George David was a master carver. Born into the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation of Vancouver Island, he spent decades working in cedar and silver, creating totem poles and masks that told his people’s stories. His work traveled the world, with pieces displayed in museums in Norway and Japan. Two canoes he carved mark Chief Seattle’s gravesite in Washington State.

In March 2016, David was 65 and living in Neah Bay, Washington. When family called about a funeral in British Columbia, he packed a bag and caught the bus to Port Angeles to make the ferry connection. A friend offered him a place to stay overnight.

Two days later, police found David dead in that apartment. Someone had beaten him to death.

The Port Angeles Police Department opened a homicide investigation, and within weeks, detectives identified Tina Marie Alcorn as their primary suspect. They arrested her in April on an unrelated warrant from Arkansas, but they didn’t have enough evidence to charge her with David’s murder. She was extradited to Arkansas for a probation violation on a theft conviction, and the homicide case went cold.

David’s family waited for answers, but years passed, and the case file gathered dust. This is how it usually goes when a Native person is murdered. Investigations stall, evidence sits unexamined, and families hear nothing.

The numbers tell the story. Native Americans face violence at rates 2.5 times higher than other Americans. Homicide is the third leading cause of death for both Native women and Native men. More than 84% of Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime. In Washington State, Native people make up 3% of the population but 7% of the missing persons list.

Most local police departments lack the resources to maintain active cold case investigations. Smaller jurisdictions can’t afford dedicated investigators or advanced forensic work, so cases sit unsolved for decades.

How the Unit Broke the Case

In 2021, Washington’s Attorney General decided to find out why. The office convened a task force that spent a year studying the crisis. They talked to families, reviewed case files, and examined what happened when Native people went missing or turned up murdered.

The task force found what families already knew: the system was failing them. They recommended creating something that didn’t exist anywhere in the country, a cold case unit focused exclusively on missing and murdered Native people, housed in the Attorney General’s office with state-level resources.

The state Legislature passed the bill unanimously in 2023, and Governor Jay Inslee signed it into law, making Washington the first state to try this approach.

The unit hired Brian George, a 27-year law enforcement veteran and enrolled member of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, as chief investigator. It secured $1.5 million from the federal Emmett Till Cold Case Investigations and Prosecution Grant, the largest amount the program had ever awarded. That money hired case navigators to stay in contact with families during investigations.

Then the unit went to work. Investigators began reviewing unsolved cases, reaching out to local departments, and reexamining old evidence with new forensic techniques.

In 2024, Port Angeles police called about George David’s case. Could the cold case unit take another look?

Investigators pulled the evidence collected in 2016 and sent it to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab for additional DNA analysis. The lab found what the original investigation had missed. In June 2025, police arrested Alcorn in West Helena, Arkansas. She was extradited back to Washington and charged with second-degree murder.

Alcorn pleaded guilty, and on December 15, 2025, a judge sentenced her to more than 13 years in prison with an enhancement for being armed during the crime. The conviction marked the cold case unit’s first success.

“We were able to bring justice in this case because of the hard work of our cold case team in collaboration with local law enforcement,” Attorney General Nick Brown said. “I commend the hard work of the Port Angeles Police Department, who never gave up on this case.”

A Model Takes Shape

The unit now has 25 active investigations and has helped locate more than 20 missing Native people. State Representative Debra Lekanoff, who championed the legislation creating the unit, has watched families reunite with relatives they thought were lost forever.

“We have saved lives, we have brought families together,” Lekanoff said. “I have had the pleasure of welcoming home members whom we thought we had lost.”

Other states are watching Washington’s experiment. The model combines state funding, federal grants, cultural knowledge, and partnerships with tribal law enforcement. Early results suggest it works.

But one unit cannot solve decades of unsolved murders across an entire state. The unit operates only when local agencies ask for help and cannot take over cases. Tribal leaders are pushing for expansion, more investigators, and bigger budgets.

Still, George David’s case proves something. When states commit real resources to Native victims, cold cases can be solved. DNA gets analyzed. Suspects get charged. Families get answers.

Maria David can’t get her father back. She can’t see the stories his unfinished carvings would have told. But she knows what happened. She knows someone is being held accountable.

“Indian artwork is a way for us to tell our stories,” she said. “And his stories can no longer be told.”

A Massive Build-Out Is Underway

The biggest technology companies in the world are racing to power artificial intelligence, and they need more electricity than the current grid can provide. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta have all signed multi-billion-dollar agreements to use nuclear energy. Meta alone has secured contracts for up to 6.6 gigawatts of nuclear power by 2035, making it one of the largest corporate nuclear buyers in American history. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has called the entire effort “the Second Manhattan Project.”

Nuclear power requires uranium, and American Indian lands hold as much as 50 percent of U.S. uranium reserves, according to the Wilson Center. Any significant expansion of nuclear energy in this country runs through tribal territory, whether for the fuel it needs or the federal land where it wants to build. Communities near existing data centers are already seeing electricity bills rise 267 percent over five years, according to a January 2026 Bloomberg report. More than 70 percent of American Indians live in urban areas, where those rate increases hit the hardest.

This Has Happened Before

Between 1951 and 1992, the U.S. conducted nearly a thousand nuclear weapons tests on Western Shoshone land in Nevada. During those same decades, 96 percent of U.S. defense-related uranium mines were on the Navajo Nation. Cancer rates among Navajo people doubled. In 1979, a dam collapsed at a uranium mill on Navajo land, sending 360 million liters of radioactive wastewater into the Puerco River, still the largest single radioactive release in American history.

More than 500 abandoned uranium mines remain on the Navajo Nation today. The cleanup has never been finished. As of 2019, more than 30 percent of Navajo Nation residents lacked running water, while a single large AI data center can consume nearly a billion gallons of water per year.

That context shapes how Indian Country hears the current round of partnership offers, and it is why the same proposal can produce completely different reactions depending on who is sitting across the table.

A Community Divided

On the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana, a utility company announced plans last year to build a Small Modular Reactor just outside reservation boundaries, a technology that has never been built or tested anywhere in North America. More than a dozen community members, most of them Northern Cheyenne, showed up to oppose it. The utility told them the project was moving forward regardless.

Organizations like Honor the Earth and Stop Data Colonialism are building resistance campaigns across multiple reservations. Dr. Nichole Keway Biber, a citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, wrote in Native News Online this month that data center development is the newest form of the land grab, and that developers frequently arrive with non-disclosure agreements that prevent communities from getting basic answers about water use and environmental risk before any decisions are made. Cheyenne Morgan of Stop Data Colonialism, a member of the United Keetoowah Band and Oglala Lakota, found similar warning signs in zoning documents for a proposed data center near the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, where public-facing materials told a different story than the industry documents. “Talk to your neighbors,” Morgan said. “Find out what they know. File open records requests.”

