From Sungmanitu:
If you don’t know, I’m making an audio documentary about AIM and conducting on the ground research and interviews with organizers new and old about their conditions in order to find out what unity can be built. I will be traveling from Michigan to Colorado and will talk to many
Elders of the movement as well as many youth and people in between. If this seems like something worth supporting to you $ZitkatosTinCan on CA or @Zitkato On ven is where you can send that help. This will help pay for a car rental, gas, emergency shelter if we need it, and most
Importantly for mutual aid and food. You can also help out by offering me a meal or a couch to sleep on. I look forward to sharing what I learn as well as the archive of information and videos I have from the 5 years I’ve been studying AIM and the US conditions
We are at 720/2500
Comrade Sungmanitu has shared the history of the Indigenous movements in Northamerica before here in this community via the ChunkaLutaNetwork here is one of my favorites: Fish Wars, Climate Change, and Forgotten History
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/29814
This article was originally produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
Kaiya Little
The Hechinger ReportSavion Horn watched as “before” and “after” images appeared on a screen at the front of his classroom: black-and-white photos of boys and girls, much younger than him and his classmates, first with faces framed by long hair and traditional clothing, then with their locks cut, wearing high-necked dresses and stiff button-ups.
For Horn, then a high school senior at Grand Prairie High School near Dallas and a descendant of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, it was his first in-depth lesson on the boarding schools where the U.S. government sent hundreds of thousands of Native American children in the 19th and 20th centuries with the goal of assimilating them and eradicating Native culture.
“They weren’t allowed to speak their own language. They weren’t allowed to represent themselves with their music or art,” said Horn, who was exposed to the lesson last school year through the American Indian/Native Studies class offered at his high school. “It was very emotional to me, and it would be for anyone who actually wanted to take anything away from the class and learn.”
The American Indian/Native Studies course, or AINS, was piloted in the Grand Prairie school district in 2021 following years of work by Indigenous parents and educators around the state, who drafted course materials from scratch. To build on the success of a Chicano/Mexican American studies class the state approved in 2015, the State Board of Education had in 2018 called for the creation of other ethnic studies classes, including Native studies. Two years later, board members certified the AINS class as an “innovative course,” meaning it covered state-approved topics that fall outside of the required curriculum and other districts could adopt it.
Grand Prairie school district social studies coordinator Lanette Aguero waits to testify at the State Board of Education’s hearing on June 26, 2025, in Texas. Credit: Photo by Kaiya Little/The Hechinger Report
But in 2025, when the class came up for its regular five-year renewal under the process for “innovative courses,” the political landscape in Texas had changed. Starting in 2021, the state had taken steps to limit instruction around issues of race, ethnicity and gender: That year, Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 3, which restricts instruction on “controversial issues” and says educators should approach those topics “objectively and in a manner free from political bias.”
This past June, just a week before the committee met to discuss the course, the state passed SB 12, allowing parents to review and raise objections about K-12 educational materials and prohibiting policies, activities or programs that “reference race, color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation.”
At the federal level, President Donald Trump has issued executive orders calling for the end of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion practices, known as DEI, in public K-12 schools and colleges. And leadership of the Texas education board had changed too, leading to more scrutiny of course content.
Groups including the Ethnic Studies Network of Texas, an organization devoted to the advancement of diverse representation in school curricula, and Native-led nonprofits like the Society of Native Nations lobbied for the course’s survival. Four Native nations from across Texas and Oklahoma also endorsed AINS, sayingthe class offered students the opportunity to understand a more complete, accurate picture of tribal histories than is typically taught in K-12 classrooms.
At the Texas education board’s June hearing, most members were supportive of the class and sympathetic to the frustrations of course organizers with the prolonged renewal process. Some board members, though, expressed concern about the course, arguing that its discussion of the role of Catholic churches in the mistreatment of students at boarding schools might shame Christian students. Another representative questioned the purpose of land acknowledgements recognizing Indigenous people as an area’s original residents, suggesting that some land was traded or given to settlers or was unclaimed and that it wasn’t always clear to whom it belonged.
After two days of debate, the board voted 9-5 in favor of renewing the course. With a compromise to remove a passage in a reading about George Washington that the board objected to, the course will continue to operate as an innovative class for another five years. At a time when DEI is under attack around the country, supporters of the Native studies class view their success as giving hope to others who want to see similar classes created or preserved in other states.
“I cannot underscore enough how important of a win this is,” said Sarah B. Shear, an associate professor of social studies and multicultural education at the University of Washington-Bothell, whose research has found that content on Native Americans in most K-12 social studies curriculum often leaves out information on modern contributions of Indigenous people.
Focus on ‘resilience’
In part because of research like hers, a few other states and districts have taken similar steps to expand Native studies. In 2015, lawmakers in Washington state passed a mandate that every school district teach tribal history, culture and government, becoming the second state to approve a Native Education for All law, after Montana in 1999. In 2025, California expanded history lessons about the Gold Rush and Spanish colonial periods to include more Native perspectives. And in Arizona, students must encounter at least two social studies courses — one in grade school, another in high school — that include the history of Native Americans in their state.
In Texas, educators, parents and tribal members around the state came together over Zoom at the height of the pandemic to develop the course, which covers lessons relating to geography, arts and culture and the contemporary achievements of Indigenous peoples around Texas and the country. The content includes sections about pivotal Supreme Court cases on tribal affairs, boarding schools and Stephen F. Austin’s Indian extermination policies in addition to topics like mascots and Indigenous scholarship in research.
The course’s creators — 22 people from Indigenous and non-Indigenous backgrounds — held trainings on its content and teaching strategies for educators interested in adopting the class. Lanette Aguero, the Grand Prairie district’s social studies coordinator, was among them. She attended an ethnic studies conference at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth in 2019, which led her to want to bring the class to her district.
While the Native American population in the 27,000-student district is quite small — only about 120 identified as Native American in 2023-2024, the most recent year for which data is available — the population of Native Americans in the larger Dallas area is significant. Twelve students in Grand Prairie signed up for the class its first year, 2021, and by 2024 the class had grown to 48 students. In 2024, two other districts, Robstown and Crowley, adopted the course as well.
As one of the first teachers of the American Indian/Native Studies class, Kimberly Rafalski, who is non-Native and a longtime social studies instructor in the Grand Prairie district, said she often felt like she learned alongside her students. Together, they walked through precontact histories and the ongoing stories of Indigenous peoples that are typically left out of traditional textbooks.
Some days were more difficult than others, she said. She recalled leaving school in tears after discussing the history of boarding schools, the image of her own young children in her mind. But throughout the year, Rafalski said, the class grew close through reflection and celebrations of Indigenous perseverance through art.
“There’s a lot of things in this class. They’re hard topics to teach,” Rafalski said. “There’s no sensationalizing any of it.”
But, she added, “We’re not going to do trauma. Every time we learn about something difficult, we do something that shows resilience.”
‘I’m right here’
In 2018, when the state education board called for the adoption of ethnic studies classes, most members supported the idea of expanded instruction, but they had differing views on whether that content should be included in separate courses or integrated into existing ones. Supporters of the ethnic studies classes referenced research suggesting that student performance improved by including representation in their textbooks, while others worried a class specializing in specific ethnic groups could be divisive.
Ultimately, Texas approved a Mexican-American studies course that year, marking the first high school ethnic studies class greenlit in the state and the first K-12 Mexican-American Studies course to be approved by a state board of education. The Native studies class was approved three years later, followed by an Asian-American studies class in 2024.
Students seemed to like the class. Some 97 percent of the 63 students who responded to a Texas Education Agency survey on the course said they felt “more positive about Native American/Indigenous culture than before taking the class.” One student said the course “helped me by not being afraid of who I am as a Native American.”
Walter Dougherty, a 10-year-old from the Conroe Independent School District near Houston who testified in favor of the course, said at the hearing that before AINS, his classes focused more on ancient civilizations than today’s Native Americans.
“People talk about us like we’re gone, but we’re not. I’m right here,” Dougherty said. “My brother and I are Cherokee kids growing up in Texas, and we want people to know our culture and history. … When I learn about my Cherokee family, I feel proud. I feel like I can do anything.”
Tom Dougherty testified at the State Board of Education’s hearing in June 2025 alongside his sons, Henry (left) and Walter. They are members of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Credit: Kaiya Little/The Hechinger Report
“I can’t imagine if my son were to never understand about his ancestors,” said Cheyenne Rendon, Diné and Apache, the senior policy officer for the Society of Native Nations and a lifelong Texan who grew up attending San Antonio schools. AINS, she said, “gives me hope that we’re not going to be erased.”
Related: States were adding lessons about Native American history. Then came the anti-CRT movement
During discussions about reauthorizing the American Indian/Native Studies course, the question of whether it ran afoul of Texas’s latest anti-DEI policies came up repeatedly.
At the hearing, Orlando Lara, cofounder of the Ethnic Studies Network of Texas, defended the course’s legality, noting that the federal Department of Education said in an April 2025 letter that “American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian history is not classified as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or critical race theory (CRT).” Under this direction, Native Americans represent distinct political identities as members of sovereign tribal nations, nonspecific to racial or ethnic classifiers.
But board members continued to press Lara over the technical definitions of race and ethnicity as they questioned how to interpret the latest state legislation.
Because of a lack of guidance from the Texas Education Agency on the “controversial issues” legislation in 2021, Lara said later, “for a long time, a lot of districts didn’t know what would get them in trouble with the law.” To counter this, he said, the Ethnic Studies Network is “trying to get out there that there’s no reason to fear teaching the class.”
There were other objections to the course too. State school board member Julie Pickren, A Republican from Pearland, said materials used in the class depicted “President George Washington as a terrorist” and lessons about boarding schools were “accusing our Christian missions and churches of kidnapping and sending kids to reeducation camps.”
Pickren did not respond to interview requests. Her comments about George Washington appeared to refer to an online resource from academic publisher ABC-Clio, which described his 1779 campaign against Iroquois villages siding with the British in which he instructed the Army “to rush on with the war-whoop and fixed bayonet” because nothing would “disconcert and terrify the Indians more than this.”
Audrey Young, a Republican school board member who represents the Houston area, shared similar concerns. She argued that 2024 curriculum standards requiring “suitable” educational materials to promote patriotism, lawful activity and other values should apply to innovative courses like the AINS class. “Currently, the suitability standards aren’t required” for innovative courses, Young wrote in an email. “But I do believe that if courses are being taught to students, then they should have to follow ALL the laws.”
Pickren and Young were among the five board members who voted against the class, but another nine members voted in favor. Those supporters noted that the AINS course materials had undergone a series of reviews and further deliberation was unnecessary.
“It is Texas history,” Gustavo Reveles, a Democrat who represents El Paso and other predominantly Hispanic border communities and who voted for the course, said in an interview. “A child can see themselves represented, can see themselves as members of this very amazing state and country, not just because of George Washington, not just because of Abraham Lincoln, but because of his people that look like him and talk like him.”
While supporters of the class celebrated the board’s approval, it’s only one step. They are now trying to get the course standards approved as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, which would leave it less vulnerable during review and renewal conversations. As it stands, the class faces another board vote in 2030 at the end of its current five-year innovative course period. Course organizers are also trying to encourage more districts and educators to adopt the class.
After graduating from the Grand Prairie school district last spring, Horn joined his family on the road as he took his place in the family business as traveling circus organizers.
He said the class became a way for him to connect with his culture and family as a descendant of the Potawatomi Nation. Now, he said, he hopes to get involved with his local Native communities and participate in the Texas powwow trail, a Native-run cultural celebration that takes place in several Texas cities each year.
“I appreciate being a part of a community, especially this one,” Horn said. “I know where I’m from, and it means a lot to me.”
Kaiya Little is a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma who has written about a variety of topics highlighting the environment and Indigenous identities in Texas.
Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at preston@hechingerreport.org.
The post Inside the fight to save Texas’ Native American studies course appeared first on ICT.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/30079
Te Aniwaniwa Paterson. (Photo supplied)
Behind the marae gates, there’s a deeply uncomfortable conversation going on, writes rangatahi Te Aniwaniwa Paterson, who’s part of a group working to end sexual violence within Māori communities.
At Waitangi, sovereignty is often spoken about. But what does sovereignty mean if we can’t openly speak about harm within our own communities?
I’m the rangatahi representative on Ngā Kaitiaki Mauri, the Māori caucus of a national network to end sexual violence. In this role, I serve alongside kaumātua Russell Smith and Joy Te Wiata. When I ran into them at Waitangi this year, it was a chance to catch up on our kaupapa.
Matua Russell Smith told me that the first time he stood at Waitangi to speak about sexual violence, in the early 2000s, he was unsure whether his kōrero would belong in a space dominated by discussions of whenua.
It was Rangimārie Naida Glavish who steadied his nerves. “She turned to me and said: ‘They’re talking about theremoved of our land, and you’re talking about theremoved of our people. Your kaupapa absolutely belongs here at Waitangi.'”
