SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — 

Some 175 years after the U.S. government stole land from the chief of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation while he was away visiting relatives, Illinois may soon return it to the tribe.

Nothing ever changed the 1829 treaty that Chief Shab-eh-nay signed with the U.S. government to preserve for him a reservation in northern Illinois: not subsequent accords nor the 1830 Indian Removal Act, which forced all indigenous people to move west of the Mississippi.

But around 1848, the U.S. sold the land to white settlers while Shab-eh-nay and other members of his tribe were visiting family in Kansas.

To right the wrong, Illinois would transfer a 1,500-acre (607-hectare) state park west of Chicago, which was named after Shab-eh-nay, to the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation. The state would continue providing maintenance while the tribe says it wants to keep the park as it is.

“The average citizen shouldn’t know that title has been transferred to the nation so they can still enjoy everything that’s going on within the park and take advantage of all of that area out there,” said Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick, chairman of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation based in Mayetta, Kansas.

It's not entirely the same soil that the U.S. took from Chief Shab-eh-nay. The boundaries of his original 1,280-acre (518-hectare) reservation now encompass hundreds of acres of privately owned land, a golf course and county forest preserve. The legislation awaiting Illinois House approval would transfer the Shabbona Lake State Recreation Area.

No one disputes Shab-eh-nay's reservation was illegally sold and still belongs to the Potawatomi. An exactingly researched July 2000 memo from the Interior Department found the claim valid and shot down rebuttals from Illinois officials at the time, positing, “It appears that Illinois officials are struggling with the concept of having an Indian reservation in the state.”

But nothing has changed a quarter-century later.

Democratic state Rep. Will Guzzardi, who sponsored the legislation to transfer the state park, said it is a significant concession on the part of the Potawatomi. With various private and public concerns now owning more than half of the original reservation land, reclaiming it for the Potawatomi would set up a serpentine legal wrangle.

“Instead, the tribe has offered a compromise, which is to say, ‘We’ll take the entirety of the park and give up our claim to the private land and the county land and the rest of that land,’” Guzzardi said. “That’s a better deal for all parties involved.”

The proposed transfer of the park, which is 68 miles (109 kilometers) west of Chicago, won Senate approval in the final days of the spring legislative session. But a snag in the House prevented its passage. Proponents will seek endorsement of the measure when the Legislature returns in November for its fall meeting.

The Second Treaty of Prairie du Chien in 1829 guaranteed the original land to Chief Shab-eh-ney. The tribe signed 20 other treaties during the next 38 years, according to Rupnick.

“Yet Congress still kept those two sections of land for Chief Shab-eh-nay and his descendants forever,” said Rupnick, a fourth great-grandson of Shab-eh-nay. “At any one of those times the Congress could have removed the status of that land. They never did.”

Key to the proposal is a management agreement between the tribe and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Rupnick said the tribe needs the state's help to maintain the park.

Many residents who live next to the park oppose the plan, fearing construction of a casino or even a hotel would draw more tourists and lead to a larger, more congested community.

“Myself and my family have put a lot of money and given up a lot to be where we are in a small community and enjoy the park the way that it is,” resident Becky Oest told a House committee in May, asking that the proposal be amended to prohibit construction that would “affect our community. It’s a small town. We don’t want it to grow bigger.”

Rupnick said a casino doesn't make sense because state-sanctioned gambling boats already dot the state. He did not rule out a hotel, noting the park draws 500,000 visitors a year and the closest lodging is in DeKalb, 18 miles (29 kilometers) northeast of Shabbona. The park has 150 campsites.

In 2006, the tribe purchased 128 acres (52 hectares) in a corner of the original reservation and leases the land for farming. The U.S. government in April certified that as the first reservation in Illinois.

Guzzardi hopes the Potawatomi don't have to wait much longer to see that grow exponentially with the park transfer.

“It keeps this beautiful public asset available to everyone,” Guzzardi said. “It resolves disputed title for landholders in the area and most importantly, it fixes a promise that we broke."

WASHINGTON — 

Feds acknowledge dams had ‘devasting impact’ on Pacific Northwest tribes

The Biden-Harris administration has released a report detailing the negative impacts that federal Columbia River dams have had, past and present, on tribal communities in the Pacific Northwest.