Other tribal leaders read the same situation differently. Paul Bemore of the Osage Nation utility authority told the Mountain West News Bureau that tribes dependent on casino revenue need to diversify, and that data center partnerships offer one path forward. He pointed to data sovereignty as an underappreciated benefit: a tribe that builds its own data infrastructure controls its enrollment records and cultural archives, rather than storing them on servers accessible to corporations or federal agencies. Matthew Rantanen, Director of Technology for the Southern California Tribal Chairman’s Association, noted that data centers built with underground cooling systems can avoid significant water consumption entirely, and that smaller, tribally controlled facilities represent something meaningfully different from a hyperscale corporate campus. “Making big blanket statements about data centers can harm some of those smaller, very effective uses,” he said.

What Comes Next

The DOE hosted a webinar in February 2026 offering tribes financial and technical assistance to pursue data center partnerships. The Trump administration has made clear it views AI infrastructure as a national priority, and federal land is part of the plan.

New uranium extraction will follow new nuclear construction. Water demand will grow alongside data center capacity. The abandoned mines, the broken cleanup promises, and the utility in Montana that moved forward over community objections are the baseline for every negotiation happening right now in Indian Country. Whether genuine consent becomes part of this build-out or is treated as a box to check remains to be seen.

If you work in tribal energy policy or live near one of the sites mentioned here, I want to hear from you. What is your community being told, and who is at the table when these decisions are made?

That changed on February 4, 2026, when Denver’s Landmark Preservation division released We Are the Land: American Indian Life, Legacy, and Future in Denver, a 334-page historic context study built from 17 oral history interviews, two multi-day Tribal convenings, and four years of community collaboration. The city hosted a release event that included a screening of an accompanying documentary film, a panel with those involved in the production, and a panel of local Native students. The project is the first city-led effort in Denver’s history to document American Indian life through Native voices rather than the archives of settlers who displaced them.

The study is not a standard municipal report. It is organized around a Northern Arapaho framework called the Four Hills of Life, taught at the 2024 Tribal Convening by Councilwoman Teresa HisChase. Each chapter moves through four stages: Traditional Knowledge, Removal, Return, and Reconnection.

Forty-Eight Tribes, One City

Denver sits at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River. Long before any European set foot in the region, this spot served as a continental crossroads for trade, ceremony, governance, and seasonal gathering. Forty-eight Tribal Nations have documented historical ties to what is now Colorado. Only two, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, still hold reservations within the state’s borders. Today, more than 200 Tribal Nations are represented in the Denver metro area’s American Indian and Alaska Native communities, according to History Colorado.

“I always say that coming into Denver, I see a cultural landscape,” Conrad Fisher, a Northern Cheyenne consultant and chair of the Montana Burial Preservation Board, said during the 2024 Tribal Convening. “I don’t necessarily see the town of Denver, but rather a place that our ancestors called home.”

One detail that might surprise outside readers: the study uses “American Indian” throughout rather than “Native American.” This was a deliberate community choice. During the project’s engagement process, participants most commonly identified themselves as American Indian, a term that carries specific legal and historical weight rooted in centuries of federal policy, Federal Indian Law, and institutions like the National Museum of the American Indian. Several community members noted that “Native American” can feel like a generic label imposed from outside Native communities during the 1960s and 1970s. The study honors that local preference.

What the Study Documents

The eight chapters cover ground from time immemorial to the present. Among them:

The Sand Creek Massacre chapter centers Cheyenne and Arapaho voices to document the November 29, 1864 attack in which Colonel John Chivington led approximately 700 soldiers against an unarmed encampment of mostly women, children, and Elders. An estimated 150 to 250 people were killed. Survivors’ oral histories describe mutilation and desecration of bodies. Soldiers later paraded through Denver with human remains as trophies. Federal investigations condemned Chivington’s actions, but he faced no criminal consequences.

The federal policy chapter examines more than 500 Indian boarding schools that operated nationally between 1870 and 1934, including Colorado institutions like the Teller Institute and Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School. Children were punished for speaking their languages, separated from their families, and subjected to violence, starvation, and sexual abuse. The study emphasizes that the term “stolen children” reflects not only physical removal but the theft of identity, belonging, and emotional safety.

The chapter on urban Native communities traces how the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ relocation program turned Denver into one of its primary hubs in the 1950s. Many relocatees experienced housing discrimination, unstable employment, and isolation. Those who stayed built organizations. In November 1955, twelve American Indians gathered at Cleo Factor’s home in Denver and founded the White Buffalo Council of American Indians, the first legally recognized Indian nonprofit in Colorado. Within fifteen years it had 300 members representing roughly 100 families and 40 Tribes.

That organizing eventually produced the Denver Indian Center, which opened in 1971 in the former Beth Hamedrosh Hagadol Synagogue. The center was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 29, 2025, as part of this project.

The study also documents the institutions that keep Denver’s American Indian community alive today: the Denver March Powwow, which now draws more than 1,500 dancers from close to 100 Tribes across 38 states and three Canadian provinces; Tocabe, the American Indian eatery founded by Benjamin Jacobs of the Osage Nation; the Four Winds American Indian Council in the Baker neighborhood; and áyA Con, an Indigenous comic and art festival whose name comes from the Lakota word for “to change, to become.”

Unfinished Business

The study’s authors are explicit that this is a beginning, not a conclusion. There are already concrete preservation outcomes: the Denver Indian Center’s National Register listing, and documented identification of sites like the Four Winds building, the TallBull Memorial Grounds, and others for potential future designation.

But the study also raises questions the city has not yet answered. The TallBull Memorial Grounds, a site in Daniels Park where American Indians have held ceremonies, powwows, and sweat lodges since the 1970s, remain city-owned with no permanent protection for community use. In 1986, the city unilaterally revoked its cooperative agreement and locked the gates without notice. Glenn Morris, a Shawnee political science professor at CU Denver who was involved with the American Indian Movement, organized a protest that ultimately restored access. The underlying power imbalance has not changed. The land remains the city’s.

“So finally, I told them, ‘Rich, they have until this Mother’s Day. That lock better be off of that gate, or we’re going out there and breaking it down on Mother’s Day in honor of our mother, the Earth,’” Morris recalled in his oral history interview for the project.

