National Native News

Photo courtesy @BuuVanNygren / X

Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren is supporting President Donald Trump’s orders to boost the coal industry.

President Trump held a signing ceremony Tuesday in Washington, D.C., where President Nygren was in attendance.

In a statement, Nygren said he wants to “emphasize the importance of including tribal nations like the Navajo Nation in this national conversation.”

The orders are aim at reversing policies that have transitioned the country away from coal production.

STATEMENT FROM NAVAJO NATION PRESIDENT BUU NYGREN ON TRUMP’S EXECUTIVE ORDER SUPPORTING COAL DEVELOPMENT

WASHINGTON – Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren today issued this statement on President Trump’s Executive Order Supporting Coal Development across the U.S.:

“Today marks… pic.twitter.com/573zJePEzW

— Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren (@BuuVanNygren) April 8, 2025

Chairman Ernie Stevens with “Supporting Each Other” Women’s honorees Delores Pigsley, Chairwoman of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, and Tracy Stanhoff, former Chairman of the Prairie Band of Potawatomi National and Founder of Ad-Pro. (Courtesy Indian Gaming Association)

The Siletz News in Oregon reports that longtime tribal chair Delores Pigsley was recently honored by the Indian Gaming Association.

Brian Bull reports.

At the 29th annual National Indian Women’s “Supporting Each Other” luncheon in Washington D.C., Pigsley was recognized for her nearly four decades of serving as chairwoman for the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians.

In those years, Pigsley helped her tribe get federally reinstated. And more recently, she helped her people get their right to harvest, fish, and hunt on their traditional lands again after 45 years.

In a recent interview, Pigsley shared her happiness at negating the consent decree.

“It’s … a … probably one of the most – since I’ve been on the tribal council, after restoration, I was on when the tribe was restored in (19)77. And the next one was when we built our casino and got the land in trust in Lincoln City. And this one is right up there with those.”

The youngest of eight children, Pigsley credited her success with having strong mentors and friends, including others on the Siletz Tribal Council.

Middle school athletes stand on the podium at the annual Traditional Games in Juneau on Saturday, April 5, 2025. (Photo: Clarise Larson / KTOO)

The eighth annual Traditional Games was held in Juneau, Alaska, over the weekend.

More than 250 athletes from 30 teams from across the state, the Lower 48, and Canada competed in a dozen different events rooted in Alaska Native values.

KTOO’s Clarise Larson was there and has this report.

18-year-old Matthew Chagluak of Anchorage sits low on the gym floor at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé Saturday morning.

His neck is craned upward and his eyes are laser-focused on a ball hanging on a piece of string above him.

Then, in one fluid motion, he kicks a leg up to touch the ball while balancing on one hand, successfully completing an Alaskan High Kick.

“By showing grace in your events, is showing respect for not only the event, but yourself too.”

Chagluak is Yup’ik, and he’s one of more than 250 athletes who came to Juneau to compete in the eighth annual Traditional Games.

Many of them are Indigenous, but the games are open to participants from any background.

The event opened with a cultural dance and songs.

Matthew Chagluak of Anchorage competes in the Alaskan High Kick at the annual Traditional Games in Juneau on Saturday, April 5, 2025. (Photo: Clarise Larson / KTOO)

Throughout the three-day event, the athletes from 30 different teams competed in a dozen different games. They’re all rooted in Indigenous hunting and survival skills.

“The history goes back hundreds maybe 1000s of years, so let’s see it continue hundreds or 1000s of more years.”

That’s Kyle Worl. He’s a coach and leads the program in Juneau.

“It’s a way to celebrate our culture and carry on these games and introduce them to youth throughout the Southeast region and beyond.”

Nathan Blake is a high school senior in Juneau.

Not only did he compete, but he was also in charge of getting the crowd of family, friends and spectators excited.

He says the inclusiveness of the games is one of the biggest reasons he’s drawn to them.

“This isn’t just a game for one culture and one only. This is a game for everyone to come together and just be one with one another, regardless of how you look or what you do.”

This year, athletes broke 12 records in different categories and age groups.

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Photo: Voters cast their ballots at Old Saint Joe’s in Nome on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Ben Townsend / KNOM)

President Donald Trump recently issued an executive order to reshape U.S. elections.

The order, among things, mandates absentee and mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day.

It also requires proof of citizenship for registering to vote in federal elections.

There’s some concern that the changes might disenfranchise voters in rural Alaska Native communities.

Alaska Desk reporter Alena Naiden from our flagship station KNBA has more.

Denise Louisaac is a poll worker in Dillingham who oversaw early absentee voting there for the last two presidential elections.

In 2020, she says it took 10 days after Election Day for the last batch of early voting ballots to get from Dillingham to Anchorage and from Anchorage to the election office in Nome.