The report, part of the Interior Department’s efforts to support tribally led salmon restoration in the Columbia River Basin, is the first comprehensive federal documentation of the harms these dams have inflicted on eight tribal nations in the Pacific Northwest.

The dams have blocked fish migration, flooded sacred lands and transformed ecosystems, resulting in profound losses for tribal communities who have historically relied on salmon and other fish for both sustenance and cultural practices.

“Since time immemorial, Tribes along the Columbia River and its tributaries have relied on Pacific salmon, steelhead and other native fish species for sustenance and their cultural and spiritual ways of life,” Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.

“Acknowledging the devastating impact of federal hydropower dams on Tribal communities is essential to our efforts to heal and ensure that salmon are restored to their ancestral waters.”

The report includes recommendations to help the federal government fulfill its trust responsibilities and ensure a healthy Columbia River Basin for future generations: first to recognize and address the unique hardships tribes have faced because of federal dam construction in conducting future environmental reviews; to pursue joint stewardship and management agreements with tribes; to continue work to restore and unite fractured homelands, and to incorporate Indigenous knowledge in environmental decision-making.

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Truth and Healing bill advances in House

The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act of 2024 has passed markup in the House Education and Workforce Committee, a key step along the path to full passage.

HR 7227, a companion bill to S. 1723 which is sponsored by U.S. Reps. Sharice Davids, Ho-Chunk and a Democrat from Kansas, and Tom Cole, Chickasaw and a Republican from Oklahoma, would create a six-year commission to investigate the federal Indian boarding school system beyond what the Interior Department’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative.

The commission would be tasked with gathering records from local, state and religious institutions and taking testimony from survivors, tribes and descendants. It would also locate and identify Native children’s graves and document the ongoing impact of the boarding school system on tribes and survivors.

"I would not be here if not for the resilience of my ancestors and those who came before me, including my grandparents, who are survivors of federal Indian Boarding Schools,” said Davids, who co-chairs the Congressional Native American Caucus, said in a statement. “I am glad my colleagues came together today to advance the establishment of a Truth and Healing Commission, bringing survivors, federal partners, and Tribal leaders to the table to fully investigate what happened to our relatives and work towards a brighter path for the next seven generations.”

In a separate statement Cole said he is committed to investigating the abuses of the boarding school era.

“This Commission will hopefully bring these communities one step closer to healing and peace for themselves, their families, and future generations,” he said.

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Tribe opens its doors to community displaced by wildfires

The Mescalero Apache Tribe in south-central New Mexico this week declared a state of emergency after two wildfires broke out Monday on the northeast corner of their reservation.

Flames quickly spread to the village of Ruidoso and the city of Ruidoso Downs, prompting thousands of mandatory evacuations.

The tribe designated two sites for both tribal and non-tribal evacuees in the area and received a strong response to appeals for donations.

“We are extremely grateful for the willingness of our tribal members, neighboring towns and villages, community groups/organizations and complete strangers for the donations being dropped off at these sites,” the tribe noted on its Facebook page.

So far, the fire has claimed two known lives, burned 9,300 hectares of combined tribal and non-tribal land, and destroyed 1,400 buildings, 500 of them residential.

Railway fined whopping $400 million for trespassing on Native land

A U.S. District Court judge on Monday ordered the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway, or BNSF, to pay the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community in Washington State just under $400 million for intentionally trespassing on their reservation.

A 1991 easement agreement allowed BNSF to run 25 train cars each direction per day and required BNSF to disclose the “nature and identity of all cargo.”

The tribe says in 2012, “unit trains” of 100 railcars or more were crossing the reservation, and by 2015, BNSF was running six 100-car “unit trains” per week across the reservation to a nearby refinery.

This resulted in significant profits, with revenues from the trespassing cars totaling about $900 million. During a recent four-day bench trial, both parties provided expert testimony on how to calculate the proportion of these profits that should be paid to the tribe.

“We know that this is a large amount of money. But that just reflects the enormous wrongful profits that BNSF gained by using the Tribe’s land day after day, week after week, year after year over our objections,” said Swinomish tribal chairman Steve Edwards. “When there are these kinds of profits to be gained, the only way to deter future wrongdoing is to do exactly what the court did today – make the trespasser give up the money it gained by trespassing.”

