Over four days in June 2021, thousands of protesters attended the Treaty People Gathering in opposition to Line 3, a crude oil pipeline slated to be built across traditional homelands of the Ojibwe peoples in northern Minnesota.

To begin the gathering, Indigenous elders led a public religious ceremony. They said prayers and sang songs that blessed and sanctified the headwaters of the Mississippi River. They also prayed for the people involved in the protest – over 100 of whom were later arrested for trespassing and other acts of civil disobedience.

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Maxine Redstar’s office on the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation sits in a valley surrounded by mineral-rich mountain ranges that stretch past the Oregon border, only a few miles to the north.

It’s May, and after a short spurt of precipitation in an otherwise record dry year for Nevada, the valley has turned pastel-green with sagebrush dotting the land. Near the administration building and Redstar’s office, a sign is planted in the ground. It reads: “Keep Your Aboriginal Rights!!”

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(RNS) — Over the last few weeks, devastating news has come out of Canada: Residential schools, also known as boarding schools, often run by churches, have been under investigation, and the remains of hundreds of Indigenous children have been unearthed in the process. The most recent discovery, of 751 bodies in unmarked graves at a former residential school in Saskatchewan, reveals the ongoing legacy of settler colonialism.

While the Canadian government and churches in Canada attempt to respond to this, First Nations peoples are demanding Canada come to terms with its history...

Native Americans are transporting a 5,000-pound totem pole from Washington state to Washington, D.C., over two weeks in July to raise awareness about protecting land that they consider sacred, according to the Washington Post.

Why it matters: The effort, which organizers are calling the “Red Road to D.C.,” has already raised $500,000 from nonprofits, sponsors, and tribal groups.

The big picture: The totem will be hauled by a semi-trailer and will be led by around a dozen people, including many members of the Lummi Nation.

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Bipartisan legislation introduced in Congress in early May would prohibit the export of sacred Native American items and increase penalties for stealing and illegally trafficking tribal cultural patrimony, property inherited from one’s male ancestor.

The STOP Act has already received support from various tribes and Native organizations including the SeaAlaska Heritage Institute and the Association of Village Council Presidents.

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BELLINGHAM, Wash. — A Lummi Nation totem pole is making a cross-country journey next month.

The totem pole carved from a 400-year-old red cedar will journey to Washington, D.C., evoking an urgent call to protect sacred lands and waters of Indigenous people.

Source: Lummi Nation totem pole to begin journey to...

PHOENIX – Native people across Turtle Island – an Indigenous name for North America – logged onto the video-sharing app for different reasons, but they stayed for the community, for the culture and to fulfill their sacred duty.

In recent months, TikTok has become wildly popular with Generation Z, especially given the extended time spent at home in the year since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. Communities of all sorts have sprouted up on the app, and one in particular has been especially empowering and important to its members.

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Florida's longest-running intertribal powwow returns to St. Lucie County this weekend.

The Florida Indian Heritage Association’s 55th annual powwow, a three-day event at the St. Lucie County Fairgrounds, falls on the fourth weekend of March every year — except for last year when it was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

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Mario Tsosie and more than two dozen other motorcycle riders rumbled into Oak Flat Campground last month with a mission and a message.

"We had riders come from San Diego, Fresno, Orange County and Los Angeles," said Tsosie, a Navajo who rides with Redrum Motorcycle Club, the world's largest Indigenous-based biker group. "It was pretty exciting."

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The United States Forest Service has withdrawn a final environmental impact statement that would allow Arizona land considered sacred by the Apache and other Native Americans to be transferred to a mining company in the next few weeks.

The move temporarily halts the transfer of Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, known widely as Oak Flat, to Australian mining company Resolution Copper, according to...

Lawrence Wetsit misses the days when his people would gather by the hundreds and sing the songs that all Assiniboine children are expected to learn by age 15.

"We can't have ceremony without memorizing all of the songs, songs galore," he said. "We're not supposed to record them: We have to be there. And when that doesn't happen in my grandchildren's life, they may never catch up."

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In the center of Ivy Pete’s high school’s office sits a glass case caging two Native American mascots in tribal dress. To her, they do not represent a real group of humans or a culture. They symbolize “the defeated and extinct Native American, akin to animals in a zoo,” she said. 

Pete, a 16-year-old student from Spokane and member of the Paiute tribe, spoke in support of a bill introduced in the Washington Legislature to prohibit such displays in public schools, along with other Native American symbols considered by many to be insulting.

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For members of the Northwestern Band of Shoshone Nation, Jan. 29 is an emotional day — a day of remembrance for the hundreds of ancestors who lost their lives 158 years ago near Preston, Idaho.

On Friday, they held a memorial for those victims of the Bear River Massacre overlooking the very land they were murdered on.

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On February 11, 2012, the Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits organization (BAAITS) held the first ever Native American Two-Spirit Powwow. A powwow is a cultural celebration that includes traditions like singing, dancing, and drumming. The team behind the first BAAITS Powwow sought to de-gender these traditions and bring Two-Spirit people, those who do not identify within the gender binary, together from tribes across North and Central America. 

They did all of that and more.

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Long Hollow, S.D. – Braving bitter cold and gusting winds, nearly a dozen people said prayers in their native Dakota language as they watched a bonfire blaze through a deceased man's clothing, sending a thin trail of smoke drifting over the snow-covered hills on the Lake Traverse Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

The traditional burning of garments represented a final rite of passage for the spirit of Francis Jay Country Jr., a 66-year-old tribal elder and musician whose life was cut short this month by the coronavirus. The bonfire also culminated two days of...