The conversation reminded him that while the Crown has obligations under Te Tiriti, which might dominate the kōrero at Waitangi, Māori also have responsibilities to each other.
“We have He Whakaputanga and Te Wakaminenga, which guide the kōrero that happens inside the marae gates of our hapū,” he explains.
And within the marae gates, one conversation comes up time and time again: What should we do about sexual abusers, including paedophiles and intimate partner abusers, who want to speak on the paepae tapu?
Joy Te Wiata and Russell Smith with Dame Rangimārie Naida Galvish (centre) at Waitangi this year. (Photo supplied)
Joy Te Wiata says this can be a deeply uncomfortable conversation. But a good way to approach it is to think about “sexual violence” through the kupu Maōri “mahi tūkino”. That wording, she says, makes the abuser’s breach of mana and tapu quite visible.
“Cultural platforms like the paepae are not places to support people who have perpetrated harm. If our marae really want to be places of safety, then they need to uphold tikanga by ensuring that mana and tapu are upheld,” says Joy.
“We’ve got to be careful we aren’t colonised in our own sacred spaces. If we’re saying that it’s okay to allow these things without going through our processes, without hohourongo, that’s not tikanga Maori.”
Russell puts it like this — when people come forward saying their kaumātua abused them, he says: “Kaumātua do not sexually abuse. If someone has done that, we need to remove that status from them. They are not practising kaumātua tikanga.”
This does not mean those who cause harm are cast out entirely or disowned.
Through their clinical and kaupapa Māori work, Russell and Joy have worked alongside many whānau as they navigate the long and difficult process of healing. They have seen that restoration is possible.
While restoration means someone may remain part of their whānau and community, it doesn’t always involve a return to positions of cultural authority. In some cases, the paepae may no longer be an appropriate place for them, Joy says.
And that applies too, she says, to numerous positions across the marae, not just the paepae: “Are we remembering, there’s as much mana in picking pipi, washing dishes, and digging the hāngi pit?”
The pair’s kaupapa Māori approach to healing differs from clinical models that focus on the individual. Instead, their work considers the wider environment in which the harm occurred — the whānau, hapū, and the spaces and systems around that person. It then addresses the conditions that allowed the harm to occur, with supervision, boundaries, and restrictions on alcohol use.
“Our tūpuna left us tikanga for a reason, for safety,” says Joy. “We’re not calling our people to something different — we’re calling them back to their own tikanga.”
“Whakamua whakamuri,” adds Russell. “The way back is forward.”
But kaupapa Māori services like this remain under-resourced.
Late last year, the government moved to redirect $1.7 million from sexual violence support services. Some contracts were extended for six months, but that came with clear warnings not to expect more.
Joy says such funding cuts affect kaupapa Māori services more deeply, because their available resources must support entire whānau.
“We’re whānau-centred, which means that each dollar must expand to cover the whānau approach,” she says. “If we discontinue services, there is a breakdown in trust with whānau, and it takes years to build trust in the first instance. So, it’s not just the end of programmes, it’s a discontinuation of that trust and reliability.”
For Russell, the ability of Māori to sustain our own healing systems is an issue of tino rangatiratanga. “The problem we have today is we don’t have full autonomy over our own resources, and that includes our own mātauranga,” he says.
He describes this as part of a longer pattern: “The Tohunga Suppression Act is still active by the way they prevent our people from accessing us, through not giving us the resources that belong to us, and that’s the biggest Tiriti issue.”
For both, Te Tiriti affirms not only a partnership but also the Crown’s responsibility to ensure Māori can exercise their own pathways to healing. Without that support, Joys says, the obligation remains unmet.
They’ve seen some tauiwi services decline to work with whānau whose needs are complex, leaving kaupapa Māori providers to carry the responsibility. But there are very few kaupapa Māori services across Aotearoa that feel equipped to work directly with people who’ve experienced sexual harm.
“We’re in dire straits, and that has a knock-on effect for our people who are wanting and needing support,” says Russell.
Still, there’s work happening at a national level to strengthen Māori capability.
Ngā Kaitiaki Mauri of Te Ohaaki a Hine is developing tools and resources to support other Māori social services to build confidence and competence in dealing with sexual violence. Rather than centralising a single national model, the focus is on strengthening local Māori providers who already have relationships with their communities.
Over time, they hope to help Māori services expand their own capacity, so whānau don’t have to seek help in systems that are not designed for them.
“Our tūpuna gave us these tools. They are breathed quite deeply into us,” says Russell. “We are basically giving back to our people what belongs rightfully to them.”
Joy and Russell at Te Tii marae, Waitangi. (Photo supplied)
Te Aniwaniwa Paterson (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Rangitihi, Ngā Paerangi, Ngāti Kahungunu) is a journalist and digital producer for Te Ao Māori News based in Tāmaki Makaurau. She represents rangatahi on Ngā Kaitiaki Mauri, the Māori caucus of TOAH-NNEST (the National Network Ending Sexual Violence Together), which operates as a Tiriti o Waitangi-based partnership. She serves alongside Russell Smith and Joy Te Wiata.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/28531
It was sunny and warm for the end of November on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation in northern Montana. Joseph Eagleman was standing on a grassy hill looking at a 20-panel solar array in the backyard of a Chippewa Cree elder.
It was built under the Solar for All program, a Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act-funded project that distributed $7 billion to build residential solar across the country. Here on Rocky Boy’s, around 200 homes would have received solar funded by the federal dollars.
This home was the first to get panels in Queensville, a small community of modest homes in one of the reservation’s valleys. The home is brown, two stories, and fully electric, which is one of the requirements to qualify for Solar for All funding. Eagleman met me there to give me a tour of the panels that all but eliminated the resident’s $200–300 monthly electricity bills, according to Eagleman.
Eagleman is the CEO of the Chippewa Cree Energy Corporation, an organization that manages energy development for the tribe. Here in the northern Plains, a coalition of 14 tribes received a $135 million grant. The money would have provided around $7.6 million for each reservation to build residential solar, and Eagleman would have managed the Solar for All funds for the Chippewa Cree.
Then came President Donald Trump. His administration cut Solar for All in August of 2025.
Joseph Eagleman, standing beneath the solar array, looks out onto the Rocky Boy’s Reservation.
Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder“It’s terrible. We were getting ready to take off,” Eagleman said.
Residents had seen this solar array, which was built in the fall of 2024, and were excited about the possibility of free solar. Eagleman had a list of 40 households that were applying for the first round of the project. But only this home got a completed solar array before the program was stopped.
“It was a gut punch,” he said.
The reservation is about an hour and a half from the closest city, Great Falls, Montana, and has a population of 3,300. Driving down to meet Eagleman, I passed a cafe/casino/bar/gas station, a school, a skate park, and many residences, but little else. “There’s not a lot of opportunities, except for leaving the reservation,” said Eagleman.
Electricity costs are high on the reservation, as they are across rural America. Building and maintaining infrastructure without density drives up costs in these areas. Applicants showed Eagleman their bills to demonstrate why they wanted solar so badly, and some were up to $900 a month. Around 35 percent of the reservation’s residents live below the poverty line, more than double the rate for the United States. Solar installations like these cost thousands of dollars — money that most residents don’t have.
Eagleman had hired Zane Patacsil, a local resident who had experience installing solar, a month before the cuts. Patacsil joined us in the sunny backyard, overlooking the hills and valleys that make up the Rocky Boy’s Reservation.
Around 200 solar arrays would have been installed on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation in northern Montana with funding from Solar for All. This was the first, and ultimately the only one, installed in fall 2024. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder
He said Solar for All would have brought some economic development to Rocky Boy’s and the other reservations that received the grant: an office and people to manage it, as well as training and hiring solar installers to do the labor.
“There were even members who were talking about starting their own solar businesses so they could be installing,” added Patacsil. “It was very disheartening to hear that news, because we lost all of that with it.”
A question of sovereignty
When protests raged against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016, Cody Two Bears was on the tribal council for the Standing Rock Sioux. He saw another layer to the dispute: energy extraction on tribal land that not only hurt residents, but also brought no relief for high energy bills.
Two Bears wanted to bring energy sovereignty to his community and other tribal nations. He started the nonprofit Indigenized Energy in 2017. “I do this because of energy and energy sovereignty as well, but it creates a sense of hope for our tribal nations,” he said.
Sovereignty and self-governance are what tribes allegedly gained in exchange for giving up traditional homelands when treaties were signed over the past centuries. Tribal sovereignty is not only about protecting culture and traditions; it’s also about self-sufficiency. It’s also legally protected by the U.S. Constitution. But that’s easier said than done without the resources to support true independence, which have been systemically removed by the U.S. government.
Native Americans are more food insecure and rely on Medicaid at higher rates than their white counterparts, depending on the U.S. government for subsidies while desiring the sovereignty that was promised. Energy independence is a way to regain a degree of that sovereignty, and Two Bears has made that his goal with Indigenized Energy.
Donica Brady outside Busby, Montana on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder
“My ultimate goal is to work myself out of a job. I want to build so much capacity into these tribes where they don’t need Indigenized Energy anymore,” said Two Bears.
But the funding picture changed dramatically when Trump’s administration slashed solar spending.
Indigenized Energy had already been building residential solar on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation for a few years, and it ramped up to prepare for more work through Solar for All. But when the program was cut, Indigenized Energy laid off around half its staff, including Donica Brady, the coordinator for the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeastern Montana.
I first met Brady in September 2025, about a month after the layoff, and the pain of losing a job she loved was evident. Brady had spent the past couple of years building trust in a community where promises have been made and broken over and over again. Solar for All became yet another one.
Part of programs like Solar for All is job development within the solar industry. Brady was part of a training program through Red Cloud Renewable, funded by previous grants for solar on reservations. Solar for All would also have funded training and trade development on these reservations.
When I caught up with Brady again at her house in Busby, she was working two jobs, and the only time she had for me was at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, after her daughter’s choir recital. I found her in the garage with a kitchen knife in hand, skinning a deer her wife had shot a few days previously. She asked if I wanted to help and handed me a knife.
Donica Brady carves out meat from a deer in her garage in Busby, Montana. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder
We chatted as we worked on the deer skin, cutting fat and sinew away from the dark red meat. She’d returned to her previous job as a bus driver and was hired by Freedom Forever, a solar installation company based in California. She’s still working in renewable energy, and Freedom Forever does work on reservations at times, but Brady’s job is no longer on the ground working with her community like she craves.
“I want my people to be able to be self-sufficient, not have to rely on funding or things like that that can be taken away,” Brady said. I heard this over and over: People don’t want to have to depend on the federal government for “handouts.”
As Brady cut out the tender backstraps and set them aside to give to her auntie, she talked about solar’s deeper meaning. “People call it progress, but I see it as going back to what we were taught, but in a new way,” she said. It’s more than just energy; it’s harnessing the sun, an important reflection of Northern Cheyenne culture.
The deer we were cutting up felt like a symbol summarizing everything we talked about. It was one way Brady could become self-sufficient and support those she loves. If only the power of the sun could be harnessed as easily as a deer skinned in a garage.
Residents are hurt most
Some time later, just outside of Lame Deer, Montana, the tribal headquarters of Northern Cheyenne, I got lost looking for Thomasine Woodenlegs’ house. My phone had no service, so all I had was Woodenlegs’ instructions: Look for a bright-green house at the end of the road. Many U-turns later, Woodenlegs welcomed me into her kitchen, where photos of loved ones covered the walls and two cats, one orange and one black, lounged on the couch.
Woodenlegs works for her tribe, and she has lived in this house for 50 years. She plans to pass it down to her family. But she knows she will be saddling them with a financial burden, too.
“How am I going to survive after I retire? And how is whoever inherits my house?” Woodenlegs asked. “I’ll need to warn them that the electricity runs like $400 or $500, and they’d have to have a really secure income to live here. Otherwise, they’d be without lights.”
Power lines cross the short grass prairie on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder
Woodenlegs saw solar panels from previous grant programs like the White River Community Solar Project, funded by the Department of Energy, going up around the reservation in 2020 and 2021. Back then, Solar for All’s big allocation for Indigenous communities brought more hope. She put in her own applications, feeling jealous of friends and acquaintances who received them, wondering when it would be her turn. She’s still waiting.
Tina Cady, another Northern Cheyenne resident, lives just outside of Busby and has applied for solar panels multiple times. She worked for the Indian Health Service for 25 years until she went on disability. Now she lives on a fixed income of about $1,000 a month, and her husband picks up as many hours as he can as an adjunct professor at the tribal college. She showed me her October electric bill, which was $225.13.
Brady handled her application and told Cady what she’d learned in the field so far: Cady was a prime applicant for solar panels and she should be at the top of the list. “I’m an elder, and I’m disabled,” Cady said. Plus, she owns her own land. But Cady never heard anything more about it.
I asked whether she felt betrayed by the funding cuts, after so many previous letdowns to tribal communities. Cady said no, because it wasn’t her money to be betrayed. But she was disappointed and disenchanted. “I have seen them do this before. You get so you don’t trust anybody anymore.”