She says the new federal voting timeline would be tight for Dillingham.

“It will definitely disenfranchise smaller rural communities.”

Jackie Arnaciar Boyer works for Rural and Indigenous Outreach Program. She says the new regulations might lead to a drop-in voter turnout for Alaska Native residents.

“I think it’d be pretty devastating to rural vote.”

In Alaska, mailed ballots can be received within 10 days after Election Day.

The timeline is helpful because hundreds of communities – predominantly Alaska Native – are accessible only by air.

Storms can prevent planes from coming in and out of the villages for days or weeks, and ballots often arrive late.

Roy Agloinga is the president of the First Alaskans Institute.

“It’s just not fair, right? I mean, to exclude an entire population because of where they live in the country, and to make it difficult for them to participate in this really important process.”

The executive order also mandates people to show proof of their citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.

Agloinga says that many Native Alaskans use tribal IDs because there’s nowhere in their village to get a passport or state ID.

While the state division of elections does not track how many residents use tribal IDs to register to vote, Agloinga says even a small number matters.

“Any number of voters that you miss in a community makes a big difference.”

Alaska Division of Elections spokesperson Stephen Kirch said in an email that the division is reviewing the new executive order and will work with the state Department of Law on any potential changes to policies.

Kirch said that, at this time, division staff don’t know if there will be any impact in Alaska.

Photo: Jeffrey Zeldman via Flickr CC

On Monday, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act.

The act, signed into law in 1975, reshaped federal Indian policy – promoting tribal self-determination through tribal involvement and oversight of programs and services administered to tribes on behalf of the federal government.

The bipartisan resolution was led by U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, and vice chair Brian Schatz (D-HI).

In a statement, Sen. Murkowski said of the law that tribes have raised the quality of life of their people.

Tribal leaders testified last week, during a House Committee on Natural Resources field hearing, about opportunities the law has brought tribes, and successes in Indian Country – including in areas of economic development, health care, and transportation.

Also on Monday, Sen. Schatz released a statement on offers made by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to senior leaders across the agency to transfer to jobs in remote areas at the Indian Health Service (IHS), as part of HHS restructuring.

Schatz calls the action disrespectful.

He says the IHS should instead be strengthened to meet the needs of its patients, and that tribes need to be involved in consultation.

During his confirmation hearing, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he planned to elevate Indian health.

Meanwhile, Sec. Kennedy is meeting with tribal leaders this week in the Southwest.

According to the HHS, Kennedy is taking part in a fireside chat with tribal leaders in Arizona, and will take a one-hour hike with Navajo leaders.

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Photo: Lee Miller is a Cultural ambassador at Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center on April 2, 2025. The Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska program started in 2024 to teach tourists about Lingít stewardship of the land. (Yvonne Krumrey / KTOO)

The Forest Service staffing at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center in Juneau, Alaska, remains uncertain due to turmoil from the Trump administration’s federal firings.

But there will be eight people working at the glacier in a different role as cultural ambassadors.

They’re all Indigenous to Southeast Alaska. Employed by the local tribe, they teach visitors about Lingít history, culture, and connections to the land.

KTOO’s Yvonne Krumrey stopped by a training session to see how they’re preparing for the quickly approaching tourist season and has more.

At the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center, cultural ambassadors are learning how to best represent the Lingít stewardship and connection to the glacier to the roughly one million tourists slated to visit this summer.

Saaní Liana Wallace sets off down the walkway toward Steep Creek.

“We’ll never stop talking. Join the crowd. We’re talking about plants, so Lee, who’s been here a while, is going to show me a plant that he wants us to work on.”

Cultural ambassador Saaní Liana Wallace takes a photo of a plant to identify on April 2, 2025. (Photo: Yvonne Krumrey / KTOO)

They are part of the group of ambassadors who will be at the glacier when tourists start arriving in less than two weeks.

The Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska program started last year, as a part of a co-stewardship agreement the tribe formed with the U.S. Forest Service.

It will allow people like Shaaḵ’indax̱ Jonah Johnson to teach visitors about Devil’s Club, or as it’s called in Lingít.

“S’axt”

Because there’s more to it than meets the eye.

“It looks like it’s just a harmful plant, but it’s really our medicine plant.”

In February, a wave of federal firings left one remaining Forest Service staff member at the visitor center. In a typical summer, there are about a dozen on site.

Some of the fired staff have been rehired, but there are rumors they may lose their jobs again, or accept a deferred leave offer.

Forest Service officials say they aren’t able to share any plans for staffing for the summer.

But while that’s up in the air, the cultural ambassadors are moving forward with their plan to staff the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area.

Lee Miller is returning for his second season. He says he thinks all of the staff at the glacier will be spread thin this year.

