs, which is just hard to find already.”

She says states could also encourage reaching unserved populations by reducing dental workers’ student loan debt.

 

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Today is election day and it is important to make sure every voice is heard at the ballot box.

That includes Native voices, who are often disenfranchised from the polls.

SDPB’s C.J. Keene checks in with one group looking to get out the Native vote.

The Communities Organizing for Unified Power (COUP) Council, a Rapid City Indigenous organization, held a town hall to discuss the importance of getting indigenous peoples to the ballot box.

After a successful campaign season signing people up, He Sapa Voters voter organization director Jean Roach says it’s a challenge to encourage people to participate for many reasons.

“People are like ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ but just telling them that their vote can be more of a bigger picture in the end. An invocation.”

Roach says housing, policing, and representation are among the most important issues facing the local community this election season.

She adds these issues can be addressed, along with increased representation in the capitol, if people recognize the influence they hold.

“People don’t realize how powerful we really are. We need to unite, and by voting that’s one step toward making a difference in our own lives. People really don’t see it, but we encourage it because maybe we’re going to have a candidate up there and we can make a difference. So, we want to make some changes. Really big ones.”

Last week, President Joe Biden apologized for U.S. government-run Native American Boarding schools.

Clark Adomaitis has more on the reaction in Colorado.

Over the course of 150 years, Indian boarding schools aimed to exterminate Indigenous culture by removing children from their families and suppressing their languages and cultural practices.

Children were also subject to other atrocities including emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.

Indigenous leaders at Fort Lewis College are applauding President Biden’s apology.

Last year, History Colorado reported that between 30 and 50 children from the Fort Lewis boarding school are buried in the cemetery on the grounds where the former boarding school stood.

Heather Shotton is the Vice President of Diversity Affairs at Fort Lewis College. She’s a citizen of the Wichita and Affiliated tribes, and is Kiowa and Cheyenne.

“It has been a long time coming, and something that is needed to start the healing process and so that we can recognize that history.”

Shotton says she appreciates Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo)’s leadership in this issue.

Ernest House Jr. is a member of the Ute Mountain Ute tribe and a Fort Lewis College board member.

“Particularly having an indigenous person in the Department of Interior leading has probably had a great deal of influence, and has been critical to have that type of representation.”

“There’s not anybody from tribal communities that has not been either personally impacted by a relative, a family member, a connection by this historical trauma, this this dark chapter.”

House wants the U.S. government to take action after President Biden’s apology.

He wants funding for language programs.

“Five-hundred and seventy-four federally recognized tribes, yet less than 200 still speak our native language. The languages were stripped from these students once they went to Indian boarding schools. The culture and what made them unique was stripped away.”

The Department of Interior reports that almost 1,000 Indigenous children died at federal Indian boarding schools.

The state of Colorado is continuing to fund research into the state’s Indian boarding schools.

 

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