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 […]

Perhaps no other Native people knows better than the Lummi the risks of megaprojects imposed on indigenous communities without consultation or consent. The tribe’s ancestral territory is located at a prime Northwest Pacific Coast shipping juncture. Battling against proliferation of toxic oil pipelines and coal ports, the heirs of Washington state’s original human settlements took […]

It’s Rice Lake Village on the White Earth Reservation – at the site of the mother lode of wild rice, Lower Rice Lake. Lew Murray stands in front of the gathering — about 200 or so people.

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.

ST. PAUL, Minnesota – At the state Governor’s Mansion on Anishinaabe (Ojibway) ancestral land, 1,000 grandmothers rallied “for future generations” May 26th. They timed the event to punctuate a call from organizers worldwide urging allies to attend the Treaty People Gathering for non-violent direct actions against oil pipelines during the first week of June 2021. […]

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 […]

Many thousands this past weekend were hit hard by the news that we had lost a living treasure on Earth, the inimitable and irreplaceable LaDonna Allard. The Lakota historian, water protector and Standing Rock movement founder had been struggling for a long time with brain cancer. And even though those of us who love her […]

Esperanza is the Spanish word for hope. The Esperanza Project offers a special blend of hope-based media – one that gives voice to those heroes and heroines who are quietly changing the world from the ground up. Many, but not all, come from countries that we in the North don’t often pay attention to, from people […]

FORT YATES, N.D. – As the Standing Rock Sioux Nation prepared for services April 16-19 honoring late water protector LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, Native youth carried on the crusade to defend treaty land from pipeline construction, which she inspired when she established the Sacred Stone Camp near here five years ago. Known as Tamaka Waste […]

Construction of Enbridge’s Line 3 faces growing resistance led by Indigenous groups who see the project as a violation of treaty rights. 

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 […]

Utterances of relief and gratitude rippled through Indian Country on Inaugural Day Jan. 20, as U.S. President Joe Biden announced an executive order revoking the Keystone XL Pipeline’s permit for construction opposed by tribes along its proposed route through unceded 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty
territory.

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’s been a decade now since Mexico experienced its Standing Rock moment.  It was the native Wixárika people—better known  internationally by their Spanish name, the  Huicholes—who galvanized a global movement  with their call for help. In the north-central  state of San Luis Potosí, one of their most  sacred sites—the Birthplace of the Sun—was  being readied for […]

RAPID CITY, S.D. – Isolating herself from family after her Covid-19 diagnosis on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation, Sicangu Lakota great-grandmother Cheryl Angel found little choice but to traipse from one lonely hotel room to another for shelter. Angel, a veteran Water Protector and self-described Sacred Activist, vowed that if she survived the deadly contagious […]

As I write, a very red Mars is approaching a Blue Moon – the second full moon of the season, and the first blue moon on a Halloween in a long, long time. Astrologers are having a field day with the particular lineup of planets that are traversing our heavens this election season, and while […]

“There’s nothing to celebrate.” It’s a common refrain every Columbus Day.  The anniversary of October 12 comes and goes and it seems as if things have only gotten progressively worse for Indigenous peoples since the day Christopher Columbus first stepped foot on Native American land.   There’s nothing to celebrate about the 212 documented assassinations of […]

Sovereignty means different things to different people, but perhaps its essence is best displayed in times of challenge. And so it was for the powerful four-day Sovereign Sisters gathering held on the third weekend in August. Despite two of the group’s founders, Cheryl Angel and LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, being sidelined by illness and injury, […]

Inspired by the indigenous-led Black Hills #Landback demonstration here earlier this summer, the Great Plains Action Society and other non-profits began circulating an “Eviction Notice” to the Dakota Access Pipeline, as well as the Keystone XL Pipeline.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Nicole Ducheneaux had it right: As lead counsel on the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe’s case to stop the oil flow of the Dakota Access Pipeline in unceded 1851 Ft. Laramie Treaty territory, she could claim a win when a federal judge recently ordered a shutdown.