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Native American News Roundup January 28-February 3, 2024

In this Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2019, photo, Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his groundbreaking novel "House Made of Dawn," sits in his Santa Fe, N.M., home between writing sessions.
In this Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2019, photo, Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his groundbreaking novel "House Made of Dawn," sits in his Santa Fe, N.M., home between writing sessions.

Kiowa literary giant N. Scott Momaday walks on

Native Americans and the literary world are mourning the passing of celebrated Kiowa author and academician N. Scott Momaday. He was 89.

Born in 1934 in Lawton, Oklahoma, he was given the Kiowa name Tsoai-talee, or “rock-tree-boy,” a reference to Devil’s Tower, the tall rock formation in Wyoming that features in Kiowa cosmology. Hear him explain the name in the video below:

During his childhood, his family moved between various locations on the Navajo reservation and the Pueblo of Jemez in New Mexico.

Momaday graduated from the University of New Mexico in 1958 and briefly attended Virginia Law School. He taught for a year on the Jicarilla Apache reservation before being awarded a creative writing fellowship at Stanford University. He taught at the University of California-Santa Barbara and the University of California-Berkeley before becoming a professor of English and literature at the University of Arizona in 1982.

He authored many collections of fiction, poetry, and essays. His first novel, "House Made of Dawn," won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

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Native youth vote could be critical in the battleground state of Arizona

U.S. National Public Radio took a look this week at the voting power of young Native Americans in the state of Arizona.

In the 2020 election, they helped President Joe Biden win by more than 11,400 votes. In 2024, they could make a difference not just in the presidential election but in determining which party controls Congress.

"Native voters are powerful, and we can't be ignored anymore," said Jaynie Parris, a citizen of the Navajo Nation and executive director of Arizona Native Vote. “And we just need other people to meet us where we are and get on board."

NPR interviewed six Arizona voters who identify as Native American. They said neither political party has taken the time to get to know tribes and the problems that tribal communities must contend with, including water and environmental issues, the fentanyl crisis, and the lack of economic opportunities.

The report gave 25-year-old Alec Ferreira, a youth program coordinator for the San Carlos Apache Tribe, the final word: “Remember who is running the table right now. It's our time. Native people, we decided the last election. We can very well decide the next one.”

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California tribes call for changes to missing person alert system

California lawmakers last week held a hearing with California tribal leaders to discuss the successes and failures of the so-called “Feather Alert” system instituted in 2023.

Here’s how it works: when an Indigenous person goes missing, tribal law enforcement notifies local law enforcement, which in turn notifies California Highway Patrol (CHP), requesting that an alert go out on highway signs, cable networks and social media.

It is up to CHP, however, to decide whether an alert is warranted: local law enforcement must believe that the person is in danger and has gone missing under unexplainable or suspicious circumstances.

Native leaders complained that CHP turned down requests for Feather Alerts in at least three cases. They also called on lawmakers to amend the law to allow tribes to submit requests directly to CHP to speed up the process.

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Bark from the birch tree, which the Anishinaabe call wiigwaasabak.
Bark from the birch tree, which the Anishinaabe call wiigwaasabak.

Michigan Ojibwe galvanize to purchase sacred scrolls at auction

Members of the Keweenaw Bay Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe (KBIC) will shortly travel from Michigan to New York to retrieve a set of AnisshinaabeAnishinaabe (Ojibwe) birch bark scrolls known as wiigwaasabakoon that they purchased at an online auction.

Historically, Anishinaabe healers and spiritual leaders developed a form of pictographic writing that they inscribed onto birch bark to record histories, sacred teachings, songs and even medicinal formulas.

Because these scrolls came from a private collection, they were not subject to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which requires federally funded organizations to repatriate human remains and items of cultural or ceremonial importance.

With only days to go before the auction, KBIC tribe member Jerry Jondreau organized a fundraiser that enabled the tribe to purchase the scrolls.

“It was five days of anxiety and stress and lack of sleep and phone calls and emails and Zoom meetings and messages and trying to understand the whole process,” he told VOA. “There were more than 150 listings before the scrolls, so we had to stay glued to the auction site.”

The Anishinaabe are a group of culturally related Indigenous peoples in the Great Lakes region of the U.S. and Canada.

