In 2001, a Canadian mining company proposed a massive gold and copper mine at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, a pristine water system on the coast of the Alaska Peninsula that’s home to the largest sockeye salmon run in the world. The salmon support a thriving ecosystem and are a cultural and economic lifeblood for native Alaskans, who have stewarded the land and water for thousands of years.

As the company moved ahead with plans to build the largest open-pit mine in North America, those Indigenous communities joined together to bring it to a halt. In 2023, they secured a rare “EPA veto” of the proposed Pebble Mine, and the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize for North America recognizes an Indigenous leader in this fight.

Alannah Hurley is the executive director of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay. Her Yup’ik name is Acaq, her great-grandmother’s name. She is the winner of the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize for North America. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/49031

This story was originally published by North Dakota Monitor.

Mary Steurer
North Dakota Monitor

The North Dakota Supreme Court has instructed a district court judge to stop an overseas free speech lawsuit against the developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The Amsterdam-based organization Greenpeace International filed suit against Energy Transfer in the Netherlands in response to the lawsuit the environmental group faces in North Dakota. Energy Transfer accuses Greenpeace of International and two other Greenpeace affiliate organizations of engaging in conspiracy, defamation and other crimes to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline pipeline from being built. A Morton County jury last spring sided with most of Energy Transfer’s claims.

Greenpeace International in early 2025 counter-sued Energy Transfer under a relatively new European Union law that protects those sued in retaliation for protest speech. The environmental group claims Energy Transfer has weaponized the legal system against it to punish Greenpeace for supporting the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.

Energy Transfer, meanwhile, alleges that Greenpeace International is only bringing the Dutch case to overturn the unfavorable verdict it received in North Dakota.

Energy Transfer asked Southwest Judicial District Judge James Gion last year to order that Greenpeace International refrain from pursuing the overseas lawsuit.

Gion denied the request, finding that Greenpeace International was not attempting to relitigate the North Dakota case because different matters are at issue in the Dutch suit. Gion also noted that the North Dakota case will likely wrap up before the Netherlands suit gets far enough along to interfere with it.

Energy Transfer appealed the decision to the North Dakota Supreme Court in September.

The high court on May 7 ruled 4-1 to overturn Gion’s decision, with Chief Justice Lisa Fair McEvers being the lone dissenting justice. District court judges Stephanie Hayden and James Shockman sat in on the case in place of justices Mark Friese and Douglas Bahr, who recused.

The four justices in the majority opinion agreed with Energy Transfer’s claim that Greenpeace International’s case in the Netherlands threatened to undermine the Morton County jury’s verdict. They directed Gion to enter an order halting the Dutch suit.

Greenpeace International wants the Amsterdam court to find that Energy Transfer’s suit is “manifestly unfounded and abusive,” Justice Jerod Tufte wrote in the majority opinion. He said this would require the court to find that Greenpeace International “did not engage in unlawful conduct, did not cause Energy Transfer’s losses, and did not act with malice.”

This goes against the Morton County jury’s decision, Tufte wrote.

He called the Dutch lawsuit “an attack on a fundamental policy of this state.”

He pointed to the fact that Greenpeace filed the Dutch suit about two weeks before its trial in Gion’s court started, he noted. This could have been a deliberate attempt to circumvent the North Dakota case, Tufte said.

“The only apparent purpose of filing a duplicative foreign action on the eve of trial is to create a vehicle for collaterally attacking the anticipated verdict,” he wrote.

Greenpeace International Senior Legal Counsel Daniel Simons in a statement said the organization is still digesting the North Dakota Supreme Court’s decision. Simons noted the order doesn’t prevent Greenpeace International from pursuing other legal action in the Netherlands related to the North Dakota case.

“This ruling does not enable Energy Transfer to escape accountability under Dutch and EU law for their back-to-back abusive court proceedings in the U.S.,” he said in the statement.

Trey Cox, the lead attorney representing Energy Transfer in its lawsuit against Greenpeace, applauded the ruling. In a Thursday statement, he said the high court’s decision “protects the authority of the North Dakota judicial system and the jury’s unanimous verdict from an improper end-run abroad.”

Fair McEvers in her dissent stated that she would deny Energy Transfer’s request, writing that there wasn’t enough evidence Gion acted in error.

She agreed with Gion that the Dutch case does not appear to be rehashing the same issues heard in his court.

“While there are some similarities, the types of actions differ,” she wrote.

Fair McEvers was also skeptical that the overseas suit threatened the integrity of the North Dakota case.

She noted that Greenpeace International submitted testimony from a Dutch law expert who indicated that even if Greenpeace International receives a favorable ruling in Amsterdam, it wouldn’t necessarily undermine the jury’s verdict.

Fair McEvers pushed back against the majority’s assertion that the timing of Greenpeace International’s Dutch suit was dubious.

While she agreed that the North Dakota judiciary has an interest in protecting its courts, she did not think the circumstances surrounding the Dutch case justified overruling Gion’s decision.

Both the majority opinion and Fair McEvers’ dissent acknowledge that the issues presented by Energy Transfer’s appeal are new to the North Dakota Supreme Court.

They also noted that there aren’t straightforward rules for how judges ought to decide when it’s appropriate to issue orders stopping another lawsuit.

In addition to Greenpeace International, Energy Transfer’s North Dakota lawsuit is also against two other Greenpeace organizations: Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace Fund. Those two aren’t part of the Dutch lawsuit.

Greenpeace International’s suit is still in its early stages. An Amsterdam court in mid-April held a hearing on claims brought by Energy Transfer asking for the case to be dismissed.

The more than three-week trial in Gion’s court last year featured dozens of witnesses, including current and former Greenpeace employees, Indigenous activists, Energy Transfer representatives and law enforcement.

The Morton County jury ultimately directed Greenpeace to pay Energy Transfer $667 million.  Gion later reduced that amount, and in March finalized an order for a $345 million judgment against Greenpeace. The three Greenpeace defendants have since filed a motion requesting a new trial.

The post North Dakota Supreme Court orders judge to halt Dutch suit against Dakota Access Pipeline developer appeared first on ICT.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/48035

A ceasefire was declared between Israel and Hamas seven months ago, but just as the deal has not stopped the killing of hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza, it has failed to alleviate the acute malnutrition crisis that was created when Israel began blocking almost all humanitarian aid in October 2023.

The international aid group Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), on Wednesday accused Israel of imposing a "manufactured malnutrition crisis" that is proving particularly devastating for pregnant and breastfeeding women, newborns, and infants.

At four clinics operated by MSF in Gaza between late 2024 and early 2026, medical teams found higher levels of miscarriage among mothers who experienced malnutrition.

The group also analyzed data on 201 mothers of newborns who required treatment in neonatal intensive care units at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and Al-Helou Hospital in Gaza City between June 2025 and this past January. More than half of the mothers had been affected by malnutrition at some point in their pregnancy.

Ninety percent of the babies had been born prematurely and 84% had low birth weight.

"Neonatal mortality was twice as high among infants born to mothers affected by malnutrition compared to those born to mothers without malnutrition," said MSF.

Samar Abu Mustafa, a displaced mother from Abasan al-Kabira, said she was diagnosed with malnutrition while pregnant with her 3-month-old baby.

"I don't know how I will provide diapers and milk, nor how I will provide food for my other daughters. There is no income and no support," said Abu Mustafa. "There is nothing apart from food parcels from the World Food Program and community kitchens. Every six months, we might get a food parcel once. It's barely enough. It is all rice and lentils. We are forced to eat whatever is in front of us."

"For a long time, we haven't eaten anything nutritious and the baby does not get enough milk from me, so I am forced to provide formula, but I don’t have money for it," she said. "I have just one remaining can of milk."

Mercè Rocaspana, MSF's medical referent for emergencies, emphasized that malnutrition in the exclave was "almost nonexistent" before Israel began bombarding Gaza and blocking humanitarian aid—an action Israeli and US officials persistently claimed Israel was not taking before the ceasefire was reached, even as the number of deaths from starvation climbed to nearly 500.

“The malnutrition crisis is entirely manufactured,” said Rocaspana. "For two and a half years, the systematic blockade of humanitarian aid and commercial goods, on top of insecurity, have severely restricted access to food and clean water. Healthcare facilities have been forced out of service and living conditions have profoundly deteriorated. As a result, vulnerable groups of people are at heightened risk of malnutrition.”

Before the war, there were no dedicated therapeutic medical feeding units in Gaza's hospitals, but MSF teams admitted more than 500 infants under six months of age to outpatient feeding programs between October 2024-December 2025—programs that the bombardment has made impossible for many families to complete.

"Of those admitted, 91% were at risk of poor growth and development. By December, 200 infants were no longer in the program—only 48% of them were cured, while 7% died, another 7% were referred to a program for older children, and a staggering 32% defaulted due in part to insecurity and displacement."

The 20-point ceasefire agreement stipulated that at least 600 aid trucks must enter Gaza daily and that border crossings must be reopened, but as Common Dreams reported in April, five leading aid groups gave "humanitarian aid access" a failing grade in a scorecard rating conditions in Gaza six months after the deal was reached.

Israel was still restricting deliveries, and food items sold in Gaza were anywhere from 3% to 233% more expensive than they were before the war started.

Al Jazeera's Hind Khoury reported Thursday that only 150 aid trucks are being allowed in daily.

Last week, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that while there's been a 72% increase in the amount of humanitarian aid reaching Palestinians in Gaza since the ceasefire was brokered, 11% of coordinated humanitarian missions are still being denied.

"Many lives have been saved in Gaza because of scaled up humanitarian effort since the ceasefire. But much more to do: We need to sustain access, protection of civilians, neutrality, and partnership," said Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs.

Gaza: Six months into the ceasefire, hunger continues to shape daily life and malnutrition levels remain high.@WFP is on the ground supporting those most in need, but aid alone is not enough for full recovery. pic.twitter.com/gABZySEjFI
— United Nations (@UN) May 6, 2026

Sahar Nafez Salem, who lives with her children in a tent in Khan Younis, told MSF that her family has been relying on a charity kitchen to eat.

"We eat lunch from it and save some for dinner," she said. "We try to manage getting lunch for our poor children every Friday, so we can bring them joy, but all week long, almost everything is from charity kitchens... The last time I received aid was during Ramadan... There is rice and lentils... Other things, like vegetables, are expensive. We can't get them all the time. So sometimes we go without vegetables for months."

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/47531

Kalle Benallie ICT

This story is part of ICT’s series on the 10th anniversary of the Standing Rock movement.

Water protectors came from far and wide. It was 2016 and the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline just begun. ICT shares the stories of those who were there.

TAYLAR DAWN STAGNER

Stagner was 23 years old and decided with two other people that she wanted to help fight against the pipeline. She helped cook and clean at a camp for a couple days in the fall of 2016.

Stagner said it developed her personally and professionally, as she later became a journalist and writer. It helped her reconnect with her roots, being Cheyenne Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone.

“I remember pulling in, throwing my stuff in a communal tent, and running to the main fire,” Stagner recalled. “I was so emotional the whole time, and talked to so many people from across the nation.”

She said being with so many Indigenous people was powerful.

“It just made me feel very like, there’s so many of us, and I don’t know how else to put it. It made me feel not alone, which sounds weird, but at the time I was reconnecting,” she said. “I mean, the energy was palpable. There was an electrified understanding of purpose of why we were there, and the importance of what we were doing.”

Stagner added how there was a lot of healing and medicine there.

“It’s made me be more connected to my own community, to fight for Buffalo rematriation on the Wind River and just better information systems everywhere in Indian Country because I truly believe that that’s really important too,” she said.

JULIE RICHARDS

Julie Richards, Oglala, said she was at the Red Warrior Camp at Standing Rock. She saw the progression of the Standing Rock community since she was there earlier in August.

“I remember in November coming over the hill from Cannonball and just seeing all the tipis and just looking at them and I was like, ‘Wow, this must have been kind of what [The Battle of] Little BigHorn looked like.'”

Richards said she did a lockdown, which is a tactic by demonstrators by physically attaching themselves to objects or each other, with her camp to stop construction of the pipeline. She said the mercenaries for the pipeline were trying to get through and the farmers who supported the pipeline were shooting off guns.

“We didn’t know if they were aiming at us or whatever, but I just put my head down and then I started praying. When I looked up, there were just hundreds of people there. I was like, where do these people come from?” Richards said.

She said she was at Standing rock to bring awareness to the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people. She was there originally with the Mothers Against Meth Alliance before joining the Red Warrior Camp.

“It felt like every Indigenous person was there. It was really powerful to see the solidarity of like, all of the tribes coming together and even the Crow tribe coming out to support,” Richards said.

The post Standing Rock: ‘It felt like every Indigenous person was there’ appeared first on ICT.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/47513

Last week, the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues released urgent calls to action, including a pause on fast-tracked critical mineral projects and increased funding for Indigenous climate projects. But those recommendations come as the Forum itself is facing an existential crisis.

For 25 years, the Forum has been the leading United Nations body representing Indigenous peoples, but that status has not always translated to policy change by member states or the U.N. itself. Growing questions about the Forum’s effectiveness also come amid budget cuts at the U.N., Trump’s rejection of multilateralism, and ongoing efforts to streamline U.N. processes. These intersecting challenges are all threatening to push the Forum, and the causes Indigenous representatives bring to it, even further toward the margins.

“For us, climate change is not a distant threat. It is a present and lived human rights crisis,” Aluki Kotierk, who is Inuk from Canada and current chairperson of the Permanent Forum, said Friday at the conclusion of the Forum’s two-week annual meeting in New York City. The Forum’s recommendations reflect discussions and research conducted by hundreds of Indigenous delegates and experts over the past year. They join more than 1,000 recommendations issued by the Forum since it first began to meet, many of which Indigenous advocates deem critical to their survival. But state governments often blatantly ignore them.

A new “Systemic Assessment” report by a group of current and former members of the Permanent Forum underscores this problem. “While UNPFII has succeeded in establishing itself as a visible and legitimate global platform, questions remain regarding its ability to translate dialogue, recommendations, and knowledge production into tangible outcomes for Indigenous Peoples on the ground,” the report said. “The proliferation of recommendations has not been matched by corresponding mechanisms for implementation, follow-up, and accountability.”

