National Native News

Photo: The Tomasiyo family – Riley, left, Tristen, Hunter, Lasean, Sevilla, Maria, Paulette, Leeland, and Lyla – stands in front of their home, which they’ve lived in for 14 years without electricity on the Navajo Nation. (Kaleb Roedel / Mountain West News Bureau)

There are homes on tribal lands that still need electricity hook-ups, including on the Navajo Nation, where climate change makes it harder for families to keep cool.

The Mountain West News Bureau’s Kaleb Roedel highlights one program that’s changing lives.

It’s a scorching hot morning in the Navajo Nation.

In the foothills of Navajo Mountain, Leeland Tomasiyo is standing outside his home – trying to catch a breeze.

“We have a metal roof on top, you know? So all that heat just kind of builds up inside and it just cooks the place up inside.”

That wasn’t always the case. But Tomasiyo says the reservation feels hotter each year.

The Tomasiyos are one of 13,000 families living without electricity here. That’s nearly a third of the homes on the reservation — which stretches across parts of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico.

A Navajo utility nonprofit started in the late 50s to help change that. But progress has been slow since then.

A land dispute with the Hopi Tribe led to a development ban across 1.5 million acres for several decades. And getting a homesite lease approved and accepted for electricity development can take years.

Back at the Navajo Nation, the Tomasiyos are standing in their kitchen. A coffeemaker and microwave are on the counter.

Paulette Tomasiyo says they’ve never been used.

“You wish you had all this stuff and you’re like, oh, these are gonna be on soon.”

She then points at the stainless steel fridge tucked against the far wall.

“Even this ‘frigerator. This is a fake ‘frigerator.”

But days without a refrigerator and air conditioning are now over for the Tomasiyos. Their home was one of 170 on the reservation that got connected to the electric grid this year.

That’s thanks to a mutual aid program called “Light Up Navajo” that relies on private and federal funding – and volunteer workers.

“It just brings tears to my eyes. Every morning we get up and I just always think to myself, I’m just waiting, waiting – one day this will come.”

And now she says heat-related stresses no longer consume her.

This story is a production of the new radio program, Our Living Lands, a collaboration of the Mountain West News Bureau, Koahnic Broadcast Corporation, and Native Public Media.

Animals’ Bridge on Route 93 near Evaro, Mont., on the Flathead Indian Reservation. (Photo: Djembayz / Public Domain)

The Pueblo of Santa Ana in New Mexico has received a nearly $6.4 million federal grant to  improve safety between wildlife and vehicles.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration award is to help the tribe design wildlife overpasses, underpasses, or other features along nearly eight miles of US-550 and 19 miles along Interstate 25.

The Pueblo, located near Albuquerque and Santa Fe, is one of 16 recipients to receive funding for wildlife crossing projects nationwide.

The funding is through a new grant program in its second round of awards to improve safety for motorists and wildlife by reducing vehicle collisions.

According to the Transportation Department, each year, more than one million wildlife-vehicle collisions are estimated to impact motorists and wildlife in in the U.S. Wildlife-vehicle collisions in the Pueblo’s area are said to included deer, elk, antelope, bears and mountain lions.

16 bills investing in Native communities were passed by the U.S. Senate in 2024, led by U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), according to the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

The committee is highlighting billions of dollars in investments in housing and health care, and support for Native lands, tourism, water rights, and bison restoration.

Four bills were enacted into law.

In a statement, Sen. Schatz, who’s chair of the committee, said he’s proud of the progress made during the year, but also said the committee has a lot more work to do for Native communities.

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Photo: The Alaska Native Heritage Center’s new exhibit on the impact of government and religious boarding schools is part of a series that will also look at the education of Native children before and after the boarding school era. (Rhonda McBride)

As it marked its 25th Anniversary, the Alaska Native Heritage Center underwent a major facelift at its Anchorage campus this year, which included new galleries and museum exhibits.

One of the latest projects looks at the history of Native boarding schools in Alaska. As Rhonda McBride from our flagship station KNBA tells us, it’s a work in progress.

The Native Boarding School exhibit is the first installment in a series that explores the history of Alaska Native education.