Once the KBIC has authenticated the scrolls, they hope to loan them out to other Anishinaabe communities so those stories can be shared.

Native American News Roundup Jan. 21-27, 2024

Aerial photo taken Nov. 13, 2023, by Archaeology Southwest shows new access roads and tower pad sites west of the San Pedro River in Arizona.
Aerial photo taken Nov. 13, 2023, by Archaeology Southwest shows new access roads and tower pad sites west of the San Pedro River in Arizona.

Tribes sue administration over mega wind energy project

Two Native American tribes are suing the U.S. Interior Department and the Bureau of Land Management to halt construction of a $10 billion wind energy transmission line from New Mexico to California.

In their complaint, the Tohono O’odham Nation and the San Carlos Apache Tribe say the government failed to consult with them over the SunZia Southwest Transmission Project, which would run through properties of historic and cultural significance to several tribes.

“For more than a decade, the San Carlos Apache Tribe and others have been raising alarms about the need to protect the cultural resources in the San Pedro Valley from the impacts of the SunZia project,” Chairman Terry Rambler said in a news release on Wednesday.

With support from the nonprofit groups Archaeology Southwest and the Center for Biological Diversity, the tribes are calling for construction to stop until the Bureau of Land Management completes a “legally adequate inventory of historic properties and cultural resources that would be impacted by the project.”

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Delaine Spilsbury, a member of the Ely Shoshone tribe, gestures during an interview at her home on Nov. 12, 2023, near McGill, Nev. She has worked for years to have the Bahsahwahbee massacre site named as a national monument. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
Delaine Spilsbury, a member of the Ely Shoshone tribe, gestures during an interview at her home on Nov. 12, 2023, near McGill, Nev. She has worked for years to have the Bahsahwahbee massacre site named as a national monument. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Nevada tribes call on feds to make massacre site a national monument

A coalition of three tribes in eastern Nevada wants the U.S. government to designate 100 square kilometers (40 square miles) as a national monument.

The Ely Shoshone, Duckwater Shoshone and the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation call the area Bahsahwahbee (Sacred Water Valley). Located in the bottom of Spring Valley near Great Basin National Park, it is the site of three massacres between 1850 and 1900 in which hundreds of their ancestors were killed by the U.S. Army and armed vigilantes.

“The people that were killed here were left here,” said Shoshone Delaine Spilsbury, who has lobbied for a Bahsahwahbee National Monument for decades. “Their spirits, their bodies, are in those trees. And so, we darn sure are going to protect those people.”

Nevada lawmakers and the state’s two U.S. senators, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, support the proposal. Masto’s office says she will soon introduce a bill in Congress to designate the monument. If successful, the site would pass from the Bureau of Land Management to the National Park Service, which works with tribes to preserve their places and histories.

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Read more Shoshone history of the site here:

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Harvard moves to ease burden on tribes seeking repatriation under NAGPRA

Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology says it will provide travel funds for tribal representatives to come to the museum for the physical repatriation of ancestors and associated funerary belongings. [[ https://peabody.harvard.edu/repatriation-visits ]]

“The funding will generally include transportation, hotel accommodations, and meals for direct round-trip travel and up to 3 nights in Cambridge [Massachusetts],” Peabody states on its website. It will also provide archival boxes and other containers but will not cover costs associated with ceremonies, special events or other services after items are repatriated.

“Some people have the mistaken impression that folks at Harvard are trying, by hook or by crook, to undermine this repatriation process. It’s not true,” said Joseph P. Gone, faculty director of the Harvard University Native American program. “No one at Harvard wants to hold on to these materials. Everyone wants to see these ancestors go back home where they belong.”

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A girl rides a horse near a highway accompanied by a dog on the Crow Indian Reservation in Crow Agency, Mont. on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2020. Youth suicide among the state’s 12 federally recognized tribes is more than five times the statewide rate for the same age group.
A girl rides a horse near a highway accompanied by a dog on the Crow Indian Reservation in Crow Agency, Mont. on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2020. Youth suicide among the state’s 12 federally recognized tribes is more than five times the statewide rate for the same age group.

