2015 Archives

Local members of the Santee Sioux Nation are frustrated with what they see as a lack of representation in their tribal government. Currently off reservation members have no voting rights on Council decisions.

The Department of Interior granted federal recognition to a Virginia Indian tribe for the first time on Thursday, more than 400 years after the first permanent English settlers encountered those Indians.

Native American spiritual leaders and other indigenous people will join with city and state officials in Medford at noon Wednesday at the Southern Oregon Regional Peace Pole for the opening ceremony of a five-day event celebrating the 20th International World Peace and Prayer Day.  The remainder of the event will be held Thursday through Sunday at Howard Prairie Lake.

Fourteen Oregon public schools that have fought to maintain their Native American-themed mascots in the face of state changes must pick new names by 2017, the Oregon Board of Education ruled this week.

From 2004 to 2006, Washington was transfixed by the revelations that several Indian tribes had paid exorbitant fees to then-uber lobbyist Jack Abramoff to stop other tribes from opening casinos that might siphon gamblers away from their own operations.

Ten years later, and little has changed. Since 2009, the Gila River Indian Community (GRIC) in Arizona has spent nearly $11 million on lobbying Congress to pass legislation that would prevent the Tohono O’odham Nation from opening a competing casino. A sister tribe, the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community, also with casinos in the Phoenix area, has dropped a couple million dollars more on the fight.

That’s a lot of money spent in service of an issue that most Americans care nothing about. Two Arizona members of Congress, Rep. Paul Gosar and Sen. John McCain, keep the issue bubbling. The question is why.

Pope Francis lauded the work of Father Junípero Serra, an 18th century Spanish priest in California. Others disagree that Father Serra should be dubbed a saint. 

Tribal leaders in California say Serra beat and imprisoned local peoples, suppressed their cultures and facilitated the spread of diseases that decimated the population.

Approximately a dozen Native actors and actresses, as well as the Native cultural advisor, left the set of Adam Sandler’s newest film production, The Ridiculous Six, on Wednesday. The actors, who were primarily from the Navajo nation, left the set after the satirical western’s script repeatedly insulted native women and elders and grossly misrepresented Apache culture.

The examples of disrespect included Native women’s names such as Beaver’s Breath and No Bra, an actress portraying an Apache woman squatting and urinating while smoking a peace pipe, and feathers inappropriately positioned on a teepee.

Even some Native Americans don’t know about the archaeological riches their ancestors left in Cedar Mesa.

A week ago, on a tour of the area, a member of the Hopi Tribe was shocked to find his family’s Flute Clan symbol in a rock pictograph.

“It was a very powerful, very emotional tour,” said Mark Maryboy, a Navajo elder. “A lot of them didn’t realize how much history and how much evidence their people left behind. There are many generations.”

The federal government invades a gathering of Native Americans, confiscates their property, and threatens to punish them if they resist. Sounds like tragic history from the 1800s, right? Robert Soto is living through it right now.

Mr. Soto is an award-winning feather dancer and Lipan Apache religious leader. In 2006, he attended a powwow – a traditional religious ceremony involving drumming, dancing, and Native American dress. But a federal agent cut the celebration short when he noticed that Mr. Soto and other American Indians possessed eagle feathers.

In Montana, the 49th parallel marks a 545-mile-long line along which the state rises to meet three Canadian provinces. This International Boundary, commonly referred to as the border, distinguishes two nations and was born of negotiations that helped end the American Revolutionary War.

But to members of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and the Blackfeet Nation, among others, the U.S.-Canada border is an arbitrary line demarcating ancestral lands, separating families and undermining tribal sovereignty.

Below is a list of federally recognized Native American tribes that have laws either defining marriage as between a man and a woman or explicitly prohibiting same-sex marriages, along with excerpts of those laws. At least 10 other tribes recognize same-sex marriages, while many more are silent on the matter.

On Monday, March 30 a federal judge issued a landmark decision affirming that officials in South Dakota violated numerous provisions in the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and denied Indian parents their rights under the Due Process Clause of the Constitution. Referencing widespread and systemic failure to protect the integrity of Indian families, Judge Jeffrey Viken issued a partial summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs in Oglala Sioux Tribe v. Luann Van Hunnik on seven issues before the court regarding emergency removal hearings, also known as “48-hour hearings,” in Pennington County, South Dakota.

More than 100 Native American tribes have reached out to FoxBarry Farms, a management firm building the nation’s first marijuana facility on tribal land, to express interest in the cannabis industry.

Each year, thousands of American Indian and Alaska Native patients are diagnosed with life-threatening blood diseases such as leukemia and aplastic anemia. For most, their only hope for a cure is a transplant of healthy marrow or blood stem cells from someone who shares their tissue type.

n 2007, Cherokee Nation citizens voted to kick out descendants of Freedmen and other non-Indians. The dispute has been in and out of the courts ever since.

The Cherokee Nation and descendants of black slaves once owned by its citizens, now known as Freedmen,  are asking a federal court to sort out their longstanding dispute over tribal citizenship rights.

Cherokee Nation members voted Saturday to revoke the tribal citizenship of an estimated 2,800 descendants of the people the Cherokee once owned as slaves.

Next month, members of the Cherokee Nation will vote on whether to amend the tribal constitution to make Indian blood a requirement for citizenship. American Indian tribes are considered sovereign nations within the United States, and their citizens are entitled to tribal benefits, including subsidized housing and health care.

The chief of the Cherokees is advocating the tribal council reverse the highest tribal court’s ruling that freedmen were illegally denied tribal citizenship.

Freedmen, descendants of freed slaves who joined the Cherokees in the 1800s, are to be recognized as citizens with privileges, under the tribal constitution, the Judicial Appeals Tribunal ruled last week.

Justices say Cherokees must grant membership to descendants of slaves. The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma’s highest court has ruled that the tribe has to give citizenship to descendants of slaves known as the Cherokee Freedmen.

Cherokee Freedman retain tribal citizenship under the tribe’s 1975 constitution and are legally entitled to vote, the tribe’s highest court ruled 2-1 Tuesday.