The fight continues
Four different lawsuits have been filed in federal courts against the Trump administration for ending Solar for All. It was terminated after the One Big Beautiful Bill Actrescinded “the unobligated funds for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund,” which had provided the funding for Solar for All.
The lawsuits claim that Solar for All was already a year into operation, so the funds were obligated, and that taking away already obligated funds is illegal.
All the lawsuits are still active. One from Climate United will move into oral arguments in February. Another from a coalition of 22 states is seeking an injunction to keep the Solar for All funds available.
Eagleman hopes to find additional funding to build residential solar arrays like this one for many more Chippewa Cree elders. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder
But even without results from the lawsuits, solar installers like Cody Two Bears and Joseph Eagleman plan to continue to fight for solar development on northern Plains reservations.
Eagleman said he’s going to keep looking for funding to help bring affordable electricity to the Chippewa Cree on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation. He’s been looking at other public funding through the Department of Energy, as well as private philanthropic options.
Two Bears said he is moving forward with his company’s list of families awaiting solar. Indigenized Energy is ready to break ground on a project on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin, which was next in line when the funding was cut. He said they found private funding for that project, as well as another solar array for the Rosebud Sioux.
“So even though the money is not there, we’re still finding alternative resources and funding to make these possible and make ’em feasible,” said Two Bears. “It’s just going to take longer.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Native families were promised free solar. Trump took it away. on Feb 15, 2026.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/27247
Janine Jackson interviewed Nation guest editor Rayan El Amine about voices from Gaza for the February 6, 2026, episode of CounterSpin*. This is a lightly edited transcript.*
https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260206El-Amine.mp3
The Nation (2/3/26)
Janine Jackson: Donald Trump declared that the “War in Gaza is over” on October 13 of last year. Trump says weird and untrue things every day, but corporate news media seemed to take this one as fact. As FAIR’s Julie Hollar found, coverage of Gaza in US news sites has plummeted since that time.
The Nation magazine dedicates its current issue entirely to the crisis the corporate news say isn’t happening, or is being controlled, featuring reflections on a number of facets: personal stories, history, literature, maps…. It’s called “A Day for Gaza,” but it represents, of course, more than that.
The issue was put together by our guest. Rayan El Amine is a writer and editor from Beirut, as well as a translator for Drop Site News and an editor at the Cleveland Review of Books. He joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Rayan El Amine.
Rayan El Amine: Hey, Janine. Good to be here.
JJ: Well, the first piece in the issue is by Mohammed Mhawish, and it talks about ceasefire, and I think that’s a good place to start. It’s a key way to talk about the divide between what’s really happening in Gaza and Palestine, and the story that US media are telling people. The New York Times, February 3, referred to a “shaky ceasefire,” but still. Are we wrong in our understanding of what “ceasefire” means, and that that is not what’s happening right now?
The Nation (2/3/26)
REA: It’s a good question, beginning with the kind of framing that the Trump administration has put forward, and that many mainstream media outlets, like the New York Times, have adopted. And they’re not wrong necessarily, in the sense that the ceasefire is functioning exactly as the Trump administration is intending. And that’s why Mohammed Mhawish’s piece, I think, is so important in leading the project. Rather than speak for him, I’ll just read a short sentence from the piece that I think encapsulates the argument well. He writes in the second paragraph:
The distance between that official narrative and the facts on the ground reveals how the language of ceasefire has been repurposed. It no longer describes a pause in violence, but rather a mechanism for managing it, sanitizing ongoing military force under the guise of restraint.
And this is a model that we’ve seen Israel adopt, primarily in South Lebanon, and is now being taken up in full force in Gaza.
Rayan El Amine: “The only way that such a—I would call it what it is—colonial project could go unnoticed is under this project of ceasefire.”
Essentially what we’re seeing, I would call it a sort of occupation via ceasefire. The introduction of this foreign “Board of Peace,” which I think in the coming months will begin what is effectively a bidding war to turn Gaza into Trump’s Riviera-ic imagination. And in many ways, that’s the impetus for this project. The only way that such a—I would call it what it is—colonial project could go unnoticed is under this project of ceasefire.
In part, Israel’s violence, because it was broadcast to the world, and because of the courage of many of the journalists, it was difficult for them to move forward with these diplomatic and bureaucratic colonial proceedings, that actually, I would say, preceded the genocide by many years—thinking about the Abraham Accords, and Oslo Acords in the ’90s long before that, this slow fracturing and destabilizing of the Palestinian Territories into separate entities. And it’s the responsibility of us working in media to not just challenge that, but to uplift the voices on the ground, to give them a sort of self-determination.
Writers Against the War in Gaza
And I’m glad you began with the Times, and quite critical of what the Times has done. And I would say what they’re doing is, at this point, misreporting. And in that case, I often turn to an organization like Writers Against the War in Gaza, which has grown exponentially over the last few years, and is engaged in a boycott, demonstrating tangibly the material relationships that people in the New York Times editorial board have with the Israeli government, the falsification of objectivity that continues to persist.
And I say that to say it’s not an accident that the language is being muddied. And what I hope we achieved a little bit, at least with our editors’ note with the framing of the project, is a kind of clarity, what we’re witnessing is a genocide sustained, and is an attempt to, I think, continue to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their land.
JJ: I also lifted up that very sentence from Mohammed Mhawish, about the redefining of ceasefire as no longer describing a pause in violence, but rather a mechanism for managing it. And that’s my fear, as a media observer, and it’s what you’re talking about, is that news media will simply define us away from seeing and responding to what’s happening. Because, after all, we are not international lawyers or diplomats. And so if someone says, “Oh no, it’s different. It’s not the horror show you saw last year. Now it’s a different situation, and there’s a new term for it,” the narrative turns us away from the reality.
And as Mhawish says, this is now going to represent the definition of success. The current state in Gaza, which involves killing, which involves genocide, which involves hunger, is going to be called a success. Sometimes media critics are joked about for caring so much about narrative, or about words. But in this case, and cases like this, it’s going to very much determine what people think is happening, and how they think they should feel about it.
Justice Everywhere (3/10/25)
REA: A hundred percent. And this question of narrative you bring up is really important. The editors who worked on this project were cognizant of the driving narratives of the moment. And by that, I’m referring principally to the ongoing horrors in Minneapolis, this invasion or I would call it an abduction in Venezuela, what’s currently happening in Iran…. I would argue the Trump administration is working on all of these in conjunction. And it’s a term that they call “flooding the zone.” I’m sure you’re familiar with it, but it’s this idea of inundating us, as media and culture workers—and more importantly, as viewers and readers—with so much horror that our capacity to be desensitized increases with every ensuing attack, every ensuing violation. Because the Trump administration is so…. They’re not willing to wait for the judicial proceedings that already exist in place, there is no legal order that can slow down this project.
It’s up to us, those of us at institutions that are great, like FAIR, and I believe are great, like The Nation, to slow down this pace. And so it’s not an accident that this was released in the midst of the ongoing violence in Minneapolis, because, in part, the intervention we want to make is a willingness to say, no injustice will pass by our publication without being heavily interrogated, without being closely noticed, and without it beginning from the ground.
An editors’ note released the day before on February 2 had specifically to do with the people of Minneapolis rising up against the ongoing ICE and state repression. And that’s the kind of thing that makes me really proud that those two editors’ notes coexist side by side at the moment.
JJ: And I was thinking that very same thing. And you hear pundits talk about competition for attention: “Well, people can’t care about Gaza when we’ve got Minneapolis”—or the Epstein files, or whatever.
And I don’t really hear regular folks say that so much. We’re emotionally exhausted and sad and angry. But I don’t hear people saying, “Oh, I can’t care about Gaza, because now there’s Minnesota.” I actually hear people seeing, oh yeah, commonality, seeing the connection among these things, which is the opposite of what I think Trump is trying to achieve, but seeing, actually, more ground for solidarity across borders, and across “issues.”
The Nation (3/23/15)
REA: This sort of solidarity extends in the inverse. It comes from Gaza. I remember, it’s funny, when Mamdani was elected, a number of journalists, —some of whom are featured in this issue—texted me, congratulating me on his election, which was a strange kind of invert of attention. And so, yeah, the network of solidarity among people who are oppressed has been rigid for a long time, and I think will continue to be.
JJ: I want to talk about the push behind the issue itself. You’ve talked about it, but The Nation has been reporting on Palestine for many years now. So why this issue, right now in particular? Has it been in the works for a while, or what’s the impetus in February 2026?
REA: It’s a good question. And I think, in part, it begins with the history of the publication. Edward Said was a longtime contributor. Mohammed El-Kurd was the publication’s first Palestine correspondent, and Jack Mirkinson, who worked on this issue, has been leading the magazine’s coverage for a long time. In truth, it would be nice to formulate a particular thematic answer, but like a lot of things, ultimately, it was pragmatic, the reason that we chose this date. I mean, this project was many, many months in the making.
And in part what I want to highlight is that the particular pieces chosen were chosen for a reason, as were the writers. And so, thank you again for the opportunity to speak about it, because one of the challenges that I would make to other publications is to understand that, actually, the construction of this project, for us on the editorial side—and maybe I’m speaking only for myself when I say this—was relatively easy.
The Nation (2/3/26)
And by that, I mean the ability to connect with journalists on the ground is not difficult. They are excited to work, they’re extremely diligent. They submit their articles on time. They’re very welcome to being edited, and this in what is, in effect, a war zone, even after the ceasefire. And so we were very careful with the kind of editing we were doing.
And because the situation is really dynamic, often we were in search for a piece that can encapsulate what’s happening. And the piece that ultimately we settled on doing was Rasha Abou Jalal’s piece on “How to Survive in a House Without Walls,” which for me is, I would say, one of the standouts. And if one was going to read this issue sequentially, after Mohammed Mhawish’s framing, I would turn to this one, because it presents the ceasefire situation as it is.
And one might notice, in reading a lot of these, there’s an intense temporal shift. Some of the essays really focus on events that happened in August. And, truthfully, that’s actually because they were commissioned then. But the authors were diligent and patient and welcome to this long and arduous editing procedure.
The Nation (2/3/26)
And the translation work needed to be delicate, I think. Many of these writers submitted in Arabic, but many of them also submitted in English. Alaa Alqaisi has a piece on reading Edward Said during the genocide. She is, in my mind, one of the most brilliant English-writing authors that is being published right now.
And so, I don’t know, it would be easy to sit here and brag and say, “We uncovered all of these special writers,” but they’ve been there. They’ve been working for three years now.
And I go back and forth on why big media institutions, with a lot of money, refuse to look to them. And I think the answer is, frankly, in some parts, a little bit racist, a little bit of the value put on foreign journalists and the guise of objectification. But I think anyone could do this project, any publication.
JJ: Right. When we do introductory speeches, I often talk about how the fact that media is a business interferes and conflicts with journalism as a public service. And one of the things that seems like a small little thing is, “Well, we’re not going to hire translators anymore. We’re going to send correspondents to Tehran, to Gaza, but we’re not going to pay for translators.”
And so then, well, what does that do? That’s a cost-cutting decision that, of course, affects who you speak to, who gets heard, whose voices are included. Translation is a real straightforward way to represent the conflict if you’re just a cost-cutting corporation, as opposed to if you are really a journalistic institution.
One of the things—and it’s just building on what you just said—a factor of this [Nation] issue is, we see Palestinians as actors and not as subjects, because even in mainstream news that is sympathetic or whatever, or critical of the Trump administration, so often Gazans, Palestinians in general, are discussed as really pawns—pawns of Hamas, pawns of Israel—but not people. And so just that fact of having these writers speak with their own, if you will, voices shifts that. And I think that’s crucial.
The Nation (2/6/26)
REA: That’s such a terrific point. It makes me really happy that it comes out in the project. In part, I think the other thing we wanted to do is—what you’re describing is, I would call this a sort of objectification of these Palestinians, right? They can only exist if they are in the hands of some other party or administration that we actually see as holding legitimate power.
But another consequence of that is the Palestinian has been a very idyllic subject, as a subject only worthy of sympathy as perfect, as absence of contradiction, as absent of even frustration. And for two years, because there’s this constant pleading with the world to move, we see them only in this sympathetic light, as if they are patiently waiting for us to save them, and they are doing the best that they can, giving us almost a divine quality.
And that’s what Ola al Asi’s piece, I think, does tremendously. She says, “Look, I knew all of you were going to betray us.” And she’s speaking to the Western leadership, to the Western audience. She said, “I knew when I was going to stay in the North and continue my work,” without what she calls purported protection of a press pass and a helmet, “I knew the world would still do nothing about it. ” And that is, I think, a much more interesting question, actually.
