January has seen major progress toward protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, thanks to the organizing power of three distinct communities—Indigenous activists, TikTok creators, and the makers of an unfinished documentary film—that came together toward a common goal.

In December, with an oil lease sale looming and the Trump administration trying to push through a seismic study for oil...

One of the lessons of the Trump era, taught mostly through negative example, is that words matter. What we call people affects how we treat people. This is also true for the land—what we call a place affects how it is treated.

Bears Ears National Monument—the 1.35 million acres of rugged and beautiful land in southeast Utah declared by President Obama in 2016 and reduced by 85 percent a year later by President Trump in US history’s largest public lands protection downsizing—has been called many names over the years, including Hoon’Naqvut, Shash Jaa’,...

The virus took Grandma Delores first, silencing an 86-year-old voice that rang with Lakota songs and stories. Then it came for Uncle Ralph, a stoic Vietnam veteran. And just after Christmas, two more elders of the Taken Alive family were buried on the frozen North Dakota prairie: Jesse and Cheryl, husband and wife, who died a month apart.

“It takes your breath away,” said Ira Taken Alive, the couple’s oldest son. “The amount of knowledge they held, and connection to our past.”

Source:...

The Children's Inn accepted a $500 donation from the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota Spiritual Group at the South Dakota State Penitentiary on Thursday.

Native American inmates normally would have used the money to hold quarterly powwows at the prison, but due to the pandemic, this year's powwows were canceled. 

Source:...

A landmark decision delivered by the Trump administration late last month gives five oil and gas companies the green light to forge ahead in drilling 5,000 wells over the next decade in northeastern Wyoming.

Though cheered by state officials and industry groups, leaders of several tribal nations with enduring ties to the land remain concerned the development will compromise air and water quality, violate existing treaty rights and destroy cultural resources. The Oglala Sioux Tribe ...

In reporting on the transformative thinking Native communities are putting into action in these tumultuous times, I heard time and time again: “This is not our first pandemic.” Since the 1500s, when ever-larger numbers of Europeans began arriving in this hemisphere, disasters have come thick and fast for the First Nations, including tens of millions wiped out within a century by continual waves of unfamiliar diseases—measles, influenza, smallpox, typhus, diphtheria, and more. Village after village stood empty. Enduring shock and grief, the survivors relied on ancient lifeways to support...

The Cherokee National History Museum is sharing the story of the first Cherokee Christmas in a new exhibit at the Cherokee National History Museum until Jan. 2, 2021.

Source: Cherokee National History Museum Hosts Special Exhibit on the...

On the dining room table in our house, a bundle of sage sits next to the Advent wreath.

Every night we read from our children’s Advent book, and then from Keepers of the Earth a book of Native American stories written by Michael Caduto and Joseph Bruchac.

I turn the Pandora station from Frank Sinatra Holiday Music to Powwow Dance in the middle of the day while I’m doing dishes, because this is what an Indigenous Advent is like.

This is the way of walking two worlds with one spirit, one spirit...

AMY WALKER, 79, gets emotional each time she drives from her home in Cherokee, North Carolina, to Kituwah, a sacred site just seven miles outside of town, to tend to her four-acre garden. There, in the place where her ancestors settled thousands of years ago, she plants heirloom beans and corn, the same crops they once grew.

An elder of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), Walker says the garden keeps her connected to her identity as an indigenous woman. “Down where there are 1,000 graves on the land,” she says. “Our ancestors’ spirits are there.”

...

Portlanders have been leading protests against racism and police brutality for more than five months after the death of George Floyd. Organizing months of ongoing direct action is one challenge, but keeping each other safe—physically and mentally—is another.

Source:...

Members from Tampa Bay’s Florida Indigenous Rights and Environmental Equality (FIREE) are planning to protest construction on a historic site in Alachua County on Thursday, Dec. 3.

They will meet up with Central Florida American Indian Movement members and supporters in Alachua County to demonstrate against plans for a Dollar General to be built upon the “...

The horses at the Sacred Way Sanctuary in Florence, Alabama, are among the last of their kind. Some have dark stripes like arrows tracing the spine or climbing up the forelegs. Some have curly, poodlelike coats or manes that cascade to the ground.

According to the history books, these horses don’t exist. In the official narrative, America’s original horses “went extinct” thousands of years ago, killed off by the frigid temperatures of the last Ice...

Yolanda Hart Stevens straddles an upright mesquite log with an indentation cut into one end.Into the hollowed-out divot, she places hunks of clay dug up from a secret clay pit.

Using the end of an oblong stone about 8 inches long, she pounds the small nodules into a coarse flour-like substance. She sifts pebbles and other contaminants from the pasty clay flour, then adds water and mixes it by hand.  

Source:...

CALEDONIA – Members of the Seneca Nation came together near the former Iroquois village of Canawaugus last week in protest of a solar developer’s plan to build a 600,000-panel solar array on hundreds of acres of land once owned, used and enjoyed by their indigenous ancestors.

Protesters say their ancestors were forced off their land through decades and centuries of aggressive tactics by European and colonial settlers, land speculators and bad-faith treaties with the United States.

Source:...

More than a dozen men in Minnesota's Sex Offender Program are suing the state's human services department, alleging the agency has banned the practice of religious gatherings for more than six months in the wake of COVID-19.

Attorney Erick Kaardal, who filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of 15 clients, said the restrictions inside the Moose Lake facility continued even after a June executive order from Gov. Tim Walz that allowed places of worship to reopen at 50 percent capacity.

Source:...