Photo: Wesley Dixon Jones and his daughter Mollyanne, in Mission, Oreg., Sunday, April 13, 2025. (Courtesy Mollyanne Jones)

This weekend on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon, volunteers will search for 71-year-old Wesley Dixon Jones, a tribal elder who’s been missing since October 5.

As Buffalo’s Fire senior reporter Brian Bull explains, the search team is testing a device that the coordinator says could be a “game changer”.

Kimberly Lining of MMIW Search & Hope Alliance out of Portland says AquaEye Pro bounces echoes off underwater objects then compares them to the “echoes” of a human body.

“It scans one acre of water up to 180 feet about every 30 minutes. And that is what we are going to take down on the deep pockets of the Umatilla on our search. If Mr. Jones is in the water, this will find him.”

Jone’s daughter, Mollyanne, is hopeful the device will deliver.

“And also utilizing canines and divers to help locate my father. Right now, this is very, very important utilizing that resource.”

Lining says her group is using the AquaEye on a trial basis. She hopes perhaps donors will cover the $29-thousand dollar cost of one they can use permanently.

The government shutdown is delaying funding for a federal heating assistance program.

In Alaska, thousands of low-income families use the program to offset their heating costs and to weatherize their homes for winter. Many of them are tribal citizens.

The Alaska Desk’s Alena Naiden reports from our flagship station KNBA.

The Alaska Department of Health said in a statement Thursday that the government shutdown has delayed the release of money for the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program for the year of 2026.

The program subsidizes energy bills for about 50,000 Alaskans, many of whom live in rural and tribal communities.

Jennifer Hyde is a Federal Infrastructure Coordinator at the statewide nonprofit the Alaska Center.

“It definitely benefits a lot of rural and tribal communities. Again, disproportionately, those communities are often low income or have different economic struggles.”

For now, the state health officials say they are operating the program using the remaining money from the previous year. And that they expect that money to run out by mid-November.

The department said it usually takes four to six weeks for the heating assistance funds to be released to states – after the shutdown is over.

Alaska tribal organizations are raising the alarm. The Tanana Chiefs Conference administers heating assistance for over 1,200 households.

Amber Vaska is the executive director of Tribal Government and Client Services at the organization.  She said by email that the federal program is “a lifeline across the Interior.”

Vaska said that the program, which also helps people weatherize their homes to cut on heating costs, is a way to ensure pipes don’t freeze when temperatures drop to minus 50 in the Interior.

The government shutdown is also affecting other programs crucial for Alaska Native communities, like food assistance and tribal Head Start.

Hyde, with the Alaska Center, says families who rely on heating assistance are the same vulnerable residents who will be affected by the loss of food benefits.

“It’s going to just be a really tough winter, unless something can give.” 

In the meantime, the state Department of Health said its staff is prioritizing applications by focusing on households in a heating emergency or at immediate risk of losing heat.

Tribes across the country are preparing for the halt of federal food benefits beginning November 1 due to the government shutdown.

The Shawnee Tribe in Oklahoma declared an emergency this week, releasing emergency funds to help citizens who may lose their benefits.

Chief Ben Barnes said in a statement the federal government may be closed, but the Shawnee Tribe’s government remains open, and no Shawnee family should go hungry “because of political dysfunction in Washington”.

Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our daily newsletter today.

Check out the latest episode of Native America Calling

Friday, October 31, 2025 – Documenting the meaningful Indigenous origins of Dia de los Muertos