It is stark and simple, but damning.

“There is a power in naming the evil.”

This Alaska map is the work of Sonya Kelliher-Combs, an Iñupiat and Athabascan artist. Each red thread represents a child that was abused by clergy. (Photo: Rhonda McBride)

Benjamin Jacuk is the Alaska Native Heritage Center’s director of Indigenous Research.

Over the past few years, he has been looking at the role of churches in boarding school abuse.

The centerpiece of the exhibit is a map of Alaska, with tiny red threads hanging from various villages.

Each represents a child abused by Catholic clergy.

Combined, they make a curtain of red across the state.

“There’s actually a difference in just talking about these things, but actually seeing it right there in front of you.”

Next to the map is a plaque with the names of more than a hundred priests and missionaries, acknowledged by the church as having credible claims of sexual abuse against them.

The exhibit is called “Education in Alaska: Disruptions in our teachings” and will be completed sometime next year.

Future installments will look backwards, beyond the boarding school era, long before missionaries and Bureau of Indian affairs teachers took over the education of Native children.

“Really this history of us and our relationship with ourselves each other and our environment is something that is millennias old, tens of thousands of years old.”

Jacuk says project will bring the history of Native education in Alaska full circle with exhibits that showcase how Native languages and cultures are being taught in schools today.

“We also have generations of ancestors who still walk with us today, teaching us who we are.”

Jacuk says to fully understand how to heal centuries of historical trauma , you have to understand how boarding schools systematically attempted to destroy the identity of Native children.

A Tlingit man and Oregon resident has gone viral for saving a barred owl from a highway overpass.

KLCC’s Brian Bull has the story.

Pattrick Price is an artist and dad living in Eugene, Oreg.

He stands under the highway bridge where on the night of December 19, he spotted an owl on the busy roadway.

“My immediate reaction was just to pull right over and turn my hazards on. I jumped out of the car into traffic, and ran over and scooped the owl up.”

Price said the owl was likely in shock, so acted calmly as he drove it home.

At last check, a video of Price and his feathered passenger has received more than 67,000 views on Facebook.

“And I was talking calmly to it like, ‘Hey, we’re in this together. I value my face, and I know you value your life, so let’s do this calmly.’ It’s not recommended that you have too much human interaction with a bird of prey like this, a wild animal, but in this case it just crawled up onto my shoulder while I was driving.”

Price took the barred owl to the Cascades Raptor Center, where the intake staff said the bird appeared to have suffered head trauma. But the good news is that it looks like it will recover, and soon be released back into the wild.

Price says he felt compelled to do the right thing, after hundreds of other drivers zipped by the owl that blustery night.

“Ancestors are looking over us, and that might have been a call-in from one our ancestors. In a lot of cultures, they see owls as a bad omen. But I don’t see them as a bad omen, I see them as caretakers of our people. They eat the rats and the mice, and the things scurrying around. Y’know, they’re out there, living. We’re living too.”

Price said this is the second time he’s rescued a raptor.

The first time happened several years back when he lived in Alaska.

He advises people to be considerate and present when encountering injured wildlife.

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Funding for the Indian Health Service has increased over the past decade, but the agency remains underfunded, which affects both the health and culture of South Dakota tribes.

Kathleen Shannon reports.

In 2021, the life expectancy of Native American or Alaska Native people in the U.S. was just over 65 years.

That’s 11 years less than non-Hispanic white people and the biggest gap since 1940.

Damon Leader Charge, director of tribal outreach for the Sanford School of Medicine at the University of South Dakota and former Tribal Health Administrator for the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, said the Indian Health Service must provide health care for Native people, but noted in a panel discussion care can be hard to get.

He noted people in his tribe who want to use the Indian Health Service to give birth have to travel 90 miles to Pine Ridge.

“We’re not having our babies within our tribal homelands. If our young parents don’t have those type of teachings, in terms of maternal child health, that baby, that Wakanyeja, that sacred being, is going to really start off on the wrong foot.”

Indian Health Service funding has increased 68% over the past decade, but experts said it is still too low.

