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RAPID CITY, S.D. – A new program, Peaceful Means, is using Lakota values to teach youth about sexual violence and prevention on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and hopes to reduce sexual violence by up to 80 percent.
Based in the Wakpamni district of Pine Ridge, Peaceful Means is an Indigenous-led sexual violence prevention center. This initiative was created through a $3.2 million grant from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a partnership with IMpower United.
After the center opened this past fall, organizers began to travel to different schools and community centers across Pine Ridge to teach youth about how they can use their voices and set healthy boundaries.
Indigenous people experience sexual violence at a rate 2.5 times higher than other groups, and one in three Indigenous women report being raped in their lifetime. Many victims are too scared to come forward with their experiences or report sexual violence to law enforcement, according to the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence. READ MORE — Amelia Schafer, Rapid City Journal and 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, ICT
People in Alaska’s rugged Interior have long known the hills surrounding the Native Village of Tetlin hid gold. As tribal member Kevin Gunter grew up, his elders told him such riches should be left alone. Nothing good would come of digging them up, they warned. Now, Gunter fears what might happen as an open-pit mine comes to his tribe’s land.
Kinross, the majority owner and operator of the project, plans to haul the ore roughly 250 miles on public roads to a mill at another mine, called Fort Knox, outside Fairbanks. To learn more about the company’s plans for the new mine, named Manh Choh, Gunter took a job as a senior electrician at Fort Knox about a year ago. He soon grew frustrated by the culture. “Nobody’s doing any quality control,” he said. “They won’t plan a job. And they won’t work the plan.”
That didn’t inspire confidence in Kinross sending 80-ton trucks rumbling down the primary highway linking Fairbanks to Canada and the Lower 48. So Gunter started digging into how and why his tribe approved the company’s lease for the land. He and other tribal officials found what they allege is a series of questionable background deals, corruption, and self-serving arrangements by the former chief and current tribal leaders.
In a written statement to Grist, Kinross insists that the company has acted in good faith and within the rights provided by its lease, while investing in things like a road to the community. But the Tetlin Native Corporation, a for-profit business owned by tribal shareholders, claims it is the rightful owner of some of the land — and that it was not party to the negotiations and did not approve the lease. It alleges that the mineral lease broke tribal laws. The corporation hopes to establish its claim to the land. This may call the lease with the tribal council into question, potentially delaying, or even stopping, the project. READ MORE — Grist
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — This year’s United Nations climate talks may have seen record numbers registered to attend, but activists who have spent years demonstrating at the annual event say their space to voice their demands is shrinking year on year.
Held in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates — where broad laws tightly restrict speech — climate activists have been protesting at COP28’s Blue Zone, which is considered international territory. Demonstrators say there have always been strict regulations for protests at COPs, but they say actions this year have been further limited in terms of the number of people allowed to participate and which climate issues they’re allowed to address on any given day. It’s a stark contrast, activists say, to the growing presence of the fossil fuel industry, where those linked to the industry number around 1,400, according to an Associated Press analysis.
“There’s always been a lot of restriction on civic space inside of COPs, but we are really seeing a trend of it increasing,” said Lise Masson, of Friends of the Earth International. “We have to say how loud we’re going to be, what’s going to be written on the banners. We’re not allowed to name countries and corporations. So it’s really a very sanitized space.”
The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, who is in charge of climate summits, said in a statement that “space is available for participants to assemble peacefully and make their voices heard on climate-related issues” and their regulations are “in line with longstanding United Nations Climate Change guidelines and adherence to international human rights norms and principles, within the Blue Zone.” READ MORE — Associated Press
Other top stories:
- Climate talk among many topics at tribal summit: President Joe Biden signed an executive order at the White House Tribal Nations Summit that should make it easier for Indigenous peoples to access federal funding and spend how they see fit
- Assembly of First Nations elects national chief in a marathon vote: Cindy Woodhouse, Pinaymootang First Nation in Manitoba, was elected to lead less than a year after the first female National Chief Roseanne Archibald was voted out of office
- Alaska Native, conservation groups support lawsuit over salmon: ‘Arctic, Yukon and Kuskokwim river salmon populations are in crisis, devastating food security and threatening food sovereignty, endangering ways of life central to who we are as Indigenous people’
- Celebrate the holidays with an Indigenous gift guide: ICT has compiled a list of Indigenous-owned businesses and items
- National Lacrosse League and Marvel team up to promote lacrosse’s legendary origin story
- Tejon Indian Tribeto break ground on Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Dec. 14
- Seminole Tribe execs, celebs flock to Hard Rock as in-person sports betting begins
We want your tips, but we also want your feedback. What should we be covering that we’re not? What are we getting wrong? Please let us know. dalton@ictnews.org.