Publishing a 334-page study is one thing. Whether Denver follows through on what the study documents is another question entirely. The city now has, in its own official record, the testimony of people whose ancestors were murdered, relocated, and systematically stripped of language, land, and children. The question is what the city does with that record beyond filing it.

If you live in Denver, have ties to the American Indian community, or work in historic preservation, I’d like to hear how this project has landed in your world. What places matter to your community that still aren’t protected?

The Citizen Potawatomi Nation’s Tribal Reentry Program has connected more than 400 Native American inmates with services since 2012. The program begins inside prison walls, where participants gather weekly for sessions that look nothing like conventional rehabilitation: healing circles, drumming, traditional dancing, crafting of ceremonial clothing. After release, the tribe helps with housing, transportation, work clothes, and education.

What sets the program apart isn’t the practical support. It’s that the tribe welcomes any Native American inmate, regardless of tribal enrollment. A Seminole member released from an Oklahoma state prison can access the same services as a Potawatomi citizen.

The Numbers Behind the Crisis

Nearly 39 percent of Native Americans released from federal prison return within three years, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. That figure mirrors broader national trends: 66 percent of people released from state prisons across 24 states in 2008 were arrested within three years, and 82 percent were arrested within ten years.

Against that backdrop, the Citizen Potawatomi program’s outcomes are striking. As of 2018, about 300 people had completed the program. According to Burt Patadal, then the program coordinator, only one had returned to prison.

One person out of 300. In a state where Native Americans face incarceration at rates far exceeding the general population.

Nationally, Native people are locked up in state and federal prisons at a rate of 763 per 100,000. That’s double the national rate and more than four times higher than the white incarceration rate of 181 per 100,000. The disparity is even more severe for young people: Native youth are 3.8 times as likely to be placed in juvenile facilities as white youth, according to 2023 data from the Sentencing Project. That gap is now at an all-time high.

Healing What Courts Cannot Reach

Patadal, who struggled with alcoholism for decades before achieving sobriety 26 years ago, leads sessions that draw on White Bison’s Wellbriety curriculum. The approach connects addiction and incarceration to historical trauma, particularly the forced assimilation of Native children in boarding schools.

Kateri Coyhis, director of White Bison’s Wellbriety Training Institute, argues that the boarding school era caused a breakdown of culture, language, and traditions that echoes through generations. The program responds by restoring what was taken.

Participants learn traditional practices. They hear their languages spoken. They cook together and share meals.

Fawna Wolfe, a Seminole member who spent 16 months in prison for a 2010 DUI, told NonDoc in 2018 that hearing Patadal speak words in Seminole brought back memories of being raised by her grandmother, who spoke the language fluently. “Burt says words in Seminole. He says bits and pieces in Seminole. We answer him back,” she said.

The practical assistance matters too. The program, initially funded through a Department of Justice grant, helps participants find work, pays for utilities and rent during the transition, assists with GED completion, and connects people to substance abuse treatment. Wolfe said the program helped her buy work boots for a manufacturing job, an electric bike for transportation, and a deposit on a house.

She had decided against returning to her hometown after release. “You know everybody,” she said, “and if I was to look for drugs, I know exactly where to go.” In Shawnee, she found a different kind of community.

A System Set Up to Fail

Native American over-incarceration has been escalating for decades. The Native population in local jails grew 85 percent between 2000 and 2019, from 5,500 to 10,200. Overall jail populations grew only 18 percent during the same period.

A 2023 report from the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge found that tribal jail incarceration rates increased 60 percent since 2000. The average length of stay doubled from 2002 to 2018.

The report’s authors identified jurisdictional fragmentation as a core structural problem. Native Americans often face overlapping criminal jurisdiction from tribal, federal, and state governments. A person can have pending charges in tribal court, state court, and local courts simultaneously, each with different appearance requirements and release conditions. Confusion about those requirements leads to more incarceration.

This complexity makes coordinated reentry especially difficult. Someone leaving a federal prison might return to a reservation where tribal, state, and federal authorities all have claims on supervision. The Citizen Potawatomi program cuts through that tangle by focusing on cultural connection and practical needs rather than bureaucratic compliance.

Other Tribes, Similar Approaches

The Citizen Potawatomi program isn’t alone. The Muscogee Creek Nation in Oklahoma operates a reintegration program considered one of the leading tribal reentry efforts in the nation. Services begin before release and cover financial assistance, housing, career development, culturally relevant programming, supervision, and legal counsel.

In Washington state, Native American Reentry Services provides connection to culture and community through sweat lodges, drum and dance circles, and teachings from elders. The organization facilitates addiction treatment through Iron House Medicine Wheel and 12-step classes.

The South Dakota Women’s Prison, where over half the population is Native American, provides cultural activities including regular sweat lodge ceremonies and Lakota culture classes.

The logic behind these programs aligns with what researchers have been arguing: tribes are best positioned to address the underlying factors that contribute to criminal justice involvement in their communities. Outside frameworks often miss what matters.

Federal Support and Uncertain Futures

In May 2025, the Second Chance Reauthorization Act was introduced in Congress with bipartisan support. If enacted, it would extend critical reentry grant programs through 2030. In 2022, the Department of Justice awarded nearly $100 million to reduce recidivism and support reentry, including funding specifically for tribal capacity building.

But scaling programs like the Citizen Potawatomi model poses challenges. The program relies on volunteers, community relationships, and elders who carry traditional knowledge. These aren’t resources that appear through grant applications.

Still, the program’s longevity speaks for itself. For over a decade, the Citizen Potawatomi Nation has welcomed Native Americans from any tribe into a space designed to heal what courts and prisons cannot. The single return to prison among hundreds of participants suggests something is working that standard metrics fail to capture.

At a recent meeting, Patadal read from the White Bison book. Wolfe said the program gives her something to do and keeps her sober. “It’s important,” she said, “because it keeps me sober.”

Tribal reentry programs remain relatively rare, and rigorous outcome data is limited. For those who’ve experienced reentry firsthand, whether as participants, family members, or service providers: what actually helped? What got in the way? I’d like to hear what worked in programs you’ve encountered and what was missing.

“The nurse held the pen in my hand,” Whitehorse, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, told New Mexico lawmakers this month. “I just signed on the line.”

Whitehorse didn’t know she had undergone a tubal ligation until years later, when she returned to the hospital struggling to conceive a second child. She would not carry another pregnancy. Her father had risked his life as a Navajo Code Talker. Her government had answered that sacrifice by taking away her reproductive future without her knowledge.