In 2017, spending per capita was less than half the spending for veterans and less than one-third for Medicare, according to the National Council of Urban Indian Health.

DenYelle Kenyon, associate dean of community health and engagement at the University of South Dakota, said the problems are multipronged, so the solutions must be, too.

“In our state, the tribal lands have a ‘double whammy’ of facing both the historical piece and being rural. We really need to not only grow the hospitals and the providers, but approach this from that health equity lens.”

She stressed it means looking at social determinants of health, which include other qualities of life that relate to health, like access to healthy food – and educational and economic opportunities.

Upper Columbia River at Northport. (Courtesy Washington State Department of Ecology / Flickr CC)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has officially added the Upper Columbia River to its Superfund priority clean up list.

Steve Jackson reports.

Beaches of the upper Columbia near Northport have been polluted by heavy metals like lead and arsenic for decades, primarily from a smelter located on the Canadian side of the border.

Studies of how to do remediation, and some actual clean up have been going on for a few years, but the official Superfund status will provide guaranteed funding for much more clean up, as well as help to coordinate the various studies on human and environmental health threats.

Casey Sixkiller, regional administrator for EPA Region 10, says both the Spokane and Colville Confederated Tribes have been supportive of adding the Superfund designation.

“Tribal members are hunting and fishing and they are consuming those resources and so the obviously have a vested interest in ensuring that the food their tribal members are consuming is not unhealthy for them.”

The Colville Tribes have been engaged in litigation for over 20 years with the Canadian company Teck to try to get them to take responsibility for the clean up of the area.

So far, EPA has cleaned up 59 residential properties in the area, and says at least 150 more need to be done.

The tribal radio station and National Native News affiliate KNNB, which serves the White Mountain Apache Tribe in Arizona, is broadcasting the Fiesta Bowl in the Apache language.

The broadcast will take place from the game in Glendale, Ariz., and will air on KNNB on the reservation.

The live broadcast will also be streamed online.

Two veteran local broadcasters, known for their coverage of high school sports, will deliver the college football commentary in Apache.

The tribe says the broadcast is historic, connecting the community to the college game, while showcasing the Apache language and culture on a national stage.

The college football quarterfinals is between Penn State and Boise State with kickoff Tuesday night.

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Photo: President Jimmy Carter during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. (Ava Lowery / Wikimedia)

President Jimmy Carter, who passed away Sunday, is being remembered for bills he signed into law for Indian Country.

In a social media post, Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. expressed his condolences and said the laws made a positive and enduring impact on Indian Country – the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, the Tribally Controlled Community College Assistance Act, and the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Chief Hoskin goes on to say President Carter was a leader who championed peace and dignity for all people.

President Jimmy Carter, Rest in Peace. He signed into law the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, the Tribally Controlled Community College Assistance Act and the Indian Child Welfare Act, all of which made a positive and enduring impact on #IndianCountry.

— Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr. (@ChuckHoskin_Jr) December 29, 2024

According to a press release from the Carter Center, the former president, who was the 39th president of the United States and winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, died peacefully at his home in Plains, Ga.

He was surrounded by his family.

He was 100 years old and is said to be the longest-lived president in U.S. history.

The Indian Health Service and the Chickasaw Nation are signing an agreement Monday for the development and operation of a new medical center in Newcastle, Okla.

It will be located within the outer suburbs of Oklahoma City and will serve patients in the Ada unit and surrounding area, which will include primary care, specialty care, and emergency services.

Indian Health Service Director Roselyn Tso and Chickasaw Nation Governor Bill Anoatubby will sing the agreement in Newcastle.

The project is expected to be built in three phases over a multi-year construction cycle.

Drew Michael, a Yup’ik and Inupiaq artist, works on a mask carving at his East Anchorage home studio. (Photo: Matt Faubion / Alaska Public Media)

The Anchorage Museum is launching a new fellowship next year designed to support artists in Alaska and the Circumpolar North.

The program was designed and conceived by mask maker and wood carver Drew Michael, who wanted to give other artists an opportunity to focus on their craft without worrying about day-to-day logistics.

Alaska Public Media’s Ammon Swenson has more.