“But it’s exciting. I mean, every day is different, every person is different”

Miller says he loves representing the Áak’w Ḵwaan, and bringing the joy of the natural world to visitors.

“You can pass it on to them. You’re, you know, you’re coming in and you say, ‘Okay, I just saw a porcupine out on the meadow there,’ or an eagle or a heron, and, you know, just point it out to them, and they’ll ask you questions.”

Miller’s family has been here for thousands of years, but he’ll be greeting people who are seeing the glacier for the first time.

“Just interacting with them and watching them, you know it just — that made the whole season.”

And his season begins April 14, when the first ship arrives.

Margaret Katzeek brought her niece Elayna Katzeek to the Baby Raven Reads family night. (Photo: Lisa Phu/KTOO)

A group of education leaders from tribal organizations testified at a U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing last week, against the dissolution of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), and for the protection of programs that support Native students.

The hearing followed an executive order President Trump signed last month to close the department.

Alaska Desk reporter Alena Naiden from our flagship station KNBA has more.

Rosita Ḵaaháni Worl, president of Sealaska Heritage Institute, spoke about the persistent lack of education funding, especially in Alaska, given the state’s fiscal situation.

“Despite these challenges, we can confidently state that through our culture-based programs that we have integrated into schools with DOE funding, we have witnessed measurable educational achievement among Native students, as well as improvements in their social and emotional well-being.”

Sydna Yellowfish is the director of Indian Education at Edmond Public Schools in Oklahoma. She says programs also help Native students who are homeless or in foster care.

“These challenges such as suicide and substance abuse, most recent bullying and sexual assault, that we have worked with our students –  I feel like we are obligated to address these challenges and work with our students and our families as the best that we can.”

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) co-led the oversight hearing. She says that the department’s programs help the government fulfill its trust responsibility.

Sen. Murkowski says that one idea to work around the department closure would be to transfer the programs to other agencies and to administer funding through the states.

However, Murkowski and several witnesses pointed out that such a transition could be detrimental to tribal sovereignty and lead to additional bureaucratic hurdles and delays.

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(Photo: Jordan Uplinger / Wyoming Public Media)

Next week, Wyoming lawmakers will meet at the state Capitol to decide what subjects interim committees should focus on between now and next year’s legislative session.

Wyoming Public Radio’s Chris Clements spoke with the chairman of one committee, who’s the only Native American legislator in the state.

The Select Committee on Tribal Relations is set to hear updates on investigations into missing and murdered Indigenous people.

And it could discuss how tribal, state and federal law enforcement manage crime on and around the Wind River Reservation.

Fort Washakie Representative Ivan Posey co-chairs the committee.

“The people in the federal system on a reservation really don’t have that luxury of knowing who’s been arrested or what they’re arrested for.”

That’s because there’s often as many as three separate jurisdictions involved in criminal cases, including the feds.

Posey is a member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, and says one of his priorities for the interim is to have a committee hearing take place off the reservation so that more non-tribal members can attend, too.

“There’s still a lack of understanding or lack of knowledge on tribal issues.”

That includes some of his fellow representatives, Posey says.

Interim committee topics will be finalized on April 8.

Grand Central Station in Belfast, Northern Ireland. (Photo: Brian Morrison / Translink)

A conservative political party in Belfast has pulled the emergency brakes on new plans for Ireland’s Indigenous language.

As Seo McPolin reports, Irish may not be arriving into the island’s newest central station anytime soon.

For just a few hundred thousand quid, Ireland’s newest and now biggest public transit station was to get signage in the Irish language.

Even though it’s twice as old as English, Irish has been suppressed for centuries – and it appears to be happening again.

Members of the right-wing, pro-British party, the DUP, are objecting to the new signs and got a judge to halt their installation, for now.

They want a debate in their assembly, which might be required under power-sharing rules created by the Good Friday Agreement.

It’s the latest chapter in the long saga of a language that dates back to the Roman Empire.

A former tribal assistant chief is sharing his Native culture, and food through his business.

Brian Bull spoke with Jason Harris about Bow and Arrow – a food truck roaming South Carolina.

Harris and his wife Melissa have both worked in tribal government and still consider themselves ambassadors of a sort. Only instead of discussing policy over the table, they share Catawba history and culture over the counter.

“One of the things that we have not been good at, especially as Catawba, is we don’t share our culture as well as we probably should. So that’s kind of given us an opportunity to answer people’s questions about not only the food, that’s just a starting point. But we can actually get into other conversations. It helps bring our communities together even more.”

Many visitors to the Bow and Arrow are non-Natives, so Harris feels this is a great way to connect with others.

The menu has frybread as the basis for its entrees.

