Native America Calling

By the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ own standards, the vast majority—83 percent—of the roads the agency oversees are in unacceptable condition. Pot holes, wash-outs and broken bridges make it hard for people in Indian Country to get to work and for goods to get where they need to go. The federal Tribal Transportation Program is ramping up and is slated to spend $500 million a year by 2020 on tribal road projects. We’ll get an assessment of the state of roads on Native land and what’s being done to improve them.

The Indian horse relay racing finals in Billings, Montana are about to start.The best of the best compete in the time-honored tradition of a bareback relay horse racing. Horses, riders, muggers and holders all play a part of this intricate, fast-paced thrill ride. We’ll talk with folks from the Horse Nations Indian Relay Council about this exciting ancient sport.

With headlines like “ASU Study Suggests George Strait Theory Replace Bering Strait Theory" and "Navajo Man Hikes Large Hill to Use Dating App," the satirical online paper, “Tlo'chi'iin News,” tackles real political issues with a humorous Navajo perspective. We’ll talk with the creator and some of the contributors about their inspiration and how far is too far when it comes to satirizing Navajo and other Native topics.

Unless Congress steps in, funding for the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program is set to expire at the end of the month. The program provides resources for new families who can benefit from guidance in the first few weeks of parenthood. We’ll talk with organizations that depend on this money to provide what they say are vital services for Native Nations.

Tribes and individual Indigenous people are increasingly in the path of oil pipelines and other energy infrastructure projects. At the same time, the spotlight is on a seemingly decreasing ability by tribes to alter environmentally harmful policies. One Lumbee environmental scientist thinks the environmental assessment for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline largely ignored populations of Native Americans in North Carolina. Tribes are also fighting pipeline proposals in northern Minnesota, North Carolina, British Columbia, and North Dakota. That’s in addition to environmental fights in Arizona, Washington state and Alaska among others. What role does race play in locating potentially harmful projects?

The National Alliance on Mental Illness calls intentionally injuring one’s self by cutting, burning or some other method a misguided way of coping with emotional distress. Statistics on how self-harm affects specific populations are hard to come by. One study by the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health in 2008 looked specifically at the White Mountain Apache Tribe and found children as young as 10 harming themselves. It concludes it’s a mental health concern that goes largely unaddressed in the tribe and mostly likely other tribal nations. Several tribes have developed systems to monitor self-harm as a way to prevent suicides.

As the flood waters from Hurricane Harvey recede, the death toll in Texas continues to rise and thousands of people remain displaced. Attention is now shifting to the destruction from Hurricane Irma in Florida and other southeast coastal states. The Seminole Tribe of Florida closed their tribal offices and began warning its citizens of potential dangers long before the storm made landfall. It’s a good time to remind ourselves about ways to prepare for disasters ahead of time. We’ll also find out how tribes are responding to natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires.

A group of Lakota elders got together and decided the word for ‘food processor’ in their language is wóyute inákpaŋ. The Chickasaw word for 'teleconferencing' is holba' aaittafamma anompoli'. These are examples of how languages adapt to new things that inevitably present themselves. We’ll discuss some of the more notable new words in certain languages and how some tribal linguists find ways to adjust to reflect their living languages.

A fish farm pen broke last month and released about 200,000 Atlantic salmon into the waters around the San Juan Islands in Washington state. National Congress of American Indians President Brian Cladoosby is among the many Native fishermen now trying to catch the invasive salmon. He says the fish threaten the wild Pacific salmon fishery with predation and the threat of disease. “These fish have infected the entire Salish Sea,” he said. The inadvertent release is one of several problems cropping up in the Pacific Northwest and in Canada involving salmon farms.

A new federal court ruling says Cherokee Freedmen are entitled to tribal citizenship. The Cherokee Nation attorney general says the tribe will not appeal the ruling. The Freedmen are decedents of former slaves. In the 78 page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan said a treaty signed in 1866 clearly guarantees them citizenship. He also states “The Cherokee Nation’s sovereign right to determine its membership is no less now, as a result of this decision, than it was after the Nation executed the 1866 Treaty.” We’ll explore what this ruling means for the Cherokee Freedman and tribal sovereignty.