The report underscores the limitations of Forum, which makes recommendations on behalf of Indigenous peoples to U.N. agencies and member states, but has been hamstrung by funding cuts and the willingness of other U.N. agencies and global leaders to listen. Annual funding for the U.N. Trust Fund on Indigenous Issues, which helps the Permanent Forum carry out its mission, is at a historic low, falling from more than $300,000 in 2021 to less than $50,000 in 2026. Currently, only three U.N. member states contribute to the fund, down from nine member states in 2006.

The drop in funding reflects a broader liquidity crisis at the U.N. driven in part by late payments from key members like the U.S. and China. Kotierk said the lack of funding has led to staff reductions at the Forum, shorter meeting times, and fewer interpretation services.

That didn’t stop the Forum from issuing bold calls to action on Friday, including urging U.N. member states to seriously consider international court rulings to mitigate climate change by 2027, and to legally protect Indigenous lands, especially land belonging to uncontacted tribes. The Forum published multiple reports Friday with recommendations ranging from asking member states to develop legal protections for nomadic Indigenous communities, to urging the Green Climate Fund and Global Environment Facility, multi-billion dollar government-funded global funds, to provide direct funding to Indigenous peoples to mitigate climate change.

Eirik Larsen, who attended this year’s Forum on behalf of the Saami Council, urged Forum members to consider capping the number of recommendations to maximize their effectiveness, and to ask member states and U.N. entities to report back on whether they’ve implemented recommendations from previous years.

Larsen said that despite the need for improvement, he keeps returning to the Forum because it’s an important arena for discussing critical issues at the international level. “It’s a unique venue for Indigenous peoples to interact directly with member states,” he said.

The systemic assessment of the Forum found that many Indigenous survey respondents agreed with Larsen’s appreciation of the Forum, seeing it as “a place of visibility, exchange, and recognition,” the report found. “Yet a large number also characterize it as overly performative, a ‘talk shop,’ or a space in which testimony is heard but not translated into meaningful change.”

To Ghazali Ohorella, international relations and Indigenous rights advisor of the Alifuru Council, the assessment could not have been issued at a worse time. Just a year ago, the U.N. embarked on a process of restructuring, which could lead to U.N. bodies like the Forum being consolidated or eliminated. Today’s Permanent Forum is the result of decades of advocacy by Indigenous peoples for a dedicated space within the U.N., which by design, privileges the voices of recognized state governments and doesn’t allow Indigenous peoples who remain under colonial rule to vote in the General Assembly. Ohorella is worried that the report — which is based on a survey of 200 respondents, rather than the thousands of attendees over the past 25 years — could give ammunition to the Forum’s detractors. “It allows them to say: See, even Indigenous Peoples themselves identified problems with the Forum. Retire it,” Ohorella said.

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Anita Hofschneider

One of the most valuable aspects of the Forum is its ability to elevate issues that otherwise might be ignored, like Indigenous health, which was the main topic of this year’s gathering. “There is no health without land. The well-being of Indigenous Peoples is inseparable from our lands, waters, and territories,” Kotierk said in her closing speech on Friday. “To restore health, we must advance decolonization.” This year, the Forum’s official recommendations urged U.N. member states to disaggregate health data on Indigenous peoples by 2027, and “to treat prolonged climate-induced displacement of Indigenous Peoples as a health emergency.”

Kotierk said that the Forum has been instrumental in influencing global policies. “This Forum has consistently elevated what the world too often ignored. It has brought visibility to the crisis of Indigenous Peoples’ languages, affirmed the rights and leadership of Indigenous women and girls, and ensured that Indigenous Peoples’ voices are not only present—but heard—in international decision-making,” Kotierk said.

Yet despite its importance, it’s not easy for Indigenous advocates to participate in the Permanent Forum. Structural barriers that limit participation include challenges obtaining visas — which have worsened under the Trump administration — lack of awareness about the Forum and how to register, and the high cost of travel. In the systemic assessment report, survey respondents suggested the Forum consider holding regional, national and local gatherings “that do not force all meaningful participation through a single annual gathering in New York.”

Mariah Hernandez-Fitch, a first-year law student at Emory University and a member of the United Houma Nation, attended the Forum for the first time as a youth fellow for the Ban Ki-Moon Foundation. Hernandez-Fitch has never been abroad and this was her first time participating in a global Indigenous space. “It was beautiful to see people not all in suits,” she said. “Seeing people in their cultural attire, their formal wear, that was very exciting to me.” She listened to someone from Vietnam speak about how climate change was affecting their community and was moved by how similar their experience was to her family’s experience with rising seas in southeastern Louisiana.

But she also felt overwhelmed by the process, confused by when the side events were happening, and ended up not delivering a planned statement, in part because she was intimidated by the process. “There’s rules, but if you don’t know about them, you do feel out of place even in a space that is for Indigenous peoples,” she said.

Still, now that she’s back in New Orleans, Hernandez-Fitch can see herself returning to the Forum. “I can see myself applying the law and my experience into those spaces,” she said. “I could see myself not being scared of making an intervention.” It helped to meet other Indigenous youth who care just as much as she does about making a difference. “There’s a communal kind of excitement and I feel excited for the future.”

Conversations about how to make the Forum more effective will continue at next year’s gathering, which will be held from May 10 to 21 and focus on global progress on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The uncertain future of the UN’s leading voice on Indigenous rights on May 6, 2026.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/44995

A few years ago, I was watching Ken Burns’ The American Buffalodocumentary when a photo of Fred Dupree and Mary Good Elk Woman popped up on the screen, and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, where did he get that? That’s our family photo!’ Fred and Mary are my great-great-great-great-grandparents, and they were living on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation in the late 1800s when Mary Good Elk Woman had a dream about saving the buffalo. The next morning, when she woke up, she told Fred he needed to get their sons and get out there and save the buffalo.

So they went out and rounded up some calves. The federal government supported efforts to eradicate the bison—it was a very purposeful campaign to destroy our food source—but the calves didn’t have any economic value at the time, so hunters left them alone. There were herds of just calves roaming around. So Fred and his sons went out, rounded up some calves, and eventually created a herd that helped repopulate the buffalo in parts of the Great Plains. Most all the buffalo in Custer State Park are descended from our family’s herd. And now, when I see baby bison, not orphaned but with their families, I get choked up, because we’ve come full circle – from a few orphans left to die on the plains to these joyful calves today zooming around their mothers.

I love that so much of my work today is still about helping bring the buffalo back to Tribes. I’m the vice president of Native Nations Conservation and Food Systems at the World Wildlife Fund. I started there in the fall of 2024 after spending four years as the director of the USDA’s Office of Tribal Relations under the Biden Administration. While I was at the USDA, I worked hard to change the agency’s policies to be more inclusive of Tribes, Tribal producers, and Indigenous foods. At the WWF, my team gets to continue much of these efforts, working to integrate Indigenous values into conservation work, and to directly support Tribal conservation—particularly with buffalo and buffalo food systems.

“You can only do so much with a PowerPoint. You really need people to experience things firsthand.”

While at USDA I often spoke to different agencies about the federal government’s role in slaughtering the buffalo in order to control Tribes’ access to food and to force Native people into becoming western farmers. It was important for people throughout the agency to understand how purposeful federal policy decisions led to the challenges you see today in Indian Country—high rates of diabetes, food insecurity, poverty, complicated land ownership, inaccessibility of Indigenous foods—because if we don’t understand the historical lens, then we can’t fix it.

But you can only do so much with a PowerPoint. You really need people to experience things firsthand. When we take people into Indian Country, it’s really impactful, but that’s hard to do. So we tried to bring experiences to D.C. as well. For Native American Heritage Month one November, my office decided to have an Indigenous Foods “cookoff” for the department. We invited people from all the different USDA agencies to stop by the office, where we had all kinds of Native ingredients on display, and pick an Indigenous ingredient to cook a dish with.

Across the board, people really got really excited, from the meat inspectors to the lawyers. One person even made brownies using tepary beans, a drought-resistant bean native to the Southwest. It was great to see folks who have never been to Indian Country doing their research on Indigenous foods and really excited, and I thought, “Wow, we have to do this every year.”

When I started at the USDA, I walked in hot. I had very specific things that I wanted to work on. I had spent years working for several large land-based Tribes, and I was aware of just how much USDA policies affect people in Indian Country. It’s our school lunches. It’s whether healthy and Indigenous foods are available through the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), which we call “the commodity program” or “commods.” It’s also our grazing rights and lack of access to farming and ranching programs. And it’s our ability to process Indigenous sources of protein, like buffalo, reindeer, and salmon.

I did a lot of hiring to make sure there was a Tribal liaison in each USDA agency. That’s important because, for example, for nutrition programs like FDPIR, SNAP, and WIC, you need someone who understands that Native bodies evolved with non-European diets. For example, Indigenous Alaskans, they’re like the original Keto diet, right? Highfat, low carbohydrate. So, whale blubber, seal, and salmon. The high proportion of those kinds of foods don’t always meet Western nutritional guidelines. So if you don’t have a Native person to consult with, you’re not going to recognize that Native bodies are different, and you’re going to be feeding those bodies the wrong foods.

That’s what happened for years and years. After we were pushed off our lands and lost our food sources, we were forced to became dependent on the federal government to feed ourselves. The FDPIR program is the modern version of that dependence, and it’s a necessity for Tribes on large reservations where grocery stores are few and far between. The USDA purchases and ships domestically sourced foods to Tribal governments, and Tribes distribute it through warehouses or Tribal stores. Historically, those food packages were lard and flour and things that were really bad for Indigenous bodies and caused dramatic problems with diabetes and obesity.

When I was at USDA, I was able to get that changed somewhat so that Tribes could choose more of the foods they wanted to eat: wild rice in the Great Lakes, buffalo in the Great Plains, blue corn in the Southwest, salmon in Alaska. It’s not across the board, but where it’s been implemented, it has been wildly successful. So now you’re seeing people calling up the FDPIR office and asking, “Hey, is the bison in?” and really wanting to participate in these programs because they are foods that are both culturally appropriate and nutritionally appropriate for the bodies in those regions. So that was a big win.

“It’s what happens when you let Tribes do what Tribes want to do: They buy healthy foods locally, and they eat healthy foods locally.”

But the really big win for Indigenous Food Sovereignty when I was at the USDA was the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement program (LFPA), which was funded first through the American Rescue Plan and later extended. It took the federal dollars and rather than USDA doing the food purchasing, it gave the money directly to states and Tribes. Those governments could then purchase whichever foods they wanted, as long as the food they bought came from within 400 miles. The idea was to strengthen local food producers after COVID showed that parts of our food supply chain were vulnerable to disruption.

I can’t speak for the states, but the LFPA was revolutionary for Tribes. It changed everything, because for the first time, Tribes had the dollars themselves to do what they’ve been thinking about forever: eating local Native foods. The Sitka Tribe of Alaska was buying crab and salmon and clams, and the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota was buying wild berries, wild turnips, and buffalo, and several Ojibwe Tribes were buying wild rice. It also empowered people within Indian Country to go out and get wild foods, like by digging up prairie turnips and starting a bison harvesting plant because they had a buyer. And it also empowered the people who wanted to eat these wild foods because now they could access them. So it created this whole economy around Indigenous local foods. It’s what happens when you let Tribes do what Tribes want to do: They buy healthy foods locally, and they eat healthy foods locally.

Unfortunately, the dollars ran out on that, but I’m hoping that Congress rethinks it, because it’s a very conservative principle. It’s basically stopping the federal government from running your nutrition programs and letting local communities empower local producers. The LFPA is also a good example of the importance of having Native people in the federal government, because originally, the LFPA did not include Tribes. The money was just going to go to state governments. We helped change that, because Tribes are not subsidiaries of the states, we’re not counties, we’re our own sovereign governments.

Another thing I helped change was access to meat processing. For 250 years, the USDA has really only invested meat-processing dollars in harvesting European domesticated animals—cattle, pigs, sheep, and chickens. We’ve never funded the processing of the animals that are actually native to the U.S. But our people want to eat seal and whale and deer and elk and moose and bison. So for the first time ever, the USDA gave grants to fund meat processing for those animals, through the Indigenous Animals Harvesting and Meat Processing Grant. And one really cool project that came out of the grants was the mobile meat-processing trailers that Tribes can take out to the field to process a buffalo.

Many Tribes don’t like to load a bunch of buffalo on a truck and take them to a big slaughterhouse. We think that’s disrespectful, because the buffalo are our relatives, and that is very stressful for them. We prefer to bring a sharpshooter out onto the prairie who takes down the animal in one shot while it’s grazing. The buffalo doesn’t ever know what’s coming and doesn’t get stressed. It lives and dies with dignity where it’s lived its whole life.

But the only way you can do that and also address modern food safety requirements is if you’ve got a refrigerated mobile harvest trailer so you can field-dress that animal out on the prairie. So I got the USDA to finance, along with the Intertribal Buffalo Council, a harvesting trailer to show it could be done. It was wildly successful. I don’t even know how many we have now, I think about 15 trailers. Every Tribe wants one. And they‘re only like $100,000 each. So compared to a $30 million stationary processing facility, they’re very accessible.

Another important policy that I worked on at USDA was changing school lunches to include more Native foods. The biggest challenge to school lunches is that the federal appropriation amount is so small; it’s a little over $4 a child, and that forces most schools to buy really unhealthy food in bulk. Schools turn to these large food corporations that consolidate the market and can offer them ultra-processed food that is not really food.

So, one of the biggest issues we faced at USDA was, how to empower schools in Indian Country to purchase local foods that are healthier for their people when you only get $4 per student? It’s really hard. So, to be frank, we’ve only been able to include Indigenous foods in Native schools when Tribes or grants have subsidized the cost. Because the price point of buying local food, whether it’s buffalo or wild rice or other things, is so much more expensive than what schools have in their budgets.

I also helped clarify to people who work in schools in Indian Country what the rules are for buffalo meat inspection. That was something we really wanted to get across during last year’s Buffalo to School Conference, because there’s a myth that all meat you serve in schools has to be USDA-inspected, but that’s not true. Buffalo and game meat are not required by USDA to be USDA-inspected. So we spent a lot of time demystifying that. We also brought together Native buffalo ranchers and school staff so they could get to know one another and create a pipeline for getting more buffalo meat into schools.

During my last year at the agency, I remember we had a panel on Indigenous Food Sovereignty with Native celebrity chef Sean Sherman and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. Sean was criticizing the USDA’s destruction of Indigenous foodways and lack of inclusion of Indigenous foods in USDA programs, and Secretary Vilsack got upset, and he pushed back and talked about how important Indigenous foods were and then listed out all the things the USDA was doing to support Tribes and Indigenous foods.