“We have ‘The Bow’ which is a ground beef-based Indian taco with the trimmings that go with that, and then we have ‘The Arrow’ which is chicken on frybread.  Then we have a bison Indian taco, we haven’t seen a whole lot of that out there in Indian Country. And then we do a strawberry dish that is my wife’s grandmother’s recipe, and it is just out of this world.”

The Catawba are South Carolina’s only federally-recognized tribe, so Harris says it’s great to represent his culture and share his passion for good food at the same time.

“We get to feed people. (laughs) Everybody’s got to eat!  And then we get to share a little bit of our culture too, so it’s been really nice to do that.”

The Harris’ black and turquoise truck roams the areas on and near the Catawba reservation, sharing Native cuisine to powwow crowds and passersby alike.

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Photo: 2025 NAJS Ambassador Taylor Begay (Diné). (Courtesy Native American Jump Start / Facebook)

The group Native American Jump Start has been providing grants to Native students, interns, and young workers for decades and, this year, has added an ambassador program.

Kathleen Shannon reports.

Nine ambassadors across the country will help spread the word on Native American Jump Start opportunities, up to 100 microgrants per year to help, among others, students at any level of higher education.

Wicahpi Chaddlesone-Yankton, grant and operations coordinator for the group, said they want to highlight more student voices and half of ambassadors in the first cohort are current students.

“We wanted to have our ambassadors work with their Native student centers or organizations on their campus and just help bring NAJS’s voice into a bigger light.”

The group is funded by private donations and therefore will be directly affected by cuts from the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, the Native American Rights fund in March sued the U.S. Interior Department and the Office of Indian Affairs over the federal administration’s cuts to the Bureau of Indian Education.

O’Shay Birdinground comes from the Great Apsaalooke Nation and will graduate this spring from the University of Montana.

He first used Jump Start funding to attend a conference.

Now, as an ambassador, Birdinground encouraged “future Indigenous leaders” to take advantage of educational opportunities.

“There are a lot of opportunities out there for education and leadership development. I wouldn’t hesitate to jump on any one of those opportunities that is provided to you.”

The application period for Native American Jump Start’s education grant funding for this fall opened April 1.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.

Tebughna School students harvest potatoes at the Tyonek Grown in 2018. (Courtesy Tyonek Tribal Conservation District)

Alaska already imports most of its food, but for many tribes in rural areas, cuts to federal grants and staff by the Trump administration could make food security even tougher, including for farmers and reindeer herders.

Alaska Desk reporter Alena Naiden from our flagship station KNBA has more.

Spring is a busy time at Tyonek Grown, a community farm located on the west side of the Cook Inlet.

Local students come to plant seeds and then harvest organic fruits and vegetables.

This summer, the farm managers wanted to set up a community food forest that would include Indigenous plants. But the forest – and many more of Tyonek Grown’s plans – are now up in the air because of cuts to federal staff and funding.

That’s according to Laurie Stuart, the executive director for Tyonek Tribal Conservation District that manages the farm.

“The loss of those funds in the coming years is going to have a big impact on the growth that we were building.”

In Alaska, nearly all produce is imported, which makes the food supply vulnerable.

Some support to local producers comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The department is among many agencies that cut programs and staff in response to Trump’s executive orders. In recent weeks, the agency reinstated some of its employees, but then put them on administrative leave.

Tyonek is located about 40 miles southwest of Anchorage.

Produce needs to be flown in, and fruits and vegetables grown at the Tyonek farm give locals a rare chance to enjoy affordable fresh food.

The USDA’s Forest Service in December awarded $900,000 to the conservation district to grow their team and set up a community food forest.

“So even if we were to find that no funding was impacted right now, we’re making decisions as if it might be.”

Meanwhile, about 500 miles northwest around Nome, reindeer herders are asking similar questions.

For herders like Bonnie Suaŋa Scheele, interruptions in federal programs mean that it’s harder to find funds to build temporary housing for workers and corrals for holding animals.

Despite the challenges, Scheele believes the herders will figure out a way to continue the practice.

“We’re still here, we’re still herding reindeer. We’re still providing for communities.”

Several USDA grants remain frozen or terminated.

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Photo: Tali Stone. (Matt Faubion / Alaska Public Media)

The Alaska House of Representatives has passed a bill that would help protect foster kids from unnecessary stays in acute psychiatric care facilities.

It’s likely to become law. And if so, kids will have the right to a court hearing within seven days of entering a facility to determine if the placement is necessary.

Almost 70% of foster kids in the state are Alaska Native or American Indian.

Alaska Public Media’s Rachel Cassandra has more.

Tali Stone was nine years old when her foster mother brought her to North Star, an acute psychiatric facility in Anchorage.

Stone says during the intake, her foster mom exaggerated her behavior and lied that she was seeing ghosts.