Drew Michael leans over his work table, rough shaping a wooden mask about the size of a large serving platter.

Strips of wood spread across the table as he gouges and scrapes by hand.

Michael is a Yup’ik and Inupiaq artist who creates interpretations of Yup’ik-style masks with contemporary embellishments like bright colors or modern metals – often incorporating religious or other spiritual concepts within the traditional aesthetic.

He was inspired to create the Drew Michael Artist Fellowship Endowment after he had his own residency opportunity at the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.

“That whole time, I was able to focus on my art. They gave me a space to live. They gave me an artist stipend. They gave me a vehicle to drive around in, because where I was staying was so far away from where I was going to be working at the school. And they gave me materials money, and that whole month, I was able to focus on creating a whole body of work.”

When Michael didn’t see anything similar in Anchorage, he wanted to give other artists the same opportunities he had.

“And I give credit to the time that I was able to spend focusing, like kind of separating from my entire life so that I could focus on creating.”

One or two artists will be selected a year for the residency.

The museum will provide artists a stipend for expenses like materials or research and access to their archives and collections.

The endowment is meant to support young or emerging artists from Alaska or the Circumpolar North with a focus on people, place and ritual.

“I think if we’re able to culture share and share about how we’re living in these places, connecting to these places, maybe we could learn, maybe we could grow in who we are in these places.”

When Michael brought the fellowship idea to museum director Julie Decker, she was immediately on board.

Michael had already promised a financial gift to the museum in his will, so he and Decker worked out a plan to create his fund through the museum’s endowment or permanent savings account.

The Drew Michael Artist Fellowship Endowment is on track to begin residencies next year.

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The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and its partners have received a $4.5 million grant from the federal America the Beautiful Challenge program to restore more than 2,000 acres of oak and prairie land.

Isobel Charlé reports.

The project will draw on partnerships across 22 public, private, and tribal sites to restore native plant species such as camas – and reduce fuel for wildfires.

Lindsay McClary, with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, says these oak and prairie lands have deep cultural significance as a source of food, medicine, and hunting grounds.

“Really, these landscapes were maintained by traditional tribal practices and they were relied upon as such. So restoring these habitats is really like restoring cultural life ways to the Willamette Valley. ”

Once widespread, only 7% of oak habitat and 1% of prairie habitat remain in the state.

This is in part due to the impacts of fire suppression, so one piece of the restoration plan is prescribed burning.

McClary says Kalapuya fire practices shaped the Willamette Valley, and that removal of fire has invited in too much plant growth, making the area more susceptible to wildfires.

She says oak and prairie habitats require constant disturbance, and the role of fire in ecosystems is often misunderstood.

“I think this project is really going to help shift and change that social conversation where we can embrace fire as an important tool when it’s done correctly.”

Oak trees are known to support biodiversity like few other trees are able to.

From large wildlife who graze on the acorns down to the many species of fungus that grow with them, oak trees are known to support at least 2,300 species.

It’s been a busy holiday season for an Anchorage man known simply as Native Santa.

But before he sat down to rest, Rhonda McBride from our flagship station KNBA caught up with him at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

“Wanna sit on my lap and we’ll take a picture?”

Jake Hawk, also known as Native Santa, asks a girl, who seems a little timid.

“Oh, there you go.”

Jake Hawk lifts her onto his lap. No matter how shy, Jake knows how to channel the magic of Santa.

“I don’t know. I’ve never been anything but the Native Santa, really.”

Even elders seem to enjoy having their picture taken.

“I helped a lady out of a wheelchair to sit on my lap earlier. I got a bunch of hugs And back there, they loved the qaspeq.”

It is a qaspeq, a traditional hooded Yup’ik overshirt made with a plush, fire engine-red fabric, that Jake’s girlfriend stitched just for him.

“I got the white fringes on the cuffs. I got the white fringes on the pocket of my qaspeq. And I don’t have a hat, but I wear the hood, and it’s got some fringe around it. So, it keeps me nice and warm.”

You might say Jake became an accidental Santa.