And I thought, OK, my work here is done. For a USDA secretary to actually care enough about Indigenous foods to be proud of the work, to get upset about it, and to know in detail all the things USDA is doing to help with Indigenous food sovereignty? That was a first for the history books.

As told to Civil Eats and lightly edited.

The post Finding ‘Big Wins’ for Indigenous Food Systems appeared first on Civil Eats.

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Editor’s note: ICT will refer to individuals defending the Black Hills as treaty defenders. The Black Hills is unceded territory in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and acknowledged by the 1980 Supreme Court ruling of the United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians.

Amelia Schafer*ICT*

RAPID CITY, South Dakota – Roughly a dozen Indigenous treaty defenders gathered near Pe’ Sla, a sacred site in the Black Hills, early Thursday morning to show their opposition to drilling near the site. Treaty defenders conducted ceremonial activities near two drill pads in response to recent exploratory graphite drilling within the two-mile buffer zone around Pe’ Sla.

Lakota youth “locked down” to drilling equipment, by taping their arms to machinery, and organizers constructed a prayer altar nearby. As of Thursday morning, organizers were informed law enforcement was en route but had not yet arrived.

Indigenous people in South Dakota concerned, alarmed at potential drilling project at sacred site

Treaty defenders said they fear that mining activity could threaten the nearby Rapid Creek Watershed, which supplies water to several tribal communities as well as local municipalities like the Ellsworth Air Force Base. Drilling also could disrupt ceremonies regularly held at Pe’ Sla, tribal leaders told ICT in May 2025.

For Oceti Sakowin (Lakota, Dakota and Nakoda) people, Pe’ Sla is sacred in part because it aligns with the constellations at various points in the year and is a focal point of oral history. Pe’ Sla is roughly 50 miles west of Rapid City. The area has been used by Oceti Sakowin nations for generations as a site for ceremony and gathering.

Exploratory drilling for graphite, in this case, involves drilling up to 18 holes that are 3 to 3.5 inches in diameter 1,000 feet into the earth.

Currently, all of the United States’s graphite comes from China, representatives from the South Dakota Mineral Industries Association told ICT in May 2025. With new tariffs from President Donald Trump, companies are looking for a domestic solution. That solution could come in the Black Hills, but not without threatening hard fought for tribal sovereignty over an area already promised to the Oceti Sakowin.

A man sits in prayer near a piece of drilling equipment used for exploratory graphite drilling near Pe’ Sla in the Black Hills. Credit: Courtesy Angel White Eyes, NDN Collective

The U.S. Forest Service granted local mining company Pete Lien & Sons a permit allowing for exploratory drilling near the site on Feb. 27. The permit was deemed to be exempt from the federal environmental review process required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

At least 10 drill pads are operating within the two-mile buffer zone surrounding Pe’ Sla, according to NDN Collective, a nonprofit Indigenous advocacy organization headquartered in Rapid City. The buffer zone was created following the purchase of portions of Pe’ Sla by several Oceti Sakowin tribes, after which it was placed in federal trust.

Treaty defenders placed signs and banners on mining equipment and sang and drummed at the site.

NDN Collective and two environmental advocacy groups, Black Hills Clean Water Alliance and Earthworks, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service on April 2 in response to its decision to permit drilling. The lawsuit cites violations of the National Environmental Policy Act and potential threats to lands recognized for religious and cultural importance.

In late April, the three plaintiffs filed for a temporary restraining order to stop drilling, NDN Collective organizers said.

“Pe’ Sla is our sacred land, and we are doing everything we can to protect it,” said Valeriah Big Eagle, Ihanktonwan Dakota and the director of He Sapa Initiatives at NDN Collective in an April 30 press release. “We will not cease our ceremony in the face of destruction, disrespect, and illegal drilling.”

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Billions of dollars have been pledged to fight the climate crisis, but almost none is reaching Indigenous peoples, even as world leaders credit them as essential to solving it. “From the Amazon to Australia, and Africa to the Arctic, you are the great guardians of nature, a living library of biodiversity conservation, and champions of climate action,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York City last week.

But global funding hasn’t followed those words. Multi-billion-dollar financial institutions set up to address the climate crisis have largely failed to deliver money to Indigenous communities, or even track whether they’re benefiting. At the Permanent Forum, Indigenous advocates described how their communities have been devastated by flooding and wildfires and called on governments and global funds to provide direct access to climate finance.

“The demand for direct access to finance by Indigenous peoples is a matter of right. It’s actually explicitly mentioned in the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that because of the historical injustices and the need for us to develop, we need direct access to finances,” said Joan Carling, who is Indigenous Kankanaey Igorot from the Philippines, a former expert member of the Permanent Forum and executive director of the organization Indigenous Peoples Rights International.

An analysis by the Rainforest Foundation Norway estimates that between 2011 and 2020, Indigenous peoples and local communities involved in land tenure and forest management received less than 1 percent of global funding for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Indigenous peoples are often combined with “local communities” in conservation spaces, despite calls from Indigenous U.N. experts to distinguish them.

“We are not asking for charity. We are not asking for privilege,” Carling continued. “This is a matter of right for us because it’s a matter of social justice. It’s just enabling us to adapt to the impacts of climate change that we did not create in the first place.”

The climate crisis is forcing many Indigenous leaders to make painful choices: rebuild homes after major disasters or relocate entire villages from ancestral lands. Those decisions are made harder by a lack of financial resources and despite international court rulings affirming the right to reparations for those harmed by climate change.

“We are protecting forests, we are protecting biodiversity,” said Deborah Sanchez, who is Indigenous Miskito from Honduras. Sanchez is the director of the Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative, which was created in 2021 to address the need for more direct climate financing. “Once the rights are realized for the communities, that’s the basis where everything can really be sustainable over time.”

The Green Climate Fund, or GCF, the official global climate fund designated by the Paris Agreement, has a portfolio of $20 billion. But not a single Indigenous peoples organization has been accredited to receive money from it, according to Helen Magata, who is Indigenous Kadaclan Igorot and serves on the fund’s Indigenous advisory committee, established in 2022. “That goes without saying that access to the fund by Indigenous peoples is near to nil,” said Magata.

Getting accredited involves meeting stringent criteria — financial management and accounting standards, environmental and social safeguards — and can take years. The fund’s minimum grant of $10 million can also be difficult for smaller communities to manage. “We have to jump through hoop after hoop in order to even qualify,” said Janene Yazzie, who is Diné and a member of the climate finance working group of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change. “They literally created a problem that is on us to prove our capacity to solve.”

A 2025 report by the fund’s Independent Evaluation Unit found that “the Green Climate Fund has not actively pursued a portfolio with Indigenous peoples” and that its processes lacked the flexibility to serve them. “For Indigenous peoples, this challenge is often compounded to the point of being insurmountable,” the report concluded, recommending the fund create a dedicated funding window for Indigenous peoples.

Magata said the fund also lacks a mechanism to track how much money Indigenous peoples actually receive. Funding recipients may claim their projects will serve Indigenous peoples, but it’s often unclear what percentage of the money reaches those communities. “If you don’t have a framework like that, then how could you say how much Indigenous peoples are really benefiting or not?” she said.

Rebecca Phwitiko, a communications specialist for the Green Climate Fund, acknowledged in an email that the fund does not yet have “a dedicated marker to track funding flows specifically to Indigenous Peoples’ organisations.” She said the fund has revised its accreditation process and supported projects benefiting Indigenous peoples in the Amazon, Australia, and the Pacific.

“Strengthening tracking, reporting, and accountability around Indigenous Peoples-related finance is an area GCF recognises as important and is continuing to work on,” she said. The fund recently held its first-ever Indigenous peoples conference in South Korea and last year accredited the International Land and Forest Tenure Facility, which works to secure land tenure rights for Indigenous peoples and local communities.

The Global Environment Facility, another major international climate fund, has disbursed more than $27 billion over three decades, including $50 million in dedicated funding for Indigenous peoples and local communities over the past eight years. Adriana Moreira, the fund’s head of partnerships, said it plans to increase that to $100 million for the next four-year funding round and intends to partner with five Indigenous-led trust funds. “We are constantly seeking to learn and improve,” she said.

Unlike the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility doesn’t require an extensive accreditation process and offers $75,000 capacity-building grants to Indigenous-led organizations. It has also set a goal of directing 20 percent of all its funding to Indigenous peoples and local communities. But like the Green Climate Fund, it is still working on ways to verify whether money actually reaches those communities. Sarah Wyatt, a senior biodiversity specialist at the fund, said it recently tested a new tracking method within one program and plans to expand it. “It is admittedly not going to be an exact science,” Wyatt said. “But still, if you don’t count, you can’t try to improve, right?”

Even if both funds improve their processes, neither can reach Indigenous peoples in the Global North. Both rely on governmental contributions classified as “official development aid” — funding that flows exclusively from wealthy countries to developing ones. At the U.N.’s annual climate conference in 2022, Yazzie was part of a caucus of Indigenous peoples who called on states to recognize the “false dichotomy of developed and developing countries in regard to funding initiatives and actions directed to Indigenous Peoples.”

At the Permanent Forum, delegates from Indigenous nations in North America described how melting ice and rising seas are causing irreversible harm to their traditional homelands — communities excluded from the current global climate financing structure. “We are dealing with the same issues and same forms of disenfranchisement across those global barriers,” said Yazzie. “It actually invisibilizes the way that the so-called ‘developed North’ profits from the theft of lands of Indigenous peoples within their own territories. To demand that those flows only go to the South is a continuation of those same colonial policies.”

Yazzie also criticized the widespread use of the phrase “Indigenous peoples and local communities,” which U.N. experts have called on climate treaties to abandon. Representatives from the Global Environment Facility said they use the description of local communities in the Convention on Biological Diversity, which describes local communities as embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. “So you see how much more narrow that truly is,” said Wyatt from the Global Environment Facility. “But I would give the example actually in the Pacific, where folks may not always call themselves Indigenous, but they would fit that type of definition.” She added the term also helps channel funding to communities in countries that don’t formally recognize Indigenous peoples — but acknowledged they don’t know what share of their grants go to Indigenous communities specifically versus local communities more broadly.

The challenge of receiving global climate finance is pushing some groups to build alternatives. “We were in the communities, we saw that the funding didn’t go to the ground,” said Sanchez from the Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative, whose organization draws mostly from private philanthropy to provide grants to Indigenous peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant organizations.

Magata remains hopeful that the major funds can change. “At the end of the day, the ultimate objective is we want to bring as much money as near to the ground as possible,” she said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Indigenous peoples bear the brunt of climate change — and get almost none of the money to fight it on Apr 29, 2026.

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Hamas stressed in a statement on Sunday, April 19, the necessity of obligating Israel to implement all the terms of phase one of the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire deal, as a prelude for launching phase two of the agreement.

The statement was released after the movement held a series of meetings with mediators and Palestinian factions in Egypt’s capital, Cairo, last week, to explore ways to complete the implementation of the agreement terms.

Hamas asserted that it dealt with the deliberations positively, affirming its keenness to continue coordinating with the mediators to reach “an acceptable agreement” based on the initiative of US President Donald Trump, and the understandings formulated in the Sharm El-Sheikh summit, in order to end the humanitarian suffering in the Gaza Strip.

Moreover, the movement accused the Israeli occupation of not adhering to most of its pledges and continuing to violate the agreement on a daily basis. It also emphasized that any agreement must include the complete withdrawal of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) from the entire besieged enclave, alongside the start of the reconstruction process.

Israel committed over 2000 violations during phase one of the agreement

Hamas’ demands came after the IOF committed over 2000 violations since phase one of the deal came into force on October 10, 2025.

According to health sources, at least 780 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes across the war-torn territory as a result of these violations.

Meanwhile, the death toll of Palestinian people killed by Israel in Gaza since October 7, 2023, has risen to 72,560, with the latest reports from the United Nations indicating that 38,000 women and girls were among the fatalities. 

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At least five Palestinians were killed, including two children and a woman, in different parts of the occupied West Bank in the past two days.

Aws al-Nassan (14), and Jihad Abu Na’im (32), were shot dead in a terror attack carried out by illegal Israeli settlers on a boys school in Al-Mughayyir village, in the central West Bank governorate of Ramallah and al-Bireh on Tuesday, April 21.

Israeli violence against the people of the village did not stop there, as the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) fired live ammunition, stun grenades, and tear gas on mourners taking part in the funeral procession of Al-Nassan and Abu Na’im the next day.

Tuesday also saw the tragic death of Mohammad al-Jaabari (16), who was run over by a car of an Israeli colonist, while he was riding a bike on his way to school in the southern governorate of Hebron.

Israeli newspaper Maariv reported that the vehicle, which hit Al-Jaabari, belonged to the security convoy of Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.

However, Haaretz (another Israeli newspaper) said it was informed by a security source that the car was en route to provide personal protection and security for settlements minister Orit Strook.

Either way, for many, the incident reflects the systematic targeting of Palestinian civilians by Israeli far-right government officials, such as Ben-Gvir and Strook, who are known for their racism and incitement of violence against Palestinians.

Read more: Israeli minister Ben-Gvir storms Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron to provoke an escalation in the West Bank

A fourth fatality was reported in the northern governorate of Jenin on Tuesday after Palestinian woman Rajaa Oweis (45) succumbed to injuries she sustained during an IOF raid on Jenin refugee camp two and a half years ago.

On Wednesday, April 22, Odeh Awawdeh (29) was killed in Israeli gunfire after a group of settlers attacked the village of Deir Debwan, east of Ramallah.

Israel killed 1,156 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 2023

Al Jazeera reported on Monday, April 20, that 1,151 Palestinians have been killed in onslaughts waged by the IOF and illegal Israeli settlers since October 2023. This means that the death toll has risen to 1,156, following the assaults launched on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Read more: Twelve Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks across the West Bank

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This story is published through the Indigenous News Alliance which includes ICT.

Anita HofschneiderGrist

Hundreds of delegates are arriving at the United Nations this week for the world’s largest gathering of Indigenous peoples. But they arrive against an increasingly hostile global backdrop, facing an artificial intelligence boom driving new extraction on ancestral lands, a U.S. administration that has made it increasingly difficult for Global South delegates to secure visas to attend, and the twin challenges of climate change and green energy projects that have frequently run afoul of Indigenous land rights.