“Even the staff said, themselves, ‘I’m not sure why you’re here.’ And I was like, ‘I’m not sure either.”

Stone was at North Star for four weeks, according to her psychiatric records. And over the next two years, she was admitted to North Star a total of four times, each of them several weeks at a time.

Stone is one of the thousands of kids under the care of the Office of Children’s Services (OCS) in Alaska who have spent time, sometimes unnecessarily, in acute psychiatric facilities.

OCS is under-resourced, with a high staff turnover rate, and a serious shortage of foster families.

But Amanda Metivier, who runs the nonprofit Facing Foster Care, says that lack of placements means foster kids stay in psychiatric facilities for too long.

“So, they do an intake at a hospital, they get a diagnosis, and then they linger there.”

Right now, kids have the right to a court hearing within thirty days of admittance, but the bill passed by the state House would reduce that timeline to seven days.

According to the bill, at the Alaska hearing, all people invested in the kid’s care would have to be there – birth parents, foster families, tribes, behavioral health care providers, and OCS.

Every kid over ten would also have their own lawyer who could advocate for them being in the least restrictive setting appropriate.

State Rep. Andrew Gray (D-AK) sponsored the bill. He says there’s a lot at stake.

“The absolute human rights violation of [voice breaks] having your freedoms completely taken away and no one coming to help you, that alone is enough that we have to fix it.”

Metivier worked with kids in foster care to help draft the bill. She says it would add a sense of urgency to the process of assessing the care.

“We need to act quickly on either identifying, again, a higher level of care or different therapeutic intervention, or releasing them.”

Tali Stone says she never got a hearing at all to assess whether she should be there. She says she really hopes this bill passes.

She wants foster kids in institutions to know they’re not forgotten.

Special Agent Hailey Evans during her 30-day deployment to New Mexico in support of Operation Not Forgotten, a four-month surge of FBI resources to Indian country. (Courtesy FBI)

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday announced increased resources to Indian Country to investigate violent crimes, including related to missing and murdered Indigenous people.

According to the department, the FBI will send 60 personnel to temporary assignments over six months to support 10 field offices, including in Albuquerque, N.M., Denver, Phoenix, Portland, Oreg., and Seattle.

The FBI will work with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and tribal law enforcement.

The personnel will work with the BIA’s Missing and Murdered Unit.

In a statement, Attorney General Pam Bondi said crime rates in American Indian and Alaska Native communities are unacceptably high.

She says by surging FBI resources and collaborating closely with U.S. Attorneys and tribal law enforcement to prosecute cases, the DOJ will help deliver accountability these communities deserve.

According to the DOJ, at the beginning of Fiscal year 2025, the FBI’s Indian Country program had about 4,300 open investigations. That includes death investigations, child abuse, domestic violence, and sexual abuse investigations.

U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, and Brian Schatz (D-HI), committee vice chair, are leading a hearing Wednesday on Indian education.

The hearing in Washington, D.C. will examine federal programs.

Witnesses include leaders of the National Indian Education Association and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium.

Educators in Indian Country and tribal leaders are among those who’ve been raising concerns about Indian education under Trump administration policies.

Watch The Hearing

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The most recent chapter in a federal civil rights case in Alaska is coming to an end.

Lawyers in the case announced last week that the final member of the Fairbanks Four has agreed to settle his wrongful conviction suit against the city and four of its police officers.

KUAC’s Patrick Gilchrist reports.

The agreement comes more than seven years after the Fairbanks Four sued the city in federal court, claiming Fairbanks police had manufactured evidence to convict them for a murder they didn’t commit.

The city will pay Marvin Roberts $11.5 million, says Fairbanks City Attorney Thomas Chard.

“It was a pretty intense negotiation. And it involved a very experienced mediator that helped parties come to that.”

The settlement means Roberts’ claims against the city and four of its police officers won’t go to a jury for trial, which was scheduled for December.

Marvin Roberts

Once all the terms are finalized, Chard says it will close out a lawsuit that’s been ongoing since late 2017.

That’s when the four Indigenous men, coined the Fairbanks Four, first filed the civil rights lawsuit.

They were convicted for the 1997 murder of teenager John Hartman.

The four were released in late 2015 after another man, William Holmes, confessed that he and a group of men had killed Hartman.

Multiple witnesses corroborated that confession. And one, Arlo Olson, said Fairbanks Police Department officers had coerced him to give a false statement against the Fairbanks Four.

Mike Kramer is Roberts’ lawyer.

“It’s just – happy to see Marvin finally get justice. That’s all he’s been asking for since he was first wrongfully arrested and accused back in 1997.”

Roberts couldn’t be reached directly for comment, but he said through a press release from his lawyer’s office that no amount of money can make up for his time in prison.