At a Christmas party a few years ago when Santa suddenly called to cancel, so as not to disappoint all the kids, Jake was begged to put on the man’s red suit and be a “substitute” Santa. And although the outfit was a little too tight, Jake discovered the role of Santa was a perfect fit.

“Walking through here, getting hugs, just randomly from little kids, I love that.”

And there are always kids who can’t get enough of Native Santa.

Hawk asks the boy on his lap what he wants.

“Lego City.”

Although Jake is Tlingit and Haida, he loves to dance to the beat of a Yup’ik drum and enjoy the timeless rhythm of giving and receiving.

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In Alaska, a group of homeowners have filed a lawsuit over the Eklutna Tribe’s planned casino project.

The tribe sees gaming as an opportunity to create jobs and boost the economy.

But, as Rhonda McBride from our flagship station KNBA reports, the lawsuit names the tribe and the head of the National Indian Gaming Commission.

In September, the Eklutna Tribe cleared wooded land in the Birchwood area for the gaming hall – a few miles off an exit from a highway on the outskirts of Anchorage.

Debbie Ossiander lives about a mile from the site.

“There’s a lot of horses and dog mushing and that kind of activity out here.”

Ossiander is-co-chair of the Birchwood Community Council and supports the lawsuit.

She says the whole community is worried the project will destroy the rural character of the area.

“People are fearful of what kind of a traffic impact that would engender. It would be a draw certainly.”

Ossiander says there are some other big unknowns, like the impact of drainage from the casino’s parking lot into nearby Peter’s Creek, a salmon spawning stream.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of eight people who live near the site for the casino.

They are represented by attorney Don Mitchell, a longtime opponent of tribes in Alaska.

Mitchell would not comment for this story, but his lawsuit questions Eklutna’s tribal status as well as the existence of tribes in Alaska.

Aaron Leggett, the president of the Native Village of Eklutna, said in a statement that the litigation is disappointing.

He said Mitchell’s argument that there are no tribes in Alaska has repeatedly been rejected by the courts.

As for the complaints from neighboring landowners about the impact on the Birchwood community, Leggett said the public will have a chance to comment on the project, after a federal environmental review of it is completed.

The land is on a Native allotment, that under a recent decision from the Interior Department’s Solicitor’s Office, became eligible for a gaming permit.

The Tribe says it will create jobs and be a boost to the local economy.

Elk in Colorado. (Photo: Vince O’Sullivan via Flickr)

A study shows that wildlife migration routes in the West will likely shift because of climate change.

That’s why researchers worked with biologists from the Southern Ute Tribe to find out how to tackle the problem.

The Mountain West News Bureau’s Kaleb Roedel reports.

Researchers used GPS data from dozens of elk collared by the Southern Ute Tribe in southwestern Colorado.

They analyzed their current migration patterns – and projected how they will look in 2050 as temperatures rise and precipitation declines.

They also considered continued growth and development and the traffic that comes along with it.

They found elk could be more spread out in the winters as snowpacks shrink. And in the summers, herds could be more compacted as their range is cut by about half.

That means new wildlife crossings – like bridges and tunnels – will be needed, says Caitlin Littlefield.

She’s with Conservation Science Partners and the study’s lead author.

“Wildlife crossings can enable continued access to new or expanding ranges, or continued access to resources like, say, forage that’s shifting in time and space.”

Littlefield says the study shows state and federal agencies the need to invest in wildlife crossings that consider the climate’s impact on animal movements.

(Photo: Ken Lund / Flickr)

The Pueblos of Jemez and Acoma in New Mexico, and the Bureau of Land Management recently renewed co-stewardship agreements, to protect traditional, religious, and cultural interests of the Pueblos on federal lands.

Tribal and federal officials in a statement said the agreements are a way to further collaborations and working relationships, and ensure sustainable management of public lands.

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President Joe Biden, at his last White House Tribal Nations Summit in December, announced the creation of a national monument to honor Native American boarding school survivors.

“I don’t want people forgetting – ten, 20, 30 years from now, pretending that it didn’t happen.”

In October, President Biden apologized on behalf of the federal government for the abuse of Native American and Alaska Native children, who attended the government- funded schools, dating back to the 1800’s.

