Credit: A demonstrator holds up a sign offering more information about incarcerated Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier at a rally organized by The Red Nation in front of the Pete V. Domenici Courthouse in downtown Albuquerque on the evening of Monday, Feb. 6, 2023, the 48th anniversary of Peltier’s incarceration and the International Day of Solidarity for the activist. (Photo by Shelby Wyatt for Source NM)

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Nick Tilsen, Oglala Lakota and the NDN Collective president and CEO, has spent his entire life rallying for the release of Leonard Peltier. As a child, he remembers sealing envelopes for the movement. Now, his organization’s rally will be the latest iteration in a long line of groups calling for Peltier’s freedom.

In 1977, Peltier, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, was sentenced to two life terms in connection with the deaths of two FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation two years earlier. Peltier, a member of AIM, had been part of the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation to protest the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s government and the federal government’s failure to honor treaties.

Now, nearly 48 years after he entered prison, the push for Peltier’s release has amped up. Tribal nations, Nobel Peace Prize winners, former FBI agents, U.S. senators and representatives, and the former U.S. Attorney whose office handled the prosecution have all called for Peltier’s release.

Amnesty International, which has long fought for Peltier’s release, has partnered with NDN Collective for a rally on Peltier’s 79th birthday, Sept. 12. READ MORE — Amelia Schafer, ICT + Rapid City Journal

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FLATHEAD LAKE, Mont. – The pews in the chapel were filled with all ages from youth to elders, some dressed in intricate lace blouses, others in gowns adorned with light-catching sequins and glimmering jewels.

A handful of people in the audience held huge cloth rainbow fans. Some used the fans to cool themselves in the August heat. Others used them to clap and hype up the participants.

Then came the performers to the stage. Some of them sang covers of their favorite songs including “At Last,” by Etta James and “Talking to the Moon,” by Bruno Mars. One contestant lip-synced and danced to “Smooth,” by Carlos Santana while another one did a comedy act dressed as a Native aunty. The talent/pageant show is a popular night among the planned events.

“This is medicine,” said Sergio Papa Ruark, who was the 2022 Mr. Montana Two-Spirit, a title he carried over the year to represent the Montana Two-Spirit Society. READ MORE — JoVonne Wagner, ICT

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Oregon Department of Justice are refusing to release the full list of public documents related to recent revisions to Oregon’s Fish Passage Law.

Part of a larger rule-making process, the revisions concern how fish passages are legally defined.

Fish passages are engineering structures, including fish ladders, that allow migrating salmon and steelhead to voluntarily swim past dams and other obstructions.

Or at least this is how fish passages were defined under Oregon law until Dec. 16, 2022, when the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission voted to approve new legal language that, critics say, changed the definition of “fish passage” to now include involuntary “trap collection and transport” procedures, also called trap-and-haul. READ MORE — Columbia Insight

In an aggressive move that angered Republicans, the Biden administration canceled the seven remaining oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Wednesday, overturning sales held in the Trump administration’s waning days, and proposed stronger protections against development on vast swaths of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

The Department of Interior’s scrapping of the leases comes after the Biden administration disappointed environmental groups earlier this year by approving the Willow oil project in the petroleum reserve, a massive project by ConocoPhillips Alaska that could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day on Alaska’s petroleum-rich North Slope. Protections are proposed for more than 20,000 square miles of land in the reserve in the western Arctic.

Some critics who said the approval of Willow flew in the face of Biden’s pledges to address climate change lauded Wednesday’s announcement. But they said more could be done. Litigation over the approval of the Willow project is pending.

“Alaska is home to many of America’s most breathtaking natural wonders and culturally significant areas. As the climate crisis warms the Arctic more than twice as fast as the rest of the world, we have a responsibility to protect this treasured region for all ages,” Biden said in a statement. READ MORE — Associated Press

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On the Thursday edition of the ICT Newscast, an Indigenous woman tells us how she plans to boost environmental learning within her Nation’s ancestral lands. A new report shows tribal forests are underfunded compared to public ones. The Chief of the Cherokee Nation plans his second term in office

The Intertribal Timber Council was first established in 1976. It is made up of tribal nations, Alaska Native corporations and individuals who work toward improving the management of natural resources, like forests. It is out with its Indian Forest Management Assessment Team Report, that only happens every 10 years. Its president is Cody Desautel.

In New Jersey the Native American Advancement Corporation recently took ownership of a 63-acre property. President of the conservation non-profit Tyrese Gould Jacinto spoke to ICT about her own connection to the land and its future.

Earlier this summer Cherokee Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. won re-election to office for another four-year term. As he begins a new administration the chief has called this some of the most challenging times in Cherokee history.

WATCH:

DUPREE, S.D. — A child abuse allegation against a teacher at Dupree Elementary School prompted the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe to take the unusual step of banning the teacher, a principal and the superintendent from reservation lands where the public school is located.

As a result, the three employees have been unable to work at the school since the beginning of the new academic year in a district with high-need students and a poor track record of student achievement.

Tribal police continue to investigate the abuse allegations, which include slapping one child and forcefully grabbing another. The teacher could face criminal abuse charges while the two administrators could be charged with breaking a South Dakota law that requires many professional employees to report potential abuse.

Those banned from the reservation, or “excluded” in legal terms, include longtime teacher Sarah Shaff, Dupree Elementary School principal Cindy Lindskov and superintendent Keith Fodness, who also had to leave his home in Dupree due to the exclusion. READ MORE — South Dakota News Watch

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