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Anchor: Antonia Gonzales
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland will visit Oklahoma Saturday for the first stop on the “The Road to Healing” tour to hear from former Indian boarding school students and descendants.
The year-long tour is part of Haaland’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, which was launched last year.
In May, the Interior Department released an investigative report, which includes collecting testimony and finding trauma-informed support for tribal communities.
Sec. Haaland discussed the tour during a U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing in June.
“A necessary part of this journey will be to connect survivors and their families with mental health support, create a permanent collection of oral histories. We know this won’t be easy, but this is a history we must learn from if we are to heal from this tragic era in our country.”
Sec. Haaland will also travel to Hawaii, Michigan, Arizona and South Dakota this year.
Additional states are expected to be announced for 2023.
The Cherokee Nation and the U.S. Mint recently celebrated the release of the Chief Wilma Mankiller quarter.
The quarter is one of five designs in the American Women Quarters Program, which highlights the accomplishments and contributions of trailblazing American women.
Chief Mankiller was the first woman elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.
Current principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, Chuck Hoskin Jr. expressed his appreciation of Mankiller during the celebration in June, saying she helped lead the way to improve health care and was an 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.”
The coin’s design depicts Mankiller looking to the future, wrapped in a shawl and the seven-pointed star of the Cherokee Nation.
The Coquille Tribe recently released a thousand juvenile Chinook salmon in a creek, as part of the tribe’s efforts to restore salmon number. KLCC’s Brian Bull reports.
A tribal member sang a song to bless the salmon, which Coquille officials say are among the first of thousands more expected to be released this year. The 2021 spawning project was done with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and other partners, after surveys showed Chinook salmon numbers had fallen to near extinction in the area. In a video released by the tribe, Coquille tribal Chair Brenda Meade said she’s proud.
“Proud of the fact that we are all coming together as a community to make this happen because there’s no way the tribe could have done it by themselves. We gotta keep going though, this is just step one, it feels like baby-steps. But it’s the first thousand that are going out, and it’s something to celebrate.”
Invasive bass, climate change, and pollution are seen as factors in the decline of Chinook salmon.
Montana tribes later this year will receive the first round of federal funding for water and sewer projects on tribal land. As Montana Public Radio’s Aaron Bolton reports, the money comes from a bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by Congress 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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