The monument will go up at the site of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.

It was one of the first and largest of the federal boarding schools.

Before it closed in 1918, more than 10,000 Native children had been taken away from their families and forced to attend.

U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) also announced that her department, the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and the Library of Congress are working to preserve stories Interior collected on its national Road to Healing Tour, which included a stop in Anchorage.

Jim LaBelle was one of those who shared his experiences of abuse at the Wrangell Institute in Southeast Alaska, a school that was similar to the one in Pennsylvania.

“Carlisle served as the model for almost all of the other boarding schools that came afterwards. And that was the military model.”

LaBelle is a retired Alaska Native studies professor, who has researched the influence of the Carlisle school on other Native boarding schools.

He says it was founded by General Richard Henry Pratt, an Indian fighter in the U.S. Army who coined the phrase, “Kill the Indian, save the man.”

LaBelle says many of the Alaska Native children who were sent there had been orphaned by epidemics, and Pratt’s militaristic approach only added to their trauma.

“It was a process of getting your hair shorn, having clothing confiscated and burned, being issued government issued clothing. It was all part and parcel of the Carlisle experience.”

Labelle says he’s glad the former campus of the Carlisle School will become a national historic landmark.

He hopes it also will recognize the other boarding schools, which include about a hundred in Alaska.

This story is by KNBA’s Rhonda McBride.

(Courtesy North Dakota Historical Society)

The North Dakota State Historical Society obtained a collection of original lithographs depicting life among Indigenous peoples of the Dakotas.

What was once hidden in a San Francisco arthouse are now part of the group’s permanent collection.

South Dakota Public Broadcasting’s C.J. Keene reports.

In 1832, Swiss artist Karl Bodmer and German Prince Maximillian embarked on a journey throughout the American Interior West.

One of the results of that expedition were the paintings of dozens of lithographs depicting Indigenous life in the region before widespread colonization of the plains.

Less than five years later, a smallpox epidemic would devastate the local Indigenous population depicted in these paintings.

Kara Haff is the public information officer for the North Dakota State Historical Society.

“The expedition stayed at Fort Clark, they were down in South Dakota, up near Fort Union. Along the way, a number of significant portraits of different Native American chiefs were a part of it, but the daily life too were documented through Bodmer’s artwork.”

Haff says it’s a rare collection of originals to see, let alone acquire for a state historical society.

“Bodmer was working on turning the sketches, paintings, and drawings to transfer those artworks onto plates to be stamped or lithographed. They don’t come up to auction very often, or come even in a complete set very often.”

The 1830s originals will be placed into rotation at the North Dakota Historical Society.

The collection, featuring over two dozen total works, was acquired via a donation from Sam McQuade Jr., with an earmark for fine art purchases.

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Photo courtesy Kawerak

A federal court case that questioned the rights of Alaska Native tribes has received a ruling.

And as KNOM’s Ben Townsend reports, it has the potential to set a precedent for years to come.

Back in 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued roughly $70 million in grant funding to bring high-speed fiber internet access to western Alaska.

That’s good news, right? There was just one major problem.

The two companies, Mukluk Telephone Company, Inc. and Interior Telephone Company, planned projects in the western Alaska villages of Elim and Unalakleet.

And with the projects taking place on tribal land, per the USDA’s own rules, they were required to obtain tribal consent.

According to a joint lawsuit filed by Elim and Unalakleet, the companies sidestepped that requirement.

Instead, they relied on support from the Nome-based tribal consortium, Kawerak, Inc., as proof of consent.

Court documents reveal it was Kawerak itself that raised concerns last year that their support was not a sufficient substitute for tribal consent.

In response, the USDA wrote they “cannot simply undo legal contracts for federal funding which it believed were properly supported and entered into.”

This May, Elim and Unalakleet filed a lawsuit against the USDA’s Rural Utility Service (RUS).

The suit sought to cancel the awards issued to the telecommunications companies and restore the villages’ ability to apply for future broadband funding.

A recent ruling issued by Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew Scoble denied the villages’ request to cancel the awards. But the judge did rule that the USDA and telecommunications companies “should have obtained tribal consent and that failure to do so is a cognizable injury”.

