Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Tribes across the country are continuing to monitor actions being taken by the Trump administration after the White House rescinded a memo Wednesday on a temporary halt on federal loans and grants.
A memo issued this week on the funding freeze caused confusion and concern across Indian Country prompting tribes to analyze possible impacts.
In a statement, Southern Indian Ute Tribe chairman Melvin Baker said they recognize the importance of programs and services that rely on these funds and that the federal government has a solemn obligation to honor its trust responsibility and financial commitments.
(Photo: Jacob Frank / National Parks Service)
The U.S. Interior Department has begun to take steps to designate Denali as Mt. McKinley.
This comes after President Donald Trump’s executive order to return the mountain to a name change made in 1917.
As Rhonda McBride from our flagship station KNBA tells us, the fight to preserve the name Denali is an old battle.
If she were alive, Poldine Carlo would probably sing her Denali song to protest President Trump’s executive order.
Carlo was in her late 90’s when she performed her Denali song at a Denakkanaaga elders and youth conference.
She had greeted President Barack Obama with the same song, when he visited Alaska in 2015, the summer his administration changed the name back from McKinley to Denali.
“It just felt so good and it was healing.”
Angela Gonzalez remembers when Poldine sang the song for Obama.
In her Athabascan Woman Blog, she wrote about it and the joy she felt over the return of the ancient name.
“Just a feeling of a great land and untold stories from our ancestors.”
Gonzalez’s maiden name is Yatlin, which means “runner”, and refers to her family’s long history of trading goods.
“We definitely traveled a long ways.” where the mountain was part of a long network of trails that went all the way from Siberia to California – and Denali, which means tall one in her Koyukon Athabascan language, was an important landmark.
“We were people who traded everywhere. We have artifacts from other locations.”
Gonzalez says no matter what the president does, Denali will always be Denali.
New research suggests that coyotes are more abundant in areas where hunting them is allowed.
Caroline Long for the Mountain West News Bureau has more.
Coyotes are native to the southwestern United States, but they have expanded their range rapidly in the last century.
“Now they’re found basically throughout all of North America … and so, our main goal was to figure out what are the environmental and human-led factors driving this expansion?”
Austin Green is an associate instructor at the University of Utah.
Along with other researchers, he analyzed data from Snapshot USA, a network of cameras across the United States.
Research found that in Utah, Wyoming, Montana, and Nevada, where hunting and trapping coyotes is barely regulated, coyotes are more abundant.
“There was no evidence across our model or across other investigations that unregulated coyote hunting is a legitimate population control measure.”
More work needs to be done, but the implications are that state wildlife managers could play an important role in controlling growing coyote populations.
Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our daily newsletter today.
Leave a Reply