If Gazans—and they should—have come to this conclusion, actually, that the world is unmoved, or not moved enough, by their position, why do they sustain the work? And one of the things in a media landscape in the West is, if we just look at the Washington Post layoffs today, that it’s increasingly easy to be cynical. One thing that I’m always awestruck by—and even now I’m sort of applying an idyllic quality to them, but I do really believe this—is that they really believe in the dutiful quality of journalism. I mean, they believe that journalism has specific ethics, that they are required to follow them, despite them being in a war zone.
A story I tell often, prior to this issue, I commissioned a writer, Abubaker Abed, while he was still in Gaza to write a story for me about being thrust into war correspondence. And he sent me a message, because he was late in submitting his piece, saying, “Hey, I’m so sorry. I am actively being flooded, and I don’t have time to write this piece.”
And I responded, saying, “Of course, take all the time you need, but also, do you want us to pay you now ahead of schedule, so you can use the money to find somewhere to stay at least for a little while?”
And he said, “Absolutely not. I refuse to get paid until the piece is out, just like you would any other reporter working for you. ” And I’m always, as someone who’s quite cynical, sometimes, of journalism’s dutiful quality, it’s really remarkable. This is a special crop of reporters and story tellers and writers.
JJ: Finally, I found the piece by Ola al Asi very moving, just talking about being a reporter in Gaza: “We have covered events no human can bear.” That piece, along with the rest of the pieces, it really brought home for me, brings home were it needed, how precious journalism is, how much reporting is about witnessing, and sitting with, and expressing complexity, and how little it’s about cocktail parties and getting access to rich people. It really does bring home how precious and how sacred real journalism is in the world today.
And there are many takeaways from this issue, but that is certainly one of them. It’s not necessarily making—I mean, it is making heroes, of course, of Palestinians, and anyone reporting from war zones at tremendous risk to themselves, to get out stories that we would not hear otherwise. I also obviously get cynical, but journalism really is a public service, and this brings that home.
FAIR.org (1/28/26)
REA: I think that’s really incredibly put. And I agree. I think that is, if not the primary takeaway, the secondary one, with the primary being the thing we’ve discussed the entire time, is that: Listen to them. They continue to be actively attacked and killed and threatened. Just today, 38 Palestinians were martyred in the last 24 hours. It’s a tremendous loss of life.
And in great part, I want to thank FAIR for quantitatively contextualizing that loss, because it’s something we all feel, but then, there’s an element of dissonance, maybe, and you’re saying, “Well, maybe I’m not looking hard enough.” But no, I would say for anyone reading this, my answer is: Let this be a start of your continued commitment to reading and listening to Palestinian voices. Do not let it be encapsulated in this single issue, because there are hundreds of writers like them, and I hope we can publish them all eventually.
JJ: We’ll end it there for now. We’ve been speaking with Rayan El Amine, guest editor of The Nation magazine’s current issue,”A Day for Gaza.” Rayan El Amine, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
REA: Oh, it was an honor, Janine. Thank you for having me.
From FAIR via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/26803
US-made bombs dropped by Israel on Gaza have evaporated the bodies of at least 2,842 Palestinians, leaving no trace of the victims besides small amounts of blood, flesh and bone, an Al Jazeera investigation has found.
Experts and witnesses told the outlet the phenomenon was caused by internationally prohibited thermal and thermobaric weapons, supplied by the US, that burn at 3,500C.
Gaza’s civil defence said it tallied the number of deaths from these bombs via a forensic process. “We enter a targeted home and cross-reference the known number of occupants with the bodies recovered,” spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said.
“If a family tells us there were five people inside, and we only recover three intact bodies, we treat the remaining two as ‘evaporated’ only after an exhaustive search yields nothing but biological traces – blood spray on walls or small fragments like scalps,” he added.
Al Jazeera identified several US-made bombs used in Gaza since October 2023 that are linked to the evaporation of victims’ bodies.
They include the MK-84 Hammer, a 900kg unguided munition that generates heat up to 3,500C; and the BLU-109 bunker buster, which was used in a September 2024 attack that evaporated 22 people, the outlet reported.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed over 72,000 people and wounded over 170,000. A January 2025 study in the Lancet medical journal found that the death toll in Gaza had been underestimated by 41%.
Israel has killed 586 Gazans since a so-called ceasefire took effect in October last year.
The US sends over $3.8bn (£2.8bn) worth of weapons and military assistance to Israel each year.
From Novara Media via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/26116
Charles Fox
Special to ICTPHILADELPHIA — Jeremy Johnson delivered a short but gracious speech to the hundreds of people gathered at the Penn Museum’s Harrison Auditorium, but he felt a void, a need to collectively honor and bless the reason they were there.
The honor song that followed — in an Indigenous language rarely heard in Philadelphia — called out in the Lenape language to the spirit that had once enveloped the mid-Atlantic homelands and the past generations that preceded him.
It was an impromptu decision, a song that flowed from his heart and matched the emotions of the day, a reclamation of the land, filled with pride and defiance. But it also signaled there was something different about the museum exhibit they were about to unveil.
For not only were Native Americans part of the opening celebration at the Penn Museum, but Johnson and seven other Native consulting curators contributed beyond the auditorium walls to shape an exhibit depicting Native people in the present day.
“I had a sense of humility because the reason I was standing there was because of the resilience and strength of my grandmas and grandpas, and to be even able to sing that song was because of what they had done,” Johnson, the cultural education director for the Delaware Tribe of Indians, also known as Lenape, told ICT later.
“It was meant to honor what was going on there [at the museum] and the people there,” he said, “but it was really a recognition of those who came before me, who have set this path up and allowed us to keep continuing these ways.”
He was joined by other Native speakers, including three other consulting curators and contributing artists, as well as Tewa Dancers from the North, in November to initiate a weekend of activities for the opening of the Penn Museum’s new exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure.”
Given that Native Americans and museums have always had an uneasy relationship, it was unusual not only for the celebratory atmosphere but also for the Native participation.
The Tewa Dancers from the North from the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo (formerly San Juan Pueblo) in northern New Mexico performed at an opening day of a new exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure,” on Nov. 22, 2025, at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT
But this exhibit is different. The new gallery is planned to be up for the next 10 years and follows the success of the museum’s previous exhibition, “Native American Voices: The People Here and Now.”
The museum and its curators hope the gallery will broaden the historical narrative that is presented in Philadelphia during the semiquincentennial celebration of the United States, and serve as a model for other museums struggling to incorporate Native voices in their corridors.
“We hope that some folks will come up here to the Penn Museum to check out the exhibit, maybe it will help put some context into what they’re celebrating as far as the 250th goes,” said Dr. Joseph Aguilar, a tribal historic preservation office board member for the San Ildefonso Pueblo and one of the consulting curators.
“Maybe it will give them some perspective like, ‘Hey, there’s this other history that also needs to be celebrated and acknowledged.’”
Ushering in the future
Native Americans rarely have gotten a say in what manner they were depicted in museums, especially in a state they were forced to leave in the 18th century. Museums often portray Indigenous people as primitive, defeated curiosities of the past rather than as a present-day populace with a rich cultural tradition.
The past actions of museums have been clouded by the unauthorized expropriation and display of sacred objects and human remains.
Barry King, Powhatan Renape Nation, visits the new exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience Resisting Erasure,” at the Penn Museum on opening day on Nov. 22, 2025 in Philadelphia. King, who once worked as an educator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, was particularly interested in seeing the Delaware (Lenape) portions of the exhibit. The background images are of tribal homelands. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT
The Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania has tried to distance itself from the past practices of museums with the new exhibit, which opened Nov. 22, 2025. It coincides with the upcoming 250th birthday of the United States in July as all Philadelphia museums and cultural institutions are gearing up for the expected influx of visitors for this year’s celebration.
The museum, a Philadelphia archaeology and anthropology institution founded in 1887, has been ahead of other museums with its recent practices. While other museums have pulled exhibits and closed galleries to comply with a change in regulations under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, known as NAGPRA, the Penn Museum has taken a different approach.
For the current exhibit, the museum tapped the eight Native consulting curators from different tribes to create a gallery that emphasizes the Native people and cultures that have thrived across the United States despite a historic agenda to erase their culture and language.
In addition to Johnson and Aguilar, the other consulting curators are RaeLyn Butler, secretary of culture and humanities, Muscogee (Creek) Nation; Beau Carroll, lead archaeologist, Tribal Historic Preservation Office, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians; Christopher Lewis, cultural specialist, Zuni Pueblo; Mary Weahkee, archaeologist, Santa Clara Pueblo; Dr. Nadia Sethi Alutiiq, art historian and museum consultant, Homer, Alaska; Darlene See, cultural heritage director, Huna Indian Association, Tribal House Management Kaach.adi Clan Tlingit.
The curators were able to shape the exhibit by helping determine its focus, what display items were appropriate, and ensure that Native people were depicted in the present day.
The exhibit hopes to “tell the past while ushering in the future,” Jill DiSanto, the museum’s public relations director, told ICT..
It marked a first for Johnson.
“Most of the work with museums in the past has been extractive of our cultural knowledge, or at worst, simply exploitative of our knowledge and our items,” Johnson said. “This is the first we collaborated on … to really get our story out there. Not just the historical presence, the pre-contact that is usually focused on in exhibits, but to really use the items here to tell the story of the people and to show that we are a living, thriving community still to this day.”
RaeLynn Butler, another of the Indigenous consulting curators and secretary of culture and humanities for Muscogee (Creek) Nation, agrees.
RaeLynn Butler, secretary of culture and humanities for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, stands by the exhibit she helped curate for the Penn Museum, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure,” which opened Nov. 22, 2025. She was one of eight Indigenous consulting curators who helped shape the exhibit. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT
“There’s been too much emphasis on objects and not enough on the culture and people,” Butler told ICT. “The difference here is to bring the ancient up to modern times. We want people to know there are 574 tribes in the United States…and that we are still here today. I think that’s always the message. and I think that this exhibit is a perfect example of including tribal nations in the telling of the history of these items and personal belongings.”
She noted in an earlier press conference, “We’re living, grieving, strong cultures, and that’s what is so exciting about these exhibits, to see people’s faces and to hear their voices and the language. That helps people when they walk away to understand these are living communities of people and that’s an important message.”
NAGPRA changes
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was passed by Congress in 1990 to establish protocols for the return of human remains and other objects to their specific tribes.
In January 2024, the federal regulations were strengthened with new rules requiring museums and government agencies to obtain permission from Native American tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations before displaying sacred and funerary objects.
“Among the updates we are implementing are critical steps to strengthen the authority and role of Indigenous communities in the repatriation process,” then-Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, said at the time. “Finalizing these changes is an important part of laying the groundwork for the healing of our people.”
The changes left some museums scrambling to comply. The Field Museum in Chicago and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University were forced to remove objects or cover displays, while the American Museum of Natural History in New York City closed its Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains Halls.
The Penn Museum had anticipated the new NAGPRA regulations, however, and had been acting accordingly before planning the new exhibit, officials said.
“I think many of those displays were really old and outdated, so they may have included items such as funerary objects or sensitive items that today tribes would not agree or want to have on display,” said Dr. Lucy Fowler Williams, the Penn Museum’s co-curator of the Native North American Gallery and associate curator-in-charge. “We were already tuned into what is sensitive for tribes and what would be appropriate to show… It’s not to say we’ve got it all perfect or anything, but we’ve just been working in this mode for a long time.”
An empty case at the entrance to a new exhibit at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia represents artifacts and other items that have been repatriated back to tribes or deemed inappropriate to display. . The museum brought in eight Native consulting curators to help develop the latest exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure,” which opened Nov. 22, 2025. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT
The Native co-curators worked with the Penn Museum to decide which items were appropriate for display and which were not for public viewing. An empty case at the start of the gallery symbolically represents those items in the museum’s collection that were deemed to have been obtained inappropriately or were considered inappropriate for display. Many of those items have been repatriated back to their tribes.
“The inclusion of an empty display case is a deliberate intervention — not an act of censorship,” Aguilar said in a museum press release.
“It serves as a thoughtful prompt for visitors to reflect on the fraught relationship between museums and Indigenous communities,” he said. “In its absence, the object becomes an act of Indigenous sovereignty.”
Lucy Fowler Williams, left, associate curator and senior keeper of American collections at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, stands with Megan Kassabaum, Penn Anthropology professor and co-curator, at a new exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure,” which opened Nov. 22, 2025. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT
Williams said the collaboration built positive relationships between the museum and tribes.
“I think that what is so important about the NAGPRA law is, they [ tribes] do have a great and a vested interest in the materials that we house,” Williams said. “And they have the right now to reclaim some of those items through repatriation. But this also sets up building positive relationships and moving forward together, to work together to find common ground and work together on projects that we both know are important to help regain those histories that the museum is interested in, and the communities are even more interested in.
“It’s taken us a long time to figure out that you can do it better together.”
‘More than fluff’
The gallery, which features approximately 260 historic and contemporary items, is arranged to represent the four corners of the country: the Delaware (Lenape) in the Northeast, the Eastern Band of Cherokee and Muscogee (Creek) in the Southeast, the Pueblo in the Southwest, and the Tlingit and Alutiiq people of Alaska in the Northwest.