Last week, New Mexico became the first state in the United States to formally commit to investigating the forced and coerced sterilization of Native American women. The memorial, Senate Memorial 014, was sponsored by five lawmakers including two Native American women, Sens. Shannon Pinto (Diné) and Angel Charley (Laguna/Diné). It directs the New Mexico Indian Affairs Department and the Commission on the Status of Women to investigate the scope and ongoing effects of the practice. Whitehorse testified in support.

What the Government Already Knew, and When

The federal government has not been without information on this. A 1976 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that four of the twelve Indian Health Service areas sterilized 3,406 women between 1973 and 1976, including 36 women under the age of 21, despite a court-ordered moratorium on sterilizations of minors. The consent forms used did not comply with federal regulations. Physicians documented in the report said they had not received or understood the regulations, even though IHS records show they received written updates on at least three separate occasions between August 1973 and April 1974.

The GAO report examined only four of twelve IHS service areas. What happened in the other eight remains largely unaccounted for. Senate Memorial 014 states that coerced sterilizations at IHS facilities were reported as recently as 2018.

To understand how IHS sterilizations became possible at all, you have to go back further. In 1907, Indiana passed the first compulsory eugenics sterilization law in the United States. By 1939, more than 30,000 people in 29 states had been sterilized in prisons and psychiatric institutions, according to historical records cited by the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. The 1927 Supreme Court ruling in Buck v. Bell gave those practices constitutional cover, and that ruling has never been overturned. The IHS itself was not established until 1955, and it began providing family planning services, including sterilization, in 1965 under the authority of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, according to Jane Lawrence’s 2000 study in the American Indian Quarterly. The legal and institutional architecture was decades in the making before the peak of IHS sterilizations in the 1970s.

Two years before the GAO audit, Dr. Connie Redbird Uri, a Choctaw and Cherokee physician, had already raised the alarm. In 1974, Uri reviewed IHS records and found that the federal agency had sterilized as many as 25 percent of its female patients of childbearing age. Some of the women she interviewed were unaware they had been sterilized at all. Others said they were pressured into signing consent forms or told the procedures were reversible. Uri’s research indicated the IHS had “singled out full-blooded Indian women for sterilization procedures.”

By the 1970s, between 25 and 50 percent of Native women of childbearing age in the United States had been sterilized, mainly through IHS facilities, according to the memorial text. A significant share of those procedures was performed at IHS service areas including Albuquerque and Gallup, which serve thousands of Native people in the Four Corners region.

The Tactics

To understand the scale of what happened, it helps to know how it happened.

Providers told some women they were being treated for appendicitis, a rash, or another condition, and performed sterilizations while the patient was under anesthesia. Others were presented with consent forms to sign while already sedated or in acute pain and rushed through emergency procedures. Some were told the sterilization was reversible. Some were threatened with the loss of welfare benefits or health care access if they refused.

One theory documented in the historical record suggests that underpaid and overworked IHS physicians sterilized Native women to reduce their future patient load. In 1974, the ratio of doctors to patients at IHS facilities stood at roughly one physician per 1,700 reservation patients, according to historical records cited by researchers. Between 1971 and 1974, applications for vacant IHS positions dropped from 700 to 100. The practical incentive, according to this line of argument, was fewer deliveries and fewer children requiring ongoing care.

A broader legal foundation enabled the practice. A 1927 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Buck v. Bell upheld states’ rights to sterilize people deemed “unfit” to reproduce, establishing the legal scaffolding for the forced sterilization of immigrants, people of color, disabled people, and other marginalized groups throughout the twentieth century. Buck v. Bell has never been overturned.

Sarah Deer, a professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, has called IHS sterilizations a campaign of “systemic” action against Native American communities. The Indian Health Service and its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, did not respond to multiple requests for comment on New Mexico’s investigation, according to reporting by the Associated Press.

Dark Winds Got Here First

Most Americans first encountered this history not through a government report but through a television drama.

In the first episode of AMC’s Dark Winds, set in 1971 on the Navajo Nation, a nurse and midwife named Emma Leaphorn warns a pregnant teenager not to give birth at the IHS clinic. She delivers the warning in Diné, speaking over the head of a white doctor who thinks she is translating his instructions. She tells the girl that if she delivers at the facility, the doctor will sterilize her afterward without her consent. Emma knows because it happened to her after the birth of her own son.

Writer Maya Rose Dittloff, who co-wrote the episode, told Salon in 2022 that the scene reflected documented history. “Sometimes women would never find out that they had been forcibly sterilized,” Dittloff said. “They just thought they couldn’t ever have children, when in fact, at a normal trip to the doctor, this had happened.”

Dark Winds returned to the subject in Season 2, dedicating a full subplot to a reporter investigating the sterilization of Native women at IHS facilities. The show, developed by Graham Roland, a TV writer and producer of Chickasaw heritage, features an all-Native writers’ room. Chris Eyre, who is Cheyenne and Arapaho, directed the first season. AMC partnered with the Navajo Nation for Season 2, bringing in a Diné cultural consultant.

That a premium cable drama has done more to surface this history than any federal acknowledgment in fifty years is not an accident. It reflects how thoroughly the federal government has avoided formal accountability.

New Mexico Takes the First Step

New Mexico state Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballero (Piro-Manso-Tiwa), a trainer and sexual violence advocate with the Office of Family Representation and Advocacy, told lawmakers at a Feb. 3 Senate hearing that she came close to becoming a victim herself. Already under sedation during a procedure after a miscarriage, she was presented with consent forms that included a hysterectomy consent. Her husband caught it. She signed nothing. She did not speak publicly about the incident until last summer, after hearing testimony from other Native women who had been sterilized without consent.

“They gave me courage,” Caballero said.

Caballero told lawmakers that coerced and forced sterilization of Native women still occurs. “Because of language barriers, poverty barriers, because women of color are vulnerable in these ways,” she said, “we are being taken advantage of.”

Nicolle Gonzalez (Diné), a certified nurse-midwife and founder of the Changing Women Initiative, an Albuquerque-based birth center and reproductive rights organization serving Native families, told Native News Online she hopes the investigation leads to formal acknowledgment, apology, and funding for Native birth workers doing healing work.

“Part of the healing work that needs to happen is that they acknowledge the wrongdoing that happened, an official apology, and some sort of pathway forward of some reconciliation,” Gonzalez said, “whether that’s funding or opportunities for organizations who are doing that healing work and integrating culturally birth supported practices.”

