Richard Arlin Walker
Special to ICT
2023 promises to be a monumental year for Indian Country,
The U.S. Supreme Court will issue a ruling that will uphold or weaken the authority of Indigenous nations to make foster care and adoption decisions for their youngest citizens.
The U.S. Senate could vote to establish a Truth and Healing Commission to address the legacy of abuses at boarding schools, as documented by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative.
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About 90 Indigenous people are starting new terms in state legislatures and in Congress, including the first Native person to serve in the U.S. Senate in 18 years.
Tribal governments will continue to invest in climate adaptation strategies.
And the first Indigenous female astronaut will return to Earth after commanding a multinational mission to the International Space Station.
Here’s a summary of what to expect in the coming year.
Indian Child Welfare Act
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this spring in Brackeen v. Haaland, the latest and perhaps most significant challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act.
ICWA was adopted by Congress in 1978 to reverse an assimilation policy of the U.S. that resulted in the forced removal of Indigenous children from their families.
The U.S. Code states the purpose of ICWA is “to protect the best interest of Indian children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes and families” by establishing minimum federal standards for the placement of Indian children in foster or adoptive homes. The placement priority: first, the child’s extended family; second, citizens of the child’s tribal nation; and third, other Native families.
Read more:
—Supreme Court takes up ICWA
In Brackeen, non-Native couples and several states are challenging the constitutionality of ICWA, saying “Indian” is a racial classification, not a political one, and therefore foster care and adoption decisions are being made based on race and not the child’s best interests, and, that it’s a violation of the 10th Amendment to require states to enforce ICWA.
Supporters of ICWA say the law has been a model for child placement and has helped keep Native families together. Supporters say “Indian” is a political classification, like “American,” and that ICWA empowers tribal nations, as sovereign governments, to make foster home and adoption decisions for children that are tribal citizens or are children of tribal citizens.
Experts fear that if “Indian” is determined by the court in Brackeen to be a racial rather than political classification, it could open the door to challenges of other laws related to the authority and jurisdiction of tribal nations.
“There are hundreds of treaties with Indian nations that are still in effect,” Harvard Law School professor Joseph William Singer told Harvard Law Today. “The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act regulates Indian gaming — is that unconstitutional? Title 25 of the U.S. Code is entitled ‘Indians.’ There are many laws about Indians — is all of that unconstitutional? If they do what the petitioners are asking them to do, it would be quite destructive of tribal sovereignty and federal Indian law. It’s very hard for me to understand what the world would look like after that.”
He added, “We do have tribes. They are sovereigns. They do have laws, governments, police. They’ve got courts and citizens. The tribes are the governments on the reservations. They govern their own lands, even non-Indians who enter their own lands. What happens to all of that law?”
Truth and Healing Commission
The U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee could vote soon on S. 2907, which would establish a Truth and Healing Commission to address the painful legacy of federal boarding school policies.
The commission would continue the work of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, which has identified marked and unmarked burial sites at approximately 53 boarding schools across the U.S. Indian boarding school system.
Some 500 children died in 19 Indian boarding schools in a 50-year period alone, according to the Interior Department.
Read more:
—‘We all carry the trauma in our hearts’
—Buried Secrets: Red Cloud takes the lead on uncovering boarding school past
If approved, the commission would develop recommendations for protecting unmarked graves and how to identify the original tribal areas from which the children were taken; and would create legislative safeguards to keep present-day governmental institutions such as social service agencies from forcibly assimilating Native children.
It could also receive power to issue subpoenas for records, which could open up long-closed church and nonprofit records to public scrutiny.
“The Interior Department will address the intergenerational impact of Indian boarding schools to shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past, no matter how hard it will be,” said Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, the first Indigenous person to serve in a presidential cabinet.
“I know that this process will be long and difficult. I know that this process will be painful. It won’t undo the heartbreak and loss we feel. But only by acknowledging the past can we work toward a future that we’re all proud to embrace.”
Congressional influence
An Indigenous politician was sworn into the U.S. Senate on Jan. 3 for the first time in 18 years, and four others took their seats in the U.S. House as the new Congress got to work in early January.
With the election of Republican Kevin McCarthy of California as speaker, the U.S. House members took their oaths on Jan. 7 and began receiving committee assignments, and four select committees from the previous Democratic-led session were dismantled.
Gone are the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, the Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth, and the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. Records from those committees are archived at GovInfo.gov.
Gone, too, is the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. The committee’s website is no more, although records are archived at GovInfo.gov and on the House member website of Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi.
Read more:
—Indigenous Politics: Another year of firsts
—Election 2022: ‘Incredible year’ for Indigenous candidates
With the new, albeit slim, majority, Republicans assumed leadership of House committees. Among them are Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, Chickasaw, who became chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, which establishes the rules under which bills are presented to the House.
Kansas Democrat Sharice Davids, Ho-Chunk, who was elected to a third term in November, is the ranking minority party member of a subcommittee of the House Small Business Committee – the Economic Growth, Tax and Capital Access Subcommittee, which examines the impact of federal tax policies on small business and evaluates the operation of financial markets, among other responsibilities.
