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AVONDALE, Ariz. — Col. Nicole Mann misses space life. She thinks about it every day. She even thinks about space in her sleep.
“I had a dream the other night that I was floating, I was in microgravity,” Mann said.
Mann, Wailacki of Round Valley Tribes, made history in 2022 when she became the first Native woman to reach space. The NASA astronaut spent about six months on the International Space Station conducting scientific research and only returned home about a year ago this month. She wants to go back, perhaps on a future mission to the moon.
“I miss (space) not only because it’s incredibly fun, the work is so rewarding,” Mann said. “You’re working with an international group of people throughout the world. I really enjoyed that work. Also, that view of planet Earth from the Earth’s orbit is something that I miss, and unfortunately, pictures and video, they just can’t do it justice.”
Wearing her blue NASA jumpsuit, Mann shared her space experience in a presentation at Estrella Mountain Community College in the Phoenix Valley to a group of students on March 26 as part of a Women’s History Month visit. She also answered a variety of questions from the students before posing for individual photos. Students even received a signed portrait of Mann in her spacesuit. READ MORE – Dalton Walker, ICT
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska – University of Utah women’s basketball players may have been especially compassionate toward one another during Monday night’s game against Gonzaga University. They shared plenty of hugs, pats on the back, and fist bumps throughout the game on the Gonzaga home court in Spokane, Washington.
That may be because several days earlier they had experienced racist incidents together at their Idaho hotel. Twice on the night of Thursday, March 21, people intimidatingly revved their truck engines and shouted the N-word at the team, the band and cheerleaders as they entered and later exited a Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, restaurant.
“Incredibly upsetting for all of us,” Utah head coach Lynne Roberts said Monday night at a press conference following the game. “You think in our worlds, in athletics and the university settings, it’s shocking. There’s so much diversity on a college campus and so you’re just not exposed to that very often. And so when you are, it’s like, you have people say, ‘Man, I can’t believe that happened.’ But racism is real and it happens, and it’s awful.
“So for our players, whether they are white, black, green, whatever, no one knew how to handle it. And it was really upsetting. And for our players and staff to not feel safe in an NCAA tournament environment, that’s messed up. READ MORE — Joaqlin Estus, ICT
The Cherokee Nation’s principal chief on Tuesday called on educators to help his tribe ramp up pressure on Oklahoma’s governor and lawmakers to ensure a motor vehicle tag compact renewal happens.
Chuck Hoskin Jr. told educators that the renewal of the tribal-state compact is necessary to ensure that the tribe can continue distributing millions annually to help fund schools, infrastructure and law enforcement across its northeast Oklahoma lands.
“Put out the call loud enough so that the governor and the Legislature can hear you loud and clear,” Hoskin told educators according to a Cherokee Nation press release. “Let’s make sure that today’s gathering to distribute funds to public schools is not our last.”
The Cherokee Nation allocates 38 percent of its annual tag revenues to education and has disbursed $92 million to schools, according to the press release. READ MORE. — Oklahoma Voice
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Tommy Orange released his second novel “Wandering Stars” on Feb. 27. ICT spoke with the author to discuss the story’s themes of a family and a friend who experience the effects of institutional violence, rooted in the histories of Indigenous people.
The book follows his critically acclaimed debut novel “There There” that was a 2019 Pulitzer Prize finalist in fiction.
Orange, Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, describes how calling boarding schools “schools” sterilizes what actually happened. There was an active effort to erase Indigenous children’s identities and they were punished if there was resistance, he said.
“I think as Native people, when someone says boarding schools it means something completely different than sending your kid off to the east coast and having them live in a fancy dorm in order to get into a college,” he said.
Fort Marion in Florida, located at Matanzas Bay in St. Augustine, Florida, is one the central locations in “Wandering Stars.” It was used as a prison multiple times imprisoning over 230 Seminoles from November to December 1837. There, Capt. Richard Henry Pratt eradicated the prisoners to dress in army uniforms, cut their hair, gave them ledger books to draw and taught them to read and write. It was the beginning of using education to culturally assimilate Indigenous people.
Orange features Pratt as a character in “Wandering Stars.” READ MORE — Kalle Benallie, ICT
- GLOBAL INDIGENOUS: Uyghur activist imprisoned: Coverage around the world on Indigenous issues for the week ending March 24, 2024
- Hawaiian singer has ‘The Voice’: On Tuesday’s ICT Newscast, from “The Voice,” Hawaiian singer Kamalei Kawa’a. An Indigenous-led library in Arizona is about get a big boost. In celebration of Women’s History Month, an Indigenous woman is named one of art’s top 50 most influential people
- Bringing back the thunder: Indigenous spring solstice tradition evokes renewal and reflection
- Mad River Brewery bought by Indigenous California tribe
- Photos: Artists and volunteers build a Native American earthen mound on the Lafitte Greenway
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.