Sheetal Deo was shocked when she got a letter from her Queens apartment building’s co-op board calling her Diwali decoration “offensive” and demanding she take it down.

“My decoration said ‘Happy Diwali’ and had a swastika on it,” said Deo, a physician, who was celebrating the Hindu festival of lights.

The equilateral cross with its legs bent at right angles is a millennia-old sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism that represents peace and good fortune, and was also used widely by Indigenous people worldwide in a similar vein.

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After the leaves have turned, and the days get shorter, Anishinaabek across the state of Michigan welcome in dagwaagin, or fall, the season of harvesting, gathering, and hunting.

It also is the time to remember those who have passed on, said Linda Woods, K’tchi Wikweedong Anishinaabe, an elder of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians.

“This time of the year holds special significance for Odawa in the region,” Woods said.

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Sam Olbekson was first exposed to architecture at age five, when his uncle was a construction worker on a project to build the Minneapolis American Indian Center.

Decades later, Olbekson, 51, now runs his own architecture firm, Full Circle Indigenous Planning. He's also MAIC's board president, designing an addition to the building which will begin construction next month.

A citizen of the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe in Minnesota, Olbekson split his childhood between the area's...

A federal appeals court will rehear Apache Stronghold’s case against the United States to save the sacred site of Oak Flat, a 6.7-square-mile stretch of land east of Phoenix that a private venture is seeking to turn into an underground copper mine.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals announced Thursday (Nov. 17) that it will rehear the case in front of a full 11-judge court instead of the original three-judge panel.

Earlier this summer, the divided federal appeals court, in a 2-1 ruling, held that the government could proceed with the transfer of Oak Flat to...

Washington state’s website for Fort Simcoe State Park highlights the military history of the park 30 miles southeast of Yakima.

“Fort Simcoe is one of the few remaining pre-Civil War forts in the west. Military history buffs should put it on their bucket lists,” reads the state’s webpage for the park, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

But for members of the Yakama Nation, the property represents something else.

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The Catholic Church is working to promote healing and rebuild trust with Native American communities in response to revelations about mistreatment of students in church-run boarding schools, a priest working on Native American issues for the U.S. bishops told an Archdiocese of Seattle gathering.

“This is heart stuff, not head stuff,” Father Michael Carson, assistant director of Native American Affairs at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said during an Oct. 23 program.

“It’s connection. Feeling the pain, the abuse, the suffering. … Do not be afraid to let the...

A new database reveals many Jesuit priests accused of sexual abuse worked in tribal communities, including dozens in the Mountain West.

Over the past 70 years, 96 priests of the Jesuits West Province of the Society of Jesus have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. Nearly half of them – 47 priests – spent time on tribal lands.

That’s according to a database called “Desolate Country: Mapping Catholic Sex Abuse in Native America,” which a pair of researchers built from the...

Jim Thomas drew chuckles from the 200 or so gathered inside the White Swan Pavilion on the Yakama Indian Reservation with his practiced imitation of the low, raspy voice actor Marlon Brando used for his role in The Godfather.

Thomas recalled how he convinced Brando to become a member of a committee working to resolve a land ownership dispute — and how Brando later, using his “Godfather” voice, told legendary newsman Walter Cronkite to meet face-to-face with Thomas and to “treat him with the same respect as you would with me.” Cronkite listened, later highlighting Thomas’ work...

Every day throughout Coachella Valley, countless organizations work painstakingly to ensure everything from civil rights and proper health care to environmental protection and stewardship of the area's diverse and historic sites.

For the latter, Native American Land Conservancy stands out. Its mission to acquire, preserve and protect the area's sacred lands has never been more vital.

"Tribal people in the United States have lost the vast majority of the lands they used to hold as a nation," said T. Robert Przeklasa...

More than three decades after Congress enacted the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the University of Kansas announced that it still has American Indian ancestral remains, funerary and other sacred objects in its museum collections.

A Kansas state legislator who is a member of the Navajo Nation said she was not surprised when she learned of the American Indian human remains and funerary objects in the University of Kansas’ possession, 32 years after Congress enacted the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Democratic Rep....

Bean Minerd runs onto the field wearing a white pinny with the word “Haudenosaunee” printed across her chest. Some of the other players wear older ones that read “Iroquois Nationals” instead.

“It feels liberating when you get to put the Haudenosaunee jersey on and get to wear it around and play and know (where) you're coming from,” Minerd said.

After nearly 30 years as the Iroquois Nationals, Haudenosaunee lacrosse athletes are embracing their roots as they vie to be world champions. The Indigenous lacrosse program’s name changed earlier this year to better...

The Tunica Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana has regained ownership of land that holds significant cultural value for the Tribe’s community.

The Tunica Biloxi Tribe and the City of Marksville recently signed an agreement, transferring ownership of the Marksville Historic State Park back to the Tribe.

The park is the location of sacred Native American burial grounds containing ancestral remains from Tunica Biloxi citizens that once inhabited the area.

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Who should manage public land that is sacred to Native Americans?

That is the question that the United States government and some states hope recent policy changes will address by giving Indigenous people greater input into managing such land. Co-management, as the policy is called, might ...

The possibility that states might decriminalize the general use of peyote is raising concerns among Indigenous practitioners, who employ the cactus in traditional settings like the Native American Church. Already, the Navajo Nation is moving to oppose any changes in the law.

As states continue to decriminalize marijuana, Tracy Willie, director of the Navajo medicine man group Azeé Bee Nahaghá of Diné Nation, Inc., said there could be a domino effect of states wanting to decriminalize peyote, which is a Schedule I controlled substance under...

Yvette Montoya, 35, has been making "concoctions" since she was a little girl, grinding up berries and making "soups" with leaves, petals, and water. There were no recipes or spellbooks; it was something that she'd been drawn to, as though something...