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Natalya Kate Chaylene Keeshig-Lisk was born in the spring of 2000, at the start of an Indigenous baby boom that swept through Canada at the beginning of the millennium.
She quickly became the gleam in her gramma’s eye.
“She was very physically beautiful. She was also athletic, she was ‘the artist.’ She was just an absolutely awesome human being,” her grandmother, Liz Akiwenzie, Ojibwe/Oneida, told ICT from her home in Mount Brydges, Ontario.
Natalya also struggled with addiction. She had been in and out of hospital since she was a teenager, and had a long pattern of getting clean then going back to drug use. By 2023, she was splitting her time between her First Nation and the town of Owen Sound.
By March 20, 2023, she was ready to get clean again, and she checked herself into hospital with the help of her grandfather. But the next day, she checked herself out, and her aunt posted that she was missing. READ MORE — Miles Morrisseau, ICT
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TULSA — Tribal leaders emphasized the importance of voting during a tribal sovereignty summit at the River Spirit Casino in Tulsa Sept. 30 as part of the Warrior Up to Vote tour.
The United Indian Nations of Oklahoma is stopping in more than 20 different towns across the state of Oklahoma to show tribal citizens what a pro-sovereignty agenda looks like. Their tour concludes in Tishomingo, in south-central Oklahoma,, at the Chickasaw Festival, Oct. 5.
“In 1996, Oklahoma was 26th in the nation in voter turnout. Today, we’re 50th. That can be undone. I’d like to see it undone, here, in Indian Country,” said Shawnee Chief Ben Barnes at the sovereignty summit Sept. 30. “When Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked, ‘How many women should be in the United States Supreme Court,’ she said, ‘All of them.’ That’s what I say about congressional officers and senators. How many Indians should it be? All of them.”
Indian Gaming Association Chairman Ernie Stevens Jr., Oneida Nation, discussed the meaning of the term “warrior” as it relates to voting. READ MORE — Felix Clary, ICT and Tulsa World
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced Tuesday its 2024 class of fellows, often known as recipients of the “genius grant.”
The 22 fellows will each receive a grant of $800,000 over five years to spend however they want. They were selected from nominations in a years-long process that solicits input from their communities and peers. Fellows do not apply and are never officially informed that they’ve been nominated unless they are selected for the award.
The interdisciplinary award seeks to “enable” people with a track record and the potential to produce additional extraordinary work, said Marlies Carruth, director of the MacArthur Fellows Program.
The 2024 fellows include two Indigenous artists: READ MORE — ICT
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TULSA, Okla. – In a symbol of triumph over censorship and the erasure of Native languages, the historic press that published the Cherokee Advocate in Tahlequah is moving back into the hands of the Cherokee Nation.
The Gilcrease Museum, operated by the University of Tulsa, is among museums across the nation working to voluntarily repatriate items of tribal significance back to tribal nations. Cherokee Nation and Gilcrease Museum leaders celebrated the repatriation of the 149-year-old printing press Aug. 6 at the tribe’s Supreme Court Museum in Tahlequah, where the press is now housed.
“Like many tribes across Indian Country, the Cherokee Nation has been stripped of numerous historic belongings over the past century at the direction of the federal government,” Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said in a press release. “It’s truly inspiring that Gilcrease Museum has voluntarily offered to return this historic piece of our identity to its origins, back into the hands of the tribe.”
The Cherokee Nation’s first newspaper began in 1828 in the capital of the tribe’s ancestral homelands, New Echota, Georgia. The Cherokee Phoenix was the first bilingual newspaper in America, with an English-language printing press also capable of publishing the Cherokee syllabary. After President Andrew Jackson forced the Cherokee Nation to migrate from their homeland, the Georgia state militia dumped the printing press into a well. READ MORE — Felix Clary, ICT and Tulsa World
Amid drums, smudging and chants to “bring our children home,” supporters of the Indian Child Welfare Act gathered early this morning outside the Minnesota Capitol building, as the state’s highest court considered the latest legal threat to the bedrock 1978 law.
The rally outside the Supreme Court on Monday was deeply personal for Korina Barry, of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. After losing her siblings to foster care, now she worries that her 2-year-old daughter could be taken from her by child welfare workers.
“For me that trauma is very real,” she said. “And that’s why I’m here because we should be pushing back against these attorneys who are challenging ICWA’s constitutionality.”
A crowd of more than 50 people attended what became part celebration, part protest — including state lawmakers, activists, mother-daughter pairs and county workers, some wearing regalia and dancing, others pushing strollers. READ MORE —The Imprint
- Oglala Sioux Tribe asks feds to investigate law enforcement: The tribe wants the Justice Department to investigate anti-Native discrimination in arrests, shootings and traffic stops in Rapid City
- County passes infant death case to other state’s attorney after protest: Brooking’s County State’s Attorney Dan Nelson will prosecute in a highly anticipated trial of a couple accused of killing a Lakota infant in Rapid City, South Dakota
- They sacrificed their lives for U.S. nuclear. Now they want justice: Native people from the Southwest gathered at the U.S. Capitol to call attention to the impacts of domestic uranium production and urge the House of Representatives to hold a vote to reauthorize and expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act
- Rez Dogs actors encourage Natives to vote: Zahn McClarnon: ‘Everybody, get out there and register and vote: don’t be a shitass’ #NativeVote24
- Indigenous voting rights dispute surfaces before 2024 election
- 36th annual Moundville Native American Festival
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.