Suicides up among Native youth in Montana

The CNN television news network this week focused on Native American suicide in the state of Montana, where youth suicide among the state’s 12 federally recognized tribes is more than five times the statewide rate for the same age group.

Native American youths are often exposed to more adverse childhood experiences, including poverty, substance abuse and family violence — part of a pattern of trauma rooted in historic policies of forced assimilation.

Suicide is preventable, but prevention programs available to Native American communities are chronically underfunded, and Indigenous experts say what few programs are available are not culturally relevant.

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Actor Lily Gladstone attends the 14th Governors Awards in Los Angeles, California, U.S., January 9, 2024. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
Actor Lily Gladstone attends the 14th Governors Awards in Los Angeles, California, U.S., January 9, 2024. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

Actress Lily Gladstone scores second ‘first’ in a month

January has been a very good month for Lily Gladstone, an actress who has Blackfeet and Nez Perce heritage. This week, she became the first Native American woman to be nominated for best actress at the Academy Awards for her role as Mollie Burkhart in Martin Scorsese’s epic “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

Earlier this month, she took home a Golden Globe award for the same performance.

“It’s time that Native characters based upon living, incredible women like Mollie Kyle be given the heart of these films,’ she told The New York Times. “‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ was an opportunity to restore a place onscreen for Native women that history has excluded us from.”

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Tribes, Environmental Groups Ask US Court to Block $10B Energy Project in Arizona

A lawsuit filed on Jan. 17, 2024, accuses the U.S. Interior Department and Bureau of Land Management of refusing for nearly 15 years to recognize "overwhelming evidence of the cultural significance" of the San Pedro Valley in Arizona to Native American tribes.
A lawsuit filed on Jan. 17, 2024, accuses the U.S. Interior Department and Bureau of Land Management of refusing for nearly 15 years to recognize "overwhelming evidence of the cultural significance" of the San Pedro Valley in Arizona to Native American tribes.

A federal judge is being asked to issue a stop-work order on a $10 billion transmission line being built through a remote southeastern Arizona valley to carry wind-generated electricity to customers as far away as California.

A 32-page lawsuit filed on January 17 in U.S. District Court in Tucson, Arizona, accuses the U.S. Interior Department and Bureau of Land Management of refusing for nearly 15 years to recognize "overwhelming evidence of the cultural significance" of the remote San Pedro Valley to Native American tribes, including the Tohono O'odham, Hopi, Zuni and San Carlos Apache Tribe.

The suit was filed shortly after Pattern Energy received approval to transmit electricity generated by its SunZia wind farm in central New Mexico through the San Pedro Valley east of Tucson and north of Interstate 10.

The lawsuit calls the valley "one of the most intact, prehistoric and historical ... landscapes in southern Arizona" and asks the court to issue restraining orders or permanent injunctions to halt construction.

"The San Pedro Valley will be irreparably harmed if construction proceeds," it says.

Government representatives declined to comment Tuesday on the pending litigation. They are expected to respond in court. The project has been touted as the biggest U.S. electricity infrastructure undertaking since the Hoover Dam.

Pattern Energy officials said Tuesday that the time has passed to reconsider the route, which was approved in 2015 following a review process.

"It is unfortunate and regrettable that after a lengthy consultation process, where certain parties did not participate repeatedly since 2009, this is the path chosen at this late stage," Pattern Energy spokesperson Matt Dallas said in an email.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are the Tohono O'odham Nation, the San Carlos Apache Tribe and the nonprofit organizations Center for Biological Diversity and Archaeology Southwest.

"The case for protecting this landscape is clear," Archaeology Southwest said in a statement that calls the San Pedro Arizona's last free-flowing river and the valley the embodiment of a "unique and timely story of social and ecological sustainability across more than 12,000 years of cultural and environmental change."

The valley represents an 80-kilometer (50-mile) stretch of the planned 885-kilometer (550-mile) conduit expected to carry electricity from new wind farms in central New Mexico to existing transmission lines in Arizona to serve populated areas as far away as California. The project has been called an important part of President Joe Biden's goal for a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035.

Work started in September in New Mexico after negotiations that spanned years and resulted in approval from the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency with authority over vast parts of the U.S. West.

