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WASHINGTON — Dozens of Indigenous leaders held a sit-in Thursday at the Interior Department in Washington, D.C., in an effort to stop the extractive fossil fuel industries.

Jennifer Falcon, Nakoda, Lakota and Dakota, with Indigenous Rising Media, was inside and said before Thursday’s sit-in at the Bureau of Indian Affairs that they warned President Joe Biden to “respect us or expect us” and he didn’t listen.

“So we’re going to keep showing up until we die,” Falcon said.

There’s been a historic surge in Indigenous resistance in Washington since Indigenous Peoples’ Day on Monday, where “expect us” was written on a Andrew Jackson’s statue. On Thursday, roughly 55 Indigenous leaders were at the federal agency for a sit-in in what is believed to be for the first time since the 1970s… READ more. — Jourdan Bennett-Begaye, Indian Country Today

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Art Coulson is anything but a reluctant storyteller.

A Cherokee Nation descendant from a family of storytellers, he published his first two picture books in a preschool program then went on to work more than 25 years in writing, editing and communications before finding his voice as a children’s author.

His 2020 book, “The Reluctant Storyteller,” has now been named one of the year’s top children’s books by the prestigious Bank Street and has been designated the American Indians in Children’s Literature Best Book of 2020.

Credit: Cherokee author Art Coulson is winning acclaim for his children's book, "The Reluctant Storyteller," about an Indigenous youth who resists his family tradition of storytelling. The book, published in late 2020, was illustrated by Carlin Bear Don't Walk, Northern Cheyenne and Crow. (Photo illustration courtesy of Reycraft Books)

Coulson also served as the first executive director of the Wilma Mankiller Foundation in Oklahoma, and plays lacrosse on the side.

“I was actually writing books, or trying to write books, for adults at first,” Coulson told Indian Country Today by phone from his home in Minneapolis, Minnesota. “And the first children’s book kind of dropped in my lap. Another writer had been approached by a publisher to write a nonfiction book about the connection of lacrosse to American Indian people. And she said, ‘Well, I don’t know anything about lacrosse, but I know a guy.’ And I was the guy.” READ more. — Sandra Hale Schulman, special to Indian Country Today

Charlie Feister, a citizen of the Klamath Tribes, was a runaway from Chemawa Indian School when he was shot dead in 1907 while trying to steal food from a store in Chemawa, Oregon.

A short article in the Weekly Chemawa American student newspaper describing the incident fails to mention that Charlie was 11 years old at the time of his death. Charlie and a friend were living in a little camp in the woods not far from the school.

We know these details today thanks to a combined 35 years of dogged work by SuAnn Reddick and Eva Guggemos who published the results of their research in a public website on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

The Deaths at Chemawa Indian School website contains the names, burial locations as well as notes about students who died at the school between 1880-1945. About 270 students died while in custody at Chemawa; 175 are buried in the school cemetery. According to Reddick and Guggemos’ research, the remains of approximately 40 students were returned home; the locations of at least 50 student’s remains are unknown… READ more. — Mary Annette Pember, Indian Country Today

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The Interior Department named Joaquin Gallegos, Jicarilla Apache Nation and Santa Ana Pueblo, special assistant, assistant secretary to Indian Affairs and Wizipan Little Elk, Rosebud Sioux Tribe, as principal deputy assistant secretary.

The Interior named two other appointees in Mike Martinez and Matthew Strickler, both of Fish and Wildlife and Parks.

“The Interior Department is hard at work turning President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda into reality. These new team members will help serve our mission to honor the federal government’s trust responsibilities to Indian Country, strengthen the Nation-to-Nation relationship, and conserve our public lands and waters for current and future generations,” said Chief of Staff Lawrence Roberts. — Indian Country Today

Kyrie Irving said Wednesday he didn’t want to lose salary or a chance to compete for a championship with the Brooklyn Nets, but was doing “what’s best for me” by refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

The Nets decided Tuesday that Irving wouldn’t be with the team because he isn’t eligible to play in home games, where a New York mandate requires professional athletes on one of the city’s teams to be vaccinated to practice or play in public venues.

Credit: Kyrie Irving at Red Cloud Indian School, Aug. 25, 2021. (Photo courtesy of school facebook page)

Speaking on Instagram Live, Irving, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, said he loved basketball and wasn’t going to retire… READ more. — The Associated Press

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The American Pops Orchestra will soon release a new episode of its PBS series “One Voice: The Songs We Share.” This one will feature Sicangu Lakota hip-hop artist Frank Waln. The multi-genre artist will not only host the program, but he will perform two original songs.

Waln talks about the PBS special… READ more.

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