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RAPID CITY, S.D. – When Bonnie LeBeau returned home to Eagle Butte, South Dakota from serving in the Navy she initially took a job as a bus driver. One day between drives, LeBeau decided to stop in and visit with her grandmother Marcella LeBeau. Walking into her grandmother’s house, LeBeau was surrounded by star quilts, between 10 and 12 of them, all in different stages. Quilts were strung out across the dining room, on the couch, on chairs and on tables.

Confused, she asked her grandmother what she was doing. To which the Cheyenne River elder responded, I’m just getting ready for Uncle Dan’s giveaway.

“I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, I need to help her.’ So I did, I just started helping her,” LeBeau said.

While she’d been sewing since she was eight, this was the first time the Cheyenne River Lakota and Diné woman had made a star quilt. Now, over two decades later, LeBeau is an award-winning quilter with her own quilt shop. READ MORE — Amelia Schafer ICT + Rapid City Journal

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OGLALA, S.D. – When Oglala Lakota elder Wilma Thin Elk walked into the public safety crisis meeting at the Prairie Wind Casino on Aug. 22, she held her cane up.

“This is my defense,” Thin Elk said, gesturing to her cane. “This is how I protect myself.”

For years, the Pine Ridge Reservation has been struggling with a public safety crisis and little resources to end it. Law enforcement personnel dropped from roughly 120 patrol officers in 2006 to now just 32, and an ongoing lawsuit against the federal government and a November 2023 State of Emergency declaration have brought little relief.

Most recently on Aug. 2, Porcupine community member Tom Thunder Hawk was killed during the annual Oglala Nation Wacipi and Rodeo. READ MORE— Amelia Schafer, ICT + Rapid City Journal

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Artificial intelligence is streamlining access to money for small businesses, leveling the playing field for rural communities. That’s the message Small Business Administration (SBA) Deputy Administrator Dilawar Syed heard Monday from University of Alaska Small Business Development Center leaders. He also heard about work to extend outreach to rural and underserved communities.

Jackson Brossy, Diné, is assistant administrator of the SBA’s Office of Native American Affairs. He said he has visited a few Alaska communities, including Bethel, which reminded him of the Navajo Nation. “It’s a place that when I was there I saw a lot of similarities to the place where I grew up, with about a 40 percent poverty rate, a 40 percent unemployment rate. And there are no banks in our communities…I see a lot of those similarities in rural Alaska to other parts of rural Native America.”

SBA Acting Regional Communications Director Norma M. Lucero agreed the lack of banks in rural Alaska is an issue. “So for example, in Yakutat, the nearest bank is in Juneau, flying from Yakutat to Juneau to get any banking services is about $600, $700 round trip ticket. That’s just the ticket; that doesn’t include the hotel or anything. So in-person banking is a real challenge in rural Alaska.” READ MORE — Joaqlin Estus, ICT

Around the World: $30 billion solar project approval prompts search for Indigenous land to use in Australia, Maasai block tourist road after forced eviction from their land in Tanzania, seven Uyghur brothers jailed in Xinjiang, and study finds thousands missing bowel cancer screening in New Zealand.

AUSTRALIA: Indigenous lands sought for solar project

Following federal approval, a renewable energy project, hailed as one of the world’s largest solar developments, is now focusing on securing Indigenous land-use agreements, the National Indigenous Times reported Aug. 22.

Tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes is set to continue his investment in Australia’s largest solar farm after the project received approval from federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek.

The $30 billion SunCable Australia-Asia Power Link, planned for a former pastoral station near Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, is expected to power three million homes, create 14,000 jobs, and accelerate research and manufacturing in renewable technology. READ MORE — Deusdedit Ruhangariyo, Special to ICT

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A smorgasbord of bright red tomatoes and vibrant vegetables line the walls of Michael Katrutsa’s produce shop in rural Camden, Tennessee. What began a decade ago as a roadside farm stand is now an air-conditioned outbuilding packed with crates of watermelon, cantaloupe and his locally renowned sweet corn — all picked fresh by a handful of local employees each morning.

The roughly 20-acre farm west of the Tennessee River sells about half of its produce through his shop, with the rest going to the wholesale market.

Farms like Katrutsa’s make up just a sliver of roughly 10.7 million acres of Tennessee farmland largely dominated by hay, soybeans, corn and cotton. Specialized machines help farmers harvest vast quantities of these commodity “row crops,” but Katrutsa said the startup cost was too steep for him. While specialty crops like produce are more labor-intensive, requiring near-constant attention from early July up until the first frost in October, Katrutsa said he takes pride in feeding his neighbors.

The World Wildlife Fund sees farms in the mid-Mississippi delta as ripe with opportunity to become a new mecca for commercial-scale American produce. California currently grows nearly three-quarters of the nation’s fruits and nuts and more than a third of its vegetables. READ MORE — Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk

After World War II, Black people in Houston found the rare chance to buy a nice home in the new community of Pleasantville, Texas. But in the years that followed, officials routed the Interstate 610 loop with its tailpipe exhaust along one side of Pleasantville and cement plants and other heavy industry grew nearby.

Just days after taking office in 2021, the Biden administration made huge promises to heavily polluted Black, Latino, Indigenous and lower income areas like this, known as environmental justice communities.

To evaluate how well Biden and his departments delivered on these promises, The Associated Press spoke to some 30 environmental justice groups around the country, people who have been trying for years and sometimes decades to get places near their homes cleaned up — Superfund sites, petrochemical plants and diesel-burning ports, for example.

Many said this administration has done more than any previous one. With ambition not seen before they said, federal officials have solicited their advice, written stricter environmental protections and committed tens of billions of dollars in funding. READ MORE— Associated Press

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