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The 18-year-old Northern Cheyenne man inhaled the pine trees, felt the crunch of newly fallen snow beneath his feet and guarded himself against the bitter cold. As he ran through the Black Hills, Mario “Winter Hawk” Spotted Elk Jr. Day found himself lost in prayer.

“When I’m in prayer, I go into this room in my mind, there’s this little me and he’s answering me telling me these prayers. It’s like I’m not there, I’m just running,” he said. “Today when I woke up I was sore, my hamstrings hurt and my calves hurt. I could barely walk out of bed, but I sat up and prayed. I was so happy to run. You don’t wanna stop when you’re out there.”

His ancestors followed the same path 145 years ago, escaping from confinement at Fort Robinson in northwestern Nebraska. More than 149 Cheyenne from Chief Dull Knife’s band had been taken into custody at Fort Robinson in October 1878 after 343 members escaped from Oklahoma. The group planned to return to their homelands in southeastern Montana where they’d lived for as long as they could remember, and they had no plans to give up. READ MORE. — Amelia Schafer, ICT + Rapid City Journal

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As temperatures dipped below zero Friday, January 12, Rapid City officials decided to close a makeshift warming shelter that was to serve Indigenous homeless people.

Two Native-serving nonprofits – Woyatan Lutheran Church and Wambli Ska Society – had planned to open the military grade warming tent as an additional shelter. But Friday afternoon, city administrators issued a stop work notice to organizers.

“When city staff went to the property to issue an order not to proceed with the use of that tent, it was with the acknowledgment that the permits had not been secured, but that we had a bigger crisis on hand,” said Vicki Fisher, Rapid City community development director. “We have a cold spree that we’ve not experienced in a long time. And we have a lot of vulnerable people that need to be sheltered. So the message was you don’t need to take down a tent. Just please don’t use it. It is so frigid that the action of trying to heat it would put those people in jeopardy of a fire.” READ MORE. — Amelia Schafer, ICT + Rapid City Journal

Generations of New Mexicans — mostly Native Americans and Hispanics — have become ill with cancer after being exposed to catastrophic levels of radioactive fallout from the Trinity nuclear bomb testing.

Now, a new documentary film, “First We Bombed New Mexico,” tells the counter-narrative to the award-winning “Oppenheimer” film, of generations still feeling the impacts of the tests and of government betrayal with tragic consequences.

The film, directed and produced by New Mexico-based filmmaker Lois Lipman, alleges a government cover-up of monumental proportions – bigger than Watergate, bigger than arms for Iran, bigger than government experiments on people of color. READ MORE. — Sandra Hale Schulman, Special to ICT

Oklahoma’s Five Civilized Tribes are unified in rejecting Gov. Kevin Stitt’s planned task force on the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s McGirt decision, all agreeing that it operates under false assumptions about the ruling.

Their letter notifying the governor of their rejection was released Tuesday evening, following last week’s Inter-tribal Council meeting at the River Spirit Casino in Tulsa.

They said Stitt’s executive order creating the panel does not give enough seats to tribal representatives.

Two of the 13 seats on the task force were reserved for tribal leaders. The Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee and Seminole tribes called for one representative per tribe on the task force. READ MORE. — Felix Clary, ICT + Tulsa World

On the Tuesday edition of the ICT Newscast, bridging the digital divide for southern Arizona Indigenous people. An organization looks to assist with home ownership. The cold weather brings out the snakes—snow snakes—an Ojibwe game. A new exhibit features Ojibwe and Oceti Sakowin artists.

Watch:

With a clever title that draws from a 1960s multimedia exhibition by pop-art master Andy Warhol, a new touring art exhibition, “Exploding Native Inevitable,” includes 15 Indigenous artists with works in ceramics, painting, video, fiber arts and more.

With a nod to Warhol’s “Exploding Plastic Inevitable” exhibition from 1966, in which he curated multimedia events to go along with his art exhibition, the “Exploding Native” exhibition will include talks with artists, screenings of films and performances.

After running at Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston, Maine, through March 4, the show will travel to three other venues in Arizona, Nebraska and Utah. The show is co-curated by top Indigenous artist Brad Kahlhamer and Bates Museum’s Director and Chief Curator Dan Mills, who have been friends for decades. READ MORE. — Sandra Hale Schulman, Special to ICT

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