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The Balkans in southeastern Europe is quickly becoming a second home for Navajo basketball player Analyss Benally.

First it was a professional contract in Romania, then Albania and now Kosovo for the 25-year-old.

Benally grew up in Shiprock, New Mexico, on the Navajo Nation and spent her high school years in Kansas before taking her basketball talents to San Jose State University in California.

Now, she’s set for her third year as a professional basketball player overseas. Benally starts preseason in September and the regular season will likely stretch into late March or early April. READ MORE — Dalton Walker, ICT

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The late Bill Richardson left a lasting impact on Native people in the Southwest.

Richardson, a two-term Democratic governor of New Mexico and an American ambassador to the United Nations who dedicated his post-political career to working to secure the release of Americans detained by foreign adversaries, has died. He was 75.

Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said Richardson understood the challenges that the Navajo people face and visited local chapter houses.

“Gov. Richardson was definitely a man of the Navajo people, a champion for the Navajo people,” Nygren told ICT. “And one of the stories he shared with me back in December was how the Navajo people were very instrumental in believing him at the very get-go running for his first political congressional office. And the Navajo people supported him then. And the Navajo people continue to really think of him very highly throughout the years and the decades.” READ MORE — ICT

Around the world: Indigenous artists raise awareness to rainsforest issues, unmarked graves are found at the Beauval residential school, a Turkish Uyghur is detained in Xinjiang, and Māori farms make their mark in New Zealand

BRAZIL: Indigenous artists globalize the Amazon

Indigenous art is gaining global recognition with next exhibitions that spotlight Brazilian and Latin American artists, countering historical erasure by galleries and museums and forging new connections between markets and villages, Mongabay reported on Aug. 29.

The new exhibitions include “Siamo Foresta,” which opened at La Triennale in Milan, Italy, in June, featuring 27 artists related to the Amazon rainforest, according to Mongabay.

The artists include Indigenous collectives such as the Yanomami Group, one of the best known in the country, with artists such as André Taniki, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, Vital Warasi and Joseca Mokahesi, Mongabay reported. READ MORE — Deusdedit Ruhangariyo, Special to ICT

BARABOO, Wis. — Arianna Barajas never thought of herself as the outdoors type. The daughter of Mexican immigrants who grew up in Chicago’s suburbs, her forays into nature usually amounted to a bike ride to a community park.

She was interested in wild animals but had no idea she could make a living working with them until her older brother enrolled in veterinarian school. She took a leap of faith and enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and became a wildlife ecology major.

This summer Barajas landed an internship designed for people of color at the International Crane Foundation’s headquarters in Baraboo, Wisconsin, and stepped into a new world.

“I always knew growing up I had an interest in wildlife and animals but didn’t know the options I had,” Barajas, 21, said. “I really just have a passion for the outdoors. I can’t just be in an office all day. I need to be outside and doing things I think are valuable.” READ MORE — Associated Press

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The former Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, was no stranger to Native American communities. ICT’s Mark Trahant has this report on Richardson’s storied career and how tribal leaders are remembering him. He died Friday, Sept. 1 at age 75.

One of the promises made by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was a commitment to regular order. That’s the idea that bills, especially ones involving spending, would work their way through committees and get a full hearing in the House. The Senate passed 12 appropriations bills, but the House has yet to act to fund the government before the Sept. 30 deadline. Here to talk more about that is ICT regular contributor Holly Cook Macarro. She is a board member of IndiJ Public Media, ICT’s parent company.

What happens when a call to the police goes unanswered? That is too often the case for residents of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe in Fort Thompson, South Dakota. The excuses were numerous and complicated by jurisdiction, resources and clear legal authority. However, after the violent death of a 35-year-old man, the tribe took steps to patrol the reservation. Journalist Amelia Schafer has been covering the story for ICT and the Rapid City Journal.

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GRANITE FALLS, Minn. — Golden prairies and winding rivers of a Minnesota state park also hold the secret burial sites of Dakota people who died as the United States failed to fulfill treaties with Native Americans more than a century ago. Now their descendants are getting the land back.

The state is taking the rare step of transferring the park with a fraught history back to a Dakota tribe, trying to make amends for events that led to a war and the largest mass hanging in U.S. history.

“It’s a place of holocaust. Our people starved to death there,” said Kevin Jensvold, chairman of the Upper Sioux Community, a small tribe with about 550 citizens just outside the park.

The Upper Sioux Agency State Park in southwestern Minnesota spans a little more than 2 square miles and includes the ruins of a federal complex where officers withheld supplies from Dakota people, leading to starvation and deaths. READ MORE — Associated Press/Report for America

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