This year’s United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is focused on the grim topic of survival in the midst of war, with its official theme “Ensuring Indigenous Peoples’ health, including in the context of conflict.” Experts emphasize that Indigenous peoples already face health inequities from colonialism and climate change, and these harms are compounded by armed conflicts and militarization that risk ecological degradation and further displacement of Indigenous peoples from their lands. Experts say that health for Indigenous peoples is directly tied to the environment, land, and sovereignty, and can’t be siloed into clinical discussions about medicine or public health.Warfare isn’t the only concern — advocates are seeing the extraction of critical minerals for the green transition drive Indigenous rights violations, and are echoing a long-standing call to make climate financing directly available to their communities, instead of through state or foreign intermediaries.

But before diplomatic conversations can even begin, many delegates must confront the practical barrier of visa restrictions put in place by the Trump Administration. Mariana Kiimi Ortiz Flores, who is Na Ñuu Savi from Mexico and works as an advocacy assistant at Cultural Survival, said last year, her organization prepared Indigenous representatives from Africa to attend the forum, but their visa applications were denied, and this year, one of their Indigenous staff members from South America was denied her visa as well.

“It’s getting harder and harder to access the United States, not only because of the visa [issues],” said Flores. “People from the Global South, especially Indigenous peoples that have a certain look like brown skin and certain characteristics, we feel threatened because of the general climate of insecurity and hate speech against Latin people and Indigenous peoples.”

Last year, Flores’ organization helped Indigenous leaders from Bolivia attend the forum to protest mining in their traditional lands. They left the forum after being harassed by the leader of a political party in Bolivia, and, coupled with health issues, have decided not to return. “The forum is meant to be for Indigenous peoples, but we really felt that that’s not what’s happening anymore and that at the end of the day the states are the ones who have more power over our lives,” Flores said. “This struggle of defending their land against this extractive industry is really affecting them not only physically but also mentally, spiritually.”

That comprehensive toll is one of the central focuses of a key report by Geoffrey Roth, a Standing Rock Sioux descendant, former vice chair of the Permanent Forum, and board chair of the Indigenous Determinants of Health Alliance, an international Indigenous health advocacy nonprofit. “You can’t separate human health from the health of the environment, or our culture, or our language,” Roth said. “Indigenous people view health from a holistic perspective.”

Geoffrey Roth, Standing Rock Sioux descendant, speaks during the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on April 21, 2025. Credit: Tailyr Irvine/Grist

In his report, Roth outlines the Indigenous determinants of health, ranging from land tenure and governance authority that strengthen Indigenous well-being to risk indicators like land dispossession and exclusion from decision-making. Roth argues that fragmented approaches to Indigenous health frequently embraced by the U.N. system and state governments fail to adequately address health problems and underlying causes.

For example, biodiversity policies that ignore Indigenous rights miss opportunities to restore Indigenous land tenure that can both improve ecosystem outcomes and strengthen access to traditional foods. Mental health interventions that ignore state-sanctioned Indigenous language erasure overlook the potential to improve Indigenous mental well-being through language revitalization. “Indigenous health is not just about healthcare, it’s about land, culture, food systems, and community,” Roth said.

The Coquille Indian Tribe in Oregon adopted the Indigenous determinants of health by ordinance last year, and Roth has been working with them as chairman of their executive health board to incorporate the determinants of health across their agencies. “They understand that when they take elders out on a monthly basis to do fishing activities, that is health for those elders,” he said. “It’s continuing their tradition as Coquille people, and it improves the mental health, behavioral health of those elders that are able to participate in that, let alone the food they catch.”

United Nations forum on Indigenous peoples impacted by ongoing budget issues

Roth also calls on the U.N. to recognize the value of Indigenous midwifery, which has been frequently banned in favor of Western practices, forcing Indigenous women into conventional institutions where they often face racism and “obstetric violence,” such as procedures performed without their consent. “Indigenous people have been doing this for thousands of years, not only midwifery, but also caring for the environment and caring for our culture and preserving these food systems,” he said.

In another report to UNPFII, former Permanent Forum chair Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, who is Indigenous Mbororo from Chad, warns that AI acts as a double-edged sword for Indigenous communities. While she urges governments to help Indigenous peoples develop AI tools to revitalize endangered languages and monitor their territories, she also warns of a looming era of digital extractivism as generative AI systems and tech companies actively scrape cultural content, such as medicinal knowledge, traditional stories, and even genetic data.

Lydia Jennings, citizen of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe (Yoeme) and Huichol (Wixáritari), is an assistant professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College. She said her advocacy for Indigenous data sovereignty — the movement ensuring communities retain the right to own and control their own data — began after a troubling discovery. She noticed a mining company had pulled information about Indigenous cultural practices from an environmental impact statement and was using it on its website to promote a mining project. “That was very alarming to me,” she said. “How much information do we share in efforts to protect our sacred homelands? And what are the ways that we can govern how and who uses that data?”

Newly elected UNPFII Chairperson Aluki Kotierk during the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on April 21, 2025. Credit: Tailyr Irvine/Grist

Like Ibrahim, she says AI can be an opportunity for tribes, noting some might be interested in hosting data centers or using AI to help with language preservation or synthesizing information. However, she remains wary of how much Indigenous data AI systems may be co-opting without consent, as well as the severe risks that massive data centers pose to tribal lands and water resources. “Who has the power and how do we redistribute that power?” she asked. “It can be a tool to power and a tool to harm, but how do we choose to wield it?”

Jennings said there’s a growing movement to incorporate best practices of Indigenous data sovereignty on multiple levels, ranging from academic research to national and international policies.

Another focus of this year’s Permanent Forum is the climate crisis. In a February report focusing on nomadic peoples, experts warned that rigid state borders and exclusionary “fortress conservation” models are curbing the traditional mobility of pastoralists, hunter-gatherers, and seafarers, even as they deal with the fallout of both climate change and increasing lack of access to ancestral lands and waters.

The authors argue that mobility is a deliberate, knowledge-based climate adaptation strategy that state policymakers are actively erasing, citing an example of the Tuareg people in the Sahara Desert. “While the desert knows no borders, contemporary militarized frontiers increasingly restrict ancestral routes and undermine pastoral systems and access to services, rendering these lived realities of Indigenous Peoples invisible in official data and policy frameworks,” the authors describe.

That echoes sentiments expressed by Samante Anne, who is Indigenous Maasai from Kenya and recently spoke at a virtual panel on pastoralists’ legal rights on behalf of the Mainyoito Pastoralists Integrated Development Organization. Anne said although 60 percent of land in Kenya is considered communal, land is increasingly being subdivided for developments and claimed for carbon offset projects that limit pastoralists’ access to land and movement.

“Mobility has everything to do with us adapting to climate change,” Anne said. “Mobility has everything to do with ensuring our livelihoods are secure, our food security is good.”

Making progress on Indigenous health, artificial intelligence, and territorial rights is complicated by a persistent trend within the U.N.: lumping Indigenous peoples together with “local communities.” In official policies and initiatives, the two groups are frequently merged under the acronym “IPLCs”—Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. But while local communities represent a broad category of stakeholders, Indigenous peoples hold distinct, legally recognized rights under international law. Roth from the Indigenous Determinants of Health Alliance said he recently confronted this issue at the World Health Organization when the agency categorized an Indigenous initiative merely as an “equity” issue.

“This is not an equity issue,” Roth said he told the agency. “We are not just another one of your minority populations. We are rights holders, and this needs to be approached from a rights-based approach.”

Former UNPFII chairperson Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim during the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on April 22, 2025. Credit: Tailyr Irvine/Grist

“Conflating us with other populations really diminishes our rights and diminishes our ability to maintain our health in our communities,” Roth said. This grouping also actively hinders participation, Roth said, pointing to the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity’s IPLC working group as an example.

“I’ve tried to participate in that group several times, and as an Indigenous person, I don’t feel welcome and I’m not able to participate,” he said. “These (IPLC) institutions are a way to lessen or dilute the voice of Indigenous peoples in these global mechanisms, and that, to me, is unacceptable.”

He is far from the only one who feels that way. In 2023, the U.N.’s three top Indigenous rights bodies — the Permanent Forum, the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples — issued a joint statement demanding that U.N. environmental treaties stop using the IPLC acronym entirely. “Indigenous Peoples should not be grouped with an undefined set of communities that may have very different rights and interests,” they wrote.

For advocates on the ground, that debate is just one part of a growing disillusionment with the U.N. system itself. Cultural Survival’s Mariana Kiimi Ortiz Flores said that the institution has suffered from a willingness by member states to simply disregard its laws.

“The United Nations as an international institution has been losing its influence and its power,” said Flores. But despite its bureaucratic hurdles, visa denials, and geopolitical hostility, she said she’s among the many Indigenous peoples determined to show up this week.

“If we as Indigenous peoples don’t do it,” said Flores, “No one else will speak for us and defend us.”

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A report published Tuesday by an international human rights consortium details how Israeli soldiers and settlers are weaponizing sexual violence to facilitate the forced expulsion of Palestinians from the illegally occupied West Bank.

The report, published by the West Bank Protection Consortium (WBPC)—which is led by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and funded by donors including 13 European nations—found that "more than 70% of displaced households interviewed identified threats to women and children, particularly sexualized violence, as the decisive reason for leaving" their homes in the West Bank of Palestine.

The West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem, has been occupied by Israel since 1967 and is the site of an accelerating campaign of US-backed deadly ethnic cleansing dating back to 1947.

Palestinians interviewed for the report described "escalating patterns of sexual harassment in Area C"—the roughly 60% of the West Bank that, under the 1995 Oslo II Accord, is under full Israeli control—"including sexualized insults and gestures, indecent exposure, intimidation, threats of sexual violence, and surveillance of intimate spaces such as bedrooms."

"Participants in multiple locations described settlers exposing themselves, making threats ofremoved, and stalking women as they walked to latrines," the report continued.

"Men and boys also experience sexualized humiliation, forced nudity, and sexualized threats," the publication notes. "In Wadi al-Seeq, after the community was forcibly displaced, three men reported that settlers detained them and attempted to sexually assault one man with a broomstick while he was blindfolded. They described forced stripping, beatings, burning and being urinated on, and said perpetrators circulated images of the abuse."

"Similar abuses have also been reported elsewhere," WBPC continued. "In the Bethlehem governorate, testimony collected during a key informant interview described two 15-year-old boys herding cattle whom settlers attacked, beat, blindfolded, and stripped. The account said one boy was urinated on and the other sustained a leg fracture."

"In another Palestinian Bedouin community in the Jordan Valley... a violent settler raid was reported in which witnesses state that a Palestinian man was subjected to severe sexual assault in front of his family," the report states. "Testimonies further indicate that women and girls were beaten, children were threatened with death, and threats ofremoved were made."

Allegra Pacheco, WBPC's chief of party, said in a statement Monday that “this is how communities are emptied: not in a single moment, but through repeated attacks, fear inside the home, and pressure that makes ordinary life impossible."

In Khirbet Wadi al-Rakhim, one Palestinian reported that "an identified settler sexually harassed them and threatened them with reference to the Sde Teiman detention facility," the notorious prison in the Negev Desert where former Palestinian prisoners, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers, and Israeli medical professionals have said they witnessed torture and other abuse of detainees ranging in age from children to the elderly.

These abuses include severe injuries caused by 24-hour shackling of hands and feet that sometimes required amputations, allegedremoved and sexual assault by male and female soldiers, electrocution, mauling by dogs, denial of food and water, sleep deprivation, and other torture. The IDF is investigating the deaths of dozens of Palestinians at Sde Teiman, including one man who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.

NRC said Monday that in the West Bank, "displacement reshapes every aspect of life."

"Households reported the impact of prolonged exposure to settler violence, including the sexualized abuse documented in the report," the group noted, adding that "92% of affected households interviewed lost access to land, 88% lost their homes, and 84% lost essential assets."

"More than half lost livelihoods, while 40% of children lost access to education," NRC added. "Women report severe psychological distress at striking rates, alongside ongoing fear, instability, and exposure to further violence after relocation."

Pacheco said that "sexual violence is not incidental to this crisis. It is one of the mechanisms driving people from their land."

“The report documents how perpetrators target women, men, and children in ways that fracture families and deprive communities of the ability to remain," she added. "When coercive conditions leave people with no genuine choice but to leave, this amounts to forcible transfer under international law.”

The WBPC report also highlights that "these abuses occur within a broader environment shaped by systematic discrimination and persistent impunity," an observation underscored by the lack of punishment or slaps on the wrist for Israeli soldiers and settlers who harm Palestinians.

Israel must be held to account for its barbaric crimes. The horrifying reports of the IDF's sexual violence against women & girls in the West Bank demand immediate action. Today, I raised this with the Foreign Secretary - we must punish perpetrators and ensure justice.

[image or embed]
— Dr Rosena Allin-Khan MP (@drrosena.bsky.social) April 21, 2026 at 5:50 AM

Previous reports by groups including United Nations agencies have detailed Israeli sexual violence against Palestinians, including a March 2025 UN publication that found "sexual and gender-based violence—which has risen in frequency and severity—is being perpetrated across the occupied Palestinian territory as a strategy of war for Israel to dominate and destroy the Palestinian people."

An August 2025 investigation by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation featured Palestinian boys kidnapped by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza who said they suffered or witnessed sexual torture committed by their jailers.

Last year, Israel blocked a request from UN sex crimes experts to probe alleged sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas fighters during the October 7, 2023 attack, reportedly to avoid attendant scrutiny ofremoveds and other abuses allegedly committed by Israeli forces against imprisoned Palestinians.

Sexual violence committed by Israelis against Palestinians is as old as the modern state of Israel itself.

Israeli filmmaker Alon Schwarz's 2022 documentary Tantura—which concerns the 1948 massacre and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian residents from the village after which the film is named—features interviews with Israeli veterans who described theremoved of Palestinian women and children. One of the Israelis gleefully recounted theremoved of a child.

A former Israeli soldier recounts the 1948 Tantura events
He refers to serious abuses against civilians, including an assault on a minor
He admits to killings without knowing the exact number of victims pic.twitter.com/ub5LHIdYAY
— ADI ALARDAH (@alardah91) April 9, 2026

When IDF reservists were arrested on suspicion of gangremoved of a Palestinian prisoner at Sde Teiman after video footage of the alleged assault went viral, a mob of right-wing Israelis whose members included senior government officials stormed the prison in a failed bid to free the suspects.