Quay Hosey, Delaware (Lenape), stands beside a tàkhwèmpës (blouse), hémpsi tëpèthun (wrap-around skirt) and kaduna (leggings) she created specifically for a new exhibit at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. She incorporates the traditional elements of her ancestors with the styles inspired by neighboring tribes after they were forcibly moved west.The exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure,” opened Nov. 22, 2025, with the help of eight Native consulting curators and contributing artists. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT
The exhibit includes a floral beadwork collar from the Lenape; a Tlingit Naaxein (Chilkay blanket) ceremonial robe; a contemporary glass sculpture, “Emerging from Raven,” by Tlingit artist Preston Singletary; a San Juan Pueblo robe created by Ramoncita Sandoval in 2001; Cherokee stickball equipment and rag dolls, and a pot ring and ring basket woven from yucca grass by Native consulting curator Christopher Lewis, a cultural specialist with the Zuni Pueblo. Lewis studied ancient baskets, textiles, wood, and feather work in the Penn Museum and other museums to create modern items using ancient techniques.
The words of Delaware artist Holly Wilson that accompany her sculpture, “I’m More than Fluff,” summarize the objective of the exhibit.
Delaware (Lenape) artist Holly Wilson’s sculpture, “I’m More than Fluff,” is among the items on display at a new exhibit at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. The exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure,” opened Nov. 22, 2025. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT
“I am more than the view that my people are frozen in time, lost to a romanticized ideal of who Native Americans were, we are more, and we are still here,” according to an informational sign posted at the exhibit. “I am not this fluff: I am here: I am loud and larger than life.”
Focusing on the stories of the people first, Wilson told ICT, “tells a different story and looks at things in a different way.”
“So much of the time it’s the history of the objects and there’s nothing connecting them to the people,” she said. “So, it’s been very emotional and powerful.”
In addition to historic items and works commissioned by contemporary artists, the gallery also features interactive stations focusing on language, stories and artistic techniques, with displays about traditions, cultural items, and the hardships caused by European contact.
Oklahoma road trip
In July, four members of the Penn Museum staff, including Williams and Penn Anthropology professor Dr. Megan Kassabaum, co-curator of the exhibit, traveled to Oklahoma to spend three days with members of the Delaware Tribe.
They brought with them four items: a floral Lenape beaded collar, a woman’s traditional red blouse, a dance staff, and an ancestral stone atlatl weight, which is a decorative stone used as a counterweight on a spear.
This floral beadwork collar from the Lenape, circa 1850-1900, is among more than 250 cultural items on display in a new exhibit at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia from eight tribes across the country. The exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure,” opened Nov. 22, 2025. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT
“We made two presentations to the tribal community members, during which time they were all invited to look closely, study, and handle the items made by their ancestors,” Williams said. “From my perspective, it was incredibly moving and important for them to see these items and to see us making the effort to go there to meet them. We hope to do more of this kind of work to try to create opportunities that strengthen the communities and the next generation, and to continue to build meaningful relationships with tribes when possible.”
Johnson, the Delaware Tribe’s cultural education director, said the items connected the past and present.
“People got to experience it and touch it and examine it, so it really went against a lot of the curatorial practices,” Johnson said. “In the two hours that we were able to spend with this beaded collar, we learned more in that time than anyone else has learned with it being behind glass for the last 100 years.”
Johnson continued, “These items have a life, and they aren’t meant to just be stuck in time. They’re really meant to be cared for and utilized within our culture and traditions and community. And we’re trying to change the way people view these things. Sometimes, it actually goes in direct opposition to museum conservation principles and in the ways that they should be cared for. Oftentimes, things need to be handled in order to take care of them, to preserve them.”
“They’re not artifacts. They’re living items that have a life and have eons of knowledge contained within them.”
Moving forward together
There is a hope that the manner in which the Penn Museum gallery was created will be a guiding model in the future for other institutions.
“Places like the Penn Museum, they’re moving forward together in a good way.. there’s a healing that has to go on in the relationships and we’re starting that process and hopefully continue that process,” said Johnson.
“It’s a good feeling to try and heal from the harms that have been done to our Native communities by the whole museum culture and the way they operate,” he said. “ It felt good to be able to contribute in a positive way in which we were able to express ourselves in the ways that we wanted, and also to be able to consult and collaborate on the items that were used and which shouldn’t be used…There’s a sense we’re getting our voice, but there’s still a lot of work to do.”
Williams said Native involvement has been key to the success.
“I have always worked in this mode [of collaboration] and I think it’s so much better,” Williams said. “It only makes sense to me. They [Native people] speak from the place, and from the history and the knowledge and from the heart with such an authenticity that they can bring to the items and to the histories.”
Streets of Philadelphia
Unlike the other Indigenous consulting curators, a trip to Philadelphia for Johnson involved returning to Lenapehokink, the Lenape homeland, which includes eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the lower Hudson Valley of New York and New York Bay, and eastern Delaware, and the conflicting emotions that it provoked.
There was the gratification of shaping and influencing an exhibit, but it was tempered by the negative history of the past and feeling isolated in what was the traditional homeland and the subsequent diaspora of his people.
William Penn’s friendship, for example, with Chief Tamanend (also spelled Tammany) and the Lenape people is often romanticized in words and in the paintings of Benjamin West and Edward Hicks, both depicting the 1683 Treaty between them in the Lenape village of Shackamaxon.
Penn’s so-called Holy Experiment soon unraveled for Indigenous people, however. After Penn’s death, his sons and other officials devised a land-grab scheme known as the Walking Purchase in 1737 to dispossess the Lenape of their homelands in eastern Pennsylvania.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Lenape were removed to Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Texas, and eventually Oklahoma. Fifteen treaties were signed with the United States and fifteen were broken. Despite living in their homelands for 16,000 years, Pennsylvania remains the only state in Lenapehokink that never recognized its Indigenous peoples. Even the Lenape name was replaced by the commonly used European name of Delaware.
“It is complicated because the Lenape people were the first Indigenous nation to sign a treaty with the United States in 1778, (the Treaty of Fort Pitt which promised them the potential of becoming a 14th state), and it’s the first treaty broken six months later,” said Johnson. “And so, we fought on the side of the early United States, and we later fought against the United States because of these broken promises.”
Jeremy Johnson, the cultural education director of the Delaware Tribe of Indians (also known as Lenape), stands amid the displays at a new exhibit at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia.The exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure” opened on Nov. 22, 2025. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT
Walking the streets of Philadelphia, a city with a limited Native population, is awkward for Johnson. The congested infrastructure and the degraded natural environment of the urban landscape obstruct any connection with the Lenape homeland from centuries ago.
Despite their development, only waterways, such as the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, offer some feeling of tranquility. After centuries of dispossession and a relocation to an area without large rivers in Oklahoma, there is the opportunity for these “water people” to reconnect to the tributaries of their homeland.
Otherwise, there is little Lenape representation. Only a small statue of Penn commemorates the 1683 treaty site in Penn Treaty Park along the Delaware River. A few blocks south, sandwiched between a bus stop turnaround and an entrance ramp to Interstate 95, a 20-foot statue of Chief Tamanend hovers as the highway traffic speeds by below. A proposal to relocate it for the semiquincentennial to a new area that was deemed a more positive location was opposed by tribal leaders, including Johnson, who saw it as another form of forced removal. The move was shelved.
The statue plaque states Tamanend was considered “the patron saint of America by colonists prior to American independence,” but the celebration of Tammany Day on May 1 disappeared with colonial times.
Despite the efforts of the Penn Museum gallery to usher the Native culture into the present, their absence in the city once again relegates them into a civilization of the past.
“I love going and visiting Philadelphia… but it’s really hard to find a true connection,” said Johnson, who feels the attachments are the strongest in the natural state and solitude along northern sections of the Delaware River far from Philadelphia.
“There’s not a whole lot of representation of Lenape that’s in our homelands that highlights our voices, our ideas, how we think, and what we do, and what we feel is present to share with people,” he said.
The absence, however, has made the Penn Museum exhibit and the method with which it was created even more meaningful for him.
“To be able to exhibit in this way in Pennsylvania and our homelands that had not been historically kind to us in many ways is empowering,” Johnson said. “To have that opportunity to reclaim some of the spaces in our homeland and to have our tribal citizens involved in that process, to give them voice in a place where we were forcibly removed from, I’m incredibly proud of that. We were not only able to empower our tribal citizens to tell their own stories, but also to reconnect with the lands of their grandmas and grandpas.”
“I think [the museum gallery] really built more pride in being able to say, ‘I’m Lenape,’ and to be able to acknowledge, yes, my ancestors went through massive hardships and challenges, but to be able to say, “I’m Lenape and still have these ways’ …
“It makes me eager to say, ‘Hey, we survived this, we’re still around, we’re actually thriving now,’ and that should be something that we’re proud of.”
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Birzeit University is no longer what it once was. The transformation has been gradual and, therefore, easily rationalized, but the result has been the hollowing out of a university that once led the Palestinian struggle.
It was an ordinary Tuesday morning when Israeli forces arrived at Birzeit’s campus. The semester was drawing to its close. Students were still inhabiting the familiar, minor dramas of university life: the arithmetic of grades, the quiet panic induced by syllabi reread too late, the low-level guilt attached to courses in which effort had not quite matched ambition. These anxieties, rehearsed and recognizable, belonged to a calendar that assumed continuity. The morning, like most mornings, appeared to agree with that assumption — until it didn’t.
The soldiers entered with confidence. They were under direct orders to disrupt and induce some shock into the body of a university with a long history of tit-for-tat with Israeli military authorities.
Birzeit had its golden age at the moment of its inception, or shortly thereafter. It lasted for a decade or two, depending on who is doing the remembering. It was an era defined less by institutional stability than by the university’s repeated closures by the Israeli military; classes reappeared in borrowed houses, in improvised rooms, in spaces whose chief qualification was that they could be made to disappear. Teaching became an exercise in logistics as much as in pedagogy, knowledge passed on under conditions that assumed interruption as the norm rather than the exception.
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Charles Fox
Special to ICTAs the 2026 Winter Olympics open in Italy, the nephew of American hockey pioneer Taffy Abel will ask President Donald Trump to give Abel the Presidential Medal of Freedom — and the official recognition he has long been denied.
The request is the latest in a decades-long effort from nephew George Jones for honoring the Ojibwe athlete, who is widely recognized as the first Indigenous American in the Winter Olympics and the first to break the color barrier in the National Hockey League.
“I think it would be a great thing for Native Americans … not just for our family, but for Native Americans,” Jones told ICT. “It starts to tell some of the untold history of Native Americans.”
More than 100 years ago, Abel was a member of the silver-medal-winning U.S. hockey team in the very first Winter Olympics in 1924, played outdoors in Chamonix, France. He was also the flag-bearer for the United States and recited the Olympic oath for the team.
A Soul on Ice: The quest for recognition after 100 years for hockey great Taffy Abel
While Abel is believed to be the first Native American to participate in the Winter Olympics — and the only Indigenous American to carry the flag in Olympic history — he kept his Ojibwe heritage secret at the time.
Due to his light skin color, Abel racially passed as White during the Olympics and throughout his 333-game career in the National Hockey League, though he is widely believed to have been the first player of color to take the ice.
Abel’s parents began the practice of concealing their race to avoid having their two children taken from them and sent to Indian boarding schools in the early 1900s. His family was multi-racial, with Taffy’s father, John Abel, a White man, originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and his mother, Charlotte Gurnoe Abel, from the Chippewa (Ojibwe) Sault Tribe.
It is likely Able would not have been put on the Olympic team or given the opportunity to play in the NHL if he had disclosed his Ojibwe heritage.
Because of his racial passing, however, the NHL has not recognized his pioneering achievements, despite being on two Stanley-Cup winning teams. While he was sometimes referred to as “Superman with skates” due to his physical play and size, not revealing his heritage by racially passing would be his kryptonite in later getting recognition.
Jones sees his uncle as the “Unseen Warrior” who used a White disguise “because of the deep societal prejudices against Indians in the early 1900s.”
The NHL has not responded to repeated requests from ICT for comment.
New life to an old resolution
The first day of 2026 was almost the last for Jones. He suffered a coronary event, and it is estimated he was dead for approximately 8 minutes before CPR by his wife and defibrillation by paramedics brought the 76-year-old man in Winter Haven, Florida back to life.
The under-14 Soo Lakers hockey team practices on Sept. 29, 2025, at the Taffy Abel Arena on the campus of Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. The arena, named for the Ojibwe hockey great, is the only NCAA hockey arena that has more seats (4,000) than the university has students. The Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians donated $3 million to the renovation. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT
The near-death event, which Jones described as “transforming,” gave Jones yet another chance to win recognition for his uncle. While campaigning for a Congressional Medal of Honor or induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame requires convincing a large number of individuals to vote in Abel’s favor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is strictly the decision of the U.S. president.