Oklahoma Republican Markwayne Mullin, Cherokee, was elected in November to the U.S. Senate after serving 10 years in the U.S. House, becoming the first tribal citizen to serve in the Senate in 18 years. Since the first Congress in 1789, only five enrolled Native people and one Native Hawaiian have been elected to the Senate. His committee assignments had not been determined by Jan. 8.
Mullin, a former professional MMA fighter, is credited with building relationships among members of Congress from both parties during his House service. He garnered Democratic co-sponsors for his bills regarding health care and Indian Country issues. But he also supported much of Trump’s agenda and introduced a bill to expunge Trump’s impeachments.
Also taking the oath in the U.S. House were Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola, Yup’ik, elected to a full term (she previously won a special election to complete the term of the late Don Young), and Oklahoma Republican Josh Brecheen, Choctaw, elected to a first term.
Ambassador appointment
The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee could soon vote on President Joe Biden’s nomination of Roger F. Nyhus, Chinook, as U.S. ambassador to seven Caribbean nations.
If approved by the Senate, Nyhus would represent the United States in Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Read more:
—Chinook citizen tapped to be U.S. ambassador
Nyhus would become what is believed to become only the third Indigenous person – and second citizen of the Chinook Indian Nation – to serve as a U.S. ambassador. He founded a communications company in Seattle and formerly served as communications director for a Washington governor and a Seattle mayor.
Biden nominated Nyhus for the post on Nov. 15.
Climate migration
Tribal nations in 17 states will invest $45.3 million to help their communities adapt to climate change – from resource protection and wildfire planning to relocating homes and public facilities away from areas prone to erosion and flooding.
The funds are part of a grants package awarded in November by the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Branch of Tribal Climate Resilience. Some 124 grants were awarded to 76 tribal nations and eight tribal organizations in 17 states.
Read more:
—Homelands in Peril
—Warming Arctic reveals shifting seasons
Since 2011, BIA has awarded more than $120 million to tribal nations and intertribal organizations for climate adaptation, ocean and coastal management, and community-driven relocation efforts, according to the agency.
“It will help,” said Mike Williams Sr., chief of the Akiak Native Community in Alaska, which received $2.7 million to move 15-20 homes that are being undermined by melting permafrost and loss of embankment along the Kuskokwim River.
“We’ve moved eight homes so far,” he said of earlier work done by the community. “We moved them away from the river with the local workforce, and we’ll continue to monitor other homes that are 200 feet from the river. If they’re threatened, we’ll continue to move them. If we can’t move them, we’ve been tearing them down because we don’t want them going downriver.”
Williams estimates he’s lost at least 300 yards of riverbank near his home because of erosion from fall storms and warm spring temperatures that are melting the permafrost.
All told, tribal nations in Alaska and the continental U.S. are managing some 66 climate adaptation projects, according to a University of Oregon database.
Indigenous in space
Astronaut Nicole Aunapu Mann is expected to return to Earth sometime in March after a history-making mission as the first Indigenous woman in space.
Mann, a citizen of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, is commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission. On the mission with her are fellow U.S. astronaut Josh Cassada, astronaut Koichi Wakata of Japan and cosmonaut Anna Kikina of Russia.
They launched on Oct. 5 from the Kennedy Space Center, and their spacecraft is docked at the International Space Station.
Among the personal items Mann took with her was a dream catcher her mother gave her.
Read more:
—First Indigenous woman launching into space
—Nicole Mann’s next challenge
Mann grew up in Petaluma, California, graduated in 1999 from the U.S. Naval Academy and Stanford University, flew 47 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and completed astronaut training in 2015, according to her NASA biography.
She is a colonel in the Marine Corps. Her decorations and awards include two Air Medals, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals, and the NASA 2015 Stephen D. Thorne Safety Award.
John Herrington, Chickasaw, became the first Indigenous person to fly in space in 2002. He carried the Chickasaw Nation flag and a traditional flute with him on his 13-day voyage.
In other space news, an Alaska Native company has been tapped to help NASA provide support for the agency’s aircraft and training simulators in coming months.
Yulista Solutions, an aerospace and defense support services company owned by the Calista Corporation, was awarded a contract by NASA.
The work will be performed March 1 to Sept. 30 at a cost of up to $540 million. The contract was announced Dec. 22 on NASA’s website.
NASA owns aircraft used for astronaut space flight readiness training as well as for cargo and passenger transport. Yulista will perform aircraft, engine and equipment maintenance; engineering support services; and air traffic control tower operation at various NASA sites, including the Johnson Space Center in Texas, Langley Research Center in Virginia, and Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
Calista is an Alaska Native Regional Corporation created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, and owns companies in 14 industries. Calista Corporation is owned by over 33,000 Yup’ik, Cup’ik and Athabascan shareholders with ancestral ties to southwest Alaska.
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