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Eleven of the most-anticipated Indigenous films of the year will be featured at the Sundance Film Festival, bringing issues such as sovereignty, identity, loss and redemption to international audiences.

The Indigenous films — which include high-profile actors and filmmakers as well as newcomers to the spotlight — were among 110 feature films and 64 shorts films curated for this year’s festival out of nearly 16,000 entries.

The festival kicks off Thursday, Jan. 19, and continues through Jan. 29 in Park City, Utah. The festival this year will also include for the first time an Indigenous House, with IllumiNative, featuring discussions, music and events.

“For Indigenous filmmakers, this is one of the strongest years in recent memory, not just in terms of the number of their films in the festival this year, but also in terms of the diversity of their work,” Adam Piron, director of the Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Film Program and a programmer at the Sundance Film Festival, told ICT. READ MORE — Sandra Hale Schulman, Special to ICT

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Indigenous issues took center stage Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. National Congress of American Indians President Fawn Sharp told world leaders that Indigenous knowledge and lands are key elements in a global climate change strategy.

“The very place where my ancestors signed our treaty is now underwater, and we are not alone,” she said. “Indigenous peoples all across the planet are on the front lines.”

More than 3,000 leaders from government and business participated in the World Economic Forum. A new report was released by the forum, “Embedding Indigenous Knowledge in the Conservation and Restoration of Landscapes.”

That report found that Indigenous communities are already a part of the solution.

“Evidence shows that Indigenous custodianship, where it’s been able to be maintained, has a direct benefit to the environment,” the report states. READ MORE — Mark Trahant, ICT

New Mexico state Rep. Derrick Lente, a Sandia Pueblo Democrat, received endorsements Monday for two bills intended to directly address the legacy of racism and disparity for Indigenous students in New Mexico’s schools.

The bills would allocate millions in funding toward equitable education in the state, prioritizing tribal leadership and funding for tribal efforts to build culturally and linguistically relevant programs.

“Our proposals have been the most direct, targeted pieces of legislation for Native American education,” Lente said. “The state has been throwing money at a problem, and that’s not going to solve things.”

He said the lack of targeted investments have been a hindrance to improving tribal education.

The Legislative Education Study Committee voted to endorse one bill that would amend the Indian Education Act. The other is asking the state for $50 million to upstart a trust fund to help tribes build educational programs and systems for tribal communities across New Mexico.

“It’s about doggone time that we use these resources the way the communities that would most benefit from know-how to use them,” said Rep. Christine Trujillo, an Albuquerque Democrat, in support of the trust fund. READ MORE — Source New Mexico

Citing a need to secure a domestic supply of lithium for electric car batteries, the Biden Administration has pledged $700 million for a planned lithium mine on the habitat of an endangered Nevada wildflower.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Energy announced it agreed to provide the attractive financing to Australian developer Ioneer Inc. under a “conditional commitment” to develop a lithium mine at Rhyolite Ridge.

The proposed loan would fund up to $700 million with a term of approximately 10 years at interest rates fixed from the date of each advance for the term of the loan and tied to applicable U.S. Treasury rates – that is, interest rates far more favorable than those likely to be obtained in private financial markets.

Bernard Rowe, the managing director of Ioneer, called the federal loan commitment “a significant milestone for Rhyolite Ridge.”

“We look forward to working with the DOE and Sibanye-Stillwater to complete the remaining milestones to start construction of Rhyolite Ridge,” Rowe said in a statement. READ MORE — Nevada Current

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The $20 million purchase by two nonprofit organizations of conservation easements on an Alaska Native corporation’s lands delivers what one nonprofit leader calls “a good one-two punch” to the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska.

But proponents of the mine continue to fight to win permits to extract precious metals from a site near Lake Iliamna — the largest lake in Alaska, a habitat for salmon that migrate to Bristol Bay, and home to one of the planet’s five populations of freshwater seals.

The Conservation Fund and Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust raised $20 million to purchase a 44,000-acre conservation easement on lands owned by the Pedro Bay Corporation, an Alaska Native Village Corporation whose shareholders are Aleuts, Yup’iks and Athabascans from the region.

Included in the easement is land that Pebble Limited Partnership, a wholly owned subsidiary of Northern Dynasty Minerals, had eyed for an industrial road from the proposed Pebble Mine to Cook Inlet. The conservation easements prohibit development and execution of any rights-of-way agreements needed to develop an industrial road across Pedro Bay Corporation lands. READ MORE — Richard Arlin Walker, Special to ICT

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