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TAOS, New Mexico — July 8 should be a holiday. It could be called “Self-Determination Day.” Or “Blue Lake Day” or the name once given to this celebration by the Taos Pueblo, “Justice Day.”

A commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the events of July 8, 1970, was held as a hybrid event at the University of New Mexico Harwood Art Museum in Taos. The celebration had been delayed for two years by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gilbert Suazo Sr., a member of the Taos Pueblo Council, said remembering the return of Blue Lake to Taos Pueblo is important because it reminds people of the significance of what happened.

“The return of Blue Lake, our beautiful and culturally important land, took over 64 to 90 years of our people’s energy and dedicated efforts against complex legal, governmental and political obstacles to accomplish,” Suazo said. “This was the first time the federal government returned land wrongfully taken from an Indian tribe.” READ MORE.— Mark Trahant, ICT

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A journey like no other began at last Saturday for survivors of U.S. Indian boarding schools.

Young and old, descendants and survivors, crowded into the gymnasium of Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, Oklahoma, to share their experiences as the kickoff to U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s Road to Healing tour.

Until now, former boarding school students were largely ignored, forced to survive brutality and separation from family, culture and language, and deal with childhood traumas as best they could.

Finally, the world is listening.

“I still feel that pain,” said Donald Neconie, 84, Kiowa, who attended Riverside school in the 1940s. READ MORE. — Mary Annette Pember, ICT

The ancestors would have known the drumming, the songs and the languages that echoed across the landscape in San Juan Island National Historical Park, located in an archipelago in the Salish Sea between mainland Washington State and Vancouver Island.

The First Peoples were displaced from the island beginning in the 1850s by foreign nations that laid claim to the lands. Settlers turned the sweeping prairie overlooking the strait into grazing pasture for livestock. A fishing industry emerged that turned salmon, a culturally important resource for Coast Salish peoples, into profits. Bigotry and government policies tried to keep the First Peoples away and kill their cultural practices.

And yet the people, and their presence on the island, endured.

Now, visitors to the island will know their stories, too. On June 21, the park opened a new American Camp Visitor Center offering the first comprehensive look at the island’s Indigenous peoples in the park’s 50-year history. READ MORE.— Richard Arlin Walker, Special to ICT

The first climate agreement focusing on Indigenous perspectives continues to gain international support after the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues urged its member states to adopt the agreement in its final report which was released last month.

Known as the Escazú Agreement, the plan was a recurring topic throughout the permanent forum’s 21st session, and its side events, in April and May in New York City, in which government, tribal and community leaders discussed vital issues affecting Indigenous populations throughout the world.

“The Escazú Agreement is the first instrument that includes provisions on the protection of human rights defenders in environmental matters,” the report states.

The permanent form’s annual session is considered the world’s largest gathering of Indigenous leaders and the final report provides expert advice and recommendations on Indigenous issues to the UN system through the economic and social council. READ MORE. — Carina Dominguez, ICT

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On this Monday edition of the ICT Newscast, a distinguished Indigenous professor talks about his career and next chapter. We learn about the ecology at Leech Lake and its traditions, and we talk more about a United Nations plan that aims to protect environmental defenders.

Watch:

The University of Arizona’s Water Resources Research Center will be kicking-off its annual conference on Tuesday in a hybrid format, with free access to the livestream of the in-person event. This year’s conference has an agricultural-theme, Arizona’s Agricultural Outlook: Water, Climate and Sustainability and it’s happening July 12-14.

Several Indigenous leaders will be speaking on the opening day of the conference including Phyllis Valenzuela, Tohono O’odham, from the San Xavier Cooperative Farm, Andrea Carter, Powhatan Renape Nations, from Native Seeds/SEARCH, Delia Carlyle from Ak-Chin Indian Community and Daniel Sestiaga Jr., Ft. Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe, from AIRES/Haury Indigenous Resilience Center at the University of Arizona will be a moderator. Other speakers throughout the conference include Cherilyn Yazzie, Navajo Nation, from Coffee Pot Farms, who will be discussing tribal resilience and Joshua Moore, Colorado River Indian Tribes, who manages his tribe’s farm, will talk about experience and opportunities with drip irrigation.

The conference will focus on the state’s agriculture, highlighting diversity and physical and social conditions that shape operations throughout the state including tribal farms and ranches. Discussions will consider food production across scales from global demand to local community gardens as well as emerging crop types, like hemp. Other considerations include the role of agriculture in Arizona in the future as a sustainable part of the state’s economy. Registration for the in-person conference is $85 and is available online or in person at the event. — ICT

Find the conference agenda and other details here. 

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