Others, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, demanded a probe—not to seek justice for the victim, but rather to find and punish whoever leaked the video. Meanwhile, Israelis advocating legalized torture andremoved of Palestinian prisoners were given nationwide platforms to air their views during the Sde Teiman scandal.

The IDF later dismissed the indictments of the accused Sde Teimanremoveds.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/43316

This story was originally published by Northern Journal.

This story was produced as part of the Pulitzer Center’sStoryReach U.S. Fellowship. It’s the third in a series about access to commercial fisheries in rural Alaska; readPart OneandPart Two.

Nathaniel Herz
Northern Journal

METLAKATLA, ALASKA — Across Alaska’s coastline, from the Indigenous communities of Bristol Bay to the Tlingit and Haida villages of the panhandle, rural harbors that once bustled with commercial fishing boats now sit unused and empty.

Abandoned boats covered with mold and algae line the shores of one Southeast town; others have seen their fleets sold off and relocated.

In the Indigenous village of Metlakatla, though, it’s a different story.

Fishing vessels pack the downtown harbor on Annette Island, which sits just off the coast at Alaska’s southernmost tip. Huge seiners, with onboard cranes to reel in fish-laden nets, loom over the docks, with many more slips filled in by smaller gillnetters. Fathers and grandfathers still fish with sons and grandsons.

Experts and industry players disagree about the exact reasons for the decline of commercial fishing in the rest of rural, coastal Alaska — with some blaming state policies and others pointing to global market trends.

In Metlakatla, local leaders say their success in sustaining their fishing culture stems from the community’s unusual history.

In the 1970s, the village stayed out of a land claims settlement between Alaska Natives and the federal government — a deal that could have brought cash in exchange for ceding Metlakatla’s reservation and residents’ collective right to pull fish from the waters off their shores. All the other Native reservations in the state were terminated.

As a result, Metlakatla is the only Native community in Alaska that manages its own commercial fishing harvest. The right to earn a living from the ocean waters surrounding the island is tied to tribal membership and can’t be sold off to outsiders — as happened in other rural and Native communities across the state.

Elsewhere, Native residents of coastal villages and cities might have to pony up $100,000 or more for a permit to access state-managed commercial fisheries just offshore. Meanwhile, any Metlakatla tribal member with a boat and $25 can buy a permit and cast their net in the Indigenous-managed fishery that extends 3,000 feet around Annette Island.

“It’s 100 percent of the reason why we’re not down to one boat,” said Albert Smith, Metlakatla’s mayor.

The island fishery sustains the largest tribally managed salmon harvest in the United States. The 1,600-person community has dozens of active commercial fishing vessels, which harvested more than 1.3 million salmon in 2024, according to the most recent tribal data available.

The community stands today as a kind of experiment. Its fishery represents an alternate reality that could have unfolded in rural Alaska if more communities had the same opportunities to access nearby waters — or had state policymakers not chosen to privatize commercial harvest rights in the rest of Alaska’s big salmon fisheries, as they did in the 1970s.

Metlakatla’s narrative is a “direct refutation” of the argument that coastal Alaska Native villages are to blame for the loss of their fishing industries, said Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, who once represented Metlakatla in the state House and several years ago pushed an unsuccessful bill to boost access to rural commercial fishing careers.

In Metlakatla, “every slip in the harbor is full — high schoolers are deckhanding for their uncle, their dad, their best friend’s dad,” Kreiss-Tomkins said. “I think it’s a fascinating case study.”

Local leaders say they’ve still had to fight to sustain Metlakatla’s fleet and its tribal fishery.

The community is now in the midst of a six-year legal effort to expand the waters available to tribal members, which leaders say could help solidify the future of Metlakatla’s fishing industry. But its federal lawsuit faces opposition from Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration, competing fishermen and even neighboring Indigenous people.

‘We’re the salmon people’

The Metlakatlans left northern British Columbia in the late-19th century amid conflicts over land ownership.

Residents secured an invitation to America from President Grover Cleveland and members of Congress at the behest of William Duncan, a charismatic Anglican minister. Duncan had worked with the region’s Indigenous Tsimshian people to establish the original Metlakatla in British Columbia, which he envisioned as a model Christian community.

After a mass migration in canoes and other vessels, the new Metlakatla was built 70 miles away on Annette Island, just across the international border in Alaska, where residents eventually built an enormous church.

A cannery served as a market for residents’ ancestral fishing tradition, which the tribe has described as a “bedrock of the Coast Tsimshian culture and way of life.” A presidential proclamation from Woodrow Wilson in 1916 subsequently set aside the 3,000-foot strip around the island exclusively for use by the village’s fishermen.

For decades afterward, Metlakatla’s commercial fleet harvested both inside and outside the exclusive zone.

Skippers of today, who are mostly men, learned to fish from their fathers, who learned from their fathers and grandfathers before them.

Fishing is “one of the few things that remain unbroken from our forever history,” said David R. Boxley, a Metlakatla artist who served on the village’s tribal council until recently.

“That’s our culture, even though it’s changed in how we do it,” he said. “It’s as old as our people. We’re the salmon people.”

Tribal fishery ‘saved our butts’

In 1971, Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which came with a painful tradeoff.

Newly formed, Indigenous-owned corporations would receive a total of $1 billion and some 45 million acres — roughly 10 percent of the state. In exchange for that money and property, Alaska’s Indigenous people would give up claims to larger swaths of traditional lands, and those that had reservations would surrender them.

Most Alaska Native groups didn’t have reservations at the time, so they had little choice but to participate in the settlement.

Metlakatla had one of only 23 reservations in Alaska and exclusive fishing rights to boot, so it had more to lose. It may have also had less to gain, because the community’s emigration from Canada made its Alaska land claims less certain.

Some in Metlakatla wanted to pursue the payout anyway, according to Boxley.

But elders whose parents and grandparents had been through the exodus from the original village site in British Columbia saw their sovereignty as priceless, he explained.

“We’d already lost a Metlakatla,” Boxley said. “We had to build two communities — one was basically taken from us. Why would we do that again?”

The other 22 reservations in Alaska were dissolved as a result of the settlement. Today, only Metlakatla’s remains.

A few years after the other tribes settled, in an effort to prevent overfishing and make the industry more profitable, the state of Alaska established its “limited entry” program. The system capped the number of skippers in each commercial fishery and transformed fishing from a public right to a private privilege, one available only to those who could afford or inherit a permit. And since the supply of permits was limited, they became valuable commodities.

Commercial fishing permits can now be bought and sold on the open market, in some cases fetching six-figure prices. And over the years, residents of many rural and Indigenous communities have sold their permits to people from Alaska’s larger cities and towns, and from other states.

Rural fishermen also moved out of villages and took their permits with them. And those forces conspired to hollow out rural, coastal communities economically — even as Alaska lawmakers have done little to stem the tide.

In Metlakatla, though, tribal members don’t need those expensive permits to pursue a commercial fishing career. While many fishermen in the village have purchased them anyway — allowing harvests both inside and outside the 3,000-foot zone — other Metlakatlans fish only inside that exclusive strip.

Even top fishermen who roam well beyond Annette Island say that the tribal fishery has helped sustain them in lean years — particularly by providing lucrative catches of sea cucumbers and clams, which are harvested in underwater diving gear and fetch high prices in Asia.

“We’ve had terrible seasons seining,” said longtime Metlakatla fisherman Daniel Marsden, 48, referring to the technique of catching salmon with a huge, circular net. “And we go diving, and that saved our butts.”

A lawsuit to expand fishing rights

While commercial fishing remains vibrant in Metlakatla, the community’s fish processing plant is another story.

The business was long an economic mainstay for the village, providing local jobs and revenue for the tribal government.

But beginning in the 1990s, falling seafood prices challenged its profitability, and since 2018, it’s processed only small amounts of fish.

Today, the cavernous waterfront processing buildings, with peeling white paint, operate at a fraction of their capacity.

Most fishermen who live in Metlakatla and dock their boats in the village harbor sell the salmon they harvest not to the tribally owned plant, but to processing businesses in Ketchikan, 15 miles north. The tribal plant currently lacks the equipment it needs to handle the large volumes of salmon netted by Metlakatla’s fleet, Smith explained.

If more of Metlakatla’s up-and-coming fishermen could harvest farther from the island without having to buy expensive state permits, he added, their catch could be large enough to justify reinvesting in the tribally owned plant.

The 3,000-foot strip around Annette Island, local leaders argue, is no longer the community’s breadbasket. It’s become a “cage” holding back the village’s fleet, according to one longtime fisherman, Edward Gunyah.

To break out of that cage, Metlakatla filed a lawsuit.

Nearly six years ago, the tribe entered a complaint in federal court, asserting that the state of Alaska’s limited entry permit program was illegally barring Metlakatlans from harvesting in areas they were entitled to fish.

The tribe argues that an 1891 federal law granted it the right to enough fish to make the village self-sustaining — which should allow members to harvest anywhere within roughly a day’s travel from the reservation. The suit doesn’t seek to expel other skippers from the disputed waters, only to allow Metlakatla residents to fish there without buying pricey state permits.

“Congress intended to give the community an opportunity to prosper by accessing the fisheries in the waters surrounding the Annette Islands,” the tribe said in its amended complaint.

State and tribal opposition

Metlakatla’s attorneys filed the 2020 lawsuit in federal court on Aug. 7 — a yearly community holiday commemorating the 1887 arrival of the village’s advance party at Annette Island.

Since then, Metlakatla has won preliminary victories as the case has wound through rounds of lower court decisions and appeals.

But it has also faced strong opposition — from the state government, the fishing industry and other tribes.

“We’re going to see this through to the end,” Doug Vincent-Lang, Alaska’s fish and game commissioner, told a group of Ketchikan fishermen in 2024, according to a recording obtained by Northern Journal and APM Reports.

A win by Metlakatla, he said, would invite efforts from other tribes “that don’t have a treaty, or want to expand what they consider their rights to fish outside the state regulatory environment.”

“We’re not against Metlakatla,” Vincent-Lang said in an interview. “We support their right to fish in their tribal waters. It’s just when you start fishing outside of those waters, there’s treaty implications and everything else that comes into play. How do you account for that? It’s just all kinds of questions that come up.”

A trade group representing Southeast Alaska’s fleet of seine boats supports the state’s position.

Some of the group’s members are concerned about the potential for the lawsuit to expand Metlakatlans’ fishing rights in a way that increases competition, said Tom Meiners, who leads the group’s board.

“We don’t see the need for the island fishery to be expanded,” Meiners said, noting how numerous Metlakatla fishermen already have state permits and wouldn’t directly benefit if the tribe wins.

Meanwhile, nearly five years into the litigation, a group of other Southeast Alaska tribal governments, the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida, filed their own motion to dismiss Metlakatla’s case.

The request, ultimately rejected by the judge, said Metlakatla’s Tsimshian residents were descended from Canadians and were infringing on traditional Tlingit and Haida harvest rights and tribal property.

The fight against the lawsuit, particularly by the state and the other tribes, has deeply frustrated Metlakatla’s leaders and allies, who say the village has long contended with hostility to its unique fishing rights. They also say that both written and oral tradition reflect the longtime presence of Tsimshian people on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border before it was established, with traditional names for Southeast Alaska sites derived from Tsimshian names.

“We should be working together” against factory fishing boats that accidentally harvest salmon, and against out-of-state commercial permit holders, said Boxley, the former Metlakatla tribal council member. He added: “That’s who’s devastating the fishery. Not us.”

‘Control our own future’

After five years of the lawsuit ping-ponging between lower and appeals courts, a decision on the expansion of Metlakatla’s tribal fishing rights could come as soon as this year.

Smith, the mayor, said a victory could help rev the village’s processing plant back to life.

“The vision is to see it going full-fledged again,” he said.

While awaiting a decision, the tribe leased a corner of the plant to a start-up, Circle Seafoods, that is testing a new concept for fish processing. Rather than trying to fillet and pack the whole summer salmon harvest in a single frenetic push of a few weeks, Circle freezes fish whole, then thaws and cuts them in batches throughout the rest of the year.

The tribe is interested in replicating the idea because it could sustain a year-round workforce in the village, Smith said. Meanwhile, Annette Island Packing Co., which is owned by the tribe, recently launched a line of freeze-dried salmon pet treats. They’re branded as Ksa Hoon — “just fish” in Sm’algyax, the Tsimshian language.

Operating at full capacity, the plant could churn out profits that the tribe could use to diversify — investing and expanding into other businesses such as ecotourism, Boxley said. He described the lawsuit as aligning with Metlakatlans’ decision a century ago to move from Canada to Alaska, where tribal members would have more autonomy.

“We did all this to be in control of our own future,” Boxley said. “That’s why we came here.”

This story was produced as part of the Pulitzer Center’sStoryReach U.S. Fellowship. It was reported and edited by Northern Journal and APM Reports.

The post ‘The salmon people’: How Alaska’s only Native reservation saved its fishing culture appeared first on ICT.

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This story was originally published by South Dakota Searchlight.

Joshua Haiar
South Dakota Searchlight

Opponents filed a lawsuit in early April challenging the U.S. Forest Service’s approval of a graphite drilling project near Pe’ Sla, a site in the Black Hills of western South Dakota that holds cultural and spiritual significance for Native Americans.

The plaintiffs are the Indigenous rights group known as NDN Collective and the Black Hills Clean Water Alliance, both based in Rapid City, and Earthworks in Washington, D.C.

The lawsuit challenges the Forest Service’s decision allowing Rapid City-based Pete Lien & Sons to move forward with exploratory drilling for graphite. Graphite is used in electric vehicle batteries, lubricants, pencils and other products.

Pe’ Sla, also known as Reynolds Prairie, is a sacred site used for prayer, ceremony and cultural activities. The area is a high-elevation meadow surrounded by forested mountains in the central Black Hills. Pe’ Sla is one of the sites in the Black Hills that corresponds with celestial features in traditional Lakota spirituality.

The lawsuit says the Forest Service improperly used a process known as a “categorical exclusion” to bypass environmental and cultural reviews.

“We will not stand for the desecration of our sacred sites, land, and water by extractive mining companies like Pete Lien,” said Wizipan Garriott, president of NDN Collective, in a press release. “The laws of the United States are often rigged against us, but we are confident this categorical exclusion was unlawful.”