The route in New Mexico was modified after the U.S. Defense Department raised concerns about the effects of high-voltage lines on radar systems and military training operations.

Work halted briefly in November amid pleas by tribes to review environmental approvals for the San Pedro Valley and resumed weeks later in what Tohono O'odham Chairman Verlon M. Jose characterized as "a punch to the gut."

SunZia expects the transmission line to begin commercial service in 2026, carrying more than 3,500 megawatts of wind power to 3 million people. Project officials say they conducted surveys and worked with tribes over the years to identify cultural resources in the area.

A photo included in the court filing shows an aerial view in November of ridgetop access roads and tower sites being built west of the San Pedro River near Redrock Canyon. Tribal officials and environmentalists say the region is otherwise relatively untouched.

The transmission line also is being challenged before the Arizona Court of Appeals. The court is being asked to consider whether state regulatory officials there properly considered the benefits and consequences of the project.

Native American News Roundup January 14-20, 2024

in 2014, the FBI seized a cache of thousands of cultural artifacts and human remains amassed by Don Miller over decades.
in 2014, the FBI seized a cache of thousands of cultural artifacts and human remains amassed by Don Miller over decades.

New NAGPRA rules aim to speed up compliance

Revisions to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) went into effect January 12.

NAGPRA directs federally funded museums and federal agencies to catalogue all Native American human remains, funerary items, and objects of cultural significance in their collections, to submit the information to a National Park Service database and to work with tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations to repatriate them.

They now have until January 2029 to update their inventories.

Previously, institutions have taken advantage of a loophole in the law allowing them to hold on to artifacts deemed “culturally unidentifiable.” That category has now been removed, and Native American traditional knowledge or geographical information will be sufficient for proving cultural affiliation going forward.

Institutions must now get permission from lineal descendants and/or Native American Tribes or Native Hawaiian Organizations (NHOs) before displaying, giving access to or allowing any research on remains or cultural artifacts.

"Pending consultation with the represented communities, we have covered all cases that we believe contain cultural items that could be subject to these regulations," Chicago’s Field Museum announced last week.

Harvard University’s Peabody Museum, which has the third-largest collection under NAGPRA, issued no statement but has closed several galleries for “maintenance” – including its Hall of the North American Indian -- until early February.

Photo portrait of Carlisle Indian School student Edward, Winnebago, taken by John Choate, ca. 1897.
Photo portrait of Carlisle Indian School student Edward, Winnebago, taken by John Choate, ca. 1897.

Tribe sues Army for failing to repatriate remains of boarding school students

The Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska this week filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Army asking that it repatriate the remains of two Winnebago children who died at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.

Carlisle records show that in September 1895, Samuel Gilbert and Edward Hensley were among a group of 11 youths taken from their families and sent to Carlisle. Both died of pneumonia – Samuel, just weeks after his arrival, and Edward in June 1899. They were both buried in the school cemetery, which is today an Army installation.

Last October, the Winnebago formally requested that the Army repatriate the remains in compliance with NAGPRA.

Carlisle Indian School cemetery in the 1930s, after the graves had been moved from their original location. Courtesy, Cumberland County Historical Society, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Carlisle Indian School cemetery in the 1930s, after the graves had been moved from their original location. Courtesy, Cumberland County Historical Society, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

“Defendants denied Winnebago’s request on the erroneous basis that NAGPRA does not apply to the repatriation of ‘Native American human remains’ …in their possession and control at Carlisle Cemetery,” the complaint states.

A June 2014 memorandum from the Army’s Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management clearly states, “NAGPRA applies to all Army Commands, installations, and activities and places affirmative duties on the Army for the protection, inventory, and disposition of Native American cultural items.”

In this case, the Army, says its “disinterment and return” process requires the identification of a “closest living relative” for remains from Carlisle Cemetery to be disinterred, not tribal nations.

“Because the Carlisle students often died as children themselves or died without children, they have no direct descendants and the identification of a “closest living relative” is nearly impossible,” a statement from the Native American Rights Fund says.

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Ceiling of New York State Capitol Building, Albany features stereotyped depictions of Native Americans painted by muralist William deLeftwich Dodge.
Ceiling of New York State Capitol Building, Albany features stereotyped depictions of Native Americans painted by muralist William deLeftwich Dodge.

