Crow Tribe issues disaster declaration due to major floods (May 23, 2011)

The Crow Tribe of Montana has issued a disaster declaration for the entire reservation due to massive flooding. The declaration was prompted by flooded homes and buildings, washed-out roads and continually rising water levels in rivers, creeks and canals. Several...

Walter Soboleff, Tlingit spiritual elder, passes away at 102 (May 23, 2011)

Walter Soboleff, a Tlingit spiritual leader from Alaska, died on Sunday. He was 102. Soboleff was born in the Tlingit village of Killisnoo on November 14, 1908. His Tlingit name was Kha'jaq'tii, which means One Slain in Battle. Soboleff attended...

Phoenix Indian Medical Center undergoing $8.2M upgrade (May 23, 2011)

The Phoenix Indian Medical Center in Arizona is undergoing an $8.2 million makeover. Operation Eagle Rebirth will bring upgrades to the facility's electrical infrastructure, the central equipment sterilizer and air-handler units, The Arizona Republic reported. "We're getting our equipment and...

Witness list for House hearing on Navajo Nation coal plant (May 23, 2011)

Two subcommittees of the House Natural Resources Committee will hold a joint oversight hearing tomorrow to discuss the Navajo Generating Station. The coal-fired power plant is owned by located on the Arizona portion of the Navajo Nation. It's owned by...

Native Sun News: NRC delays uranium bid in South Dakota (May 23, 2011)

The following story was written and reported by Talli Nauman. All content © Native Sun News. Native American and non-Indian activists welcomed the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s May 6 notice that it is suspending the safety review on the Canadian-owned...

Mark Trahant: 2012 elections important for Indian Country (May 23, 2011)

Canada just finished its national elections and the governing Conservative Party expanded its majority in parliament. Last week Prime Minister Stephen Harper also announced the historic appointment of two Native Canadians to that country’s cabinet. Assembly of First Nations National...

Bill for Indian affairs post in Oklahoma passes in nine days (May 23, 2011)

A bill to disband the Oklahoma Indian Affairs Commission and replace it with a cabinet-level liaison passed in just nine days, giving tribes little opportunity to comment on it.

Tribunal to hear Native woman's discrimination complaint (May 23, 2011)

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal will hear a Native woman's complaint of discrimination against a nightclub in Vancouver. Colleen Mitchell White, who is Cree, Ojibwe and Metis, was denied entry to The Roxy in March 2009. She was told...

Wambli Sina Win: Oklahoma Indian inmates need our help (May 23, 2011)

How often in our busy lives do we take time to reflect upon the simple things in life that are taken for granted? Our freedom is “priceless.” No amount of frog skins, “maza ska” or money can ever compensate for...

San Manuel chair and rival seek police union endorsement (May 23, 2011)

The San Bernardino County Safety Employees' Benefit Association hasn't decided who to endorse in the race for 3rd district supervisor. James Ramos, the chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, met with the union earlier this month. So...

Senate Energy Committee to hold hearing on Sealaska bill (May 23, 2011)

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing this Wednesday on five bills, including S.730, the Southeast Alaska Native Land Entitlement Finalization and Jobs Protection Act. Sealaska, an Alaska Native regional corporation, is entitled to land under...

Five candidates in running for Eastern Band principal chief (May 23, 2011)

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina will hold an election for principal chief this summer. Five candidates are running for the job. They are: incumbent Michell Hicks, Mary "Missy" Crowe, Patrick LambertGary R. Ledford and Juanita Plummer...

Marc Simmons: Zuni Pueblo often retreated to sacred site (May 23, 2011)

"One of New Mexico's most fabled shrines is Towa Yalane, a flat-topped mountain rising a thousand feet above a sandy plain, just three miles southeast of Zuni Pueblo. The name translates as Corn Mountain, tracing back to antiquity when a...

Kevin Abourezk: Chief Standing Bear Breakfast in Nebraska (May 23, 2011)

"As a child, he would walk with his grandfather across the prairie and along rivers on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation of South Dakota. Winter, spring, summer and fall, a young Joseph Marshall III walked beside his grandfather, who wore...

Financial Times: Cut in BIA loan guarantee fund hits tribes (May 23, 2011)

"The Delaware Nation has a simple idea for creating jobs for the 60 per cent of its members who are unemployed – it wants to manufacture lighting. However, no one will lend this Native American community the money to get...

Kevin Gover: NMAI strives to address myths about Indians (May 23, 2011)

"Congress established the National Museum of the American Indian in 1989, noting that the establishment of the museum within the Smithsonian would “give all Americans the opportunity to learn of the cultural legacy, historical grandeur, and contemporary culture of Native...

Steve Russell: Drugs and violence killing Mexican economy (May 23, 2011)

"In 2009, some of my students from Indiana University took one of those inexpensive “Spring Break in Cancun” packages. Every one of them was the victim of crime. Separate crimes, except one group mugging. The guys who used to truck...

Melvin Martin: Indians still inspiring fear for White America (May 23, 2011)

Indian people everywhere have told me that perhaps too much has already been analyzed, written about, and publicly debated by a multitude of activists and scholars on both sides of the American Indian mascot controversy. Or perhaps not nearly enough...

Vi Waln: Lakota philosophy prepares us to face everything (May 23, 2011)

Last week people were abuzz about the rapture. Some thought it meant the end of the world. But I awoke on Sunday and the world was still intact. I haven’t heard of anyone mysteriously disappearing or of any resurrections from...

Charles Trimble: Young Indian man chained by victimhood (May 23, 2011)

The following column was published in The Lakota Country Times. Recently I’ve received a series of shrill and insulting e-mail messages from a young Native American man named Joseph who is perplexed that I have the gall to tell about...

Tim Giago: Boarding school survivors start healing process (May 23, 2011)

The elder Winatchapam (Yakama) woman, Levina Wilkens, was puzzled. She was about to say the prayer to open the Boarding School Healing Symposium in Boulder, Colorado, but she didn’t know which way was East because of the heavy cloud cover....