The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has published numbers on how many employees left the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) during President Donald Trump’s first year in office.

BIA focused on reducing its federal workforce through layoffs and hiring freezes.

KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio has details.

The 31-page report finds that more than 800 employees were gone by last July. That is roughly 11%.

When such restructuring occurs, BIA is supposed to notify tribes in advance.

“Tribal leaders told us that the consultations happened after the staff reductions.”

Anna Maria Ortiz is director of GAO’s natural resources and environmental team.

“It’s resulting in the loss of a lot of institutional knowledge. It’s very hard for BIA to fulfill its mission.”

BIA did not offer a comment to GAO on its report, but tells KJZZ it is committed to increasing efficiency, accountability, and support for tribal self-determination.

(Courtesy CSPAN)

Since assuming his second presidential term last year, Trump has leveled several executive orders that have affected Two Spirits and the Native LGBTQ+ community.

Brian Bull (Nez Perce) of Buffalo’s Fire reports.

Trump’s decree for federal agencies is to only recognize “male” and “female” as genders, determined at conception. Trump has also banned gender-affirming care for youth.

Elton Naswood is the executive director of the Two Spirit and Native LGBTQ+ Center for Equity. He says, as the White House began its onslaught against his community last year, he reached out to the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), which reactivated its Two-Spirit Task Force.

“I had heard a community member express the frustration of  ‘Why our people are not protecting us?’ Just that simple phrase really hit me, and instilled some type of advocacy tactic to be able to begin to highlight the issues of how the Trump administration’s executive orders were going to impact our communities.”

Before colonization, Two Spirits were accepted and even seen as sacred in many tribes, but over the past few centuries, Western attitudes have sparked intolerance and harassment against them and Native LGBTQ+ people.

Naswood says resolutions from the NCAI help, as does carrying on events like the annual Bay Area American Indian Two Spirit Powwow.

Just being among community is healing, he adds.

(Courtesy BLM)

Western Washington communities are applauding the state house and senate for including full wildfire prevention funding in their proposed budgets.

Isobel Charle has more.

The decisions honor a previous legislative commitment.

Glenn Ellis Jr. is a board member of The Nature Conservancy and a member of the Makah Tribe.

The Makah reservation sits on the north end of the Olympic Peninsula – one of the rainiest places in the country.

Ellis notes that while people rarely associate the peninsula with fire, recent years have proven otherwise.

“Three years ago, we had two fires sprout up during November. It’s just crazy to think that fire could spread in a place like this during that time. We get 119 inches of rain a year. We’re a temperate rainforest.”

Funds from what was known as H.B. 1168, that passed five years ago, have helped 175 small forest landowners in three counties reduce wildfire risk through thinning and prescribed burns.

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