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...

Rockland County Legislators have unanimously adopted a new law to allow the preservation of cultural resources held sacred by the Ramapough Lenape Nation at a place called Split Rock. For some legislators, the new law is only the beginning of an effort to win more protections for  the Ramapough and other Indigenous Peoples.

“I’ve been fighting for the state recognition of the Ramapough Lenape for the last 15 years,” Rockland County Legislature Chairman Alden H. Wolfe said. “This has been a struggle that sadly has resulted in inaction by the New York State Legislature. I...

President Joe Biden on Friday restored two sprawling national monuments in Utah, reversing a decision by President Donald Trump that opened for mining and other development hundreds of thousands of acres of rugged lands sacred to Native Americans and home to ancient cliff dwellings and petroglyphs.

The Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments in southern Utah encompass more than 3.2 million acres — an area nearly the size of Connecticut — and were created by Democratic administrations under a century-old law that allows presidents to protect sites considered historic...

Top officials with the largest Native American tribe in the United States are renewing a request for congressional leaders to hold a field hearing before deciding on federal legislation aimed at limiting oil and gas development around Chaco Culture National Historical Park.

The Navajo Nation has struggled for years with high poverty rates and joblessness, and the tribe’s legislative leaders say individual Navajo allottees stand to lose an important source of income if a 10-mile (16-kilometer) buffer is created around the park as proposed. They’re calling for a smaller area of...

A number of Catholic groups and Protestant denominations are calling for the United States to establish a Truth and Healing Commission to reckon with the country’s history of boarding schools that separated thousands of Indigenous children from their families and cultures during the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

Their support comes as the Catholic Church and a number of Protestant denominations are ...

A coalition of Indigenous and non-Indigenous environmental activists are rallying against a proposed new project in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula they believe could lead to activities that could pollute Wisconsin waterways.

The Coalition to Save the Menominee River formed in April 2017 to oppose the Back Forty Mine project, which is...

Off a lonely highway in northern Nevada, a collection of brightly colored tents, a horse trailer and latrines suddenly comes into view. It’s a stark contrast to the pale, sagebrush covered mountains.

“I’ve been camped here for about a month and a half now,” says Gary McKinney, who’s ducked under the shade of his tent, its nylon fabric flapping in the near constant wind.

McKinney, a Shoshone-Paiute tribal member from the Duck Valley Reservation in Nevada, wears black sunglasses and an American Indian Movement ski hat and tank top, exposing his tattooed, muscled arms...

It’s a Bible verse familiar to many Christians — and even to many non-Christians who have seen John 3:16 on billboards and T-shirts or scrawled across eye black under football players’ helmets.

But Terry Wildman hopes the new translation published Tuesday (Aug. 31) by InterVarsity Press, “First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament,” will help Christians and Indigenous peoples read it again in a...

Dził Nchaa Si An, or Big Seated Mountain in Apache, is shown on most maps as Mount Graham. At 10,720 feet above sea level, it dominates the otherwise flat landscape in southeastern Arizona’s Gila River Valley. 

As one of the Southwest's "Sky Islands," it holds biological riches. The climate ranges from desert at the lowest elevation to subalpine at the highest, where green woods offer cool relief from the searing deserts below and precious springs trickle down the slopes to feed rivers like the Gila. Native species like the Mount Graham red squirrel cling...

For people who live and travel around northern Arizona, the San Francisco Peaks dominate the landscape like no other landmark. The snow-capped tops are visible for hundreds of miles in the winter; their cool green slopes are a popular summer destination for hikers and overheated Phoenix residents.

For many tribes, the peaks are far more significant and occupy a sacred place in history and culture. Whether called Dook'o'oosłííd in Diné, Nuva'tukya'ovi in Hopi, Wik'hanbaja by the Hualapai or Nuvaxatuh by the Southern Paiute, the volcanic mountain range has for millennia drawn...

Since time immemorial — before the European colonization of what is now known as the United States — tribes of the Pit River Nation have made annual pilgrimages to Medicine Lake in Northern California. The Pit River creation story says that the Creator and his son bathed themselves in the lake after making the Earth. Each year in late July, Pit River tribes return to the sacred region for healing and ceremonial practice. But two byproducts of climate change prevented them from doing so this year: wildfire and drought.

Morning Star Gali, a member of the Ajumawi Band of...

Tourists speeding toward Grand Canyon National Park rarely notice the rocky protuberance that juts above the flat expanse of Arizona's Coconino Plateau.

But to the Havasu 'Baaja, known to the world as the Havasupai Tribe or "People of the Blue-Green Water," the isolated hill forms the center of their lands and spiritual life.

Red Butte (Wii'I Gdwiisa or "Clenched Fist Mountain") is the abdomen of Mother Earth. Mat Taav Tiivjunmdva, a meadow about 3 miles north of the distinctive mountain close to...

A 25-foot totem pole, intricately hand-carved and painted by Native Americans, arrived in the nation’s capital Wednesday afternoon after a two-week cross-country journey from Washington state, as part of a campaign to protect sacred tribal lands.

Hauled on a flatbed trailer, the roughly 5,000-pound totem pole was brought to the front entrance of the National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall, where a small crowd came to welcome it. Douglas James, a Lummi Nation member who was one of the pole’s carvers and traveled with the group that brought it across the United States...

Pueblo people are the direct descendants of Bears Ears, Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde therefore, it is within our cultural interest to protect these sacred landscapes. 

Under the Obama administration, Bears Ears was designated as a national monument, a cultural classification under the Antiquities Act. The advocacy for protecting Bears Ears was led by Indigenous nations with a historical and cultural stake in how the landscape is managed. These actions for land protections were motivated by ensuring stricter environmental rules and preserving the cultural and spiritual...