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SEATTLE — 

The U.S. government on Tuesday acknowledged, for the first time, the harmful role it has played over the past century in building and operating dams in the Pacific Northwest — dams that devastated Native American tribes by inundating their villages and decimating salmon runs while bringing electricity, irrigation and jobs to nearby communities.

In a new report, the Biden administration said those cultural, spiritual and economic detriments continue to pain the tribes, which consider salmon part of their cultural and spiritual identity, as well as a crucial food source.

The government downplayed or accepted the well-known risk to the fish in its drive for industrial development, converting the wealth of the tribes into the wealth of non-Native people, according to the report.

"The government afforded little, if any, consideration to the devastation the dams would bring to Tribal communities, including to their cultures, sacred sites, economies, and homes,” the report said.

It added: “Despite decades of efforts and an enormous amount of funding attempting to mitigate these impacts, salmon stocks remain threatened or endangered and continued operation of the dams perpetuates the myriad adverse effects.”

The Interior Department's report comes amid a $1 billion effort announced earlier this year to restore the region’s salmon runs before more become extinct — and to better partner with the tribes on the actions necessary to make that happen.

That includes increasing the production and storage of renewable energy to replace hydropower generation that would be lost if four dams on the lower Snake River are ever breached. Tribes, conservationists and even federal scientists say that would be the best hope for recovering the salmon, providing the fish with access to hundreds of miles of pristine habitat and spawning grounds in Idaho.

“President Biden recognizes that to confront injustice, we must be honest about history – even when doing so is difficult,” said a statement from White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary. “In the Pacific Northwest, an open and candid conversation about the history and legacy of the federal government’s management of the Columbia River is long overdue.”

Northwest Republicans in Congress and some business and utility groups oppose breaching the dams, saying it would jeopardize an important shipping route for farmers and throw off clean-energy goals. GOP Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who represents eastern Washington, called Tuesday's report a “sham."

“This bad faith report is just the latest in a long list of examples that prove the Biden administration’s goal has always been dam breaching," she said in a written statement.

The document was a requirement of an agreement last year to halt decades of legal fights over the operation of the dams. It lays out how government and private interests in the early 20th century began walling off the tributaries of the Columbia River, the largest in the Northwest, to provide water for irrigation or flood control, compounding the damage that was already being caused to water quality and salmon runs by mining, logging and rapacious non-tribal salmon cannery operations.

The report was accompanied by the announcement of a new task force to coordinate salmon recovery efforts across federal agencies.

Tribal representatives said they were gratified with the administration’s formal, if long-belated, acknowledgment of how the U.S. government ignored their treaty-based fishing rights and their concerns about how the dams would affect their people.

“The salmon themselves have been suffering the consequences since the dams first were put in,” said Shannon Wheeler, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe. “The lack of salmon eventually starts affecting us, but they're the ones who have been suffering the longest. ... It feels like there's an opportunity to end the suffering.”

Salmon are born in rivers and migrate far downstream to the ocean, where they spend their adult lives before returning to their natal rivers to spawn and die. Dams can disrupt that by cutting off access to upstream habitat and by slowing and warming water to the point that fish die.

The Columbia River Basin, an area roughly the size of Texas, was once the world’s greatest salmon-producing river system, with as many as 16 million salmon and steelhead returning every year to spawn.

Now, scientists say, about 2 million salmon and steelhead return to the Columbia and its tributaries each year, about two-thirds of them hatchery raised. The Shoshone-Bannock Tribe in southeastern Idaho said it once harvested enough salmon for each tribal member to have 700 pounds of fish in a year. Today, the average harvest yields barely 1 pound per tribal member.

Of the 16 stocks of salmon and steelhead that once populated the river system, four are extinct and seven are listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Another iconic but endangered Northwest species, a population of killer whales, also depend on the salmon.

There has been growing recognition across the U.S. that the harms some dams cause to fish outweigh their usefulness. Dams on the Elwha River in Washington state and the Klamath River along the Oregon-California border have been or are being removed.

The construction of the first dams on the main Columbia River, including the Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams in the 1930s, provided jobs to a country grappling with the Great Depression, as well as hydropower and navigation.