Gonzalez added that a New Mexico investigation could set the stage for a national inquiry. “Is there a potential for Congress to put a hearing through the Senate committee of Indian Affairs? Yes,” she said. “Could there be a national study and an inquiry that really studies where this happened and what the implications for reconciliation repair? Absolutely.”

What Accountability Has Looked Like Elsewhere

New Mexico is not alone in attempting a reckoning with forced sterilization, though it is the first to focus specifically on Native women. In 2023, Vermont launched a truth and reconciliation commission to study the forced sterilization of marginalized groups, including Native Americans. In 2024, California began paying reparations to people sterilized without consent in state-run prisons and hospitals. In Canada, doctors were sanctioned as recently as 2023 for sterilizing Indigenous women without consent.

None of that has come from the federal government. The 1976 GAO report remains the only formal federal acknowledgment of what happened at IHS facilities. Whitehorse testified about the practice to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2025, calling for the United States to issue a formal apology. None has come.

The Limits of What New Mexico Can Do

The New Mexico investigation faces a structural problem: it has no authority to compel federal agencies to participate. Deer told the Associated Press that without cooperation from the IHS or the Department of Health and Human Services, the commission’s ability to gather records will be limited.

The GAO’s own 1976 investigation illustrates how long that problem has existed. Researchers at the time determined that interviewing women who had undergone sterilizations “would not be productive,” citing a single study of cardiac surgical patients in New York who struggled to recall conversations with doctors. The decision to exclude victim testimony from the audit was noted at the time as a significant limitation. It also meant the federal government’s first and only formal look at IHS sterilization practices never included the voices of the women most directly affected.

Rachael Lorenzo, executive director of Indigenous Women Rising, an Albuquerque-based sexual and reproductive health organization, told the Associated Press that any commission examining the sterilizations must be careful not to re-traumatize survivors in the process of documenting what was done to them.

Jean Whitehorse carried her story for nearly 40 years before telling it to her daughter, then to other family members, then to lawmakers and United Nations representatives. “Each time I tell my story, it relieves the shame, the guilt,” she told reporters. “Now I think, why should I be ashamed? It’s the government that should be ashamed of what they did to us.”

The commission’s investigation is just beginning. What it finds, and whether Washington responds to what New Mexico uncovers, remains unanswered.

If you or someone you know has been affected by coerced sterilization at an IHS facility and wants to contribute to the New Mexico investigation, the memorial directs inquiries to the New Mexico Indian Affairs Department and the Commission on the Status of Women. Know of other survivors whose stories should be part of the public record? Reply and let me know.

On December 19, 2025, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced a criminal investigation into eight Native American boarding schools that operated across her state. The goal is simple and unprecedented: identify crimes, gather evidence, and prosecute.

The federal government has spent years documenting boarding school history and the State of Michigan wants accountability.

The Department of the Interior launched its Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative in 2021. Investigators identified more than 400 schools nationwide. They documented over 900 children who died at these institutions. They collected testimony and they published reports.

What they did not do is pursue criminal charges.

That was never the mandate. The federal effort was historical, focused on truth-telling and supporting tribal-led healing. Survivors who testified knew their stories would become part of the record. They did not expect a criminal investigation to follow.

Michigan is taking a different approach.

Two of the state’s boarding schools remained open into the 1980s. Holy Childhood of Jesus School in Harbor Springs operated from 1829 until 1983. That’s recent enough that survivors are still alive. So are some of the people who hurt them.

What Makes Michigan Different

Federal investigators documented history. Nessel’s office has subpoena power. Federal reports named patterns of abuse. Michigan prosecutors can name defendants.

“This investigation seeks to bring truth and accountability to a painful chapter in our state’s history,” Nessel said. “My office is committed to ensuring that survivors’ voices are heard and that any criminal acts uncovered are thoroughly investigated and, when possible, prosecuted.”

The investigation covers eight institutions. Five were federally run boarding schools. Three were church-operated orphanages and mission schools.

Sault Ste. Marie Tribal Council member Aaron Payment captured what this moment means for survivors who have already testified. During the Interior Department’s “Road to Healing” tour in 2022, then-Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary, held listening sessions across the country. Payment attended.

“One by one, victims stood in solidarity and testified, often weeping and naming their perpetrator as Sister X or Father Y,” Payment told Native News Online.

Those names now have somewhere to go.

Tribes Respond

Michigan’s 12 federally recognized tribes all have members affected by the boarding school era. Some are engaging directly with the investigation.

The Keweenaw Bay Indian Community announced its participation on November 15, 2025. Tribal Council member Rodney Loonsfoot framed it simply.

“That’s what we’re talking about here, finally, that accountability,” Loonsfoot said. “Now that we’ve been given a platform to do it.”

The stakes are personal. The St. Joseph Orphanage in Assinins, one of the eight institutions under investigation, sits in Keweenaw Bay territory.

Meanwhile, the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe has spent years transforming the former Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School into a memorial and healing space. That school operated from 1893 to 1934. Records show 227 children died there.

The tribe’s vision includes a museum, a memorial, and a language center. They want to turn a site of removal into a site of return. Nessel’s investigation adds another layer. History and accountability, running together.

What Remains Unclear

Several questions remain.

Statutes of limitations will shape what’s possible. Some crimes may be too old to prosecute. Michigan law varies by offense.

Institutional defendants present another challenge. The School Sisters of Notre Dame operated Holy Childhood. The Catholic Diocese of Gaylord oversaw the parish. Whether institutions face consequences, or only individuals, remains unclear.

The attorney general’s office has promised a public report. Even where prosecution fails, the investigation will create an official record. That matters for survivors who want their experiences acknowledged as crimes.

A tip line is active. Survivors can call 517-897-7391. Tips can be anonymous.

Survivors already did the hardest part. They testified. They named names. They told their stories at federal listening sessions, tribal gatherings, in documentary films.

Michigan is asking whether the system will do something with that courage.

Boarding schools operated in nearly every state. Living survivors exist beyond Michigan. If this investigation produces charges, it creates a template others could follow.

Your state probably had boarding schools too. Should your attorney general be paying attention?

Campbell was the first Native American elected to the U.S. Senate in more than 60 years when he took office in 1993, and he remains the only American Indian ever to chair the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. But his impact extended far beyond tribal policy. In the 106th Congress, Campbell ranked first among all 535 members of Congress for passing the most standalone legislation into law.

A Museum on the National Mall

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian opened on September 21, 2004, and Campbell wore his full Northern Cheyenne eagle feather headdress on the Senate floor that day. He had spent 15 years fighting for the building.