In the end, it will require one man to convince one man of another man’s achievement.
“So, he’s [President Trump] got an America First policy. Well, why the hell not honor some of the first Americans here, too? That’s my point. They deserve it,” Jones told ICT. “Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. So, it’s not a foregone conclusion either way, but that’s not going to extinguish my advocacy to be on the right side of history.”
As of January 2025, 673 individuals have been awarded the medal but only six Native Americans — Wilma Mankiller, Suzan Shown Harjo, Eloise Cobell, Billy Frank Jr., Jim Thorpe, and Annie Dodge Wauneka.
The very low percentage of Native honorees, Jones feels, could work in his favor.
‘Errors of omission and silence’
This year also marks the 100th anniversary of the historic moment on Nov. 16, 1926, when Abel stepped onto the ice for the New York Rangers, becoming the first Indigenous American player in the National Hockey League. It was also the opening game in the inaugural season of the New York Rangers.
Clarence “Taffy” Abel, Ojibwe, was the first Indigenous athlete to play in the National Hockey League. He joined the Chicago Blackhawks in 1929 and played until 1934. This photo is from the 1929-1930 hockey season, when he began playing with the team. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Jones Family Collection
But there are numerous factors that work against Jones’ campaign. Getting recognition for his uncle has often put him at odds with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. Trump has a long-standing relationship with Bettman and has praised the hockey commissioner for the “incredible” job he has done. In 2025, Trump appointed Bettman to his President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition.
Jones has never hesitated to speak poorly about Bettman in strong, condemning language and has accused the league of bypassing his uncle through “errors of omission and silence.”
Bettman and other league executives credit Willie O’Ree, the first Black (African-Canadian) player in the NHL, with breaking the league’s color barrier in 1958, proclaiming him the “Jackie Robinson of hockey.” It has been an ongoing point of contention between Jones and the NHL.
To strengthen his cause, Jones hopes to gain the support of the governors of Michigan, New York, Illinois, and Minnesota — the states where Abel played. He is also hoping for grassroots support.
While not reacting specifically to Jones’ campaign, the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians Chairman Austin Lowes responded in an email to ICT.
“Taffy Abel is a hero in our community for being both an Olympian and the first American Indian to also play in the NHL,” Lowes said. “Our Tribe contributed several millions to support the renovations to the Lake Superior State University ice arena in the mid 1990s. In turn, the university named the university ice area the Taffy Abel Arena. We are very proud of Taffy and support recognition of his accomplishments.”
Jones said he will remain focused on his goal.
“I’m talking about my uncle’s legacy,” he said. “I think his legacy was forgotten.”
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Last Updated on February 6, 2026 Anti-Indigenous rhetoric and policy actions have started trending in Canada, Australia, the United States and New Zealand, reflecting what can only be described as a coordinated rollback of hard-won gains and an emboldened backlash against Indigenous self-determination. What was once debated at the margins has moved into mainstream politics. Governments and opposition movements alike are questioning the legitimacy of Indigenous governance, narrowing interpretations of historic agreements, and rolling back institutions designed to address long-documented inequalities.
At the same time, online harassment, public hostility and, in some cases, violence directed at Indigenous peoples have intensified, creating a climate of normalization around racism that had previously been more openly condemned.
From challenges to Te Tiriti o Waitangi in New Zealand to efforts to dismantle tribal sovereignty protections in the United States, these developments are not isolated. Instead, they reflect a shared political playbook that minimizes colonial history and treats Indigenous rights as an obstacle to national unity rather than a foundation of justice.
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Amelia Schafer
ICTMore than 162 years after the Mdewakanton Dakota people were forcibly detained and held at Fort Snelling in Minnesota, a Mdewakanton woman found herself detained in the same place her ancestors had been.
On the drive into Fort Snelling, Sophie Watso, 30, said she closed her eyes and prayed. She sang a song in Dakota, a prayer song, asking her ancestors for guidance.
Upwards of 3,000 Dakota and Ho-Chunk people were imprisoned at Fort Snelling, a concentration camp, during the winter of 1862 following the Dakota Indian Wars. Approximately 300 Native people died there.
Aside from being the site of a former concentration camp, the area is also a site of creation for the Dakota people. B’dote, where the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers meet, is one of the Dakota peoples’ creation sites. Today, B’dote is visible from the bluffs at the historic Fort Snelling complex.
As historic immigration raids pay out across the Twin Cities, several Native people have reported being detained at Fort Snelling. The Bishop Henry Whipple Building in Fort Snelling is being used as an ICE detainment and processing facility by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The encounter
Watso was detained on Wednesday, Jan. 14, in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, a suburb immediately north of the city of Minneapolis. Watso wasn’t released from ICE custody until Jan. 16, more than 48 hours after her initial encounter with ICE.
The Mdewakanton Dakota woman said she was monitoring ICE activity from her vehicle when agents and another group who she initially believed were local law enforcement approached her in her truck.
The video shows agents with the words “Police ICE” on their vests, which makes Watso believe they were all immigration enforcement personnel. Some agents or officers in the area have had the words “Police” or “ICE” labeled on them.
“It was a very confusing situation,” she said. “Because of the way that they [ICE agents] do not identify themselves, right?”
Dakota citizen arrested by federal officers during Minneapolis protests Saturday
One agent told Watso she was in violation of U.S. Code 18 section 111, which is a federal charge pertaining to imposing, obstructing or assaulting a federal law enforcement agent while on duty. ICE agents are allowed to detain U.S. citizens believed to be in violation of the code.
ICE agents have used this same charge against at least two other Native American people, William LaFromboise, a Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota man arrested while protesting ICE on Jan. 26, and Jose “Beto” Ramirez, a Red Lake Nation descendant detained on Jan. 7. Ramirez was charged nearly two weeks after his detainment.
Watso said one of the men told her she was impeding or obstructing an ongoing federal immigration investigation, but another told her if she didn’t stop what she was doing she would then be in violation of the code.
“A lot of people were talking at the same time,” she said. “At that point, I was already pulled over. So I had already stopped everything I was doing.”
Agents asked for her identification, Watso said she did not feel comfortable stepping out of her vehicle or handing over her ID.
Some tribes have reported incidents where individuals posing as ICE questioned members and asked for their identification.
Roughly three hours south of Minneapolis, the Meskwaki Nation in Tama, Iowa, reported at least one tribal member was questioned by men in nearby Toledo, Iowa, pretending to be immigration agents. The tribe said upon investigation, the individuals were confirmed to not be ICE personnel.
A photo taken after Sophie Watso’s detainment shows her pickup truck’s windows smashed in by immigration agents on January 14, 2026, in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. Credit: Courtesy Isavela Lopez
“I didn’t know who these people were,” Watso said. “They’re just some masked men that approached my window. So I didn’t feel comfortable giving them my identification.”
Moments later, Watso said the agents used a window breaker to smash in her truck’s driver’s side and passenger side windows.
Watso’s dog, a small pomeranian named Modean, was sitting on the passenger seat. She grabbed Modean to try and shield him from the shattered glass. Around her, prairie sage from her dashboard fell around the drug.
Watso, who is 5 feet, 2 inches tall, said it wasn’t difficult for the agents to pull her out of her truck from the broken window and place her on the ground. She held tight to her dog, who she feared was injured from the broken glass.
“There was nothing I could hold on to,” she said. “I was just holding on to my dog, and they put me on the ground on top of the glass that they just broke. And that’s when they were just trying to rip my dog from my arms.”
Watso said agents grabbed Modean from her arms and took him away from her before laying her face down on the ground, on top of the broken glass, a few agents leaned their full weight on her back and placing her in handcuffs. She could barely breathe, she said.
Fortunately, some of her friends were in the area and able to record the interaction, she said.
“I was yelling to them,” she said. “I told them, ‘Tell them where my dog is,’ and they were also malicious about that.
Watso said her friends were able to locate her dog at a nearby pound while officers drove her to the Whipple building in Fort Snelling for processing. Her friends then took her dog to stay with Watso’s mother.
Sophie Watso and her dog Modean pose in front of a mural she painted. Watso, Mdewakanton Dakota, was detained by immigration agents outside Minneapolis on January 14, 2026, and held for 48 hours. Credit: Courtesy of Sophie Watso
In detainment
At this point, knowing she was on her way to Fort Snelling, Watso began to sing.
“So it was important to me to sing a song, one of the only songs that I know by heart,” she said. “It’s a prayer song, and it’s asking for help.”
She felt like she was captured, she said, and began reflecting on what her Mdewakanton ancestors had experienced a century ago.
“The words in this song are asking for help, telling the creator that I want to live,” she said. “Not only am I praying for my safety, but I was also praying and wanting to greet my ancestors, in our language, with a song, because I know that my ancestors are there.”
Agents began to make fun of her singing, she said, asking if she was on drugs. But she didn’t care.
“I don’t do drugs and I don’t drink alcohol, but I expected that from them,” she said. “I understood that these people are colonized and they have the intention of degrading you.”
So she made sure to look them in the eyes as she sang.
“I wasn’t going to show them that I’m a spectacle,” she said.
Once inside of the Whipple building, Watso said she waited for several hours in a warehouse-like facility, her arms and legs shackled. She felt scared but oddly enough comforted at the same time, knowing her ancestors were there, she said.
“I knew that I wasn’t alone,” she said. “I knew that my people have suffered here, but I also knew that people have lived here.”
She said she took comfort in that fact.
Former Native American concentration camp lies beneath current immigration detention center
While detained, Watso said she was not offered an opportunity to speak with a lawyer. Watso said she at one point verbally requested to speak with a lawyer, but was not given the opportunity. Since she was not able to speak with a lawyer, Watso was further transferred out of the Whipple building to an ICE partner facility, the Sherbourne County Jail.
Sherbourne was a much better experience than being kept at the Whipple building, she said.
“The people at Sherburne County, these are just sheriffs, people who work there, and they’re actually nice to you,” she said. “They actually treat you like a human. They ask you if you want water and they give it to you. They talk to you normally like you’re a person.”
‘I’m traumatized’
In Sherbourne on Thursday, Jan. 15, Watso said was finally given an opportunity to make phone calls. Watso was then able to contact a lawyer and has since been working with the Native American Rights Fund, a non-profit organization dedicated to the legal protection of Indigenous people, tribes and tribal organizations.
Because no charges were filed against her, Watso was let go from Sherbourne after a 48-hour hold on Friday, Jan. 16.
Following her release from Sherbourne, Watso said was taken back to the Whipple building in Fort Snelling by two Homeland Security department agents. Watso was given paperwork and her possessions back at Fort Snelling and informed she could now go home, but it wasn’t the end, she said.
While leaving, Watso said she wasn’t given clear instruction by the agents on how to exit the building. While making her way through the parking lot, jogging to speed up her journey due to the below freezing temperatures, Watso was tackled by several ICE agents who assumed she was attempting to break out of the facility.
Watso said at least four agents dressed in full gear tackled her, leaving her with back pain and further traumatizing her. She was placed back in handcuffs and again taken into the Whipple building where another agent verified she had been released from custody, at which point she was freed again, this time with a ride home.
“It’s all on surveillance video,” she said. “Here I am free, running, and then I’m tackled, brutalized, cuffed back up and brought back inside. Every time I go outside now, my head is on a swivel, like, left, right, left, right, turn behind you. ‘Is there anyone behind me?’ I’m traumatized.”
A young Dakota woman incarcerated at the Fort Snelling concentration camp is photographed in 1862. Survivors of the camp were sent via steamboat to the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota and the Santee Reservation in Nebraska. (Courtesy Minnesota Historical Society)
Watso said as of Jan. 26 she had not yet been able to go to the hospital to have her injuries evaluated. She has, however, been able to visit with a therapist and is staying with friends for safety, she said.
The experience has left her completely terrified, she said. Since she’s staying with friends, on one occasion she accidentally locked herself out of the apartment and began to panic.
“I was here alone, and I was outside, and I didn’t have anything, any identification on me, so I was immediately terrified,” she said.
Fortunately, a couple welcomed her into their home until her brother was able to come pick her up.
“That was a crazy feeling,” she said. “For people like me, who look like me, you don’t even want to leave your house because you’re scared ICE is going to take you.”
Watso said she wants to share her story to raise awareness to what’s really happening in Minneapolis, a place she moved to two years ago to be closer to her ancestral homelands.
“[I moved back] to reconnect to the land and my people and to live on this land,” she said. “So many people don’t get to live on their ancestral homelands in America, so I felt like it was important to do that.”
After hearing about charges pressed against Jose Ramirez, a Red Lake nation descendant who was detained by ICE the week prior, Watso was scared of the potential for the same thing to happen to her.
“I feel like it’s important to speak out about what happened to me,” she said.
Being surrounded by friends and family is helping her heal, she said. Leaning on prayer and medicine has helped to center her.
