Boozhoo, relatives.
A lot of news out there. Thanks for stopping by ICT’s digital platform.
Each day we do our best to gather the latest news for you. Okay, here’s what you need to know today:
In the second half of our two-part series, members of the Pine Ridge community put pressure on the Catholic Church to share information about the boarding school it ran on the reservation.
ICT reporter Mary Annette Pember, a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe, visits Red Cloud Indian School, which has launched a truth and healing initiative for former students and their descendants. A youth-led activist group called the International Indigenous Youth Council has created a list of demands that includes financial reparations and the return of tribal land. The group also wants the Catholic Church to open up its records about the school’s past, especially information about children who may have died there. READ MORE. — ICT
Mary Annette Pember on APTN discussing the project. WATCH HERE.
Mary Annette Pember on ICT Newscast with Aliyah Chavez.
Watch here:
SUPPORT INDIGENOUS JOURNALISM. CONTRIBUTE TODAY.
Let’s start with an important question: What would the economy look like for tribal nations if every citizen could work at home? The idea of remote work – something that boomed during the pandemic – could be a vehicle to end the “out migration” from rural tribal communities and create new opportunities.
Now hold that thought while considering a report about the data.
Robert Maxim, Mashpee Wampanoag, is one of the authors of a paper, “Native Americans are getting left behind in the remote work economy,” published jointly last month by the Brookings Institution and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. The paper found that so far Native Americans are being consistently left behind other workers in the work-from-home trend. And, “even as media outlets and researchers have begun to emphasize the benefits of remote work, fewer analyses have focused on its racial disparities.” READ MORE. — Mark Trahant, ICT
Three White couples who sought to adopt Indigenous children will have their legal cases heard by the U.S. Supreme Court next month. Each of the foster families, including a couple from Minnesota, says the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act discriminated against them because of their race.
The law, known as ICWA, ensures that tribes have a right to intervene when their citizens are involved in child welfare cases. And it requires that local governments make extra efforts to protect connections with Indigenous culture and kin. The outcome of the case challenging ICWA, Brackeen v. Haaland, has far-reaching implications: not only for the battle against family separation in Indian Country, but potentially for the foundational rights of tribes in relation to the U.S. government.
Two of the couples—Jennifer Kay and Chad Everet Brackeen of Texas, and Heather Lynn and Frank Nicholas Libretti of Nevada—gained full custody of the Native children they wanted to adopt.
One of the three sets of plaintiffs in the Brackeen v. Haaland case did not. READ MORE. — The Imprint
As a kid, Matthew Johnson spent his afternoons playing basketball in the reservation gymnasium, a building that also housed the one-room Umatilla Tribal Court, where his dad worked. Today, Johnson walks through the glassy, two-story rotunda of the Nixyaawii Governance Center to get to his office, where he works with his father as the director of one of the leading tribal courts in the United States.
In the 40 years since Johnson’s father helped set up the court system for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation (CTUIR), it has shaken off the constraints of state jurisdiction on its lands and taken on the most comprehensive criminal jurisdiction allowed under federal laws that restrict tribal court activity.
Umatilla Tribal Court Chief Judge William Johnson, Matthew’s father, says his court is prepared to go further now that tribal jurisdiction has expanded under the most recent reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).
Judge Johnson says Umatilla, Cayuse and Walla Walla people, who together make up the CTUIR, share the desire to operate the systems that make their nation run, rather than allowing the government to do so on their behalf. READ MORE. — Underscore News
Sign up here to get ICT’s newsletter
Unless you live in or around the Columbia River Gorge you may not have heard of the Condit Dam on Washington’s White Salmon River.
For a century, the 44-mile-long White Salmon had been blocked by the 125-foot PacifiCorp hydroelectric dam, located upstream from the town of Underwood.
On Oct. 26, 2011, contractors detonated charges opening a tunnel through the base of the dam. The opening emptied Northwestern Lake behind the dam and sent millions of gallons of water and tons of sediment downriver.
Engineers expected that upon breaching Confit Dam, the lake would drain in six hours. It drained in 30 minutes. READ MORE. — Columbia Insight
FOLLOW ICT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: FACEBOOK, TWITTER, INSTAGRAM, TIKTOK.
- Months after floods, Brazil’s Amazon faces a severe drought: In the Porto Praia Indigenous community, the nearby branch of the Amazon River has become a vast swath of sand that during the day becomes too hot to walk across.
- Yakama Nation recall election ousts chairman, council members: The recalls came after whistleblowers in an ethics board investigation accused department managers in the tribe’s Land Management division of misusing tribal funds.
- Mary Peltola gets hero’s welcome at Alaska Federation for Natives: Alaska’s first Indigenous representative in Congress is a star at the Native organization’s annual convention — and embraced by Don Young’s daughters.
- The importance of representation:Thousands of Native students attend Albuquerque, New Mexico schools. Most will never have a Native teacher.
- ‘Glitz and glam’ pathway has its setbacks:Actors, model talk about mainstream fame as Indigenous people.
- A1 Revisited: Our coverage of 1970 protestshowed neglect of vital Native issues.
- White Earth BandPlans to Buy Ridgeway Court Apartments in Bemidji.
- ‘Really beautiful’: Indigenous jacket with ties to Red River region discovered by U.K. thrift shop.
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.