The lawsuit alleges a categorical exclusion was improper because the project includes drilling, road work and other activity near Pe’ Sla that goes beyond what a categorical exclusion allows. The plaintiffs also argue that Pe’ Sla’s religious and cultural importance should have triggered a fuller review rather than the abbreviated process.

Neither Pete Lien & Sons nor the Forest Service immediately responded to requests for comment.

A representative of Pete Lien & Sons previously toldSearchlight the company was reviewing the plan’s potential impact on sites of cultural and historical significance in the proposed project area, and questions and concerns should be directed to the Forest Service.

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BRASILIA (AP) — Indigenous people in Brazil have marched in the capital, Brasilia, to protest what they say are violations of their land rights. They accuse large corporations of advancing farming, logging and mining projects on their lands. The protest is part of the annual Free Land Indigenous Camp, Brazil’s largest Indigenous mobilization. This year’s gathering comes amid rising reports of violent attacks against the Pataxo people in Bahia state. Indigenous women have been protesting since February in Para state against a massive gold mine project. Despite some advances under President Lula, Indigenous rights remain under pressure from Congress and economic interests.   Indigenous protesters set fire to skull sculptures representing lawmakers to protest Congress. Image by Eraldo Peres, Associated Press. Pataxo Indigenous women hold up cardboard cutouts of jaguars as they get ready to attend a march with the slogan: “Congress, enemy of the people: our future is not for sale.”  Image by Eraldo Peres, Associated Press. Indigenous people marching. Image by Eraldo Peres, Associated Press. By Gabriela Sá Pessoa, Associated Press Banner image: Indigenous people march during the annual “Acampamento Terra Livre,” or Free Land Encampment, Brazil’s largest annual Indigenous mobilization that focuses on land rights and environmental protection, in Brasilia, Brazil, Tuesday, April 7, 2026. Image by Eraldo Peres, Associated Press.This article was originally published on Mongabay

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/40714

Stewart Huntington
ICT

David Fadden is not blind to hard truths.

“You can’t help but become angry about the injustices and land theft and all the wrong steps that occurred in this country towards Indigenous people,” he said.

But bitterness, Fadden said, is not an answer. A Mohawk Nation citizen and director of the Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center in New York’s Adirondack State Park, Fadden thinks it’s best to look back to move forward.

“One way to correct that is to use our ancestor’s philosophy as an example,” he said.

With the help of the Nature Conservancy and others, Fadden’s cultural center and museum last month acquired a 600-acre tract of woodlands for $1.1 million from Paul Smith’s College. The land is adjacent to the center’s existing 330-acre campus in Onchiota, New York.

Initial plans call for ecological restoration as some of the property has been logged. Hiking paths and a youth camp are envisioned in the future, Fadden said. The land is part of the traditional homelands of Fadden’s Mohawk ancestors. It is also part of the broader territory of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the historically sturdy alliance of six nations in what is today mainly New York and Ontario, Canada.

“We’re going to invite knowledgeable folks from [the Haudenosaunee Confederacy] to come to explore the property, to identify what’s under in terms of medicinal plants, food plants, animals, their habitats and their trails,” Fadden said. “And in coming years, we’ll develop a trail system that will avoid the more sensitive areas so we don’t walk on delicate plant life.”

And the land will be protected by carefully constructed legal guard rails. The cultural center is a non-profit entity that will own the land. The land title will come with conservation easements restricting what can be down on the property. Importantly, the text of the easements will be based on Haudenosaunee values of peace and reflect how Indigenous communities view land stewardship with a laser focus on how any decision will benefit future generations.

And, in what is believed to be a first in New York state, the easements will be filed in both English and Mohawk.

“We’re going to frame it very similar to the Two Row Wampum,” said Fadden, referring to the beaded belts of parallel colors that represented a commitment to harmony between Haudenosaunee Nations and early Dutch settlers centuries ago. The new documents will be “a binding agreement, a compact, a promise that will both take care of the land.”

Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center Director David Fadden, Mohawk, sits in front of art work and displays at the center in Onchiota, New York. The center recently acquired 600 acres of woodlands. Credit: Screengrab/ICT

Despite the fact that the Dutch – and their French, British and American successors – did not respect the peaceful precepts of those original pacts, Fadden maintains a commitment to the ideals of his ancestors. Under the new conservation easements, “we will help each other and we’ll learn from each other. Hopefully this will set a good example for others in the future,” he said.

The folks at the Nature Conservancy agree. The global conservation organization has been growing partnerships around the world with Indigenous nations and communities and said it was excited to team up with the Iroquois Cultural Center on this project.

“Some of the members of the Haudenosaunee community had come to us and asked if we could help find a property in the Adirondacks where the they could gather as a community and create a home for a Native youth camp,” said Peg Olsen, director of the Nature Conservancy’s New York State Indigenous Partnerships program. “When we realized this property was up for sale, it had all the elements. It could provide an opportunity for ecological restoration. It had cabins that would be good for a youth camp. And it happened to be right next door to the Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center.

“It’s like all the stars aligned,” she said.

“Since time immemorial, the Haudenosaunee have lived in reciprocal relationship with these lands and waters,” said Bill Ulfelder, executive director of The Nature Conservancy in New York. “This [land purchase] marks The Nature Conservancy in New York’s first land return and demonstrates our commitment to expanding Indigenous access, care, and ownership of land.”

A 600-acre tract of woodlands in New York Adirondack State Park has recently been returned to Haudenausonee stewardship with the help of the Nature Conservancy. “I always had a fear that it would be sold off to developers or loggers,” said Mohawk citizen David Fadden who explored the land extensively as a child. Credit: Becca Halter/Adirondack Land Trust

Which brought – and brings – a smile to Fadden’s face. He grew up in and around the property and explored it extensively.

His grandparents Ray and Christine Fadden founded the cultural center in 1954.

“As a young person, I used to hike that area,” he said. “I knew those woods like the back of my hand. And, I always had a fear that they would be sold off to developers or loggers.”

Today that fear is gone, replaced with hope.Now, the 600 acres Fadden wandered in his youth “will serve as a classroom to share and learn Indigenous ecological knowledge for Native and non-Native students alike for generations,” he said.

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This story was originally published by Source New Mexico.

Danielle Prokop
Source New Mexico

Three New Mexico Pueblos, Santa Ana, Zuni and Cochiti, recently received federal funding for tribal conservation programs and wildfire management that will be used to support efforts surrounding endangered birds, bald eagles and Bighorn sheep.

The awards, close to $200,000 each for Santa Ana and Cochiti, and approximately $180,000 for Zuni, come as part of $6.6 million distributed through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Tribal Wildlife Grants program, which funds more than 700 conservation programs operated by Native American and Alaska Native Tribes. The most recent grants, announced last week, will benefit 35 tribes.

“Tribes are vital partners in wildlife conservation, and we’re proud to support projects that reflect their connection to the land and leadership in protecting it,” U.S FWS Service Director Brian Nesvik said in a statement. “These investments support tribal sovereignty while advancing our shared conservation goals.”

Santa Ana Pueblo will use its funds to install wildlife recording devices along the Rio Grande to monitor two endangered birds: the Yellow-billed cuckoo and the Willow flycatcher.

Zuni Pueblo was granted the funds for Zuni Eagle Aviary, which houses debilitated gold and bald eagles. The funding will assess the facility’s wildfire risk, install safety systems and clear brush. Additionally, the funding will be used for expanding the aviary’s work to include “rehabilitation and release program” on site. Neither Santa Ana nor Zuni Pueblos responded to Source NM requests for comment.

Cochiti Pueblo will use its funds to track Bighorn sheep population, which the Pueblo and the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish reintroduced in 2014 to the Cochiti canyon and the Jemez mountains after a century-long absence of herds in that area.

Specifically, Cochiti Pueblo will monitor the Bighorn sheep for the parasitic New World screwworm moving through Mexico.

The Pueblo will also restore the habitat devastated by the 2022 Cerro Pelado wildfires, which, in combination with drought, threatens the herd’s ability to move and much of their food, according to Earl Conway, the director of the Natural Resources and Conservation program at Cochiti Pueblo.

“These stressors combined have made it difficult for bighorn sheep to move safely across the landscape, maintain herd health, and sustain stable population levels,” Conway said in a statement.

The funding will help with targeted habitat restoration, replanting of fire-resistant vegetation and tracing the herd’s movements.

“Combined with wildfire prevention measures, these activities will reduce the risk of future habitat loss and ensure a more resilient and sustainable environment for Bighorn sheep herds,” he said.

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Before the war, our home garden was more than just a patch of green. It was a refuge I retreated to whenever the world felt too heavy. Bougainvillea climbed the walls, and flowers in every color filled the corners — tended by my mother as if they were her own children. In one corner stood a pomegranate tree we had brought from a nursery in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza — a city long known as the Strip’s food basket, with its fertile agricultural lands.

When the war began, our priorities shifted entirely. There was no longer space for beauty. Survival became the only goal. The flowers withered, and the once-vibrant garden turned into a silent gray space. We uprooted the blossoms and planted onions in their place, trying to ease the burden of hunger and soaring prices. Only the pomegranate tree remained — an enduring reminder of an agricultural city whose lands were bulldozed and whose residents were denied return.

Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, which once supplied much of Gaza with fruits and vegetables, have been reduced to devastated terrain. By late 2025 and into early 2026, satellite analyses from the Food and Agriculture Organization and the UN Satellite Center show that up to 98 percent of fruit-bearing tree cropland — including olives and pomegranates — has been destroyed, while more than 87 percent of overall cropland and more than 80 percent of greenhouses have been damaged or wiped out. Only a tiny fraction of Gaza’s agricultural land — somewhere between 1.5 percent and 4 percent — remains both accessible and undamaged, mostly in limited southern areas, leaving the north largely off-limits due to restrictions, contamination, and military zones. This was not merely collateral damage. It was a direct assault on food security and livelihoods that continues to unfold even after the fragile ceasefire began in October 2025.

Source

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This article was originally published by KOSU, an independent news service based in Oklahoma.

Sarah Liese (Twilla)
KOSU

The Choctaw Nation announced last week the purchase of a former Big Lots distribution facility and adjoining land in Durant, which had been speculated to be a potential detention center site for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Choctaw Nation Council passed a bill on March 14, approving the purchase of the facility. Last week, Chief Gary Batton confirmed the acquisition in a statement, calling it an opportunity to strengthen the tribe’s long-term business strategy.

When in business, the 1.2 million-square-foot Big Lots distribution facility employed more than 300 workers. It closed in January 2025 due to the company’s overall financial distress.

“We are evaluating how to use this adjoining property as part of our efforts to support operational growth and exploring a variety of potential uses that align with our strategic vision,” Batton said in a statement. “This is an opportunity to enhance our presence and continue driving economic prosperity for our tribal members and the surrounding community.”

The potential for the former Big Lots distribution center to open an ICE detention facility came under fire in January, when both the Choctaw Nation and Durant City Council took precautionary measures to ensure the facility aligned with their communities’ best interests.

The Durant City Council put guardrails in place and passed an ordinance in January that makes it illegal for a detention center to operate without a conditional use permit.

Choctaw Nation council members sounded the alarm that the facility is “unacceptably close to the nation’s governmental headquarters” and community-serving facilities, including childcare and elderly services. The council then unanimously passed an oppositional bill, which Batton later signed into law.

When talking about the tribe’s opposition to the facility in January, Batton said it would be like having a detention center close to the White House.

“We don’t want it close to our facility…due to the safety and concern for our young and for our old, but also for all of our employees, our customers that come here,” Batton said in an interview about the bill.

Batton said he became concerned because he had heard the Bryan County Sheriff’s Office was in talks with the officials from the Department of Homeland Security. He also suggested that he is not entirely opposed to having an ICE facility open inside the reservation, as long as it makes sense for the community.

“If you think about it, in McAlester, we have a prison here,” Batton said. “Every county has a jail. So it’s not that I would oppose having a facility that houses bad people, if you know what I’m saying. But I would want it to be in a place that’s a good, safe, controlled environment.”

The amount of money spent on the Choctaw Nation’s acquisition is unclear. The Bryan County Assessor’s Office said it had not received all the paperwork and could not confirm the cost.

It will, however, be the second action taken in Oklahoma to shut down the opening of a potential ICE facility. It follows an Oklahoma City warehouse that was no longer being considered as an ICE detention center, after Mayor David Holt met with the owner and confirmed they are no longer in talks with the Department of Homeland Security.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/39613

Miles Morrisseau
ICT

WINNIPEG, Manitoba — Driving west on Marion Street, the billboard stands out dramatically amidst the signs selling insurance and promoting local radio stations.

“First Nations children want the one-parent rule to happen now,” it says.

The billboard is one of 15 placed across the province of Manitoba, and Lou Moodie plans to put up more to spread the word across Canada.

Moodie, Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, is a man on a mission. He wants the government to pass legislation known as Bill S-2, and he wants them to do it now.

The bill would remove a clause enacted in 1985 in the Indian Act that created two kinds of Status Indians.One group 6(1) could pass their status to their children no matter who they had children with, and the other group 6(2) could not pass their status if they had children with a person who did not have status.

It’s known as the “second-generation cut-off.”

“What they did was they inserted category 6(1) and 6(2),” Moodie told ICT recently. “What that policy basically states is that you cannot have any children with non-status people. If you do, the reprisals are that your child will be categorized or downsized or watered down to a 6(2).”

Children are also being categorized as a 6(2) if the father is not identified on the birth certificate.

“There’s one thing that is talked about, and that is having children with non-status people, but the forgotten one is that if the woman did not identify the father on the birth certificate, that child was watered down to a 6(2). So that’s a forgotten piece.”

Indigenous Services Canada counts 325,024 Status Indians as 6(2) of the total registered population of nearly 1.3 million as of November 2024, which is more than 25 percent of the population.

Bill S-2 was introduced in Canadian Senate by Sen. Paul Prosper, Mi’kmaw. The deletion of the clauses, if approved by Parliament, would allow the children of all Status Indians to be recognized in subsequent generations.

Canadian Sen. Paul Prosper, Mi’kmaw, introduced a bill in Parliament that would allow the children of all Status Indians to be recognized in subsequent generations. The bill received unanimous support from the Senate before moving to the House of Commons, where it had not been scheduled for a vote as of April 1, 2026. Credit: Courtesy photo

For now, however, thousands of First Nations people live in bureaucratic limbo where they don’t have the freedom to fall in love and have children with whomever they want for fear that their children and future generations will no longer be legally recognized as First Nations.