“This settlement, however, gives me freedom with my life, and most importantly, more time with my daughter and my parents, who supported me throughout this nightmare.”

The other three members of the Fairbanks Four – George Frese, Kevin Pease and Eugene Vent – settled with the City of Fairbanks’ insurer in 2023.

They agreed to drop their portion of the federal civil rights lawsuit for about $1.6 million apiece.

Neither settlement required the city to admit fault or issue a formal apology.

President Donald Trump speaks at the Utah State Capitol in 2017 before issuing a proclamation reducing boundaries for the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.

Six tribes have formed a coalition to protect Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah.

As David Condos reports for the Mountain West News Bureau, the group is working to conserve tribal homelands.

President Donald Trump shrunk both Grand Staircase-Escalante and nearby Bears Ears National Monument in 2017 during his first term. And some people worry history could repeat itself.

Hank Stevens is a member of the intertribal coalition and part of Utah’s Navajo Nation.

“With a new administration coming in, you know, there’s concerns that we’re probably gonna have the two monuments being shrunk again.”

The new Trump administration issued an order to review national monuments as part of a push to expand gas production and mining on federal lands.

Stevens is optimistic the federal government will collaborate with the coalition and make sure Native voices are heard.

Heather Shotton. (Courtesy Fort Lewis College)

A Native woman has been named the sole finalist in the search for president for Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo.

Heather Shotton (Witchita and Affiliated Tribes, Kiowa and Cheyenne descent) would be the first Indigenous person to lead the institution.

According to the college, her selection comes at a critical time as the college continues to reconcile with its past as a former Indian boarding school.

Shotton currently serves as Vice President for Diversity Affairs and Acting Dean of Students. She has more than 20 years of experience in higher education.

The board of trustees is expected to make a final decision on the finalist on April 11.

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Photo: Anti-DOGE/Elon Musk protest in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood on March 22, 2025. (Geoff Livingston / Flickr)

The chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and other Republicans are pushing back against the Trump administration’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) purge of Native Americans — quite literally — from federal government websites.

Correspondent Nicolae Butler reports from Washington that even members of the president’s own party are aghast at efforts to erase First Americans from government websites.

At the U.S. Capitol, Republicans are more unified than the party’s been in decades, if not a century as the party rallies around most all of President Donald Trump’s recent efforts to reshape Washington in his own image. But even members of the president’s own party are aghast at efforts to erase First Americans from government websites.

Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team seem to have crossed an unwritten Republican red line when they literally erased the term “Native American” from some government sites.

U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told National Native News at the Capitol he doesn’t “know why you just do that as a matter of course.”

Other Republicans are struggling to even grasp what Musk and his team did.

U.S. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) told National Native News he “hadn’t seen that, so I have no idea.”

Still, other Republicans, like U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), are confused by what DOGE did, even after we told him what was deleted from federal websites, because it’s so incomprehensible to them.

“Wait, I don’t understand the question.”

It’s more than just deleting the term “Native American”, which critics say is bad enough, but Department of Defense web pages honoring Navajo Code Talkers were also deleted.

The administration says it restored the pages, calling it a “mistake”, but the “mistakes” didn’t stop there.

Sen. Cramer said he’s no fan of DEI, but the administration went too far this time.

“If it’s Native American, it’s Native American. I don’t know. You can’t — I don’t know. I mean, seems weird. I don’t know why you do that, But first thing I would do is check with local Native people to see what their preference is, because some of them don’t like it.”

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, has been leaning on officials at the Interior Department and Health and Human Services (HHS) to ensure tribal programs aren’t caught up in this DEI purge.

“We were worried about that right at the outset, right? And that was why it was important to get some assurance, some confirmation that when it came to tribes and tribal programs, they were not going to be subject to this DEI initiative. We got that assurance through Interior; we got it through HHS.”

But Sen. Murkowski says other federal agencies have some catching up to do.

“But we’re seeing this in other accounts, which is troubling. We’ve reached out to address this, because it’s not the way it should be.”

Alaska’s other senator, Sen. Sullivan, calls the erasure of tribal references a “huge” misstep. The Republican suggests Musk and his DOGE team are in need of a history lesson.

“Tribes and Native Americans are in the Constitution. Maybe some people should go reread their Constitution.”

The LCB contributed to this report from Washington. 

In Oregon, the search for a missing Grande Ronde tribal elder continued over the weekend.

63-year-old Jonathan House disappeared in mid-March after leaving a crashed truck in the Coast Range foothills west of Junction City.

As KLCC’s Brian Bull reports, prospects are dim that House is still alive.

House was said to be upset when he drove off from home, and flyers say he sounded distressed in his last call to his partner on March 15.

This weekend, teams with the Lane County Sheriff’s Office and the MMIW Search & Hope Alliance searched around Dancing Deer Mountain.