As early as the late 1930s, tribes were warning that the salmon runs could disappear, with the fish no longer able to access spawning grounds upstream. The tribes — the Yakama Nation, Spokane Tribe, confederated tribes of the Colville and Umatilla reservations, Nez Perce, and others — continued to fight the construction and operation of the dams for generations.

Tom Iverson, regional coordinator for Yakama Nation Fisheries, said that while the report was gratifying, it remains “hopes and promises” until funding for salmon restoration and renewable power projects comes through Congress.

“With these agreements, there is hope," Iverson said. "We feel like this is a moment in time. If it doesn’t happen now, it will be too late.”

WASHINGTON — 

Native Americans today say they still face barriers to casting their votes, six decades after U.S. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.

Many live miles away from voter registration and polling sites and lack access to reliable transportation.

Others may not have traditional mailing addresses and cannot satisfy voter registration requirements. Voting by mail can be “iffy,” according to O.J. Semans, a Sicangu Lakota citizen living on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota and co-executive director of Four Directions, a voting rights advocacy group that has worked on behalf of tribes in several states.

“You must remember, the old Pony Express [mail delivery on horseback] wasn’t meant for reservations. It was for outposts and settler towns,” Semans said. “The U.S. Postal Service has neglected every Indian reservation in the United States when it comes to ensuring we have equality.”

A 2023 study of mail service on the Navajo Nation — the largest reservation in the U.S. — notes that when deciding where to open post offices during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the U.S. Postal Service picked locations that would “advance military objectives and serve the interests of Anglo-American settlers.”

“Post Offices are fewer and farther from each other on reservation communities; there are fewer service hours; and we show in a mail experiment that letters posted on reservations are slower and less likely to arrive," the study said.

Post offices exist on Seman’s Rosebud Reservation, but they no longer accept general delivery.

“So, if you want to vote by mail, you can request an absentee ballot and fill it out. But you’d never get the ballot back,” he said.

States pass restrictive laws

The 1965 Voting Rights Act banned traditional forms of voter discrimination such as literacy tests, character assessments and other practices widely used to disenfranchise minority voters.

It authorized the federal government to oversee voter registration and election procedures in certain states and localities with histories of discriminatory practices, and it also required those jurisdictions to obtain “preclearance” from the Justice Department or a federal court before changing voting laws or procedures.

In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the formula for deciding which localities needed preclearance as unconstitutional, opening the way for states to pass new voting laws.

During a Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing in 2021, Jacqueline De Leon, an enrolled member of the Isleta Pueblo and a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, or NARF, described some conditions for Indigenous voters.

“In South Dakota, Native American voters were forced to vote in a repurposed chicken coop with no bathroom facilities and feathers on the floor,” she testified.

In Wisconsin, Native Americans were required to cast their ballots inside a sheriff’s office.

NARF, tribes fight back

In 2021, President Joe Biden created the Interagency Steering Group on Native American Voting Rights to report on barriers facing Native voters.

“Native American communities have not been immune, but indeed have been packed or divided by district lines that dilute their vote or otherwise discriminate,” the group reported.

In November 2021, North Dakota’s Republican-led legislature approved a new legislative map that separated state House districts on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation and the Fort Berthold reservation, home to the Three Affiliated Tribes.

The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and Spirit Lake tribes filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the new map violated the Voting Rights Act by packing the Turtle Mountain band — that is, concentrating them into a single electoral district to reduce their influence in other districts, and cracking — or dividing — the Spirit Lake tribe across districts to dilute their voting power.

“A conservative judge found this was a clear violation of the Voting Rights Act,” De Leon told VOA. “And rather than protect its Native constituents where there was a violation, the state has appealed, trying to just block the cost of action as opposed to remediating the discrimination.”

Arizona passed a law in 2022 requiring voters to provide proof of their physical address.

“And that was really an attack on the Native vote because about 40,000 homes in Indian Country in Arizona don't have traditional addresses on them or any way to prove residential location,” De Leon said.

With NARF’s support, the Tohono O’odham Nation and the Gila River Indian Community in 2022 filed suit in U.S. District Court for Arizona. In 2023, the court ruled in their favor, finding that the address requirements violated tribe members’ constitutional right to vote.

With five months to go before November’s general election, Semans said, Indigenous voting rights activists must stay vigilant.