“I truly believe that there is no greater existential threat to First Nations than the second-generation cut-off,” Prosper told ICT in an email. “Ever since the cut-off was introduced in 1985, First Nations have been pushing back; there have been countless consultation sessions. Time and time again, advocates have called for an end to government involvement in determining who our people are.”

Removing people from the registry

The changes enacted in 1985 were part of a long-term plan by the Canadian government to reduce and perhaps eliminate Indian status in the First Nations population using various clauses in the Indian Act. In addition to controlling nearly every aspect of First Nation life from cradle to grave, the Indian Act of 1876 had mechanisms that would remove people from the registry of so-called Status Indians.

In an earlier version of the Indian Act, Indian status would be lost if the person was deemed “civilized” by attending university, becoming a doctor or lawyer, or being ordained as a minister or priest. This was in place until the 1920s.

In decades following, First Nations who joined the war efforts in World War I and World War II would also be subject to loss of status upon their return home to Canada. This was called “enfranchisement” and was at the discretion of the all-powerful Indian agents who ran the communities and its members as their personal fiefdom.

Up until 1985, First Nations women who married a non-Status man would lose her Indian status. It did not matter if the man was Métis or a First Nations man without status, such as a veteran of war who had been enfranchised, she and her children and future generations would all be classified as non-Status.

They would not be allowed to live on the reserve or receive any support provided by the government to First Nations people.

On the contrary, non-Indigenous women who married a status First Nations man would be granted full Indian status.

This was the law of the land for more than a century, until the implementation of Bill C-31 in 1985. Although the bill corrected the gender inequality to a certain degree, it did not eradicate the mechanism that would still rob current and future generations of First Nations people of their legally recognized Indian status. It contained the “second-generation cut-off.”

The Indigenous Services Canada website explains the second-generation cut off.

“After two consecutive generations of parenting with a person who is not entitled to registration (a non-Indian), the third generation is no longer entitled to registration. Entitlement is therefore cut off after the second-generation. In other words, an individual will not be entitled to Indian registration if they have one grandparent and one parent who are not entitled to registration.”

The Indigenous Services website also explains that the cut-off is “mechanical” and there are no means for debate or opportunity to contest; it is a bureaucratic algorithmic reality.

‘That’s just who I was’

For Jeannette Corbiere-Lavell, the fight to protect First Nations status and citizenship started more than 50 years ago. She married her husband, a non-Indigenous man, and a few weeks later she received a letter from the Canadian government telling her she no longer had Indian status and was no longer a member of her home community.

“1970, that’s when I met my husband, David Lavell, and we were in Toronto at the time,” Corbiere-Lavell told ICT. “Two weeks later, I received this letter from the Department of Indian Affairs and it said, ‘Jeannette Corbiere, enclosed please find a check for $35. And you are no longer a member of the Wikwemikong Unceded Territory.’”

Jeannette Corbiere-Lavell, shown here at right in this undated photo, has been fighting for equality for decades in Canada. In 2026, she’s now working for changes to Canadian law that would allow Indian Status to be handed down to future generations. Credit: Photo courtesy of Jeannette Corbiere-Lavell

Although she was aware that this was the law at the time, as she knew other First Nations women who had also lost their status, the reality of it hit her hard.

“I really had that sense of loss,” she said. “Now, what? I’m no longer part of my community. This is the only place I’ve ever known, you know, prior to coming to Toronto, because I went to school there and my relatives, family had the language, everything, aunts and uncles, and that’s just who I was. And so that started that whole big challenge.”

Corbiere-Lavell was acquainted with Clayton Ruby, one of Canada’s most well-known civil rights lawyers, and he agreed to take on her case if she wanted to challenge the law as discriminatory against First Nations women.

The case went all the way to the Canada Supreme Court, where they lost in a close decision. But the advocacy work continued, including forming organizations like the Ontario Native Women’s Association to speak on behalf of Indigenous women’s rights.

The Indian Act was amended in 1985 with Bill C-31, which allowed women who had lost their status through marriage or men such as veterans who had been “enfranchised” to regain their Indian status.

“I got my status back, but unfortunately again, and I don’t know if it’s because we’re women or whatever, but we didn’t get our full status,” Corbiere-Lavell said. “We were still being discriminated against. And this is what I’m leading up to when we’re talking about the current second-generation cutoff, because the Indian Act then in 1985, it still treated us, as women, secondary. We didn’t get our full rights back. It was designed so that our communities were losing more and more people. We were shrinking and we have statistics to show that.”

Corbiere-Lavell continues to fight the system that denies status to First Nations as the citizenship commissioner for the Anishinaabek Nation in Ontario.

‘Colonial legacies’

Bill S-2 must go through three readings in the House of Commons before it can be officially adopted into law.

The bill was introduced into the Senate on May 29, 2025. At the time, Canada’s Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty, Cree, said the bill was a priority for the government of the new Prime Minister Mark Carney.

“As Minister of Indigenous Services, eliminating gender-based inequities and colonial legacies in the Indian Act is a responsibility I take seriously,” said Gull-Masty. “This is one of the first bills proposed by this  government because we understand the urgency of these measures for those impacted. I look forward to thoughtful study and discussions about this bill as it moves through the parliamentary process.”

Debate continues in the Canadian House of Commons as the bill moves through the process of becoming law. During proceedings on Feb. 27, Gull-Masty noted that it was illegal for more than a century for a First Nations person with Indian status to be elected to Parliament.

The Canadian Parliament building in Ottawa, Ontario, is shown in this undated photo. Credit: Photo by Benoit Debaix on Unsplash

“I stand here to speak to Bill S-2, a vital step towards addressing inequities in the Indian Act,” Gull-Masty told the House. “It is worth remembering that before 1960, a First Nations woman like me would never have had the opportunity to sit in this chamber as a Member of Parliament unless she first gave up her status. To serve in Canada’s democracy, she would have been required to renounce legal recognition of who she was. That was the price of enfranchisement: participation in exchange for erasure.”

Prosper, who filed the bill, clarified that the bill is not going to assist anyone looking for a connection into a long-forgotten past to claim Indian status.

“S-2 does not seek to restore status to those who had a single First Nation ancestor sometime in their distant past,” he said. “It simply seeks to correct the injustice that was unilaterally imposed on First Nations in 1985. I believe that this bill is all about bringing families {together] that were arbitrarily divided [with] siblings into 6(1) and 6(2) groups based on their date of birth; it’s about recognizing the children that live in our communities, go to our schools, grow up in our traditions but have, sadly, been cut-off.”

Prosper references the treaty signed by his ancestors as proof that his people wanted to protect future generations.

“When Mi’kmaq signed the Peace and Friendship treaties, they specified that these treaty protections applied to their ‘heirs and the heirs of their heirs forever,’ indicating that it would apply to future generations in perpetuity,” he said. “There was never a qualification that these protections would be void due to intermarriage.”

The bill received unanimous support from the Canadian Senate before being sent to the House of Commons for final debate. The bill now has to go through two more readings in the House before a final vote will be made for the amendment to be approved, though no schedule hasa yet been set.

‘Guiding light’

Pressure continues across the country to get the bill pushed through the House of Commons, with First Nations organizations such as the Southern Chiefs Organization hosting online petitions and webinars to educate their citizens about the importance of the legislation.

In Manitoba, Moodie plans to expand his billboard campaign across the country to get the message out.

“I’m really pushing, that’s why you see all those billboards.” he said. “I’m going to Regina, I’m going to Vancouver, I’m going to Calgary, I’m going to Toronto, all along the lifeline of Canada, which is the Trans-Canada Highway. I’m trying to erect as many billboards as possible for the parliamentarians to see and hopefully recognize that this is real.”

In Ontario, elder Corbiere-Lavell continues the fight that started over a half-century ago, inspired by her traditions and spirituality.

“I was given the name North Star,” she said. “I was barely 20, I think, when I was in Toronto. I didn’t realize the significance at the time. My youngest son pointed that out. He said, ‘Mom, did you realize how everyone in the world looks at the North Star? That’s the guiding light.’”

She is willing to retain that responsibility.

“I believe that’s what I have to do … to make sure we don’t lose any of our people, and that we maintain that connection to our land, to those resources, to the water especially, to protect the water,” she said. “And that’s our role as women, and the men have their roles as well, for protection of our people. …We just have to remember it.”

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Amelia Schafer

ICT

RAPID CITY, S.D. – Sahela “Toka Win” Sangrait would have turned 22 on March 26. Instead,  more than 50 people gathered on her birthday to demand justice and systemic change.

Federal prosecutors have charged United States Airman Quinterius Chappelle with first-degree murder in connection to Sangrait’s homicide, which law enforcement say took place on the Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota on Aug. 10, 2024.

But those gathered say the crime could have been prevented.

Chappelle was convicted of aggravated assault following a February 2024 domestic incident not involving Sangrait, according to Jesse removederland, a sergeant with the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office. removederland testified during Chappelle’s November 2024 arraignment in the Sangrait case. The February 2024 incident was handled by Air Force authorities.

Additionally, local Box Elder law enforcement officials responded to a report of domestic violence at Chappelle’s residence on the night of Sangrait’s death but did not contact anyone inside the residence, removederland testified. Because the 2024 assault case was handled internally by the Air Force, it’s unclear if Box Elder police were aware of Chappelle’s criminal history.

Lorna Cuny, executive director of Indigenous motorcyclist advocacy group the Medicine Wheel Ride, holds a bundle of prairie sage and a lit candle at a vigil for Sahela Sangrait on March 26 in Rapid City, South Dakota.

“This should not have happened to her, there were signs, there were things that could have prevented her from facing this tragedy,” said Lorna Cuny, Oglala Lakota and the Executive Director of the Medicine Wheel Ride, a group of motorcyclists who raise awareness for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women epidemic.

Sangrait’s grandmother agreed.

“I don’t have a hard heart,” said Vonda High Hawk, Mnicoujou Lakota. “But this girl should have lived. I think they (the Airforce Base) should at some point be held accountable for the wrongful death (of Sangrait). There’s a chain of command…These senseless crimes need to be handled appropriately by their chain of command. There has to be some type of example made of that.”

Chappelle and Sangrait were in a romantic relationship, family members said.

“She was killed by someone she knew… someone she trusted,” Hillary Dubray, Sangrait’s mother said. **“**We want her story to get out. She was just (about to turn) 21, just getting her life started, but her life was cut short.”

Dubray, Mnicoujou Lakota, stood firmly, wearing a bright red hooded sweatshirt with her daughter’s face on it. Dubrary gathered with family members, friends and community in chilly below-zero temperatures and drizzling rain on March 26 to demand justice for her daughter.

Two young men sing at a vigil for Sahela Sangrait on what would have been her 22nd birthday. Federal prosecutors have charged a United States Airman with first-degree murder in connection to Sangrait’s death. Credit: Amelia Schafer, ICT

“We want people to know she mattered,” said Sangrait’s other grandmother, Phyllis Bald Eagle, who is Mnicoujou Lakota and Mdewakanton Dakota.

Community members are organizing a mid-April demonstration outside of the Ellsworth Air Force Basewhere Sangrait was killed. Organizers from local MMIW advocacy groups, the Medicine Wheel Ride and the Red Ribbon Skirt Society, said the demonstration will bring awareness to Sangrait’s murder as they await the accused’s trial in Rapid City in May.

“It’s for justice,” said Frances Dupris, Sicangu Lakota/Northern Arapaho and an organizer with the Red Ribbon Skirt Society. Dupris spent 24 years as a United States Airman before retiring. “The individuals that should be held accountable for Sahela’s murder are Airmen… I was an Airman, I retired, so this is not to say that all Airmen are bad. But the people who do bad things need to be held accountable.”

Nationwide, Indigenous women are reported missing at a disproportionately high rate. Further, homicide is one of the leading causes of death among American Indians and Alaska Natives, a significant proportion of which are the result of domestic violence.

Sixty-one American Indian/Alaska Native people were reported missing in South Dakota as of March 26, compared to 95 total missing individuals, meaning roughly 65 percent of all missing people in the state are American Indian/Alaska Native. Natives make up only 11 percent of the statewide population. This percentage of missing Native people statewide has remained steady for over two years.

Vonda HighHawk speaks at a vigil for her late granddaughter Sahela Toka Win Sangrait, who federal prosecutors say was killed by a United States Airman on the Ellsworth Air Force Base. Credit: Amelia Schafer, ICT

So far, two individuals are federally charged in connection with Sangrait’s murder. Chappelle and Drew Durand, both 25 and both residents of Box Elder where the Ellsworth Airforce Base is located. Chappelle is charged with first-degree murder and Durand with accessory after the fact and misprision of a felony.

Law enforcement believe that Chappelle and Durand transported Sangrait’s body to the Black Hills National Forest in the early hours of Aug. 11. Sangrait’s remains were found by a hiker in a remote area within National Park boundaries near Hill City on March 11, 2025.

Police charged Chapelle days later with Sangrait’s murder.

Due to the homicide having allegedly taken place on the air force base and the body being found on National Park Service land, Chappelle and Durand are charged in federal court.

Chappelle and Durand will both appear before a 12-person jury May 25 at Andrew W. Bogue Federal Building in Rapid City. Each has pleaded not guilty.

Authorities believe Chapelle killed Sangrait at his residence on the Ellsworth Air Force Baseon Aug. 10. That same night, local law enforcement responded to a report of a domestic dispute at his residence but left without making contact with Chappelle or anyone inside the residence, according police testimony at Chapelle’s to a March 28, 2025, arraignment.

A man hold a sign depiciting Lakota woman Sahela Sangrait. Federal prosecutors have charged a United States Airman with first-degree murder in connection to Sangrait’s homicide and say her death occured on the Ellsworth Air Force Base in Box Elder, South Dakota. Credit: Amelia Schafer, ICT

Due to Chappelle’s assault conviction on the air force base, his commanding officer required him to go to local law enforcement when he arrived at work on Aug. 12 with finger nail scratches across his face. Chappelle reported to Rapid City law enforcement officers that the scratches were the result of an Aug. 10 break-in at his residence. Chappelle declined to follow up with officers regarding an investigation.

Crimes committed on an Air Force base are often prosecuted internally by the base’s court, meaning records of the incident are not available to the public or civilians. Due to this, no court records regarding Chappelle’s assault conviction are available to the public. Information regarding the incident was only made available to the public through law enforcement testimony at Chappelle’s arraignment.