Bill Barnard covered almost 800 acres with his drone.

“The Sheriff’s Office was kind enough to share the coordinates of the last cell phone ping. Unfortunately, that indicated that he didn’t progress towards town or towards a road. It actually indicated that he headed deeper into the forest.”

Kim Lining organized the volunteer search. Given the time and elements, she knows it’s looking dire for House.

“We’re not going to stop looking for him. He’s out there, somewhere. We’re looking for his body, his remains. The family is very understanding and thankful, and really great.”

Anyone with information on House is asked to call the Lane County Sheriff’s Office.

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Six tribes have formed a coalition to protect Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah.

As David Condos reports for the Mountain West News Bureau, the group is working to conserve tribal homelands.

President Donald Trump shrunk both Grand Staircase-Escalante and nearby Bears Ears National Monument in 2017 during his first term. And some people worry history could repeat itself.

Hank Stevens is a member of the inter tribal coalition and part of Utah’s Navajo Nation.

“With a new administration coming in, you know, there’s concerns that we’re probably gonna have the two monuments being shrunk again.” 

The administration issued an order last month to review national monuments as part of a push to expand gas production and mining on federal lands.

Stevens is optimistic the federal government will collaborate with the coalition and make sure Native voices are heard.

(Courtesy The Bow & Arrow / Facebook)

When you’ve served 17 years in tribal government, what’s the next step? Well, if you’re Jason Harris, you start a food truck.

NNN’s Brian Bull talked to the former Catawba assistant chief, whose business, “Bow and Arrow”, roams South Carolina.

Harris and his wife Melissa have both worked in tribal government and still consider themselves ambassadors of a sort. Only instead of discussing policy over the table, they share Catawba history and culture over the counter.

“One of the things that we have not been good at, especially as Catawba, is we don’t share our culture as well as we probably should. So that’s kind of given us an opportunity to answer people’s questions about not only the food, that’s just a starting point. But we can actually get into other conversations. It helps bring our communities together even more.”

Many visitors to the Bow and Arrow are non-Natives, so Harris feels this is a great way to connect with others.

The menu has frybread as the basis for its entrees.

“We have ‘The Bow’ which is a ground beef-based Indian taco with the trimmings that go with that, and then we have ‘The Arrow’ which is chicken on frybread. Then we have a bison Indian taco, we haven’t seen a whole lot of that out there in Indian Country. And then we do a strawberry dish that is my wife’s grandmother’s recipe, and it is just out of this world.”

(Courtesy The Bow & Arrow / Facebook)

The Catawba are South Carolina’s only federally-recognized tribe, so Harris says it’s great to represent his culture and share his passion for good food at the same time.

“We get to feed people. (laughs) Everybody’s got to eat! And then we get to share a little bit of our culture too, so it’s been really nice to do that.”

The Harris’ black and turquoise truck roams the areas on and near the Catawba reservation, sharing Native cuisine to pow-wow crowds and passersby alike.

(Courtesy RTÉ)

It’s all aboard the victory train for Indigenous language activists in Ireland.

Seo McPolin reports on signs of hope at the island’s largest integrated transport hub.

It’s been a good year for Ireland’s Indigenous language.

The Irish hip-hop band Kneecap is showcasing the 2,500-year-old language at high-profile festivals this year like Coachella and Glastonbury.

And this week – in Kneecap’s hometown of Belfast – officials in charge of the new Grand Central Station announced plans to install signage with Irish – in addition to the “King’s English”.

Irish language equality has become a political tool in the historically violent showdown between those who favor a united Ireland – and those who wish to keep Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom.

That’s why a handful of far-right politicians are trying to suppress the new signs.

More than two million people on the island, or 30% of the population, say they have some ability to speak Irish.

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Photo: Ashlee Shingoose. (Courtesy Southern Chiefs’ Organization)

In Canada, an unknown murder victim of a Winnipeg serial killer has now been identified.

Ashlee Shingoose was identified as the fourth victim of a serial killer who murdered Indigenous women in 2022.

More from Dan Karpenchuk.

Until she was identified, she was known only as Buffalo Woman. Now investigators say she was Ashlee Shingoose, a 31-year old woman from St. Theresa Point Anisininew Nation.

Shingoose was the first victim of serial killer Jeremy Skibicki.

Officials travelled to her home community this week to break the news to her family.

Investigators had searched for years to identify her.

They interviewed Skibicki in prison and found a piece of clothing in his apartment that belonged to Shingoose.

DNA testing confirmed that it was hers. Now officials including Premier Wab Kinew have pledged support for a new search of the nearby Brady landfill.

Premier Wab Kinew talked to all the people of Manitoba.

