Category Archives: Native Americans

Some US states have firearm death rates comparable to countries in conflict, report says

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Mississippi’s firearm-related violence rate nearly double that of Haiti, which is plagued by political and gang strife

A new report by the Commonwealth Fund finds some US states have firearm death rates comparable to countries in conflict, and even states with the fewest firearms deaths are far higher than peer developed democracies.

For instance, Mississippi’s rate of firearm-related violence (28.5 per 100,000 people) was nearly double that of Haiti (15.1 per 100,000) in 2021, when mercenaries assassinated the country’s president, unleashing a fresh round of gang warfare which pushed the country into a state of civil war.

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US navy apologizes for razing of Native Alaska community in late 1800s

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In ceremony in Kake, military acknowledges bombardment of village that destroyed it and led to many deaths

In a ceremony Saturday afternoon, the US navy apologized for firing upon and torching the Alaska Native village of Kake in 1869.

Surrounded by tribal Chilkat weavings, historic photographs and other Lingít artwork in the Kake elementary and high school gymnasium, R Adm Mark B Sucato expressed the military’s regret, in the first of two apologies planned by the military for bombardments of Alaska Native communities in the late 1800s.

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Trump-backed Senate candidate caught on tape disparaging Native Americans

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Tim Sheehy, locked in tight race with incumbent Democrat John Tester, repeatedly referred to Crow tribe at fundraisers

A Republican candidate in a race that could decide control of the US Senate made disparaging comments about Native Americans at campaign fundraising events, according to recordings disclosed in local media.

Tim Sheehy, a wealthy cattle rancher who has been endorsed by Donald Trump in his bid to become senator for Montana, made the remarks repeatedly at a series of gatherings where he boasted of cultivating ties and bonding with members of the Crow Reservation, the official home of the Indigenous Crow tribe.

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Peggy Flanagan in line to be first US female Indigenous governor if Harris and Walz win

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Walz can continue serving as Minnesota’s governor until the election, but if he and Harris are successful, Flanagan will take over

Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota’s lieutenant governor, could become the first US female Indigenous governor if Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz, resigns from office. Walz can continue serving as the state’s governor until the November election, but if he and Harris are successful, Flanagan will take over his gubernatorial duties.

In fact, a series of firsts would be triggered should the Harris-Walz ticket win: Harris would become the nation’s first woman, first Black woman and first person of Indian descent to ascend to the country’s top office. Flanagan, already the highest-ranking Native woman in a state-level executive office, would become Minnesota’s first female governor and the first Indigenous woman to serve as governor of a US state. And Minnesota’s senate president, Bobby Joe Champion, would become Minnesota’s first Black lieutenant governor.

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Rare white buffalo sacred to Lakota not seen in Yellowstone since birth

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Park staff say they have not been able to locate calf, who fulfilled Lakota prophecy and is named Wakan Gli

A rare white buffalo calf in Yellowstone national park has not been seen since its birth on 4 June, according to park officials.

In a statement released on Friday, the National Park Service (NPS) confirmed that a white buffalo calf was born in Lamar Valley earlier this month, adding that the park’s buffalo management team had received numerous reports of the calf on 4 June from park visitors, professional wildlife watchers, commercial guides and researchers.

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US admits dams in Pacific north-west have devastated Native Americans

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US says dams killed off salmon, inundated villages and burial grounds, and spirited wealth away from tribes

The US government, in a report published on Tuesday, acknowledged for the first time the harms that federal dams have inflicted on Native American tribes in the US Pacific north-west.

The report by the interior department details the “historic, ongoing and cumulative impacts of federal Columbia River dams on Columbia River Basin Tribes”, including how dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers have devastated salmon runs, inundated villages and burial grounds, and deprived tribal members of the ability to exercise traditional ways of life.

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Colorado was built on stolen tribal land worth $1.7tn, report finds

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Report published by Native American-led non-profit identifies 10 tribal nations tied to land and how it was taken

A report published this week by a Native American-led non-profit examines in detail the dispossession of $1.7tn worth of Indigenous homelands in Colorado by the state and the US – and the more than $546m the state has reaped in mineral extraction from them.