In February 2024, Chappelle was charged with aggravated assault via strangulation.

He was found guilty for these charges in November, two months after the alleged

murder, removederland said. Chappelle also broke no-contact orders two separate times, according to removederland.

Sahela’s story

Sangrait comes from a strong lineage of Lakota and Dakota warriors – a legacy that lived on through her, her family said.

Her great-great-grandfather was Mdewakanton Dakota Chief Little Crow, also known as Ta-Oyate-Duta, who led the six-week 1862 Dakota Uprising in Minnesota. Little Crow is remembered as one of the Dakota 38+2, a group of Dakota men killed by the United States Government in retaliation for the uprising.

Sangrait was also a descendant of Chief Dave Bald Eagle, a World War II veteran who parachuted into the D-Day invasion of Normandy.  Bald Eagle was awarded a Silver Star and a Purple Heart for his service. Bald Eagle was also the grandson of Hunkpapa Lakota Chief White Bull, who was Sitting Bull’s nephew. White Bull fought in the Battle of Little Big Horn.

“There’s a beautiful history this lady comes from,” High Hawk said. “She comes from a very strong lineage, and she will never be forgotten.”

Sahela was given her Lakota name, Toka Win, which roughly translates to Different Cheyenne Woman, by her great-grandmother Clarenda Little Crow, who was Chief Little Crow’s Daughter.

“Everyone needs to know who she was and who she came from,” Bald Eagle said.

High Hawk said it’s paramount to remember Sangrait’s ancestor’s battles and what they went through while fighting for justice for her.

Community members gathered in honor of Sahela Sangrait on March 26 in Rapid City, South Dakota. Federal prosecutors have charged a United States Airman with first-degree murder in connection to Sangrait’s death. Credit: Amelia Schafer, ICT

“These injustices and these atrocities go way back,” High Hawk said. “There needs to be more awareness, more events like what we just did. … We will continue to say her name.”

Sahela grew up in the Black Hills area and moved to Rapid City at 18 years old, her mother said. In Rapid City she worked to fundraise for youth programming and was a vocal advocate for Indigenous youth.

“She was beautiful, just so pretty,” said Sangrait’s other grandmother Vonda High Hawk, who traveled over two hours from the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota, to attend the vigil. “Regardless of the odds that were against her in this life she still radiated with beauty.”

Community members gathered in honor of Sahela Sangrait on March 26 in Rapid City, South Dakota. Federal prosecutors have charged a United States Airman with first-degree murder in connection to Sangrait’s death. Credit: Amelia Schafer, ICT

At just 20 years old, Sangrait hadn’t quite figured out what she was going to do yet as an adult, her family said. She was passionate about helping others and volunteered at Ateeyapi, a local non-profit youth program for Indigenous students in the Black Hills area. She also wanted to raise awareness for domestic violence victims, her mother said.

Sangrait will be buried in April on the Cheyenne River Reservation, her family said.

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My name is Jack Strong, and I’m a member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. I’m the executive chef of The Allison Inn and Spa in Newberg, Oregon, and I’m a partner with the Siletz Valley culinary program at the school that I went to as a kid.

Students in the course cook from-scratch meals for the entire school (K through 12), located just outside the Siletz Reservation, in central Oregon. They also run a food truck, which is named YA-TR’EE-YAN (“a gathering of people around food” or “feast” in Dee-ni) and offers free meals to students and tribal members during the summer. They serve some recipes from my cookbook, too, with Native ingredients like venison, elk, salmon, and sablefish.

I’ve heard Native foods described as the first cuisine of the Americas and the last to be discovered. All these different Asian and European cultures are represented in the U.S., but until recently people wouldn’t even say there is a Native cuisine. Coming up, I didn’t have any Native chefs to look up. Telling that story, at the restaurant and to my students, has been something I’ve really tried to do.

I was raised on the Siletz reservation in central Oregon by my grandmother and grandfather. I enjoyed growing up in a small town. It felt safe; you knew everyone; there was no traffic. There was the forest where you could run around a little bit, and the river for fishing, and this place called the play shed, where I played basketball. You got to experience different sports because there weren’t a lot of kids—they needed everybody to make a team.

One of Strong’s signature dishes at JORY: Pan-roasted Skuna Bay King salmon with a salmon skin chip, set on sunchoke purée and quinoa and topped with cranberry relish and radish microgreens. (Photo credit: Kari Rowe)

My grandma would tell me stories about the history of our family and tribe. There was a time when we were a recognized tribe. Then, from the 1950s to the 1960s, the U.S. government eliminated federal status for tribes. We lost all federal recognition, access to land, resources, benefits. We call that the “termination” period.

What we have now in Siletz is a mere fraction of what our original land was. We moved here from our ancestral homelands, which are primarily from Southern Oregon into Northern California.

Termination was a tough time for our tribe, but they continued to fight to be recognized as a sovereign nation again and have land to create a home that would be ours for generations. Many tribal leaders made trips to Washington, D.C., to speak in front of Congress on our behalf, including my grandfather, who was on our tribal council as well as being a war veteran. In 1977, we regained federal status.

I was fortunate because as I grew up, the tribe started do more culturally important activities that we hadn’t done during termination. Our community started what we call “culture camp” that we still do every year over a weekend. They were teaching the youth things like basketry making and preparing eels to eat. My grandma would tell stories about teaching herself everything—like her amazing beadwork —and was a big part of making sure I went to that camp to learn about our culture.

“Friends and family knew there was always some kind of meal happening at the Strong house.”

My grandfather passed away when I was ten, but growing up, my grandmother was working and he was retired, so I originally started cooking for him. It was basic stuff that I learned from my grandmother—who cooked everything from scratch for us—and I learned I had a love for being in the kitchen.

I got into fishing as a young teenager. The Siletz River runs through the town and reservation, then it joins the ocean in the Siletz Bay. Growing up, I’d see salmon and steelhead trout spawning in the river.

My family was connected with seafood. My uncle was known for his smoked salmon—he would barter with smoked salmon like currency. He’d dig for clams and mussels, too. My other relatives worked in seafood processing. They would bring my grandma salmon heads. She would boil them and eat all the parts—the eyeballs, the cheeks. Later, in my first job out of culinary school, I did a lot of seafood butchery, and we would break down all of our salmon, and I’d bring the heads to her as gifts.

I’ve been asked quite a bit throughout my career about my grandma’s cooking. Her time was so much about survival. It was being taken from your homelands and away from your native foods. Growing up toward the end of that in the ‘80s, we were still on commodity foods—the flour and fats and sugars that were given to us. One of my first early times helping her in the kitchen was making noodles from scratch for chicken noodle soup.

Friends and family knew there was always some kind of meal happening at the Strong house. It was never just us eating by ourselves—it was always people coming over. I had this connection that food equates to taking care of other people, it gives you a sense of home and community.

My Culinary Influences

My first job was in high school at a fish-and-chips place in Newport, along the coast, 20 minutes away. It was a husband and wife who owned it, and they were mentors for me. He would go down to the boats on the bay front and get fresh fish, bring it back, and teach us how to fillet it.

I learned to appreciate fresh products and also the basics of hospitality, like cleanliness and multitasking, and how to interact with guests and the importance of being a strong player to support the team.

Afterwards, I enrolled in a two-year hands-on culinary program at Lane Community College in Eugene, and then at a local restaurant. That chef asked me to do a dish that might speak more to my culture.

I thought of fry bread, which was such a big part of our culture, but also came out of survival. My chef was Jewish, so I made a play off of lox and bagel with fry bread and cold-smoked cured salmon lox. That was probably the first-ever dish highlighting some part of my culture. That’s when I started to do what I do now every day.

After eight years at the restaurant, I started to get itchy. I wanted to try something else. I got an offer from the Phonecian Resort, near Phoenix, that had over 1,200 employees—more staff than people who lived in the town I came from. Arizona was the opposite of Oregon. Here, it’s beautiful and green and wet. There, it was dry and sunny every day. It was completely different from what I was used to. It was overwhelming, but I grew quickly there because I was like a sponge, absorbing everything.

I learned about the foods from the other beautiful tribes around there—the Navajo, Hopi, Gila River, Tohono O’odham. They’re all so different, and they’re all based off of place. Southwest foods include so many different chiles, beans, and corn—all Native foods. It was just so clear to see how these foods have sustained people for generations.

Students at the Siletz Valley School culinary program butchering local albacore tuna. (Photo credit: Rachelle Hacmac)

My Local Foods

After many years of working in Arizona—including at the Sheraton Grand at Wild Horse Pass, on the Gila River Reservation, and KAI, which is influenced by the food of the Akimel O’odham and Piipaash peoples—I ultimately came back to the Northwest to be close to family. Now, at The Allison in Newberg, I get to highlight Native foods in the kitchen and garden. I really love that—it’s my culture and home, and it’s nice to be able to share all the great things that come from here.

My role as a chef is about taking care of others, nourishing people. I’ve always felt like my part in this ecosystem is to support the farmers, the fishermen—to put money back into community.

If you’re getting any kind of tribal foods or just even local foods, usually they’re not really set up with infrastructure, so it takes extra effort on your part. At JORY, the fine-dining restaurant at The Allison, we use a lot of local.

“I’ve always felt like my part in this ecosystem is to support the farmers, the fishermen—to put money back into community.”

We have local fishermen through Northwest Fresh Seafood, which is a cute little fish shop right in Newberg. Our meats all come from Northwest Premier Meats nearby in Tualatin—her name’s Tina, and she takes care of us. Our cheese is from Briar Rose Creamery, 15 minutes away. Bread comes from our baker, Tim, at Carlton Bakery. We get our mushrooms and huckleberries and black and white Oregon truffles from Misty Mountain. We have a guy down at Oregon Royal Sturgeon, which is in the Fort Klamath area, and their fish is so fresh. For special events I might get something specific, like the Ozette potatoes from the Makah tribe up in Neah Bay, Washington, which I get through a gentleman who works for the Northwest Native Chamber.

Our produce is from local farms or our 1.5-acre garden, and last year we grew some Ozettes too. Anna, our master gardener, is so cooperative and passionate about what she does. We recently planted miner’s lettuce out there, which is a Native food. I do this dish called The Allison Garden, with a “soil” out of dark rye bread and vegetables stuck in that soil, with greens on the side. I use the miner’s lettuce as part of this dish.

Reconnecting With Native Traditions

Growing up, our Siletz language, Dee-ni, wasn’t taught in school. Now they have an online dictionary and programs in the elementary schools, so younger generations have access to our language. I learned what I know when I moved back to the reservation as an adult, going to once-a-month classes and coming home to put sticky notes on objects in the house. I mostly use our language around food—for things like lhuk (salmon), gus (potato), or ch’aa-ghee-she’ (egg)—especially on menus, because it relates to me that way.

When I was young, as far as I’m aware, the tribe wasn’t really foraging for traditional foods like huckleberries, and camas was only for ceremonies. Now every year I go picking huckleberries on tribal lands, and they’re one of my favorite foods. We serve them often at The Allison. You can go savory or sweet with huckleberries, and I’ve worked with the pastry chef, Shelly Toombs, to develop a huckleberry semifreddo.

My Work With Native Youth

In 2024, I got a message from Patrick Clarke, the director of the Siletz Valley School culinary program, which started the previous year. He said, “You should come out to the school and meet the kids sometime.”

I invited the class out to The Allison for a field trip tour of the garden and kitchen, followed by lunch and a Q&A. The class of about 20 students got to learn about cooking and other aspects of hospitality, including marketing, housekeeping, HR, accounting, admin—all these different jobs you can have under one roof at a place like The Allison. They asked me questions about my path and my advice for them. I feel like my path into the culinary world is very approachable, very driven by taking care of others and just pushing yourself to be the best you can.

It could have been just the one tour, but Patrick and I kept talking. Next, the school hosted me. They made lunch and gave a tour of the school and their food truck. The kids used the recipe out of my cookbook for fry bread, and I hopped in the food truck to make it with them.

Since then, a lot of what I do with the culinary program is giving them opportunities to learn and connect with other Native chefs—like at the Native American Heritage Month event we hosted at The Allison last November. The students helped with everything, from prep days to shucking oysters that night.

“I do whatever I can to give them experiences. The more experiences they have, the bigger and better picture they’ll see.”

I try to give them a path toward a good career in the kitchen, about being happy in what you do. But I’m also very transparent about the difficulties. You’re going to work holidays and your birthday, and you’re going to be taking care of others on their special days. It can be long days of physical work.

Siletz is a small town with no stoplights, a thousand people, and really no business besides a mini-mart gas station—unless you work for the tribe, and those jobs are limited. So it’s really all about exposure to new things. That’s half the battle—getting out of Siletz a bit and seeing what’s in the world. I do whatever I can to give them experiences, like going up into Portland and being part of the governor’s conference [in April 2025], feeding lawmakers and representing the tribe. The more experiences they have, the bigger and better picture they’ll see.

Last month, there was an event called the Blue Foods Forum in Portland, all focused on foods from the ocean. The kids cooked Oregon albacore and supported the chefs, including helping with a plating for a demonstration I led with tribal-caught salmon from Iliamna Fish Co.

Through the Oregon Albacore Commission, they also got to go out on a boat—which I know for some kids was their first time. They received a donation of whole albacore tuna that they learned to butcher. As part of the lesson, they took the fish heads and other parts of the skeletons and buried them to help create a natural fertilizer, as part of this full-circle journey so that nothing goes to waste and everything stays in the ecosystem.

It was like one of the times, as a kid, that I came back home with trout for my grandma. I didn’t clean the fish at the river, and she reprimanded me. She was happy I had caught trout, but she was like, ‘You need to gut those at the river. You need to wash the inside of their flesh with the water. All of what you cleaned out is going to be eaten by the crawdads and all the other life that’s in the river, and that’s part of the process.’ With the students learning how to break down albacore after the boat trip—that was their teaching moment of how everything is connected.

It’s really impressive to see how far some of the students have come. The program gives them direction; it pushes them to see what they can do, and it benefits the school and the community. I try to do whatever I can to support the students. For the past two years at JORY, we’ve had a special dish on the menu that highlights traditional Siletz foods, with some of the proceeds going towards the culinary school program.

I really connect with the youth in Siletz. As someone who came from that school, I understand what those kids are going through, what their opportunities are. For me, it’s personal—I can say: “I’ve sat where you’re sitting.”

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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