Campbell authored the 1989 legislation authorizing construction of the museum on the National Mall. The bill did something else: it required the Smithsonian to inventory human remains in its collection and return them to tribes requesting repatriation.

The museum drew 2.4 million visitors in its first year. Its collection holds more than 800,000 artifacts, making it the largest institution of its kind in the world. The curvilinear limestone building stands between the National Air and Space Museum and the U.S. Capitol.

Campbell called the museum “a monument to the millions of Native people who died of sickness, slavery, starvation and war.” At the opening ceremony, he led a procession of 25,000 Native Americans from more than 500 tribes through Washington’s streets. That evening, he said: “The circle is complete.”

Kristen Carpenter, director of the American Indian Law Program at the University of Colorado, said the museum legislation “was about respecting their humanity.”

The Sand Creek Massacre Site

Campbell’s most personal legislative achievement was the preservation of Sand Creek, where his ancestors Red Dress and Yellow Woman were killed.

On November 29, 1864, Colonel John Chivington led approximately 700 soldiers in an attack on a Cheyenne and Arapaho village in southeastern Colorado. The village, led by Chief Black Kettle, was flying an American flag and a white flag of truce. More than 150 people were killed, mostly women, children, and elderly men. No memorial marked the site for over 130 years.

Campbell introduced legislation in 1998 directing the National Park Service to verify the massacre site’s location. President Bill Clinton signed the establishment act on November 7, 2000, creating the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.

“This action will provide remembrance to the event and allow present and future generations of Americans to learn from our history,” Campbell said.

Colorado’s Public Lands

Campbell was instrumental in four major public land designations in Colorado.

The Colorado Wilderness Act of 1993 designated or expanded 19 wilderness areas after 13 years of legislative effort. Campbell also shepherded the elevation of Great Sand Dunes from a national monument to a national park and did the same for Black Canyon of the Gunnison.

In the House, Campbell co-sponsored legislation renaming Custer Battlefield National Monument to Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in 1991. The legislation also authorized a memorial to the Native warriors who fought there.

“History is written by the winners,” Campbell told reporters, “and while Indians won this battle, they did lose the war.”

Tribal Sovereignty and Economic Development

Campbell co-authored the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which established federal standards for gaming on tribal lands. The Indian Gaming Association said Campbell “understood that IGRA was not merely legislation; it was a hard-won, necessary protection for tribal governments.”

IGA Chairman David Z. Bean said Campbell “was a strong defender of Indian Country. He knew the people, he knew the struggle, and he knew the promise of Native nations.”

As chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee from 1997 to 2005, Campbell oversaw more pro-tribal legislation than any comparable period. He also negotiated the Animas-La Plata water project settlement, fulfilling long-overdue water rights for the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute Tribes. Lake Nighthorse, the reservoir created by the project, bears his name.

Beyond Indian Country

Campbell’s legislative record included significant work for non-Native constituencies. He passed the Bulletproof Vest Partnership Act, which funded protective equipment for small police departments and tribal law enforcement.

When critics dismissed the bill as minor, Campbell responded: “Well tell that to the mother of some cop whose life was saved by a bulletproof vest. That was a damn important bill.”

Campbell served as a Democrat from 1987 to 1995, then switched to the Republican Party. His policy positions remained consistent: pro-choice, pro-union, and supportive of public lands protection.

A Chief’s Final Journey

Campbell was born in Auburn, California, on April 13, 1933. His mother was a Portuguese immigrant; his father was Northern Cheyenne but hid his heritage due to discrimination. Campbell spent half of his first ten years in a Sacramento orphanage while his mother battled tuberculosis.

He dropped out of high school to join the Air Force, served in Korea, earned his GED, then used the G.I. Bill to attend San Jose State University. He captained the 1964 U.S. Olympic judo team and won a gold medal at the 1963 Pan-American Games.

Campbell learned jewelry-making from his father and later incorporated techniques from Japanese sword makers. His work was collected by U.S. presidents, Mick Jagger, and Robert Redford.

In his final hours, Southern Ute elders visited the Nighthorse Ranch. Eddie Box Jr. sang the sacred Sundance songs that have carried Native people between worlds for generations.

“In his vision, Eddie saw my father on his horse, wearing his war bonnet and buckskins, riding into the other world, the warrior heading home,” his daughter Shanan Campbell wrote.

National Congress of American Indians President Mark Macarro said Campbell “stood at the intersection of our peoples’ history and future. His extraordinary life and accomplishments broke barriers and left a path for all those who seek to follow.”

What Remains

The museum still stands on the National Mall, welcoming millions of visitors annually. Sand Creek is preserved. Two national parks protect Colorado’s landscapes. Lake Nighthorse still fills.

Cherokee Senator Markwayne Mullin, elected in 2022, became the first Native American to serve in the Senate since Campbell’s retirement. Campbell set the precedent that made that representation possible.

Campbell is survived by his wife Linda, to whom he was married for 59 years, and by his children Colin and Shanan and four grandchildren.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis ordered flags lowered in Campbell’s honor. Flags at the National Museum of the American Indian flew at half-staff as well, at the building Campbell spent 15 years fighting to construct.

The Native Ledger covers Native American rights, policy, and communities.

The Oakland Heist

On October 15, 2025, at approximately 3:30 a.m., thieves broke into an off-site storage facility belonging to the Oakland Museum of California. They took more than 1,000 artifacts, including Native American baskets, jewelry, ceremonial pieces, historical photographs, and carved ivory scrimshaw tusks.

Four days later, four thieves used a cherry picker to steal nine jewels worth $102 million from the Louvre in broad daylight. Within hours, the robbery dominated global news. France’s culture minister called it a “humiliation.” The museum director offered to resign. Arrests followed in eight days.

The Oakland theft produced a few local news segments. The story generated no viral hashtags and no global manhunt.

European art generates international concern. Native cultural property generates compliance forms.

The Legal Framework Museums Exploit

The disparity between responses to the Louvre and Oakland thefts reflects a larger problem. Over 90,000 Native American human remains sit in museum storage and university basements across the United States. Under federal law, institutions were supposed to return them decades ago. Most haven’t.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, passed in 1990, requires museums and universities receiving federal funding to inventory Native American human remains and funerary objects, then work with affiliated tribes to return them. NAGPRA established that these remains belong to descendant communities, not to the institutions that collected them.

Thirty-five years later, the law has produced extensive documentation but limited repatriation.

According to the National NAGPRA database, institutions have reported over 200,000 Native American human remains since 1990. That number represents people. Grandmothers and children. Warriors and healers. Removed from burial grounds, boxed, and stored in climate-controlled basements.

