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Memorandum for tribal consultation and strengthening nation-to-nation relationships, the U.S. Forest Service on has rescinded its permit for a massive foreign copper mine that would engulf sacred Apache sites here.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 […]

The border encampment in Matamoros that had become a makeshift community for thousands has now been emptied of the final 700, or so, souls still living there when Biden announced the end of MPP. But not all 700 camp inhabitants, like Perla, have been allowed to cross. Roughly 70 individuals with “complex cases” remain in […]

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 […]

“Haaland’s appointment gives us a voice in a department that has long been responsible for our exploitation.”

The seeds of Standing Rock have taken root and are growing all across the northern US, as water protectors from Montana to Minnesota and many points between raise the #LandBack flag and fight back against the Keystone XL, Enbridge Line 3 and many other infrastructure pipelines that they believe, if completed, would seal our fate in a world hurling toward climate catastrophe.

KYKOTSMOVI VILLAGE, Arizona – Some 30 years ago, when Navajo Nation member Nicole Horseherder returned to her Native land after college, her hopes of building a home like her grandmother’s near here were dampened because wells had dried up with massive coal strip mining and power plant development that drained the underground water tables while polluting Diné and Hopi communities.

GUADALAJARA, Jalisco, Mexico — Yesterday I went to the papelería around the corner, owned by my neighbor Alejandra, to pick up a few office supplies. “How are you going to celebrate Día de Acción de Gracias?” she inquired, using the Spanish word for our uniquely United Statesian holiday. I hadn’t thought about it, really. There […]

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 […]

The legacy of Lakota Territory treaty violation came back to haunt city officials in the freezing wake of South Dakota’s 2020 Native American Day, as #Landback activists defied city ordinance to set up the tipi encampment to shelter homeless people.

DEADWOOD, South Dakota – Descendants of both the original residents and the settlers of the Great Plains brought their experience and philosophies to bear on contemporary challenges of race relations at the 28th West River History Conference Oct. 8-10, here in the heart of ancestral Lakota Territory.  “Hope is the only thing that ties us […]

BISMARCK, ND — Law enforcement and private security agencies that employed attack dogs, pepper spray and water cannons against Standing Rock water protectors will have to stand trial next August — not for use of excessive force, but for closing a road. Water protectors have secured an August 2021 jury trial date in their class […]

“Having access to reliable connectivity is a necessity, not a luxury anymore,” said Petra Wilson, adding, “It’s going to give tribes control over it.”

RAPID CITY – Participants from numerous grassroots groups tackling life-or-death issues of Native homeless and other community members highly vulnerable to the Covid-19 pandemic here rallied for an autonomous “command center” at a Sept. 11 gathering outside the civic center. Organizers, speaking with a megaphone, pressured the Rapid City Police Department representative in attendance at […]

RAPID CITY, South Dakota — When Native American Natural Foods launched Tanka Bars and Tanka Bites in 2007 it had a mission:  “To heal the people and our Mother Earth by building a company that innovates real food products based on the traditional values of Native American respect for all living things by living in […]

BEAR BUTTE – About 100 people from all across the land gathered at this native sacred site Aug. 9 to pray and participate in the Sturgis Medicine Wheel Ride 2020 to raise awareness about the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Children and Two-Spirit relatives. Native women motorcyclists led the 70-mile ride from Bear […]

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.