As Republicans and Democrats battle it out for control of the U.S. House, Alaska’s lone Congressional seat appears to be closer to being flipped.

That seat is held by U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola (Yup’ik/D-AK), the first Alaska Native to be elected to Congress.

KNBA’s Rhonda McBride has the latest numbers.

Since election night, Rep. Peltola has trailed her Republican challenger Nick Begich III by about 10,000 votes.

After the Alaska Division of Elections added more than 38,000 votes to the totals late Tuesday night, Peltola cut into her opponent’s lead by a few hundred votes, but the gap between the two candidates remains about the same.

So far, Begich has 49.1% of the vote, not enough to avoid triggering Alaska’s ranked choice voting system on November 20.

If Begich cannot surpass a threshold of 50% of the vote, the second-choice votes for two other candidates in the race will be divided between Begich and Peltola, who will have to get a lion’s share of those votes to pull out ahead.

The next election update comes this Friday.

People on the Wind River Reservation say President Joe Biden’s recent apology for the federal Indian boarding school system needs follow-up.

The schools sought to assimilate Native children and separate them from their languages and communities.

Wyoming Public Radio’s Hannah Habermann has more.

In recent years, both the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes have brought home remains of children who died at the Carlisle Boarding School.

The trauma of the boarding school system still impacts those communities today.  

“I hope they prove it. It’s good for (President) Biden to offer an apology, but that isn’t enough.”

“The apology needs to go deeper than just the boarding school issue. It needs to deal with physical genocide, extermination, decimation of the buffalo.”

“Increased funding for tribal nations to be able to regain everything that was lost because of the boarding school policy.”

That was Northern Arapaho member Cherokee Brown, former Eastern Shoshone Business Council chairman John St. Clair, and Northern Arapaho Business Councilwoman Karen Returns to War.

Federal officials announced a new round of funding to help tribes access clean drinking water.

As Alex Hager reports for the Mountain West News Bureau, that includes nearly $35 million for tribes in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming.

Across the country, nearly half of all tribal homes do not have access to reliable clean drinking water.

This money, which comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, is part of a federal effort to change that.

The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in Colorado and the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona are among those getting money to plan, build, and maintain pipelines and water treatment plants.

The Biden Administration says this pool of money will help it stay on track with a goal to give 40% of its climate spending to marginalized communities.

This comes as tribes in the Southwest are asking for a bigger say in talks about how to use the Colorado River.

They’ve been largely excluded from negotiations about the river since the earliest days of its management.

The Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma and Prime Video have teamed up to bring the Cherokee language to viewers through dub and subtitles on select titles in Prime Video’s library.

It’s part of the tribe’s efforts to preserve the Cherokee language.

The first production was The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

The episode premiere during a recent special screening in Tahlequah.

All season one episodes of the series are being translated and expected to be available in Cherokee by the Spring of 2025.

Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily and stay up-to-date on the 2024 Native Vote. Sign up for our daily newsletter today.