An attorney representing Elim and Unalakleet called the ruling “a huge vindication of Tribal sovereign rights”.

While Mukluk and Interior will be able to move forward with the broadband project, the ruling sets an important precedent for future cases involving tribal consent.

A Tlingit man and Oregon resident has gone viral for saving a barred owl from a highway overpass.

KLCC’s Brian Bull has the story.

Pattrick Price is an artist and dad living in Eugene, Oreg.

He stands under the highway bridge where on the night of December 19, he spotted an owl on the busy roadway.

“My immediate reaction was just to pull right over and turn my hazards on. I jumped out of the car into traffic, and ran over and scooped the owl up.”

Price said the owl was likely in shock, so acted calmly as he drove it home.

At last check, a video of Price and his feathered passenger has received more than 67,000 views on Facebook.

“And I was talking calmly to it like, ‘Hey, we’re in this together. I value my face, and I know you value your life, so let’s do this calmly.’ It’s not recommended that you have too much human interaction with a bird of prey like this, a wild animal, but in this case it just crawled up onto my shoulder while I was driving.”

Price took the barred owl to the Cascades Raptor Center, where the intake staff said the bird appeared to have suffered head trauma. But the good news is that it looks like it will recover, and soon be released back into the wild.

Price says he felt compelled to do the right thing, after hundreds of other drivers zipped by the owl that blustery night.

“Ancestors are looking over us, and that might have been a call-in from one our ancestors. In a lot of cultures, they see owls as a bad omen. But I don’t see them as a bad omen, I see them as caretakers of our people. They eat the rats and the mice, and the things scurrying around. Y’know, they’re out there, living. We’re living too.”

Price said this is the second time he’s rescued a raptor.

The first time happened several years back when he lived in Alaska.

He advises people to be considerate and present when encountering injured wildlife.

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U.S. Democratic senators blocked a bill sponsored by U.S. Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY).

The bill would’ve transferred the Pilot Butte Power Plant to a non-tribal irrigation entity.

As Wyoming Public Radio’s Chris Clements reports, the plant is located on the Wind River Reservation, but is owned by the Bureau of Reclamation.

Senate Democrats had issues with the Wyoming federal delegation’s supposed lack of consultation with the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes.

Sen. Barrasso says he spoke with both tribes as early as February.

The Wind River Inter-Tribal Council released a resolution insisting neither tribe was consulted.

For the second time this month, members of the tribes traveled to Barrasso’s office in Cheyenne to protest the transfer.

Eastern Shoshone Business Council chair Wayland Large read the resolution at the protest earlier this month.

“The federal government owes both trust and treaty obligations to the tribes, and proceeding with this proposed legislation would constitute a violation of both.”

Barrasso emphasized that the plant is not currently owned by the tribes and said he’d retaliate against the Democratic senators.

“I will be vigilant in watching out for bills that impact at least two and a half acres in their home states! I consider their bills now dead until the Pilot Butte issue is resolved!”

Arizona State University has developed a new tool researchers hope will help analyze connections between illnesses and health determinants within Indigenous populations.

Alex Gonzalez has more.

The Indigenous Health Research Dashboard is an online repository of peer-reviewed, published studies that focus on medical conditions and diseases impacting Indigenous health since 2020.

Angela Gonzales is a member of the Hopi Tribe in Northern Arizona.

She’s also an ASU professor and the director of the American Indian Studies Program.

She says it is important for her to be a part of an initiative that aims to move the needle for Indigenous health equity.

She says she’s seen firsthand the “devastating impacts” of limited access to health care in Native communities.

“By having it public available and accessible, when tribes are interested in trying to find out the latest research, for instance let’s say on COVID-19 vaccinations, they have a one stop source to be able to access a lot of that information. You can search by keywords, can search by key topics, it breaks it down into regions.”

Gonzales says the dashboard is what she calls “bio-directional”, meaning it’s an effort that is driven by what tribal partners have identified as major health concerns.