More than 90,000 remain unreturned. Alongside them: over 700,000 funerary objects, items buried with the dead, meant to accompany them into the next world. Sacred belongings reduced to inventory tags.

“NAGPRA compliance” often means paperwork filed and a notice posted in the Federal Register. It does not necessarily mean remains returned.

The Burden on Descendants

French authorities mobilized immediately after the Louvre robbery. Tribes requesting their ancestors back encounter years of administrative procedure.

Tribal Historic Preservation Officers spend years, sometimes decades, proving “cultural affiliation” under NAGPRA’s evidentiary standards. The burden of proof falls on descendants of the people who were removed from their graves.

Tribes hire lawyers and raise funds to file forms and travel for consultations. Some tribes have established entire repatriation departments with full-time staff working through federal regulations.

The costs add up. The Association on American Indian Affairs estimates that tribes spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on individual repatriation cases. Many tribes lack the resources to pursue claims at all.

Even after completing the process, institutions can refuse. Universities including UC Berkeley, Harvard, and the University of Oklahoma hold thousands of remains. Some have slow-walked repatriation for decades, citing ongoing research value or disputed affiliation.

According to testimony before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, repatriation officers have found ancestors in university labs, private collections, and in at least one documented case, stored on a private citizen’s kitchen counter.

The Smithsonian Exemption

NAGPRA does not apply to the Smithsonian Institution.

The Smithsonian operates under a separate 1989 law, the National Museum of the American Indian Act, which establishes different standards. The evidentiary threshold is higher. Institutional discretion is broader.

The Smithsonian holds at least 15,000 Native American human remains. Returning them is not mandatory under the same framework that governs other institutions.

In 2023, the Department of the Interior issued new NAGPRA regulations strengthening tribal authority and setting deadlines for institutional compliance. The Smithsonian remains exempt from these updates.

International Comparison

The pattern extends beyond U.S. borders. The British Museum holds eight million objects, including over 6,000 from Indigenous Australia, the Parthenon Marbles, and the Benin Bronzes.

The Gweagal shield, seized during Captain Cook’s first violent encounter with Aboriginal Australians in 1770, remains in London. The museum has responded to repatriation requests by offering to loan the shield back to Australia.

France has moved faster. President Macron announced the return of 26 objects to Benin in 2021 and proposed legislation requiring returns upon request from source countries.

The British Museum’s stated position: holding objects from around the world constitutes “preserving global heritage.”

Institutional Priorities

The response gap between the Louvre heist and the retention of Native remains shows which cultural property American and European institutions prioritize.

The Louvre will recover its jewels. They will return to display cases. The colonial origins of those objects will likely appear as a footnote, if mentioned at all.

The Oakland Museum may recover some artifacts. Many will likely disappear into the black market, where Native American cultural objects fetch significant prices with minimal provenance questions.

Native ancestors remain in institutional custody. The legal framework for their return exists. Implementation remains incomplete.

The treatment of Native remains in American institutions functions as what legal scholar Felix Cohen described: a measure of “the rise and fall in our democratic faith.”

Developments to Watch

The 2023 NAGPRA regulatory updates take full effect in 2024, requiring institutions to complete inventories and initiate consultation with tribes on a compressed timeline. Institutions that fail to comply face potential loss of federal funding.

Several tribes have active repatriation cases pending against major universities. Legal challenges to the new regulations are possible.

The Oakland theft remains under investigation. No arrests have been announced.

How to Get Invovled

Check the National NAGPRA database. It’s publicly accessible. Search for institutions near you and review what they hold.

Contact your local university or museum. Ask how many Native remains they hold, what their repatriation timeline is, and whether they’ve consulted with affiliated tribes.

Support tribal repatriation efforts. Organizations like the Association on American Indian Affairs accept donations to cover legal fees, travel, and ceremony costs.

If you work at an institution holding Native remains, I want to hear from you. What’s actually happening inside these compliance processes? Contact me directly with documentation.

Nothing changed and nothing was supposed to.

A growing number of Native people can’t stand land acknowledgements. In 2021, the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists requested that the American Anthropological Association formally pause all land acknowledgements and related welcoming rituals, citing concerns that these statements had become “highly performative, feel-good empty gestures.” Kevin Gover, a citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and undersecretary for museums and culture at the Smithsonian Institution, put it more bluntly in an interview with NPR: “If I hear a land acknowledgment, part of what I’m hearing is, ‘There used to be Indians here. But now they’re gone. Isn’t that a shame?’”

I share that frustration.

Performance Without Consequences

The problem isn’t acknowledging Native land. The problem is what happens after. Which is, almost always, nothing.

Land acknowledgements have become the thoughts-and-prayers of progressive institutions: a symbolic gesture that costs nothing, demands nothing, and allows institutions to appear virtuous while the dispossession continues.

When a university administrator intones that their campus sits on “the traditional, unceded territory” of a particular tribe, the subtext is clear. We know this land was stolen. We’re benefiting from that theft. We’re going to keep benefiting. But we feel bad about it.

The gesture amounts to a confession without any level of penance.

The Unpaid Labor Problem

Non-Native organizations routinely ask Native people to craft, edit, or approve land acknowledgement statements. Usually without compensation.

Universities, corporations, and nonprofits expect Native people to volunteer time helping institutions manage their public image. Native communities already carry the weight of intergenerational trauma, language loss, and systemic discrimination. Adding unpaid consulting to that load extracts labor from the communities these statements claim to honor.

In my experience, and in the view of many Native people who sit through these ceremonies, the requests focus obsessively on wording: pronunciation, geographic boundaries, proper terminology. Questions about restitution or land return rarely come up.

Undermining Sovereignty

Land acknowledgements often do something worse than empty performance. They undermine tribal sovereignty.

Many describe Native peoples as “stewards” or “caretakers” of the land, language that implies we never truly owned it. That framing is manifest destiny in progressive clothing.

The finality compounds the problem. These statements acknowledge past ownership while cementing present dispossession. Ongoing treaty violations, water rights battles, and struggles against extractive industries on tribal land go unmentioned. The acknowledgement becomes a historical marker, treating colonization as concluded rather than continuing.

Material Support

Supporting Native peoples requires moving past wording debates toward harder questions.

What concrete actions follow the acknowledgement? Actions already taken, not just promised.