“I hope that you recognize that through the ups and downs we are moving closer to a province and to a Canada that is going to be safer because there’s going to be more trust, there’s going to be more cooperation, there’s going to be more share interest for everybody no matter where you come from in this province. And you’re seeing all leaders, from every level of government including police leadership, coming forward to say this matters and we’re going to work together.”

Winnipeg Police Chief Gene Bowers says the decision not to search for the remains of two of the victims had an impact on the families and the community.

He said while the past cannot be undone, we can learn and know what needs to be done. He says talks will begin about a humanitarian search for Singoose’s remains.

In a rare move, six tribal nations in Michigan have withdrawn from discussions on a federal permit for the Line 5 tunnel, which the Canadian company Enbridge wants to build under the Straits of Mackinac.

Interlochen Public Radio’s Izzy Ross has more.

Line 5 carries oil and natural gas liquids across the Straits of Mackinac. It runs 645 miles from Superior, Wisc., to Sarnia, Ont.

Along that route, its dual pipelines cross the lakebed of the Straits.

Enbridge wants to replace that approximately four-mile section and move it into an underground tunnel.

To build the tunnel, Enbridge needs a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which it applied for in April of 2020. As part of that, the National Environmental Policy Act requires the Corps to conduct an environmental review.

Until last week, six tribes had been involved in that process as cooperating agencies: the Bay Mills Indian Community, Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi, and Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi.

But the tribes say that during a meeting on Thursday, they learned that the Corps anticipated fast-tracking the tunnel permit under President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring an energy emergency.

The tribes already had concerns about the process, but that was “the final straw,” according to Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community.

“What we saw time and time again is that no matter how much evidence we collected, no matter what type of comments we provided, all of that was disregarded by the Corps. Now we can do what we need to do outside of the process” including litigation of the Corps’ final decision.

One problem, Gravelle said, was the Army Corps’ approach to discussions of a construction that would “cause destruction to not only the Great Lakes, but also an Indigenous people’s way of life, my way of life, for all Great Lakes Anishinaabe.”

“When you’re trying to convey that type of existential crisis that you’re trying to prevent, and all you’re met with is this robotic, monotone answer, that, too, creates additional frustrations. You know they’re not really listening to you. You know they’re not hearing what you have to say. You know that they’re not even thinking about what’s going to happen to you.”

The tribes wrote a letter to the Corps on Friday.

“Tribal Nations are no longer willing to expend their time and resources as Cooperating Agencies just so their participation may be used by the Corps to lend credibility to a flawed [Environmental Impact Statement] process and document.”

They also said the Corps’ environmental review process was weighted toward Enbridge and harmed tribal nations, ignored tribal expertise, lacked meaningful dialogue, and undermined treaty rights.

The Army Corps’ Detroit District is still reviewing the letter, according to an email to IPR from spokesperson Carrie Fox.

“We look forward to continued Tribal consultation on treaty rights and on impacts to historic properties. The Detroit District will consider comments from Tribes, state and federal agencies, and the public, as we prepare the environmental impact statement and make a permit decision.”

The Corps also said it was proceeding as directed by President Trump’s energy emergency declaration, relying on “longstanding” regulations to speed up the permitting process for eligible projects.

The Corps headquarters “instructed division commanders to establish these procedures” which will then be posted publicly, Fox wrote.

The Army Corps has determined that it won’t account for the effects of a spill from the pipeline into the Great Lakes in its permit analysis; it says doing so is beyond the scope of its authority and that such an assessment falls to the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

Earthjustice, one of the law firms representing Bay Mills, shared an internal memo sent January 7 by then-Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Jaime Pinkham, in which he ordered the agency to assess the risk and impacts of oil spills and further consider alternatives.

Just under two weeks later, Trump’s emergency declaration directed agencies “to use, to the fullest extent possible and consistent with applicable law, the emergency Army Corps permitting provisions to facilitate the Nation’s energy supply.”

The Native American Rights Fund is also representing Bay Mills.

According to David Gover, managing attorney of its Colorado office, the tunnel project won’t meet the Trump administration’s objectives and the executive order shouldn’t apply.

“You’re talking about a project, Line 5, that serves Canadian companies and Canadian interest.”

Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy said in an email the company welcomes “constructive dialogue and engagement.”

The company has long maintained that the tunnel will “make a safe pipeline safer while also ensuring the continued safe, secure, and affordable delivery of essential energy to the Great Lakes region.”

The federal permit from the Army Corps is one of three key permits the company needs for the tunnel.

In December 2023, Michigan Public Service Commission granted it a permit to relocate the pipeline into the yet-to-be-built tunnel.

Enbridge is also in the process of redoing a permit for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy that would have expired early next year, before construction could begin.

The tribes plan to participate in that permitting process as well, and will likely challenge the outcome in court.

Disclosure: Enbridge supports National Native News.

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