Credit: A man and a woman in a Dodge Ram pickup drive by a July 20, 2024, pro-Palestine rally hosted by Lakota youth in Rapid City, South Dakota. Rally attendees say the couple threatened them, including waving a firearm at them, and have reported their actions to local police. (Photo courtesy of the Oglala Lakota chapter of the International Indigenous Youth Council)

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Those who attended a July 20 Lakota youth-lead rally for Palestine in South Dakota have reported multiple attacks from several alleged perpetrators, one involving the brandishing of a firearm.

The Oglala Lakota chapter of the International Indigenous Youth Council hosted the rally in downtown Rapid City, South Dakota.

The council chapter posted on Facebook after the event saying, “The youth organizers were debriefing at the City Hall public parking, when a caucasian man in a black Ram TRX pickup drove by holding a gun, threatening the group of peaceful youth. When the youth began to notify the police, which were a block away, the black Ram TRX immediately drove away with a caucasian woman hanging out the passenger window yelling ‘Go to Hell with the Palestinians.’”

The incident was captured on video. The man is seen holding a gun in his hand on the steering wheel, while his wife is holding an image of the Israeli flag on her phone. READ MORE — Felix Clary, ICT and Tulsa World

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CHOCTAW, Miss. — As the drummers walk onto the field, the players behind them smack their hickory sticks to the beat. The rhythm envelops the stands and a palpable sense of anticipation flows through the crowd.

Indigenous peoples have been playing stickball for hundreds of years, and every summer since 1975, teams have competed in Mississippi to become champion of perhaps the oldest game in North America.

A game of physicality and endurance, stickball is often referred to as the grandfather of field sports and the annual tournament in Mississippi is the game’s premier event. For generations, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians has been producing some of the country’s best players at stickball, not to be confused with the baseball-like game played on the streets of big cities. A team from Mississippi will almost certainly be the one to beat in any tournament or exhibition game in the country. READ MORE — Associated Press

Rose Fisher Greer and her daughter are the only basket weavers left in the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians, a tribe based in central Louisiana.

To practice her craft, Greer needs river cane. For that, she has to go into Kisatchie National Forest, and she’s the only person in her tribe willing to make the journey. At one patch just off the side of the road, a few feet into the forest, the river cane grows in clusters of green stalks several feet high.

In April, Greer drove out to harvest some, along with David Moore, a U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service botanist who works at Kisatchie. “The last basket weaver died in the 1930s from my tribe,” she said. “So that tradition and that part of our culture had died out, you know, fifty, sixty years before I was even born.”

Greer enjoys being a part of the process of making a basket from start to finish. “It’s very meaningful for me to even harvest the cane because I know I’m doing the same thing my ancestors did and my ancestors’ ancestors,” she said. READ MORE — WWNO

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A school district in San Juan County — small in student population, huge in land area — says it is in a precarious financial position as the Public Service Company of New Mexico transitions from coal-fired power to renewable energy.

Lawmakers and officials with the Central Consolidated School District are calling on the state’s biggest utility to live up to the promises of a “just transition” promised in the Energy Transition Act of 2018. The legislation promised replacement power generation to be developed within boundaries of the school district as the company moved away from coal, long a key economic driver in the area.

The school district, consisting of 15 schools, a technical center and several preschools spread over nearly 3,000 square miles in northwest New Mexico, have complained about funding shortfalls following the closure of San Juan Generating Station, and worry about a future closure of the nearby Four Corners Power Plant. Both have been critical contributors to the school district’s tax base.

The district serves about 5,000 students; more than 90 percent are Native American. READ MORE — The Santa Fe New Mexican

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