Grandfather’s vision about ‘gallons and gallons’ of Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara seeds nurtures tribal college food sovereignty project. Dr. Ruth Plenty Sweetgrass-She Kills recalls when her grandfather, Gerard Baker, shared with her some seeds – and his dream that they would multiply. “His wish was that there would be gallons and gallons of jars of these seeds […]

Forest Service responds with 20-year proposed ban on mining activity RAPID CITY, S.D. — When federal agencies responded positively in 2023 to citizen pleas to prevent a “modern gold rush” in the fabled Black Hills, it was a milestone for a decades-long grassroots movement defending the region’s habitat from looming mega-mining. Tribal and nonprofit organizations […]

Cheryl Angel, Sicangu Lakota Water and Land Protector, community activist and great-grandmother, was the first person in the lineup for Earth Sky Woman Tami Brunk’s EcoSapien Speaker Series. Because we never had a chance to delve deep into those wonderful interviews, we are going to be sharing some very special ones with you this year, […]

PINE RIDGE, S.D.- A global enterprise based in Spain may seem an unlikely role model for a fledging American Indian initiative. But inspired by its success, Winona’s Hemp and Heritage Farm in Anishinaabeg territory is sowing the start of an intertribal cooperative consortium. The new endeavor, called the Indigenous Hemp and Cannabis Farmers Cooperative, is […]

Editor’s Note: The U.S. eleventh-hour climate policy — to pin global greenhouse gas reduction on the proliferation of individual electric vehicles made with lithium exclusively from the American continent — appears to be having a domino effect nationally and in countries south of the border. In April, when Chile’s President Gabriel Boric announced his intention […]

Fifty years ago, on Feb. 27, 1973, around 200 Native treaty rights defenders, among them American Indian Movement leaders, occupied the trading post of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The site was historically significant for the 1890 massacre there in which federal troops killed up to 300 Lakota men, women and children. […]

Last year was a tough one, on many counts. A pandemic that wouldn’t let go; devastating heat waves, wildfires, storms and floods around the globe; spiraling inflation and economic hardship; the war in Ukraine, with heavy worldwide impacts. Sometimes it was hard to see the silver lining.  But behind the headlines, good things were happening […]

Last week we lost a powerful voice in the Water Protector and Climate Justice movements. Joye Braun (Wambli Wiyan Ka’win) of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Nation passed away at her home on Sunday, November 13th. Her untimely death at 53 leaves a void that no one can fill.  Esperanza Project contributing editor Talli Nauman, […]

This summer, Hot Springs citizens scored a breakthrough: They collected enough signatures to obtain a ballot measure that would declare mining a “nuisance” in Fall River County.

SILVER CITY, South Dakota — The moment the U.S. Forest Service posted its July notice of a draft decision to permit gold prospecting at Jenny Gulch here in the Black Hills, tribes, water protectors and treaty rights defenders turned out in droves to ward off the project and others like it. The Black Hills make […]

As the year draws to a close, I pause to wish you all a happy Solstice season and reflect on what we’ve been able to accomplish this year: the publication of 70 stories in English and 51 in Spanish, together with our first transmedia series, a bilingual film and three related articles and the presentation […]

Oglala Lakota citizen Maria Hazel Stands takes the microphone. Surrounded by Pine Ridge Indian Reservation community members she accepts the introduction as a “survivor” of Red Cloud Indian School, where they are gathered under a canopy of trees in the grassy yard.

Diana Negrin Diana Negrín is a geographer, writer and professor who works between Mexico and the US. Negrín’s multidisciplinary work focuses on the intersection of social justice, ecology, arts and culture. Negrín helps run the Wixarika Research Center, a non-profit dedicated to supporting Wixarika autonomy and preserving their art and culture. Follow her at @geo.grafiando […]

BEMIDJI, Minnesota — Massive direct actions to stop Line 3 tar-sands crude-oil pipeline construction here in Native Anishinaabe ancestral territory launched a weeklong Treaty People Gathering on June 7. Attracting an estimated 2,000 participants, the occasion was “the beginning of a summer of resistance,” according to Indigenous-led groups, communities of faith, and climate justice organizations hosting it.

This fall, when we bring in the sheaves, they will be of hemp. Then we’ll have a harvest hoedown to follow up.

It’s been a year since we launched our Patreon site on Earth Day 2020. “Esperanza is the Antidote,” it was called, and it was launched in the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic with a campaign to support our special hope-based approach to journalism.  It was not a good time for a campaign of this […]

OAK FLAT, Arizona — To make good on Joe Biden’s recent Presidential Memorandum for tribal consultation and strengthening nation-to-nation relationships, the U.S. Forest Service on has rescinded its permit for a massive foreign copper mine that would engulf sacred Apache sites here. For years, the two biggest metal mining companies in the world, Rio Tinto […]

HILL CITY, S.D. — A Standing Rock Sioux teen tribal member is among Native headliners to play on the moving picture screen beginning Feb. 22 during the Black Hills Film Festival’s 12th annual season. Lakota youth pipeline fighter and climate justice advocate Tokata Iron Eyes stars in “My Name Is Future,” a new independent feature […]

PHILIP, South Dakota – The difference in law enforcement handling of peaceful Native pipeline resisters compared to that of the violent mob that breached the U.S. Capitol Building was an inequity not lost on Indian Country. “At a time when white rioters are being let off the hook after raiding the nation’s Capitol and driving […]

It was a year that this roving reporter began in a refugee camp, taking inspiration from the asylum seekers who had passed through hell to arrive at our borders, and from the people from both sides of the border who had shown up to accompany and support them. We all sensed it would be a […]