New York tribes called to review ‘offensive’ artwork in state capitol

New York Governor Kathy Hochul is inviting New York tribes to review artwork in the State Capitol Building in Albany, citing “offensive imagery and distasteful representations of populations.”

“All New Yorkers should feel welcome and respected when visiting the State Capitol,” she said in her 2024 State of the State report. “Indigenous peoples, in particular, are often depicted in artworks in a manner that reflects harmful racial stereotypes and glorifies violence against Indigenous peoples.”

The ceiling of the governor’s reception room features 25 paintings by 20th Century muralist William deLeftwich Dodge. Unveiled in 1931, they depict the military history of New York, including a scene showing French explorer Samuel Champlain “killing first Indian.”

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Petroglyphs like these at Newspaper Rock, in Bears Ears National Monument, Utah, can be found across the state.
Petroglyphs like these at Newspaper Rock, in Bears Ears National Monument, Utah, can be found across the state.

Treasure hunter wreaks havoc at historic Pueblo site

A Utah treasure hunter has been charged with a second-degree felony for tunneling more than four meters into a 1,000-year-old archaeological site.

Acting on a tip from a concerned citizen, authorities in Washington County, Utah, say they found Eduardo Humberto Seoane, 51, digging at the ancient Pueblo Indian site that includes 100 petroglyphs that archaeologists believe are at least 500 years old.

“We couldn’t believe what we were seeing,” said Washington County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Darrell Cashin. “The suspect had power and hand tools out there, and he’d been excavating for quite some time.”

Authorities say Seoane told them he was prospecting for precious minerals, but they discovered that he belongs to several treasure-hunter groups.

"It's almost impossible to calculate the damage caused by this guy," said a press release from Trust Lands Administration lead archaeologist Joel Boomgarden. "It is important for people to remember that the archaeological record of Utah is a finite resource. Nobody is making 1,000-year-old ancestral Puebloan sites anymore. Once they are gone, there is no going back."

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Canada Signs Over Control of Arctic Lands to Inuit Territory

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, is greeted by an elder during a devolution ceremony at the Aqsarniit Hotel & Conference Centre in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada, Jan. 18, 2024.
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, is greeted by an elder during a devolution ceremony at the Aqsarniit Hotel & Conference Centre in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada, Jan. 18, 2024.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday signed over control of resource-rich Arctic lands to the government of the predominantly Inuit territory of Nunavut, in what was billed as the largest land transfer in Canada's history.

Nunavut, at more than 2 million square kilometers (800,000 square miles), is almost three times the size of the U.S. state of Texas and is believed to hold some of the richest resource deposits in the country, including gold, diamonds and rare earth minerals, as well as oil and gas.

With global warming, the Arctic territory is becoming more accessible for mining and shipping.

In its capital, Iqaluit, Trudeau signed a devolution agreement with Nunavut Premier P.J. Akeeagok.

It effectively gives the territorial government of Nunavut responsibility over its lands and resources and the right to collect royalties that would otherwise go to the federal government.

"Inuit have hunted and fished and lived on these lands for generations, some going back well before recorded history. Today begins a new chapter in the history of Nunavut, a transformative chapter," Trudeau said at the signing ceremony.

A drummer dances during the Nunavut devolution agreement ceremony at the Aqsarniit Hotel & Conference Centre in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada, Jan. 18, 2024.
A drummer dances during the Nunavut devolution agreement ceremony at the Aqsarniit Hotel & Conference Centre in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada, Jan. 18, 2024.

"This is a place that is rich with culture, traditional knowledge, critical minerals and other resources that are needed as we build the economy of the future together," he said.

"And with this increased control, [the government and people of Nunavut] will be able to have more say and more prosperity."

The agreement comes after decades of negotiations between Nunavut and the federal government. It is to be fully implemented over the next three years.

"It's our land, our resources, [now] in the hands of our people," cheered Akeeagok.

Ottawa started in the 1960s gradually transferring responsibilities for health, education, social services and other areas to its Arctic territories.

Nunavut, which was created in 1999, is the last of Canada's three Arctic territories — after the Northwest Territories and the Yukon — to take full control of its lands.

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