“I haven’t been to sweat yet but I’m planning on it,” she said. “I know that there’s definitely a lot to process, but at the same time I don’t want to. I don’t want to think about it.”
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This story was originally published by Washington State Standard.
Henry Brannan
Washington State StandardFederal energy regulators last Thursday greenlit a roughly $2 billion renewable energy megaproject on a Yakama Nation sacred site overlooking the Columbia River in Klickitat County.
The 40-year federal license requires the project to break ground within two years, although it still faces legal challenges, said Erik Steimle, who is leading the project for Rye Development. The new license is the final legal approval needed to move the project into construction, Steimle said.
The site is used for ceremonies as well as treaty-reserved fishing and root gathering, and has been a village location for the Yakama Nation since time immemorial, said Elaine Harvey, who is a conservation scientist and member of the Yakama’s Kamíłpa Band, which is from the area.
But if the Goldendale Energy Storage Project is built, the hillside would become a giant hydropower generator producing enough electricity to power 500,000 homes for 12 hours. It would work by dropping 2.3 billion gallons of water sitting in a man-made reservoir atop the bluff about 2,000 feet down a large tunnel drilled into the rock. After flowing through turbines, water would then be pumped back to the top reservoir to repeat the cycle.
The idea is to release water from the top when electricity is needed, then use wind and solar power to pump it back up at times when electricity from the notoriously unpredictable renewables is abundant. In short: It would be a giant battery.
The federal license ruling comes as the Pacific Northwest heads toward an energy crisis, with growing regional electricity consumption — especially from power-hungry data centers — blowing up old demand projections and threatening Washington and Oregon’s climate goals.
Celebrations, condemnations
“This is a landmark moment for the Pacific Northwest,” said Steimle in a press release. “With electricity demand and energy costs on the rise, this license represents a huge step toward a more reliable grid and affordable energy prices for the region.”
The license follows another win against Native nations and environmental groups last year, when the project earned a water-quality certification.
Construction on the nearly 700-acre project will take four to five years, according to Becky Brun, who is a consultant for the project.
Steimle said he expected construction to start in 2027. Underground tunneling machines will hollow out thousands of feet of tunnels to a diameter of 29 feet.
The project would be the first major pumped storage hydropower project in Washington, as well as the first new major U.S. pumped storage project in about 30 years, he said.
The company is currently working on two other pumped storage projects, including one in Oregon that won federal approval in 2019 but is only a little ahead of the Goldendale project, Brun said.
“There’s an urgent need for this type of energy storage,” Steimle told The Columbian, “and the Goldendale project will help Washington meet its clean energy goals with minimal environmental impact.”
The potential project’s harms to Yakama sacred sites were the subject of an award-winning 2024 documentary titled “These Sacred Hills.”
Yakama Tribal Council Chairman Gerald Lewis blasted the permit approval in a press release as “rewarding bad actors who have spent years finding loopholes to target a new wave of industrial development on top of Indigenous sites that have religious and legendary significance.”
“They know it’s wrong,” he added, “if a small Christian shrine sat on this site the decision-makers would understand what ‘sacred’ means.”
A state review of the project found it would have “significant and unavoidable adverse impacts” on the Nations’ historic sites and culturally important plants.
In addition to the Yakama, 17 tribal governments, the National Congress of American Indians and Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians all have come out against the project, according to Columbia Riverkeeper, which is currently fighting the project in state appeals court alongside the Yakama Nation.
History repeating
“The potential consequences, if this project does proceed, would include, No. 1, a total desecration of our sacred site, Pushpum,” Harvey said. “And it’s irreversible.”
Pushpum means “Mother of all roots,” a name bestowed on the area because it functions as a seed bank for almost three dozen different kinds of roots, flowers and shrubs. Some can only be found there, according to Columbia Riverkeeper.
Because of Pushpum’s current use as a site for gathering, fishing and ceremonies, and because it contains archaeological sites, Harvey said the project put the Yakama Nation between a rock and a hard place: reveal a sacred site, opening it up to looting or keep the information secret but lose it all together.
Harvey’s family has been displaced by hydropower development twice.
First, The Dalles Dam flooded the Willa-wy-tis Band’s village in Maryhill in the 1950s. Then in the late 1960s, the Army Corps of Engineers removed Harvey’s family from lower Rock Creek Canyon as John Day Dam flooded the area, pushing them to Goldendale where Harvey lives today.
“We had to bear the burden of the hydro systems, we had to be removed from our village site along the Columbia River. My grandmothers and grandfathers were pretty much just told to leave, and they were left homeless,” Harvey said. “That’s the type of tragedies that our people have endured for ‘green energy.’ ”
Why there?
The area is part of about 12 million acres ceded to the U.S. in an 1855 treaty that enshrined ongoing fishing, hunting and gathering rights at traditional sites like Pushpum into U.S. law.
Critics have long asked why 40 years of hydropower is worth destroying a sacred site in an area with some of the oldest and most well-documented Native history in North America. Nearby Celilo Falls, for example, was the longest continually inhabited site in North America before it was drowned by The Dalles Dam hydropower project.
Steimle said the company understands the importance of protecting Native cultural sites and has moved some components of the project around the site to address concerns.
“We do not propose projects on lands where we’re not invited to do so,” Steimle said. “This piece of private land that’s been industrialized for quite some time is owned by a landowner who has requested this type of development.”
The bottom half of the site was an aluminum smelter until regional power prices jumped in 2003.
“There are very specific things that are required for this type of site: geology, geography, a sustainable source of water,” Steimle said.
In this case, local and state officials have targeted the site for redevelopment, he said.
Simone Anter, a senior staff attorney at Columbia Riverkeeper, said project opponents still have 30 days from when regulators published the license to challenge it — a process that could lead to more legal battles.
And Harvey has no plans to give up on the prized home of early-season Indian celery, which is an important part of longhouse ceremonies.
“That’s why it attracts people of different longhouses to come and gather,” she said. “We still dig Indian celery there — we’ll be there next month, in February, digging it.”
Henry Brannan, reporting for The Columbian in Vancouver, is with the Washington State Murrow Fellowships, a local news program supported by the state.
The post Feds greenlight $2B renewable energy project on Yakama Nation sacred site appeared first on ICT.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/25017
Two Human Rights Watch employees—the group's entire Israel-Palestine team—resigned after senior staffers blocked a report calling Israel's denial of Palestinian refugees' right of return to their homeland a crime against humanity.
Jewish Currents' Alex Kane reported Tuesday that HRW Israel-Palestine team lead Omar Shakir and assistant researcher Milena Ansari are stepping down over leadership's decision to nix the report, which was scheduled for release on December 4. Shakir wrote in his resignation email that one senior HRW leader informed him that calling Israel's denial of Palestinian right of return would be seen as a call to “demographically extinguish the Jewishness of the Israeli state.”
“I have lost my faith in the integrity of how we do our work and our commitment to principled reporting on the facts and application of the law,” Shakir—who is also member of Jewish Currents' advisory board—wrote in his resignation letter. “As such, I am no longer able to represent or work for Human Rights Watch.”
In an interview published Tuesday by Drop Site News, Shakir—who was deported from Israel in 2019 over his advocacy of Palestinian rights—said: “I’ve given every bit of myself to the work for a decade. I’ve defended the work in very, very difficult circumstances... The refugees I interviewed deserve to know why their stories aren’t being told."
Ansari said that "whatever justification" HRW leadership "had for pausing the report is not based on the law or facts."
The resignations underscored tensions among HRW staffers over how to navigate a potential political minefield while conducting legal analysis and reporting of Israeli policies and practices in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.
As Kane reported:
The resignations have roiled one of the most prominent human rights groups in the world just as HRW’s new executive director, Philippe Bolopion, begins his tenure. In a statement, HRW said that the report “raised complex and consequential issues. In our review process, we concluded that aspects of the research and the factual basis for our legal conclusions needed to be strengthened to meet Human Rights Watch’s high standards.” They said that “the publication of the report was paused pending further analysis and research,” and that the process was “ongoing.”
Kenneth Roth, a longtime former HRW executive director, defended the group's decision to block the report, asserting on social media that Bolopion "was right to suspend a report using a novel and unsupported legal theory to contend that denying the right to return to a locale is a crime against humanity."
However, Shakir countered that HRW "found in 2023 denial of a return to amount to a crime against humanity in Chagos."
"This is based on [International Criminal Court] precedent," he added. "Other reports echoed the analysis. Are you calling on HRW to retract a report for its first time ever, or it just different rules for Palestine?"
Polis Project founder Suchitra Vijayan said on X Tuesday that "the decision by Human Rights Watch’s leadership to pull a report on the right of return for Palestinian refugees, after it had cleared internal review, legal sign-off, and publication preparation, demands public reckoning."
"This was not a draft in dispute and the explanation offered so far evades the central issue of 'institutional independence' in the face of political pressure," added Vijayan, who is also a professor at Columbia and New York universities. "Why was the report stopped, and what does this decision signals for the future of its work and credibility on Palestine?"
Offering "solidarity to Omar and Milena" on social media, Medical Aid for Palestinians director of advocacy and campaigns Rohan Talbot said that "Palestinian rights are yet again exceptionalized, their suffering trivialized, and their pursuit of justice forestalled by people who care more about reputation and expediency than law and justice."
Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW's former Middle East and North Africa director and currently executive director at Democracy for the Arab World Now, told Drop Site News on Tuesday that “We have once again run into Human Rights Watch’s systemic ‘Israel Exception,’ with work critical of Israel subjected to exceptional review and arbitrary processes that no other country work faces."
The modern state of Israel was established in 1948 largely through a more than decadelong campaign of terrorism against both the British occupiers of Palestine and Palestinian Arabs and the ethnic cleansing of the latter. More than 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homeland, sometimes via massacres or the threat thereof, in what Arabs call the Nakba, or catastrophe.
More than 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed or abandoned, and their denizens—some of whom still hold the keys to their stolen homes—have yet to return. Today, they and their descendants number more than 7 million, all of whom have been denied the right of return affirmed in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194.
Many Palestinians and experts around the world argue that the Nakba never ended—a position that has gained attention over the past 28 months, as Israel has faced mounting allegations of genocide for a war that's left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing in the coastal strip and around 2 million people forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
Bolopion told Kane Tuesday that the controversy over the blocked report is “a genuine and good-faith disagreement among colleagues on complex legal and advocacy questions."
“HRW remains committed to the right of return for all Palestinians, as has been our policy for many years," he added.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24029
Graham Lee Brewer, Savannah Peters and Stewart HuntingtonAssociated Press + ICT
MINNEAPOLIS — When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flooded Minneapolis, Shane Mantz dug his Choctaw Nation citizenship card out of a box on his dresser and slid it into his wallet.
Some strangers mistake the pest-control company manager for Latino, he said, and he fears getting caught up in ICE raids.
Like Mantz, many Native Americans are carrying tribal documents proving their U.S. citizenship in case they are stopped or questioned by federal immigration agents. This is why dozens of the 575 federally recognized Native nations are making it easier to get tribal IDs. They’re waiving fees, lowering the age of eligibility — ranging from 5 to 18 nationwide — and printing the cards faster.
It’s the first time tribal IDs have been widely used as proof of U.S. citizenship and protection against federal law enforcement, said David Wilkins, an expert on Native politics and governance at the University of Richmond.
“I don’t think there’s anything historically comparable,” Wilkins said. “I find it terribly frustrating and disheartening.”
As Native Americans around the country rush to secure documents proving their right to live in the United States, many see a bitter irony.
“As the first people of this land, there’s no reason why Native Americans should have their citizenship questioned,” said Jaqueline De León, a senior staff attorney with the nonprofit Native American Rights Fund and member of Isleta Pueblo.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to more than four requests for comment over a week.
Native identity in a new age of fear
Since the mid- to late 1800s, the U.S. government has kept detailed genealogical records to estimate Native Americans’ fraction of “Indian blood” and determine their eligibility for health care, housing, education and other services owed under federal legal responsibilities. Those records were also used to aid federal assimilation efforts and chip away at tribal sovereignty, communal lands and identity.
Beginning in the late 1960s, many tribal nations began issuing their own forms of identification. In the last two decades, tribal photo ID cards have become commonplace and can be used to vote in tribal elections, to prove U.S. work eligibility and for domestic air travel.
About 70 percent of Native Americans today live in urban areas, including tens of thousands in the Twin Cities, one of the largest urban Native populations in the country.
There, in early January, a top ICE official announced the “largest immigration operation ever.”
Masked, heavily armed agents traveling in convoys of unmarked SUVs became commonplace in some neighborhoods. By this week, more than 3,400 people had been arrested, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At least 2,000 ICE officers and 1,000 Border Patrol officers were on the ground.
Representatives from at least 10 tribes traveled hundreds of miles to Minneapolis — the birthplace of the American Indian Movement — to accept ID applications from members there. Among them were the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Ojibwe of Wisconsin, the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate of South Dakota and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa of North Dakota.
Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Chairman Jamie Azure speaks about an effort for tribal citizens to get tribal IDs at a pop-up event in Minneapolis on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. (Stewart Huntington/ICT via AP)
Turtle Mountain citizen Faron Houle renewed his tribal ID card and got his young adult son’s and his daughter’s first ones.
“You just get nervous,” Houle said. “I think (ICE agents are) more or less racial profiling people, including me.”
Events in downtown coffee shops, hotel ballrooms, and at the Minneapolis American Indian Center helped urban tribal citizens connect and share resources, said Christine Yellow Bird, who directs the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation’s satellite office in Fargo, North Dakota.
Yellow Bird made four trips to Minneapolis in recent weeks, putting nearly 2,000 miles on her 2017 Chevy Tahoe to help citizens in the Twin Cities who can’t make the long journey to their reservation.
Yellow Bird said she always keeps her tribal ID with her.
“I’m proud of who I am,” she said. “I never thought I would have to carry it for my own safety.”
Some Native Americans say ICE is harassing them
Last year, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said that several tribal citizens reported being stopped and detained by ICE officers in Arizona and New Mexico. He and other tribal leaders have advised citizens to carry tribal IDs with them at all times.
Last November, Elaine Miles, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon and an actress known for her roles in “Northern Exposure” and “The Last of Us,” said she was stopped by ICE officers in Washington state who told her that her tribal ID looked fake.
The Oglala Sioux Tribe this week banned ICE from its reservation in southwestern South Dakota and northwestern Nebraska, one of the largest in the country.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North and South Dakota said a member was detained in Minnesota last weekend. And Peter Yazzie, who is Navajo, said he was arrested and held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Phoenix for several hours last week.
Yazzie, a construction worker from nearby Chinle, Arizona, said he was sitting in his car at a gas station preparing for a day of work when he saw ICE officers arrest some Latino men. The officers soon turned their attention to Yazzie, pushed him to the ground, and searched his vehicle, he said.
He said he told them where to find his driver’s license, birth certificate, and a federal Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood. Yazzie said the car he was in is registered to his mother. Officers said the names didn’t match, he said, and he was arrested, taken to a nearby detention center and held for about four hours.
“It’s an ugly feeling. It makes you feel less human. To know that people see your features and think so little of you,” he said.
DHS did not respond to questions about the arrest.
Mantz, the Choctaw Nation citizen, said he runs pest-control operations in Minneapolis neighborhoods where ICE agents are active and he won’t leave home without his tribal identification documents.
Securing them for his children is now a priority.
“It gives me some peace of mind. But at the same time, why do we have to carry these documents?” Mantz said. “Who are you to ask us to prove who we are?”
Brewer reported from Oklahoma City and Peters from Edgewood, New Mexico.
The post Fearing ICE, Native Americans rush to prove their right to belong in the US appeared first on ICT.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24066
Charlene Belleau, right, is pictured at an Esk’etemc celebration in 2024. Photo by Julie Elizabeth Photography
Former Esk’etemc Kúkwpi7 Charlene Belleau (Eaglestar Woman) has been recognized with an award for her work to support healing and justice for residential “school” survivors and their families.
The Elder was among seven people honoured with a British Columbia Reconciliation Award at the Government House in lək̓ʷəŋən territories on Thursday evening.
The award — presented by the Office of the Lieutenant Governor and BC Achievement Foundation — recognizes individuals, groups and organizations who demonstrate their commitment to reconciliation.
At the presentation ceremony, this year’s recipients were welcomed in behind lək̓ʷəŋən dancers as the Government House was rearranged to resemble a longhouse.
Jerymy Brownridge, executive director of Government House, acknowledged Belleau’s embodiment of “truth, courage, care” as she’s been dedicated to advancing healing and justice for survivors of residential “schools,” families and many communities across the province.
He commended her time as a First Nations liaison with the government where she ensured communities were met with respect, provided resources and allowed for accountability through her work.
Brownridge also recognized the importance of Belleau’s involvement with the groundbreaking documentary Sugarcane and the decades of leadership she has displayed through her time in her community and Indigenous healthcare spaces.
“Tonight we honour a leader whose integrity and lived experience continue to light the path forward on reconciliation,” Brownridge announced.
Belleau has been committed to helping communities through her time as a leader of her community and later as an investigator for the St. Joseph’s Mission — a residential “school” that operated near Williams Lake — which the Elder attended for four years.
“A residential school survivor herself, Charlene has been a leading voice in addressing the intergenerational impacts of colonial institutions,” says the award website.
“She has supported communities in collecting and protecting oral histories, accessing historical records, and creating safe spaces where survivors can share their truths with dignity and care.”
She was heavily involved in the Sugarcane documentary, through her work as an investigator and with firsthand experience at the “school,” using her knowledge to continue leading and helping others learn the truth.
In a past interview with IndigiNews, Belleau mentioned how it wasn’t until the documentary that her family became aware of how difficult her work was with the residential “schools,” but she remained committed to helping others and ensuring people continue to grow through their experiences.
“I’ve said before that I want our people to know that because of our resilience, that we’re stronger for what we’ve been through,” she said.
A lifelong advocate
Belleau accepts her award on Jan. 29. Screengrab via livestream
Belleau is described on the award website as a “lifelong advocate for truth, justice, and healing.”
She was appointed as a First Nations liaison in 2021 by then-Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Murray Rankin. In this role, she is described as having provided “critical guidance to the Province of British Columbia in its response to findings at former Indian Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals.”
Serving as a liaison, Belleau maintained communication between Indigenous communities and the government to “ensure that communities receive the resources, respect, and support needed to pursue truth, healing, and accountability.”
Belleau also held previous roles as chair of the First Nations Health Council which represents the five health regions in the province and as Provincial Indian Residential School Coordinator.
Through her roles, Belleau has created safe spaces for other survivors to come forward and share their own experiences at residential “schools” where she helped collect the oral stories and create records of firsthand accounts.
The supportive environment Belleau provides extends to her roles in health and wellness and community leadership as well.
Fellow recipients of the award were: Kevin Borserio (Luu G̱aahlandaay), Deanna Duncan (H̀búkvs λamalayu), Aboriginal Housing Management Association, Honouring Our Elders Legacy Project Coordinating Team and the syiyaya Reconciliation Movement and Dwight Ballantyne who was the recipient of the first Phyllis Webstad Emerging Leader award.
To commemorate their efforts, the recipients received a print of a canoe paddle designed by artist Stephanie Anderson who is a member of the Likhsilyu “Small Frog” clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. They were also gifted an intricately designed orange scarf by Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw artist Carey Newman (Hayalthkin’geme).
Nominations for the 2026 Reconciliation Awards are open until Feb. 15, 2026.
The post ‘Truth, courage, care’: Esk’etemc leader honoured with ‘B.C.’ reconciliation award appeared first on Indiginews.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24297
Ilana Newman
The Daily YonderBrandon Small’s pickup squeezes down a narrow dirt road lined with trees and bushes as we drive down the hillside towards the buffalo. We’re on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeastern Montana, a landscape full of yellow grasses and hillsides lined with small pine trees. Small runs the buffalo restoration program here on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation.
Here on the reservation, where food and energy sovereignty are inextricably linked, a new solar installation is helping the tribe become more self-sufficient.
Brandon Small drives across the Northern Cheyenne buffalo pasture near Lame Deer, Montana to fix some water troughs for the animals. He points out where buffalo look like tiny specks on the horizon. Photo by Ilana Newman/Daily Yonder.
The buffalo pasture we’re traversing is huge—15,244 acres, to be exact—and Small said they’re working on expanding even further. Small drove us out here from nearby Lame Deer, Montana, to check on the water infrastructure and give us a tour of the buffalo habitat and the brand new solar installation that will allow them to grow their buffalo operation.
The buffalo enclosure has no transmission lines crossing it, meaning there’s no way to get electricity out to the land unless the electricity is completely off the grid.
Last year, in partnership with Indigenized Energy, a native led nonprofit focused on energy sovereignty, the Northern Cheyenne buffalo program received a solar array that will allow Small to expand the herd and processing capacity of the facility. The 36kW solar array and 57.6kW battery was funded by the Honnold Foundation and Empowered By Light and constructed by Freedom Forever and Jinko Solar in collaboration with Indigenized Energy.
This 36 kW solar and 57.6 kW battery system was installed in 2025 by Freedom Forever in collaboration with Indigenized Energy with donations from Jinko Solar. It was funded by the Honnold Foundation. Photo by Ilana Newman/Daily Yonder.
Cody Two Bears, the founder of Indigenized Energy, sees energy sovereignty as inextricable from food sovereignty. “ We need energy sovereignty to flourish because that’s what’s gonna support all the other initiatives that are so important to tribal people moving forward,” Two Bears said in a Daily Yonder interview.
Tribal nations are supposed to be sovereign nations, self governing and independent from the United States government. But many factors, like broken treaties and stolen traditional homelands, have forced tribal communities into continued reliance on federal subsidies, impeding full sovereignty. But sovereignty is still the goal for every tribal nation. And asserting independence around how they manage their food, health, and energy are some main ways indigenous communities are reclaiming sovereignty.
The Importance of Buffalo
Buffalo are the keystone species of the northern plains, an animal who shape the prairie ecosystem, but they’ve been nearly extinct for a century. Now, tribes and researchers are proving that buffalo are the key to healthier ecosystems and food sovereignty for northern plains tribes like the Northern Cheyenne.
“Having bison on the landscape, especially at really large scales, is likely to increase sort of diversity of vegetation, conditions, and habitat and likely to increase biodiversity,” said Andy Boyce-Pero, a Great Plains researcher for the Smithsonian Institute.
Brandon Small wades through a buffalo water trough that he just performed maintenance on while he takes us on a tour of the Northern Cheyenne buffalo habitat. Photos by Ilana Newman/Daily Yonder.
Before Small started running the buffalo restoration program, he worked at the Rosebud Mine, a coal mine in Colstrip, Montana. The buffalo program has existed since the tribe was given a herd of buffalo in the 1970s, but those buffalo were left relatively unmanaged until Small got involved and created a new management plan.
When Covid-19 hit, Small started to think about how he could help. He saw the currently unmanaged buffalo—who were in the habit of breaking through their fences onto the highway—as a resource the tribe was neglecting, and an important piece of their journey towards self-sufficiency.
He started spending time out with the buffalo, fixing fences and supplying food, while he petitioned tribal council with a management plan for a buffalo program. “I spent a lot of time out there on my own, out of my own pocket,” said Small as we drove on a ridge overlooking the buffalo enclosure.
Brandon Small wades through a buffalo water trough that he just performed maintenance on while he takes us on a tour of the Northern Cheyenne buffalo habitat. Photos by Ilana Newman/Daily Yonder.
It’s obvious how much Small cares about the animals that we eventually find, munching on grass on either side—and in the middle of—the dirt road we are slowly driving along.
Small’s five year goal was to form a “tribal buffalo program that was self-sufficient, where I didn’t need any money from the tribe or federal government,” he said.
He said they’re currently on track with that goal, but it’s not cheap to take care of a herd of more than 300 buffalo. “This year we’re spending 32,000 [dollars] on hay alone,” said Small.
The solar array also brings the buffalo program closer to self-sufficiency. It currently powers a small bunkhouse with a mini split that, during our September visit, provided welcome relief from the hot sun, Starlink internet, and a freezer that holds processed bison meat. It also powers electric fences and gates to keep out intruders. Small said that they have had issues with poaching in the past.
The solar array allows for electricity and internet access on the remote landscape of the buffalo habitat which helps with processing the animals and allows for operations to grow over time. Photo by Ilana Newman/Daily Yonder.
In December 2025, the Northern Cheyenne buffalo solar array was named one of Solar Builder Magazine’s projects of the year, highlighting the remote location of the project and how it builds capacity and sustainability for the tribe’s buffalo program.
Eventually, Small wants to have a small processing facility onsite. The solar array was built to be expandable to grow with the program.
The buffalo are both a source of food and economic development for the tribe. In November 2025, Small and the buffalo program handed out 5,414 pounds of buffalo meat. But they also sell the animals to other buffalo ranchers. The first year, Small said they sold 103 animals for around $126,000 to a rancher in South Dakota.
The processed buffalo meat sits in a freezer that would be impossible without the solar array. Small and the buffalo restoration program donate the processed meat to the tribe in regular giveaways. Photo by Ilana Newman/Daily Yonder.
There is a fine line between running a successful business and providing for the community, said Small. “We wanted to do it in such a way that we could still get meat processed and donated out to the communities, but still have enough money to keep our operation going and keep growing and expanding.”
This solar array, as well as the buffalo program overall, helps the Northern Cheyenne tribe become more sovereign and self-sufficient in every way. “Energy policy is really health policy because of what energy extraction has continuously done to our water, our air, our land, and our animals,” said Two Bears.
The post The Northern Cheyenne Tribe reclaims sovereignty through solar energy and buffalo restoration appeared first on ICT.
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