National Native News

Photo: Rhyolite formations at Chiricahua National Monument in southern Arizona. (Charles Dischinger) The U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill last week that would turn the Chiricahua National Monument in Cochise County into Arizona’s fourth national park. As KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio reports, the southern Arizona congressman who championed the bill is confident it will get President Donald Trump’s signature. Chiricahua is the unmistakable name of the Apache band that nomadically inhabited the rugged borderlands between the U.S. and Mexico. Among them was Geronimo. Historically, tribes like San Carlos, Mescalero, and Fort Sill Apache have not backed the national park designation. The bill’s sponsor, U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Arizona, sought to ease concerns that Apaches could no longer access the 12,000 acre site for ceremonies, but Ciscomani promised them that their right to pray and worship freely would not be infringed upon because of visitors or traffic. “We were able to assure them of that and make sure that was protected. That addressed most of their concerns on this – enough to not oppose this anymore.” Ciscomani is confident that Trump will sign the bill despite his administration’s funding and staffing cuts to the National Park Service. “We expect this to get done very soon, sooner than later. We should expect the president to sign this – no indication at all that there’s any kind of reservation from the White House on this. Quite the opposite, they’re celebrating it.” The state currently has three national parks – Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, and, most recently, Saguaro, which was designated in October 1994. “So October has become a great month to designate national parks in Arizona – 32 years apart – but nevertheless it happened in the fall. Beautiful time of the year. I encourage everyone listening to go check out the Chiricahuas, and a lot more people are going to find out about them soon.” Rocky Shore area in September 2026. (Photo: Andrea Taylor) The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians ceded much of their ancestral land as the U.S. ratified treaties across Oregon in 1855, but as Brian Bull of Underscore Native News and KLCC reports, some of that land will be returned soon. It is called Rocky Shores, and it is on the Oregon coast south of Yachats. After colonization, it fell under private ownership, but with the help of the McKenzie River Trust and some conservation non-profits, this seven-acre area will soon be back under the tribe’s stewardship. The Siletz’s natural resources director, Angela Sondenaa, says Rocky Shores is a  pristine space rich in biodiversity. “There is a freshwater stream that runs through it. It’s rich in ferns and mosses and mushrooms. Abundant salal, other coastal species that are so critically important to us and our efforts to restore kelp and sea otters to our territory.” The acreage was bought for $120,000 and is expected to be transferred to the Siletz soon. The tribe will not open it to the public to protect its ecosystem, but might hold organized events there. Land within Coppermine Chapter on the Navajo Nation. (Courtesy Loren Thomas) A Navajo Nation community near Page, Arizona passed a resolution in August denying a controversial copper mine proposal. KNAU’s Chris Clements reports the denial means the mine likely will not be able to move forward — for now. The resolution says the community of Coppermine unequivocally opposes any company digging for copper due to concerns about public health. David Kelley is the CEO of Chakana Copper, the Canadian mining company tied to the proposal. He says he is aware of the resolution. “We want a project that’s wholeheartedly endorsed by by the community until such time that it gets to that point, then you know there there’s not going to be a project.” That comes as a big relief to tribal members like Destinee Bigman, who opposed the mine because she is worried about environmental impacts. “Our land holds a lot of meaning to us as a family, and it means a lot. I mean, we ranch out there. Everything we do our traditional ceremonies there.” Bigman says she does not think the community will ever allow the mine to move forward.     Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our daily newsletter today. Download our NV1 Android or iOs App for breaking news alerts. Check out today’s Native America Calling episode Monday, October 5, 2026 — One tribe breaks from the pack on prediction markets

Photo: Albuquerque Indian Health Center. (cmh2315fl / Flickr) A new congressional resolution is confronting a painful chapter in federal health care for Native women. Lawmakers are formally condemning the non-consensual sterilization of thousands of Native women by the Indian Health Service in the 1970s. as Jeanette DeDios (Jicarilla Apache and Diné) reports. Sterilization abuse against Native women is at the center of a congressional resolution introduced this week. U.S. Reps. Sharice Davids (Ho-Chunk Nation), D-Kansas, and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pennsylvania, introduced a resolution officially condemning the non-consensual sterilization of Native American women by IHS during the 1970s. According to Davids’ office, a federal investigation found that between 1973 and 1976, IHS performed sterilization procedures on more than 3,400 Native women in four service areas without fully complying with informed consent requirements. The Government Accountability Office, then known as the General Accounting Office, found problems including inadequate consent forms, improper waiting periods, and procedures performed on women under the age of 21. The resolution acknowledges the lasting harm caused by the practice and calls for greater awareness of the federal government’s role in the abuse. Davids says the history is personal for Native communities and that acknowledging what happened is necessary to rebuild trust. The resolution also calls for continued efforts to protect informed consent and reproductive autonomy for Native people receiving health care. Davids is one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress. (Courtesy National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation / Facebook) Across the country, Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians marked the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation this week. As Dan Karpenchuk reports, September 30, also known as Orange Shirt Day, has become an important day of survivors of Canada’s notorious residential school system. It is also known as Orange Shirt Day and was declared by the Canadian government following the discovery of more than 200 unmarked gaves at the site of a former residential school in British Columbia. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation says more than 150,000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children attened the schools between the mid 1800’s to the late 1900’s. Many of them never returned to their homes and families. The children were taken from their families and communites and sent the residential schools which were run by churches and financed by the government. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke in Edmonton about the sixth National Day for Truth and Reconcialiation. He said the day is about the children – those who survived and those who did not. “And this is not a distant chapter in Canada’s past, but a truth that endures. And truth is the foundation of justice. We shouldn’t choose, as we used to here, in Fort Edmonton, which parts of our history to remember. We shouldn’t admire the bead work, and foreget the children that were forced into uniforms. We shoudn’t honour the drum and ignore the years that it was made to fall silent. And we should not hear the truth of residential schools and fail to act on it.” Across Canada, survivors of the schools told their stories of abuse and loss of culture. In Ottawa, Governor General Louise Arbour said it is important for all Canadians to face their unsettling past. She said truth does not change the past; it is a reminder that memory carries responsibility, to recognize the injustices to learn from them, and to ensure that they are never repeated.   Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our daily newsletter today. Download our NV1 Android or iOs App for breaking news alerts. Check out today’s Native America Calling episode Friday, October 2, 2026 — Indigenous design as visual sovereignty

Photo: Revillagigedo Island in Alaska where the old-growth forest plan is facing objections from KIC. (Anita Gould / Flickr) Ketchikan Indian Community and two conservation groups are asking a federal court to halt an old-growth timber sale in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. The Shelter Cove sale offers about 4 million board feet of timber as part of the larger South Revilla project near Ketchikan. The groups argue logging would harm subsistence resources, wildlife. and remaining old-growth forest. KIC President Gloria Burns says Indigenous knowledge cannot be treated as an afterthought in decisions about Tribal homelands. The groups are seeking an injunction while the court considers their broader lawsuit challenging the South Revilla project. Bids for the timber sale are scheduled to open October 20. Tesuque Casino in Santa Fe, N.M. (Courtesy Tesuque Casino) Prediction markets are becoming an issue for Native American tribes who argue they are threatening their gaming revenues and thus their ability to fund vital services. As KUNM’s Jeanette DeDios (Jicarilla Apache and Diné) reports, New Mexico tribes and state lawmakers are looking at taxing them. Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket are online platforms where people wager bets on an outcome around future real-world events, like sports or elections, but because of the way they are regulated they do not usually pay taxes to states. Tribal gaming in New Mexico, however, contributed over $151 million to the state’s general fund in the last fiscal year. Tribes fear that prediction markets will lead people away from gambling in tribal casinos to online markets, which people can access on their phones while on tribal lands. and tribal officials say that is a violation of the gaming rights they negotiated with the state as sovereign governments. Tribes also use those revenues for things like early education programs, housing, and healthcare. During a meeting of the Indian Affairs Interim Committee last week, Navajo Nation Council Delegate Eugenia Charles-Newton describes how prediction markets are also targeting minors to bet. Right now, with prediction markets, we know that a 10-year-old standing next to the sheep camp, they can go onto a website and they can wager a bet. Prediction market websites are classified as federal financial exchanges rather than traditional gambling platforms, which allows them to market to people 18 and older. With weak age verification on social media, minors have been reported making wagers. Prediction markets currently exist in a legal gray area and gaming officials want the state to tax them, but lawmakers raised concerns. Those include whether taxes would affect current gaming compacts, how online activity would be tracked on tribal lands, and who would collect revenue. The Mescalero Apache, along with Isleta, Pojoaque, and Sandia pueblos are suing Kalshi. The New Mexico Attorney General also filed suit in June. They are among a number of lawsuits across the country against the platforms. In response, the federal government is suing New Mexico to block the state from enforcing its gambling laws against prediction markets. (Courtesy Native Voters Alliance Nevada) Voting disparities have deep roots for people of color and new research shows New Mexico’s Native voters are likely to face numerous roadblocks at the November ballot box. Roz Brown has more. Native voters in New Mexico face many barriers to voting, including disproportionately high rejections for voter registration and mail-in ballots. The new Native American Rights Fund and Blockwell Consulting report, “Obstacles Persist”, analyzes data collected by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission from the 2020, 2022, and 2024 general elections. The report found rejected voter registration applications increased by an average of 200% in counties where Native Americans make up at least a quarter of the population. Senior staff attorney Allison Neswood says the report confirms what Native communities have long known to be true. “Their registration is getting denied, their ballots [are] getting rejected, and all of this really adds up to the systemic disenfranchisement of our people in our own homelands.” The report also outlines how disruptions at the U.S. Postal Service had a significant impact on Native voters. Even as overall mail-in voting numbers declined between 2020 and 2024, the rejection rate of ballots in areas with larger Native populations increased by 134%. Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order, calling on the Postal Service to oversee mail-in ballots, a move plaintiffs successfully argued would have severely restricted voting by mail. The report’s recommendations include expanding automatic and same-day registration to areas with larger Native populations, and paying poll workers comparable wages. Neswood says more investment is needed for voting infrastructure in Indian Country. “Making sure that our Native communities have polling locations in a reasonable distance from where they live, making sure they have registration opportunities, making sure that they can participate in mail voting.” The study focused on counties with high Native populations, including Cibola, McKinley, and San Juan counties in New Mexico along with Apache and Navajo counties in Arizona. Research by the Brennan Center in 2024 found voters of color are more likely to turn out when they live in jurisdictions where their ethnic group is the majority.   Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our daily newsletter today. Download our NV1 Android or iOs App for breaking news alerts. Check out today’s Native America Calling episode Thursday, October 1, 2026 — Indigenous leaders take on organized attempts to downplay residential school narrative

Photo courtesy Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc Canadian political leaders are condemning a white nationalist demonstration on Indigenous land in British Columbia as “despicable”. As Dan Karpenchuk reports, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are now investigating the incident. (Courtesy Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc) The group displayed a sign near a former Residential school that appeared to question the existence of children’s remains. Their demonstration took place on land belonging to the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc reserve near Kamloops. Police were called and members of the group, wearing masks, moved on through the city of Kamloops. Police officials say they take the matter seriously and are investigating. British Columbia is in the middle of a provincial election campaign and New Democratic party leader David Eby condemned the demonstration as disgusting. “This isn’t who we are as British Columbians. And we have seen a rise in hate, we have a rise in this kind of white nationalist behaviour in the province. So we got to do more to fight it.” The province’s Conservative party leader Lorne Doerkson also voiced is disapproval. “What happened yesterday, it was appalling and I hope that our law enforcement does everything they can, and everything that is available to them, to make sure that events like that do not happen in our province.” Prime Minister Mark Carney called the demonstration both cowardly and abhorrent adding that it had no place in this country. In a statement, Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc Chief Rosaenne Casimir said it was deeply concerning. She said the safety and well being of band members is a priority, adding that her people had a right to feel safe in their homes and in their community. According to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, a white nationalist group called The Second Sons views violence as necessary and inevitable to defend their movement, attack opposition, and ethnically cleanse Canada. (Photo: Dean Swope / KYUK) The draft of a supplemental report for the possible environmental impact of Alaska’s proposed Donlin Gold Mine was released for public comment this week. A federal court judge last year required the mine project to reexamine some of those impacts, particularly a larger spill scenario. KYUK’s Samantha Watson reports on its findings. The 2025 court order hinged on the possible environmental impact of the dam that would hold back waste from the proposed Donlin Gold mine project, called a tailings dam. Donlin Gold plans for the construction of a dam taller than the great pyramid of Giza, with capacity to contain millions of tons of production waste. It has been a focal point for regional opposition to the mine. Many locals have expressed fear about the possible contamination of the nearby land, communities, and the Kuskokwim River should that dam leak, or fail. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers examined potential environmental impacts of the project to inform the federal permitting process. The agency’s 2018 environmental assessment of the project, which was used to permit the proposed mine. modeled a spill of just 0.5% of the tailings dam’s contents. But Bethel’s Orutsararmiut Native Council argued in federal court that the Army Corps should have considered the chance of a much larger spill. A federal judge agreed on that point. This week, a draft of that court-ordered report was released for public comment. It examines a spill of 27% of the dam’s contents into the land and waterways surrounding the mine site on the middle Kuskokwim River. In that catastrophic scenario, the Army Corps’ draft report says a spill could devastate fish habitats and aquatic activity in Crooked Creek, a community about ten miles from the proposed mine site, for decades. Thousands of acres of wetlands and streams would be buried or eroded. A spill that large would expose the people in Crooked Creek to contaminants, potentially displace members of the community, or even kill people, the report says. Donlin Gold said in a written statement last Wednesday that it takes the report seriously. The company also maintains that “the supplemental review does not mean the risk of a tailings release has increased, nor does it represent a change to the proposed tailings storage facility design.” In a statement also released last Wednesday, the law firm Earthjustice, which represents tribal opposition to the proposed mine, said that the supplemental environmental review still falls short. They argue that 27% is still a small percentage of what could be released. They want to see modifications to the design of the tailings dam. The draft report now enters a 30-day comment period.   Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our daily newsletter today. Download our NV1 Android or iOs App for breaking news alerts. Check out today’s Native America Calling episode Wednesday, September 30, 2026 — The Menu: Blue corn children’s book and a new Native pastry shop