She adds the project has also allowed students to develop their research skills and learn to synthesize information. Gonzales adds they’re currently recruiting students to be a part of the team that’ll continue working on the initiative next year. She hopes they’re able to capture a more ‘holistic’ and historical view of trends and findings.

Gonzales says they’re ramping up outreach efforts to ensure public health professionals and medical providers in Indigenous communities know about the useful resource. But she adds that Native communities have already expressed the need for such information.

“If you’re a tribal health professional, the opportunity to do research, it takes away from your other responsibilities that are oftentimes more pressing. By having this dashboard available, they can go right to it.”

Gonzales argues that Indigenous health equity has been improving in recent years, but she says as an academic she hopes researchers do better to create a stronger ‘knowledge bridge,’ and develop resources that are use-inspired. She feels the dashboard is a step in that direction.

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Photo: Dental services at the Coquille Tribe’s wellness clinic in Coos Bay, Oreg. (Courtesy Coquille Tribe)

Four states now allow government-run insurance programs to cover Native American healing practices.

In October, the Biden Administration expanded both Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for practices including sweat lodges and drumming in Oregon, California, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Jen Procter Andrews is Vice Chair for the Coquille Tribe based in Coastal Oregon, and a member of the Portland Area Indian Health Board.

She says this is a fantastic development which will address issues specific to Native communities.

“Native women die from pregnancy-related causes at twice the rate of white women and Native infants die in their first year of life at a nearly twice the rate of white infants. And our populations experience higher levels of other health issues like chronic liver disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, unintentional injuries, and the list could go on, but the expected result is better quality health and health outcomes in tribal communities really by improving access to culturally appropriate health care.”

The expansion for Medicaid and CHIP is on a pilot basis.

It’s set to expire at the end of September 2027, unless extended.

Andrews is hopeful that it will continue.

“Our indigeneity is unique because it encompasses the past and present treatment of Indigenous peoples and includes the connection between health outcomes and the environment in which we live. Indigenous peoples’ environment, the deep-rooted cultural beliefs, and other components that are not usually found in our current, frankly, colonial approaches to healthcare.”

The Coquille Tribe operates several health clinics, including one in Eugene, Oreg., well beyond its traditional territory.

The Juneau campus of Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC), pictured here on Dec. 19, 2018, is located off Hospital Drive. (Photo: Jeremy Hsieh / KTOO)

After three years and dozens of hearings, a former Juneau, Alaska chiropractor who targeted primarily Native women will go on trial.

Jeffrey Fultz is charged with sexually assaulting more than a dozen patients who received medical care at a tribal health organization that serves Southeast Alaska.

At a recent hearing, Assistant District Attorney Jessalyn Gillum said the repeated delays in the case have taken a big toll on his alleged victims.

“The idea of just sort of delaying for delay’s sake does sometimes have an adverse effect on witnesses’ willingness to participate. They get tired, they get fed up.”

Police initially arrested Fultz in 2021 on three charges of sexual assault.

More women have since come forward; 14 in all.

Some of the alleged crimes date back more than a decade.

The charges against Fultz are based on accusations that he assaulted patients who sought chiropractic care, while he worked for Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium.

Since Fultz posted bail three years ago, he has been living in Colorado.

His attorney James Christie took on the case last January.

Christie argued at each hearing that his team hasn’t had enough time to review the case.

“I understand that everyone on the line has rights here and my client’s constitutional right to a fair trial trumps all of them.”

Despite those objections, the judge has blocked out five weeks for a trial, starting in February.

Christie had also requested that the witnesses calling in to court to testify be publicly identified.

Another motion he filed asked for broader access to their medical records.

The judge denied both requests.

The Sacagawea Interpretive Center in Salmon, Idaho. (Photo: Rickmouser45 / Wikimedia)

And on this day in 1812, Sacajawea is said to have died.

A Shoshone woman captured by the Hidatsa as a child, Sacajawea is often portrayed as being an interpreter and occasional guide for the Lewis and Clark expedition which began in 1804.

She accompanied the explorers, while also carrying her infant son Jean Baptiste, who was born a year into the so-called Corps of Discovery.

She’s commemorated on a dollar coin issued by the U.S. Mint and as the namesake for many schools.

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