Greetings, relatives. (can be in traditional language, make intro your own)
A lot of news out there. Thanks for stopping by ICT’s digital platform.
Each day we do our best to gather the latest news for you.
Okay, here’s what you need to know today:
‘Dark legacy’: Boarding school commission gains ground in US Senate
Congressional efforts to create a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies got another boost this week, leaving the Senate poised to consider a bill to investigate the history and trauma of Native boarding schools.
Just one week after a U.S. House committee advanced a bill another step toward a vote by the full House, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs advanced a Senate version of the legislation to the Senate floor for consideration.
The move marks the furthest the bill has ever made it in the legislative process. A companion bill in the U.S. House also moved to the House floor for a vote on June 13.
“This bill is long overdue, and our Indian boarding school relatives and survivors deserve to be recognized,” said Ruth Anna Buffalo, Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation, who is board president of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. READ MORE. — Mary Annette Pember, ICT
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Federal police are seeking help from the public about the cause of a wildfire in southeastern New Mexico that has killed two, injured one and destroyed hundreds of buildings.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation Albuquerque Division on Saturday night published a flyer and media alert saying they’re asking for help from the public “in identifying the cause” of the South Fork and Salt fires near the Village of Ruidoso and the Mescalero Apache Tribe.
FBI is offering a $10,000 reward “for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for starting the fires.”
“We ask that anyone who may have any information pertaining to the cause of the fires to please call 1-800-CALL-FBI or online at tips.fbi.gov,” the agency wrote.
The cause of the fires remains “undetermined,” according to the latest incident status summary report published at 11:35 a.m. on Sunday by the Southwest Area Team 5. READ MORE. — Source NM
“The Ribbon Skirt” by Cameron Mukwa is a story he was always looking for while growing up.
Mukwa is Anishinaabe and transgender. He writes for a middle-grade audience because of the potential impact it could make. While creating the story he was able to bring up his own experiences of being Two-Spirit and transgender and how those feelings are the most prominent in your younger years.
“It was so overwhelming and I didn’t really know how to process some of those emotions. I was just thinking as I was writing that if this was a book that I had gotten to come across in middle school that it would completely change who I thought of myself at that age,” he said.
“The Ribbon Skirt” is a coming-of-age story about Anang, a Two-Spirited nonbinary Anishinaabe person, who wants to create a ribbon skirt for the upcoming powwow. Anang, the Anishinaabe word for star, faces the feelings of uncertainty about what others in their community will think after experiencing transphobia from someone they had trusted. READ MORE. — Kalle Benallie, ICT
Oklahoma Turnpike Authority Executive Director Joe Echelle stood before 31 tribal leaders on Tuesday to make his case for adding tribal members to the state’s PlatePay cashless toll system.
Gov. Kevin Stitt has previously said he would like all of the tribal tag compacts to work the same as the Choctaw and Chickasaw compacts, meaning no tribe would operate its own tag agency. Echelle presented a slightly different argument during a panel discussion before the United Indian Nations of Oklahoma, which promotes sovereignty, policy and advocacy on behalf of the state’s tribes.
After implementing the PlatePay system, through which cameras take pictures of license tags on toll roads and motorists without PikePasses are sent bills for their tolls, the OTA looked for the source of leakage in its revenue. It found that the main sources of lost revenue came from motorists without license plates, people with plates that are covered and people with tribal tags issued by nations other than the Choctaw and Chickasaw. READ MORE. — Felix Clary, ICT + Tulsa World
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On Monday’s ICT Newscast, an ancestor of Congress member Tom Cole will be inducted into the national Native American Hall of Fame. Find out who. A report about the Phoenix police department gets concerning reactions from local Indigenous leaders. A gathering of experts in the Pacific Northwest advance language. Electronic ballots are new to tribes in Nevada—how will it affect the swing state?
Watch:
Lily Gladstone knows the gravity stories about what she calls the “epidemic” of missing and murdered Indigenous people have. But she also values humor in telling those stories.
In “Fancy Dance,” set for a limited theatrical release Friday and streaming release on Apple TV+ June 28, Gladstone plays Jax, who has cared for her niece, Roki, since her sister’s disappearance on the Seneca-Cayuga reservation in Oklahoma. As the pair searches for their loved one and prepares for Roki’s upcoming powwow, they share moments of unexpected levity baked into the emotional story.
“You would be very hard pressed to find any Indigenous person in North America today that is not touched by an element of the story very personally,” Gladstone said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “We all know an MMIP (missing and murdered Indigenous person). It’s something that we all collectively kind of grieve and work to fix. … We stick together and we survive through it by being funny, by finding humor in it.” READ MORE. — Associated Press
- Through connection to their land: Tarahumara runners are among Mexico’s most beloved champions.
- Standing Rock Sioux graduate takes on reservation school principal duties: New elementary principal at Cannon Ball aims to elevate students’ academic skills from their rank on North Dakota’s bottom rung.
- A few midwives seek to uphold Native Hawaiian birth traditions: Would a state law jeopardize them?
- Oregon report identifies missing Native American women as an ‘emergency’: Main recommendations remain unfinished, governor has not read the report, and critics say Indigenous voices have been left out.
- Animal health and wellbeing through an Indigenous lens: First of its kind gathering is a partnership between the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and veterinary leaders from four states.
- Governor Newsom announces historic land return effort on the 5th anniversary of California’s apology to Native Americans.
- Finding language in song to the wonder of the natural world.
- Coalition of labor and Alaska Native leaders throws its weight behind Peltola.
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.
