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Ganoñhsahgaeoñh, Alfred “Alfie” Jacques, Turtle Clan from the Onondaga Nation, passed on June 14, 2023. Jacques was a fixture in his community and was widely respected as the world’s foremost wooden lacrosse stick maker. He spent his life honing his craft and sharing his love of the game. He was 74.

Jacques worked out of a shop in the backyard of his childhood home on the Onondaga Nation territory. The cement brick walled shack, built by Jacques and his father Lou Jacques in the early 1960s, was where he worked and welcomed visitors who came from all over to watch and learn from him. It was home to sticks at various steps along the nearly yearlong process of splitting, steaming, bending and carving, some of his own self-designed, handcrafted tools and equipment, and his cats, Obama and Michelle.

A typical day for Jacques began in the kitchen of the house just up the hill for coffee with his sister Freida Jacques. The two story house, which Freida now lives in, was also built by their father Lou and mother Ada when Jacques and Freida were just kids.

“He would come here around 8:30-9 a.m. He’d sit in this chair, and I’d sit there, and we’d have my coffee and he’d tell me stories and talk to me and tell me jokes,” Freida said. READ MORE — Nathan Abrams, Special to ICT

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A biweekly column from ICT with the latest news from the arts and entertainment world. READ MORE — Sandra Hale Schulman, Special to ICT

Thousands of Indigenous athletes are getting set for the opening of the 2023 North American Indigenous Games in Nova Scotia.

The games are the largest continental sporting and cultural gathering of Indigenous Peoples and are taking place between July 15 to 23 in Kjipuktuk (Halifax), Dartmouth, Millbrook First Nation, Sipekne’katik.

APTN News is live on location and will be sharing the latest coverage from the games. READ MORE.

In 1976, Binan Tuku ventured to meet a Brazilian government’s expedition on the banks of the Itui River in a remote area of the western Amazon rainforest. After some initial suspicion, he and his father accepted machetes and soap in what was the beginning of the Matis tribe’s contact with the non-Indigenous world.

Nearly 50 years later, Tuku’s own son Tumi is trying to carve out a living in the impoverished city of Atalaia do Norte. Instead of the traditional blowgun, Tumi held a pastry bag in his hands while working in a bakery, and his face bore none of the tattoos or piercings characteristic of the Matis.

“In the village, the quality of education is not as good as in the city,” said Tumi, 24, who hopes to go to college to study medicine or journalism. “I want to engage with non-Indigenous people, learn from the challenges I face, and perhaps one day return to my village to share my understanding of how the city functions with the elders.”

Thousands of Indigenous like Tumi are migrating to cities like Atalaia do Norte, some in pursuit of a better education and some drawn by a federal welfare benefit that can ensnare them in urban poverty. Their exodus is leaving villages to wither and raising concern that the world’s largest tropical rainforest — crucial to stemming the worst of climate change — will be left without its most effective guardians. READ MORE — Associated Press

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The Bureau of Indian Education recently extended a five-year contract of a program that provides additional mental health resources for tribal youth, impacting more than 100 tribal schools in the Mountain West.

The Behavioral Health and Wellness program allows for both Indigenous students and staff from both schools and universities to access the resources. Some of those resources offered by the program include telehealth counseling, a 24/7, BIE-focused crisis hotline, and on-site crisis support. Teresia Paul, the program lead and a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe in South Dakota, believes it is a “gamechanger” for Indigenous communities.

“I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had a crisis situation pop up in real time, whether it’s dealing with a serious mental health challenge or dealing with a significant loss in the community,” she said. “It would have been awesome to be able to deploy our own crisis team that knows our communities.”

Some Indigenous communities believe speaking about suicide is taboo, and some cultures do not even have words that describe the act of killing oneself. But Paul said the majority of their clinical team are Indigenous people who live in the community. Whether it’s speaking their language or utilizing cultural ceremonies for healing, like sweat lodges, having members that can culturally approach the situation makes all the difference, she said.

“We’re able to really engage in those types of interventions with people who are from the communities and who know how to do those interventions respectfully,” she said. “You can’t just tap someone to step into that role. It has to be folks that have gained that respect.” READ MORE — Mountain West Bureau/ KUNC

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