Indigenous Peoples Resources: In the News

Dennis Banks, a Native American activist who co-founded the American Indian Movement and helped lead the 1973 armed occupation of Wounded Knee, has died at 80.

The International Human Rights Workshop at University of Arizona Law’s Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program is working with the Water Protectors Legal Collective to develop an international human rights response to the legal and human rights concerns facing “water protectors” demonstrating against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in Standing Rock, North Dakota.

The Huerta Scholarship was established in 2014 in honor of Judge Laurence Huerta to provide financial support and assistance to Native American law students at the University of Arizona College of Law (Arizona Law). Judge Huerta, a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, was the first Native American to graduate from Arizona Law (class of ’53) and be licensed to practice law in Arizona. Throughout his illustrious career, Huerta worked tirelessly to increase access to education and promote tribal sovereignty.

When he started working as a bartender a few years ago in Seattle, Howie Echo-Hawk says he began experiencing discrimination. First, a bar manager told him to get a respectable haircut.
"I had a Mohawk, which is the traditional style of my people and I wore it because of that," he said. Echo-Hawk is a member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma.

“As indigenous people we've contributed so many things to the world, and our kids don't even know about it,” " We need to educate our kids through our art.”

The life expectancy of Native Americans in some states is 20 years shorter than the national average. There are many reasons why. Among them, health programs for American Indians are chronically underfunded by Congress. And, about a quarter of Native Americans reported experiencing discrimination when going to a doctor or health clinic, according to findings of a poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

OG History is a Teen Vogue series where we unearth history not told through a white, cisheteropatriarchal lens. In this op-ed, Ruth H. Hopkins (Cankudutawin-Red Road Woman), a Dakota/Lakota Sioux writer, biologist, attorney, and former tribal judge, explains the history of broken treaties between the United States government and the Oceti Sakowin (Great Sioux Nation), which she belongs to.

Roller derby's Team Indigenous seeks to empower women and two-spirit people while addressing Native issues and desegregating a predominantly White sport.

Nestle was there to seek the Band Council's support for its application to the provincial government to continue to draw water for its bottled water operations from Six Nations traditional territory. Anna Milner, who is with the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, says, "In addition to the ministry's duty to consult, the ministry has asked Nestle to engage these communities directly to listen to their concerns and work with them." Turtle Island News highlights, "During the sometimes testy meet and greet session on Monday, elected Chief Ava Hill bluntly asked Nestle representatives, 'If Six Nations say we don't agree with those permits, will you‎ shut those plants down?'" Nestle's Adreanne Simard replied that she couldn't answer that question and that "some of what you are hearing isn't the truth." Chief Hill then stated, "Well the truth is you're taking the water out of the ground and we don't want you to."

The Native American Times was launched in 1994 as the Oklahoma Indian Times by Jim Gray (Osage) and Elizabeth Gaines (Cherokee). It was a bi-weekly newspaper distributed throughout Oklahoma.

There is this magical made-up time between Columbus Day (or Indigenous People's Day for the enlightened) and Thanksgiving where white Americans think about native people. That's sort of our window.

November is Native American Heritage month. Before that, of course, is Halloween. Until about three years ago, one of the most popular Halloween costumes was Pocahontas. People know nothing about us, but they like to dress up like us or have us as a mascot.

Ask students in the Mohawk Club at Massena Central High School whether they've been on the receiving end of negative stereotypes, and the answer is quick and sharp.
"We see that we're always the troublemakers or that we're bad kids," says Amanda Rourke, the club's president. Member Mallory Sunday adds, "It's funny because they don't understand who we are as a people."

Carol Hopkins firmly believes there are promising paths forward for Indigenous communities confronting mental health and addiction issues. A member of the Delaware First Nation of Moraviantown, Ontario, Hopkins — also known as Nozhem of the Wolf Clan — is executive director of the Thunderbird Partnership Foundation, which works with First Nations and Inuit communities to address substance abuse and addiction. While Hopkins is hopeful, though, she says too few mental health services are grounded in the historical and cultural contexts that are crucial for Indigenous healing.

How A New Generation of Native Women Are Standing Up & Fighting Back.

Hours after President Donald Trump announced his scaled-back vision for Bears Ears National Monument on Monday, a coalition of five American Indian tribes filed the first lawsuit of many that were promised to challenge the executive action. Their argument: Trump does not have the legal authority to shrink the designation.

Edwin Schupman’s been chipping away at misconceptions of Native Americans since he started working as an educator some 30 years ago. Only after he started at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian did he have the resources and support to address the issue on a national scale. Now, Schupman is spearheading Native Knowledge 360°, the museum’s long-term initiative to integrate the Native American experience into social studies, language arts and other curriculums in kindergarten through 12th-grade classrooms across the country. The museum is working with Native communities and educators nationally to achieve these goals.

