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PHOENIX — Laney Maria Lupe remembers when Alissa Pili was still playing for the University of Utah.
Having attended a game against the University of Arizona in Tucson, she recalled her initial conversation with the Minnesota Lynx rookie forward and the devout connection they shared, even before Pili’s WNBA debut.
Friday night in downtown Phoenix was no different. Pili, Samoan and Iñupiaq, and her Lynx team were in the city to play the Phoenix Mercury.
“I gifted her an eagle feather because it has significance with Indigenous people,” Lupe, who currently holds the title of Miss Indian Arizona for the 2023-24 year, said. “(It’s for) strength, wisdom and guidance throughout her journey.” READ MORE — Leah Mesquita, ICT
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PINE RIDGE, S.D. – After returning home from the Vietnam war, the annual Oglala Lakota Vietnam Veterans Wacipi began as a way to embrace and honor veterans. Eventually, the name Vietnam was dropped, but the powwow continued bringing in new veterans.
“The only place we were honored was home,” said Bryan Brewer, a Vietnam Veteran. “Lakota veterans, we came home and we were honored. Right now we’re trying to honor all the veteran’s coming back, trying to encourage them and welcome them, make sure they have what they need.”
On Friday, the annual Veterans Stand Down provided access to resources that are generally difficult to access. Veteran’s Stand Downs are generally one to three-day events that provide access to food and VA benefits. The Oglala Lakota Stand Down offered free clothing, food, access to VA benefits, legal assistance, employment services, housing referrals and more.
The tribe also worked to bring a mobile optometrist and health clinic to the Stand Down. READ MORE— Amelia Schafer, ICT + Rapid City Journal
PHOENIX, AZ – Thirty-four years ago, Congress granted Native American tribes a pathway to reclaim ancestors that were dug up, stored and sometimes displayed in museums. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act required American institutions to return them.
The road to repatriation has been long at Arizona State University. The university has made under 2 percent of its Indigenous human remains available to Native American tribes, among the lowest rates in the nation, according to an investigation by Cronkite News and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at ASU.
ASU’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change is built on the lands of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, whose ancestors stewarded the desert landscape for millennia.
About two miles south sits the school’s Center for Archaeology and Society Repository, one of four locations that hold the remains of some 800 Native Americans – none of which have yet been made available to be returned to their descendants. READ MORE — Sam Ellefson and Aspen Ford, Cronkite News/Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at ASU
Marred by over 150 years of colonization and industrialization, few people know the wonders of Willamette Falls, the second largest waterfall by volume in North America.
A culturally and historically significant gathering sight for Native nations throughout the region since time immemorial, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde is working on a project on the east side of the falls at the old Blue Heron Paper Mill site. The new name is Tumwata Village -— Tumwata is Grand Ronde’s name for Willamette Falls. Tum means heart, like the ‘tum tum’ of a heartbeat.
“Anyone who comes here to visit it will feel that connection to the falls,” said Jon George, councilman for the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. “To feel the power of it, the spirituality of it, the connection, and to see that things have been restored.”
Though still roughly a decade away from project completion, demolition is well underway. Ryan Webb, engineering and planning manager for the project, is hopeful that construction could begin as soon as next summer. READ MORE — Nika Bartoo-Smith, Underscore News + ICT
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Leonard Peltier, who was convicted for the 1975 killing of two FBI agents in South Dakota, had a parole hearing on Monday. Now at age 75, he is in poor health. ICT’s Amelia Schafer tells us more.
Community organizer Angel Charley, is the presumed winner the New Mexico’s District 30, after winning the Democratic nomination in the June primary. There is no Republican candidate currently running for the general election. ICT’s Paris Wise has this interview.
Officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture have been working on tribal concerns and issues. ICT’s Stewart Huntington has this interview with Heather Dawn Thompson.
A tribe in Southwest Idaho is putting education first. ICT’s Shirley Sneve spoke to Shoshone-Bannock Tribes education manager Jessica James.
WATCH
TUCSON, AZ — In early February, U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawai’i, took to the Senate floor to lambast 70 universities and museums for failing to return tens of thousands of Indigenous human remains and artifacts to the Native American tribes from which they were taken.
Schatz called the institutions the foremost offenders of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, known as NAGPRA, and accused them of having “done everything in their power to obstruct and obfuscate when confronted about their collections.”
One of the institutions Schatz singled out was the University of Arizona.
“This is not morally ambiguous,” Schatz said. “There is nothing to ponder here. The fact is these items do not belong in museums and universities, or to science or academia. They belong to the Native people from which they came.” READ MORE — Reagan Priest and Christopher Lomahquahu, Cronkite News/Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at ASU
- Community, healing and justice: When reporting hits close to home: Indigenous student journalists share what reporting on repatriation and NAGPRA meant to them
- Cherokee author shares children’s book celebrating homecoming: Literary powerhouses Traci Sorell, Cherokee Nation, and illustrator Michaela Goade, Tlingit and Haida Nations, embrace change in their latest literary project ‘Being Home’
- Ernie Stevens Sr. was ‘a modern day warrior’: Korean War veteran leaves behind a remarkable legacy
- Justice Alito questions possibility of political compromise in secret recording
- Tribes, Forest Service to sign MOU on Pactola Visitor Center
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