The report, shared first with the Associated Press, identifies 10 tribal nations that have “aboriginal title, congressional title and treaty title to lands within Colorado” and details the ways the land was legally and illegally taken. It determined that many of the transactions were in direct violation of treaty rights or in some cases lacked title for a legal transfer.

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Native American tribe wins right to hunt gray whales off Washington coast

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Makah people, whose right to hunt whales is noted in treaty, granted waiver by US government to kill two or three a year

After facing decades of legal and bureaucratic hurdles, the Makah Tribe in Washington has won approval from the US to resume whale hunting for the first time in 25 years.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) Fisheries announced on Wednesday that it would grant the tribe a waiver, allowing the Makah “a limited subsistence and ceremonial hunt” under an 1855 treaty. The Makah will be permitted to hunt up to 25 eastern North Pacific gray whales over 10 years.

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Rare white buffalo born at Yellowstone prompts Lakota Sioux celebration

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The birth, not yet confirmed by park officials, holds special significance to tribe as ‘both a blessing and warning’

A rare white buffalo has been born in Yellowstone national park, with the arrival prompting local Lakota Sioux leaders to plan a special celebration, with the calf representing a sign of hope and the need to look after the planet.

The white calf was reportedly spotted shortly after its birth, on Tuesday last week, by park visitor Erin Braaten, a photographer. She took several shots of the wobbly baby after spotting it amongst a herd of buffalo in the north-eastern corner of the large park, located in Wyoming and a small slice of Montana.

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Leonard Peltier, Indigenous activist in prison for 47 years over FBI killings, has parole hearing

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FBI chief condemns Peltier, 79, who denies killing agents on Pine Ridge reservation in 1975, as ‘remorseless killer’

Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist who has served nearly 50 years in prison for the killing of two FBI agents, was due to have his first parole hearing since 2009 on Monday, his lawyer said.

Peltier, 79, has maintained that he did not kill the FBI special agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams in 1975 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Advocates, including figures such as the late Nelson Mandela and a former prosecutor and judge involved in his case, have long said he should be freed because of what they call legal irregularities in his trial.

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Manahahtáanung or Manhattan? Tribal representatives call for apology for Dutch settlement of New York City

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As new exhibition opens in Amsterdam exploring the settlement of North America, original Manhattanites demand apology

Representatives for some of the Lenape people have called for an apology and reparations for the 17th-century Dutch “settling” of New Amsterdam, the place that is now New York.

Precisely four centuries after the Dutch established a colony at the mouth of the Hudson River, some descendants of Indigenous Americans believe it is time for a fuller story of the wars on their people, slavery, exploitation and dispersal.

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South Dakota tribe bans governor from reservation over US border comments

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Oglala Sioux tribe banishes Republican Kristi Noem after she spoke about wanting to send razor wire to Texas

A South Dakota tribe has banned the state’s Republican governor, Kristi Noem, from one of the US’s largest reservations after she spoke this week about wanting to send razor wire and security personnel to Texas to help deter immigration at the southern border with Mexico.

The Oglala Sioux tribe president said Noem’s ban from the Pine Ridge reservation resulted from the fact that many arriving at the US border with Mexico are Indigenous people from places like El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, who come “in search of jobs and a better life”.

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N Scott Momaday, Pulitzer-winning Native American novelist, dies aged 89

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The Kiowa tribe member’s debut House Made of Dawn is credited as the starting point for contemporary Native American literature

N Scott Momaday, a Pulitzer prize-winning storyteller, poet, educator and folklorist whose debut novel House Made of Dawn is widely credited as the starting point for contemporary Native American literature, has died. He was 89.

Momaday died Wednesday at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, publisher HarperCollins announced. He had been in failing health.

Something like a leaf lies here within me; / it wavers almost not at all, / and there is no light to see it by / that it withers upon a black field. / If it could ascend the thousand years into my mouth, / I would make a word of it at last, / and I would speak it into the silence of the sun.