Lee Francis IV is good at firsts. In 2015, the publisher started Native Realities Press, the country’s first publishing house devoted exclusively to Native American comics and graphic novels. The next year, the Laguna Pueblo tribal member, who earned a Ph.D. from Texas State University, launched Indigenous Comic Con, an Albuquerque-based event that was the first comic convention devoted to the alternative universe of Native American-created comics. Last June, he opened Red Planet Books & Comics, a block off Central Avenue, in the west downtown area of Albuquerque. While there are bookstores devoted to Native American literature, this is the first whose shelves are lined largely with indigenous comics and games. Housed in a former beauty salon, the 800-square-foot space has a hand-painted storefront that looks like a comic-book cover, down to a New Mexico-based insignia that reads, “505¢.”

The new exhibition ‘Americans’ at the National Museum of the American Indian prompts a deeper dive for historic truths. When you think of the Trail of Tears, you likely imagine a long procession of suffering Cherokee Indians forced westward by a villainous Andrew Jackson. Perhaps you envision unscrupulous white slaveholders, whose interest in growing a plantation economy underlay the decision to expel the Cherokee, flooding in to take their place east of the Mississippi River. What you probably don’t picture are Cherokee slaveholders, foremost among them Cherokee chief John Ross. What you probably don’t picture are the numerous African-American slaves, Cherokee-owned, who made the brutal march themselves, or else were shipped en masse to what is now Oklahoma aboard cramped boats by their wealthy Indian masters. And what you may not know is that the federal policy of Indian removal, which ranged far beyond the Trail of Tears and the Cherokee, was not simply the vindictive scheme of Andrew Jackson, but rather a popularly endorsed, congressionally sanctioned campaign spanning the administrations of nine separate presidents.

The International Indigenous Youth Council (IIYC) is an organization that was started and led by womxn and two-spirit peoples during the Standing Rock Indigenous Uprising of 2016, while peacefully protecting the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. We have extended the reach of the organization by establishing chapters across the country, including Chicago, Denver, Texas (Yanaguana Chapter), New Mexico, and South Dakota. We are rooted in the protection of the elements and have been brought together and continue to be guided by the prayer for the water. We aspire to inspire young individuals to build bridges of solidarity and become leaders of their communities.

More than half of Native Americans living on tribal lands or other majority-Native areas say they have experienced racial or ethnic discrimination when interacting with police (55 percent) and applying for jobs (54 percent). That's according to new poll results being released Tuesday by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

A 14-year-old Native American boy was shot and killed by a sheriff deputy on Wednesday — a fate all too common for Native Americans in the U.S. The number of Native Americans killed by police doubled from 2015 to 2016. Per capita, Native Americans are more likely to be killed by police than any other demographic in the U.S., according to a 2014 study by The Center of Juvenile and Criminal Justice. And that’s probably undercounted.

Columbus discovered America. Pilgrims were loyal friends to Native Americans. The relationship between John Smith and Pocahontas was a love story with a happy ending. Like many of us, 16-year-old Tori Blakeney accepted those accounts as truths. At the Capital City Public Charter High School in the District, where [s]he is an 11th-grader, such “truths” have given way to a new reality. Students are getting to see history from the perspective of people and groups who are often left out of the traditional American narrative — African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and women, among others.

This is the story of an American hero. One who stands tall amongst the likes of Robert Kennedy, Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King, Jr. Someone who humbly defied the odds and overcame insurmountable obstacles to fight injustice and gave a voice to the voiceless. And yet few people know her name. This is the story of an American legend, Wilma Mankiller, who overcame rampant sexism and personal challenges to emerge as the Cherokee Nation’s first woman Principal Chief in 1985. MANKILLER examines the legacy of the formidable Wilma Mankiller and reunites the documentary team of Gale Anne Hurd and Valerie Red-Horse Mohl for their third and most powerful film.

"Indigenous fashion can redefine mainstream fashion and art: our fashion illustrates our stories, traditions, sovereignty and resiliency," said Paul in a press release issued Thursday. "IFWTO is about carving out space for Indigenous fashion, craft and textiles." Further programming details and a schedule will be announced in the coming weeks, according to IFWTO. In the meantime, you can follow them on Instagram.

alter-NATIVE follows a year in the life of Native American fashion designer Bethany Yellowtail, who went from the Crow Reservation in Montana to sunbaked Los Angeles, to bring the world her fashion inspired by the beauty and resilience of indigenous women.