Photo: The Alaska Federation of Natives educates young people in Indigenous villages about the importance of voting in every election. (Michelle Sparck / AFN) Alaska Native leaders are working to bring back the power of the state’s Indigenous voters. In a state where one in four voters is Native, Tribal leaders say that inaccessible geography and information gaps have combined to reduce the potency of Indigenous voices. What was once a powerful voting bloc has weakened over the years as younger generations have become less politically active, as Mark Moran reports. As recently as 1982, Indigenous people wielded substantial power at the polls – some villages even had voter turnout as high as 80%. That number has fallen drastically, now hovering at closer to 30%. Michelle Sparck, director of Get Out Native Vote for Alaska Federation of Natives, says Indigenous leaders are encouraging Native villagers to carry on the tradition of democracy established by their elders. “How difficult is it to convince a dozen of your friends and neighbors in a small community to invest in making informed decisions, and testimony, and willingness to serve? And that’s what we’re asking our people to do, is reflect on our history.” Sparck says Alaska’s Indigenous population prefers to cast its vote in person rather than by mail, which can often be difficult due to geography, health issues or a lack of polling places. But even if voting by mail, postal service can often be interrupted by severe weather. There is also limited access to Alaskan communities that can only be reached by boat or plane. The Alaska Federation of Natives has worked in schools to teach young people about civics and government. The organization also travels to villages to encourage young people to re-awaken the power of voting. “We have so much political power. We have an ability to shape Alaska’s government in our own image, and we just need to own that power again, just like our elders did.” Indigenous villages are also facing a shortage of poll workers, especially in the most remote regions of the state, or physical polling places that were never open at all in recent elections – including in Shaktoolik, Diomede, and Kobuk in northwest and western Alaska. Federal officials are also working to build practices to best communicate with Indigenous villagers, and help them exercise their right to vote. Organizations like the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center in south Minneapolis offer supportive housing that helps urban Native Americans access culturally responsive healthcare, social, and recreational services as they overcome obstacles in their lives. (Courtesy MIWRC) Ending longstanding disparities for Native Americans is not just limited to reservations. A lack of access to affordable, stable housing is an issue felt across Minnesota. Support organizations working with Indigenous populations in Minneapolis say they are working through a maze of complications, as Mike Moen reports. Minneapolis is home to one of the largest concentrations of urban Native Americans in the United States with a key cultural corridor on the city’s south side. The American Indian Community Development Corporation offers programs addressing housing and homelessness in the area. Executive Director Travis Earth-Werner says the support system has had a lot to contend with recently. “The opioid epidemic, the pandemic, all these events that have occurred throughout, you know, the last ten years [have] escalated homelessness, poverty. There’s a lot of first-time homeless individuals.” His nonprofit has about 500 units available for Native Americans overcoming substance use disorders and other challenges so they can maintain their housing, but Earth-Werner says resources are stretched thin, with added concerns about possible federal cuts on the horizon. And he says there are still gaps to fill for needs like sober housing options. In communities all over, Earth-Werner says everybody wants to add affordable housing development to meet demand, but he says to stay in those units, people need good paying jobs that do not always require a long list of education credentials. And for areas with unique needs, he says groups on the ground need all the outside support they can get so that staff members can stay mission focused. “It takes people with a lot of hard work to work with individuals and progress them forward when often there’s a lot of hopelessness involved.” Ruth Buffalo, president of the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, echoes thoughts about having strong supportive services to go alongside any new housing development. In this part of South Minneapolis, she says public safety feels like an afterthought, with drug dealing and other criminal activity making it hard for American Indians to go about their daily lives. “Our most vulnerable are really trying hard to make a new path forward, but they can just go right outside and there’s predators lurking.” The Women’s Resource Center recently opened its 24-unit supportive housing building called Oshki-Gakeyaa, or New Way. The city contributed funding to that effort, but on a larger scale, Buffalo says policymakers need to listen to what residents want in crafting solutions, like housing they can afford.     Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our daily newsletter today. Download our NV1 Android or iOs App for breaking news alerts. Check out today’s Native America Calling episode