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Muscogee Nation sues Tulsa, Oklahoma, for ticketing drivers within reservation

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Tribe says city has been breaking federal law by continuing to ticket Native Americans within sovereign boundaries

The Muscogee (Creek) Nation filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, arguing that police are continuing to ticket Native American drivers within the tribe’s reservation boundaries, despite a recent federal appeals court ruling they lacked jurisdiction to do so.

The tribe filed the lawsuit in federal court in Tulsa against the city; the mayor, GT Bynum; the chief of police, Wendell Franklin; and the city attorney, Jack Blair.

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1,000-year-old Native American canoe retrieved from North Carolina lake

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Elders moved to tears as members of tribe and archaeologists recover canoe discovered in Lake Waccamaw two years ago

Tribal elders were moved to tears by the retrieval of a 1,000-year-old Native American canoe from Lake Waccamaw in North Carolina.

The Waccamaw Siouan chief, Michael Jacobs, told CBC it was emotional to watch the elders “sit on the bank and cry tears of joy, tears of sadness, tears of a future for our youth – how this is going to impact them and help them overcome some of the trauma they’ve experienced through being excluded at times, and even counted as not worthy”.

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Hollywood producer accused of faking Cherokee ancestry

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Heather Rae has identified as Native American throughout her career but public family records don’t show any evidence of it

Questions about the Native American ancestry of film producer Heather Rae, known for being an activist for Native and Indigenous creators and projects in Hollywood, are being raised after a group published public family records that do not show evidence of Native ancestry.

The Tribal Alliance Against Frauds, an organization that examines claims of Native ancestry from individuals and businesses who publicly represent Native identity, told the New York Post that public family records do not show any ties to tribal heritage for Rae. Citing research published in a blogpost, the group said her family identified as white across multiple public records.

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Kansas City Chiefs face new call to drop ‘insulting’ name and symbol

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Group gathered outside Arizona stadium to protest the team’s name and the insulting gesture and chant performed by its fans

The Kansas City Chiefs may have won the Super Bowl in an epic game, but for some there will be no victory until the football team changes its name and symbol and its fans stop performing an insulting gesture and chant.

A small but loud group protested outside the stadium hosting the Super Bowl in Arizona on Sunday, aggrieved that the team from the city that straddles the Kansas-Missouri border continues to refuse to drop its name and arrowhead symbol, which Native American leaders class as a racist mascot and symbol that devalues Native traditions.

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How one Derbyshire museum took initiative in returning Indigenous artefacts

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Buxton Museum returned entire collection of Native American and First Nation artefacts to their original communities

When Taa.uu ‘Yuuwans Nika Collison first opened the email from Buxton Museum, she was, she says, “sort of in shock”.

Collison is a member of the Haida nation, the Indigenous inhabitants of a remote archipelago called Haida Gwaii off the very far north-west coast of Canada. For 25 years she and others had been lobbying museums and collectors around the world to return items made by her people back to their homeland, often with very little success. Here was a curator from a small town in Derbyshire she had never heard of, saying it had some Haida items in its collection, and it wanted to send them back.

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FBI’s opposition to release Leonard Peltier driven by vendetta, says ex-agent

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Exclusive: retired FBI agent Coleen Rowley calls for clemency for Indigenous activist who has been in prison for nearly 50 years

The FBI’s repeated opposition to the release of Leonard Peltier is driven by vindictiveness and misplaced loyalties, according to a former senior agent close to the case who is the first agency insider to call for clemency for the Indigenous rights activist who has been held in US maximum security prisons for almost five decades.

Coleen Rowley, a retired FBI special agent whose career included 14 years as legal counsel in the Minneapolis division where she worked with prosecutors and agents directly involved in the Peltier case, has written to Joe Biden making a case for Peltier’s release.

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Academy Awards apologises to Sacheen Littlefeather for Oscars speech moment

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Nearly 50 years after speech on behalf of Marlon Brando about depiction of Native Americans, Academy apologises for ‘unwarranted’ abuse she endured

Nearly 50 years after Sacheen Littlefeather stood on the Academy Awards stage on behalf of Marlon Brando to speak out about the depiction of Native Americans in Hollywood films, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences apologised to her for the abuse she endured.

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on Monday said that it will host Littlefeather, now 75, for an evening of “conversation, healing and celebration” in September.

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