“With this new Supreme Court, even rulings that we got years ago that were positive for Indian country could change before then,” he said. “Things can change on a dime.”

WASHINGTON — 

Catholic bishops apologize to Native Americans

The Catholic Church on Friday issued a carefully worded apology to Native Americans for a “history of trauma” caused in part by its “abandonment” of the community.

During their spring assembly in Louisville, Kentucky, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) approved a document titled, “Keeping Christ’s Sacred Promise: A Pastoral Framework for Indigenous Ministry,” which cites “epidemics, national policies, and Native boarding schools” as sources of that trauma.

The 56-page document also notes that “European and Eurocentric world powers” used language from 14th and 15th century public decrees known as Papal bulls to justify the enslavement and mistreatment of Native Americans and dispossession from their lands. “Let us be very clear here: The Catholic Church does not espouse these ideologies,” the document reads.

The document stops short of formally rescinding the bulls, as Indigenous groups have long requested. Nor does the document reference widespread abuse of Indigenous children by Catholic clergy.

“Many Christians have committed evil acts against indigenous peoples for which recent Popes have asked forgiveness on numerous occasions,” it states.

Bishops originally commissioned the document in 2020 but put it on hold in November 2023 concerned that certain language could create liability issues for the Church. The language in question referenced “past sins” and “wounds inflicted on Native peoples” by “some members of the Church,” the Catholic news site The Pillar reported.

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Florida parole board to decide on clemency for Leonard Peltier

American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier appealed his case before a Florida parole board Monday after having served most of his life in prison.

Peltier, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota, was convicted in 1977 of killing two FBI agents during a 1975 standoff on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.

Nick Tilsen, president and CEO of the Indigenous-led advocacy group NDN Collective, was allowed to testify at the parole hearing.

“Face to face with the federal government, I got to tell them that Leonard is revered globally as a political prisoner fighting against the unjust systems that oppress our people,” said Tilsen as quoted on the collective’s Facebook page.

Peltier, 79, claims he is innocent of the charges. The parole board is expected to announce their decision in mid-July.

Makah hunters in Washington state to resume whale hunts

The U.S. government announced this week it will allow the Makah Tribe in Washington to resume hunting grey whales, a right guaranteed them by the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service will allow the Makah Tribe to resume hunting up to 25 Eastern North Pacific gray whales over a 10-year period in U.S. waters.

“This final rule represents a major milestone in the process to return ceremonial and subsistence hunting of Eastern North Pacific gray whales to the Makah Tribe,” said Janet Coit, assistant administrator for NOAA Fisheries. “The measures adopted today honor the Makah Tribe's treaty rights and their cultural whaling tradition that dates back well over 1,000 years and is fundamental to their identity and heritage.”

The Marine Mammal Act of 1972 banned hunting, harassing, capturing or killing any marine mammal and prohibits the import and export of marine mammals and their parts or products.

The Makah Tribe in 2005 asked NOAA for a waiver that would allow them to hunt gray whales for ceremonial and subsistence purposes and to make and sell items created from harvested whales.

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Rare white buffalo calf of special significance to Lakota

While camping recently in Yellowstone Park’s Lamar Valley, Montana photographer Erin Braaten captured one-of-a-kind photographs of a white buffalo calf moments after it was born.

White buffalo calves are a rarity; though no formal studies have been conducted, cited statistics say only one in 10 billion buffalo is born white.

They have special spiritual significance to Plains tribes and are featured in many traditional stories.

Before his death in 1950, Lakota spiritual leader and visionary Nicholas Black Elk related to author Joseph Epes Brown why: nineteen generations ago, he said, a mysterious holy woman dressed in white buckskin came to Lakota chief Standing (or High) Hollow Horn and presented him a sacred stone pipe. She also taught him the seven spiritual rituals in which it should be used.

“’Always remember how sacred it is, and treat it as such, for it will take you to the end,’” Black Elk quoted her as saying. “’I am leaving now, but I shall look back upon your people in every age and at the end I shall return.” As she left, tradition holds that she transformed into a white buffalo calf.

The pipe has been passed down from one generation to the next. Today, Miniconjou Lakota spiritual leader Arvol Looking Horse is the 19th pipe holder. It was given to him when he was 12.

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