A Nevada tribe succeeded Tuesday in getting a district judge to temporarily pause construction of a planned geothermal energy project near the Dixie Meadows Hot Springs, a site considered sacred to the tribe.

U.S District Judge Robert Clive Jones granted a 90-day pause that will temporarily prevent construction of the Dixie Meadows geothermal energy project, proposed by developer Ormat Technologies. 

The Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe requested a halt on construction that was scheduled to start Jan. 6 while the...

Middle schooler Rarity Cournoyer stood at the heart of the Red Cloud Indian School campus and chanted a prayer song firmly and solemnly in the Lakota language — in a place where past generations of students were punished for speaking their mother tongue.

Her classmates stood around her at a prayer circle designed with archetypes of Native American spirituality, with a circular sidewalk representing a traditional medicine wheel, crossed by sidewalks pointing to the four cardinal directions.

Lakota language teacher Amery Brave Heart walked quietly with a small bundle...

 Attorneys for a Louisiana oil and gas company have asked a federal judge to reinstate a drilling lease it held on land considered sacred to Native American tribes in the U.S. and Canada.

The long-disputed energy lease in the Badger-Two Medicine area of northwestern Montana near the Blackfeet Reservation was cancelled in 2016 under then-U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. That decision was upheld by a federal appeals court last year.

Now Solenex LLC - the company that held the lease - is making another run at getting a court to restore its drilling rights. In...

In November 2021, the secretaries of the U.S. Department of the Interior, Department of Agriculture, Department of Transportation, Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, White House Council on Environmental Quality, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, and the Tennessee Valley Authority (the participating agencies) entered into a voluntary Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to “improve the protection of, and access to, Indigenous sacred sites through enhanced and improved interdepartmental coordination, collaboration, and action.”

The MOU provides by...

Since 2015, the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band of Costanoan/Ohlone have been vehemently opposing a proposed quarry in central California that will eventually destroy four sacred mountains and cause serious ecological damage to Juristac, an area that is the heart of the tribe’s ancestral lands.

The proposed sand and gravel quarry would be located on and around the former Sargent Ranch in Santa Clara and San Benito counties near Gilroy, about 40 miles southeast of San Jose. The Debt Acquisition Company of America, a wealthy developer group from San Diego bought the land at auction in...

A lawsuit accusing a Nebraska school district of violating a Lakota family's First Amendment rights and unlawful racial discrimination is headed to court.

The suit was filed after a school employee cut two girls' hair during school lice checks, even after the parents raised concerns.

Rose Godinez, interim legal director for the ACLU of Nebraska, the group representing the family associated with the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, explained hair is considered a sacred symbol that should only be cut by specific people under certain conditions.

Source:...

Two influential U.S. Roman Catholic Church bishops are encouraging their peers to cooperate with a federal investigation into abuses committed within the former Native American boarding school system.

In a letter sent to all U.S. bishops in November, Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, who heads a church committee on domestic justice, and Bishop James Wall of Gallup, New Mexico, who leads a church committee on Native American affairs, asked fellow bishops to hand over records investigators may seek and allow access to...

The Wašiw Tribe took a step forward in September of 2021 when Squaw Valley announced the name change of their resort to Palisades Tahoe. The name was changed following an official yearlong process of planning and working with the Wašiw (Washoe) Tribe of Nevada and California, along with several public discussions.

While many eager, and some angry, onlookers from around the country waited only a year for the official name change of the resort, the Wašiw Tribe was finally able to breathe a small sigh of relief after decades of fighting the oppressive word.

In August...

Animal neglect used to be such a problem on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota, with basic services like sterilization out of reach for many due to poverty and remoteness, that packs of stray dogs would sometimes bring traffic to a halt on the main highway.

Today, strays are rare. Kids are helping their elders in animal rescues, pet food and supplies are routinely distributed in the community and the first veterinary clinic in the main town, Cass Lake, is one final permit away from breaking ground.

It’s all thanks to a yearslong and increasingly...

A pair of Arizona men are facing federal charges for allegedly climbing up and into a set of protected pre-Columbian cliff dwellings considered sacred by many Native American tribes, shooting video of their illegal escapades that they later posted to Facebook. That’s according to a criminal complaint filed in Arizona federal court, accusing Levi Lee Watson and Shayne McKenna Brunt with trespassing, unlawfully entering...

 President Joe Biden on Monday ordered several Cabinet departments to work together to combat human trafficking and crime on Native lands, where violent crime rates are more than double the national average.

Speaking at a White House summit on tribal nations, Biden signed an executive order tasking the Justice, Homeland Security and Interior departments with pursuing strategies to reduce crime. Biden also asked the departments to work to strengthen participation in Amber Alert programs and national training programs for federal agents, and appoint a liaison who can speak...

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland has announced a new initiative to protect and improve access to sites across the United States considered sacred by Indigenous peoples.

Haaland’s announcement came Tuesday (Nov. 16), on the second day of the Biden administration’s first Tribal Nations Summit.

“Since time immemorial, the Earth’s lands and waters have been central to the social, cultural, spiritual, mental, and physical wellbeing of Indigenous peoples. It is essential that we do everything we can to honor sites...

Oak Flat is about 4,300 acres of desert landscape in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest, about an hour east of Phoenix. It’s a world-renowned rock climbing spot and a popular hiking and camping destination. 

For the Apache, it’s a sacred religious site. The area also has a massive copper deposit. In a 2014 deal, ...

To Apache Stronghold founder Wendsler Nosie, Sr., it’s going to take just about a miracle to win their case to preserve the Apache sacred site in Arizona known as Oak Flat, given how “deceitful” he said it was for Congress to authorize the transfer of the land to Resolution Copper, a company owned by the British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto.

“When I say that we’re going to need a miracle, it means that the judges are going to sit there and have to make a moral decision — what they really mean when it comes to the Constitution, when they say freedom of religion, freedom of...