For institutions built on stolen land and funded by stolen Native wealth, the demands are straightforward. Universities should offer free tuition for Native students and hire Native faculty in positions with actual authority. Corporations operating on tribal territory should establish voluntary land tax programs, direct procurement to Native-owned businesses, and advocate publicly for tribal rights. Both should provide material support for tribal sovereignty, not just verbal recognition of it.

For individuals, the bar is lower but still requires action: recurring financial contributions to tribal nations or Native-led organizations, presence at Native-led protests, and support for land-back initiatives.

An Accountability Model

A land acknowledgement that functions as intended should create discomfort. It should demand action beyond historical description.

The Abiayala Sovereign Nations Citizens’ Collective at UNC-Chapel Hill provides one model. Their land and labor acknowledgement states that the university was “chartered in 1789 as an institution designed to educate and further the careers of White men” and “founded as an institution of White supremacy on unceded lands.” The statement specifies revenue the university extracted from Cherokee and Chickasaw land. It demands that the university undertake substantial actions to reconfigure itself as an anti-racist and anti-colonial institution.

That’s accountability. The discomfort is the point.

What Follows?

If you can recite a land acknowledgement and continue your day unchanged, the acknowledgement failed. I’ve stopped participating in most land acknowledgement ceremonies. Watching non-Native institutions congratulate themselves for minimal effort while material conditions remain unchanged serves no one.

Awareness was never enough. For anyone delivering a land acknowledgement: What specific action follows?

What land acknowledgements have you encountered that led to real institutional change, or that struck you as hollow? I’m collecting examples from different institutions and regions.

Abby Roque, who made history at the 2022 Beijing Games as the first Native American woman on the U.S. Olympic hockey team, did not make the 23-player roster announced January 2. A member of the Wahnapitae First Nation, Roque now plays for Montreal Victoire in the Professional Women’s Hockey League. Her absence means the U.S. women’s hockey team took the ice in Milan without confirmed Native representation for the first time since her breakthrough four years ago.

Team Canada partially fills that gap. Jocelyne Larocque, a Métis defender who has won three Olympic medals, made Canada’s final roster and is competing in her fourth Games. If Canada medals, Larocque will extend her record as the country’s most decorated Native Olympian. Liam Gill, a halfpipe snowboarder from the Łı́ı́dlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́ First Nation who competed in Beijing and modeled Team Canada’s 2026 Olympic gear at the November unveiling, did not make the team. Canada’s halfpipe roster carried no men’s entries.

The mixed picture fits a pattern stretching back more than a century: Native athletes have delivered some of the most dramatic moments in Olympic history, often while fighting institutional barriers alongside competitors.

From Stockholm to Tokyo

Jim Thorpe of the Sac and Fox Nation remains the only athlete in Olympic history to win gold in both the pentathlon and decathlon. At the 1912 Stockholm Games, he scored 8,413 points in the decathlon, finishing 688 points ahead of second place. King Gustav V reportedly told him: “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.”

Six months later, the Amateur Athletic Union stripped Thorpe’s medals after discovering he had earned roughly $25 per week playing minor league baseball. Many college athletes played under aliases to protect their amateur status. Thorpe used his real name. Native Americans were not U.S. citizens in 1912.

The restoration took 110 years. On July 15, 2022, the IOC reinstated Thorpe as the sole gold medalist and President Biden posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom on May 3, 2024.

Billy Mills’ victory in the 10,000 meters at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics remains arguably the greatest upset in distance running history. An Oglala Lakota from the Pine Ridge Reservation, Mills entered as a 1,000-to-1 longshot. In the final stretch, he broke past world record holder Ron Clarke of Australia to win in 28:24.4, nearly 50 seconds faster than his previous personal best.

Mills remains the only American to win Olympic gold in the 10,000 meters. Orphaned at 12 on Pine Ridge, he overcame poverty and suicidal thoughts to reach Tokyo. He later co-founded Running Strong for American Indian Youth.

Native Olympians Before and After Thorpe

The 1912 Stockholm Games featured significant Native representation beyond Thorpe. Lewis Tewanima, a Hopi runner who arrived at the Carlisle Indian School after federal authorities forced Hopi children into boarding schools, won silver in the 10,000 meters and set an American record that stood for 52 years.

Duke Kahanamoku, a Native Hawaiian, won gold in the 100-meter freestyle in 1912 and earned five Olympic medals across three Games. Clarence “Taffy” Abel, an Ojibwe hockey player, became the first Native American Winter Olympian and the first U.S. flag bearer at the 1924 Chamonix Games.

Canada has its own lineage. Alwyn Morris, a Mohawk from Kahnawake, won gold in kayaking at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. On the podium, he held up an eagle feather to honor his grandfather and his heritage.

The Haudenosaunee Question

Looking ahead to the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, a larger question looms. Lacrosse returns to the Games for the first time since 1908. The sport’s creators may be watching from the sidelines.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, whose ancestors invented lacrosse roughly 1,000 years ago, has sought an exemption from the International Olympic Committee to compete under their own flag. The confederacy, comprising the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora nations, has operated as a sovereign entity for centuries with nation-to-nation treaties with the United States.

The Haudenosaunee Nationals men’s team ranks third in the world. Both teams have been full members of World Lacrosse since 1988, making them the only Native nation with such recognition in any international sport.

On January 17, 2025, President Biden and Prime Minister Trudeau issued a joint statement calling for an IOC exemption: “Given the unique and exceptional circumstances of the Haudenosaunee’s historic connection to this sport… we believe that a narrowly scoped exception is appropriate.”

In June 2025, IOC President Kirsty Coventry, who took office in March 2025, ruled that eligibility decisions would fall to the U.S. and Canadian Olympic committees, allowing Haudenosaunee players to try out for those countries’ national teams based on their passports. The Haudenosaunee rejected the offer.

“We’re not going to go there as a gesture,” said Rex Lyons, a board member of the Haudenosaunee Nationals. “We should be there under our own flag, standing shoulder to shoulder. Not subservient, not playing in an exhibition game and getting a pat on the head. That’s not inclusion. That’s exploitation.”

There is precedent for exceptions. The Olympic Refugee Team has competed since 2016. In 2022, when the World Games initially excluded the Haudenosaunee from lacrosse, Ireland voluntarily withdrew to give them a spot.

The Haudenosaunee continue to press for their own flag. In December 2025, their men’s and women’s sixes teams swept gold at the Pan-American Lacrosse Association cup in Puerto Rico. The 2027 World Lacrosse Sixes Championships is expected to be a central part of the Olympic qualification process, but the full parameters have not been finalized.

Sovereignty Beyond Sports

From Jim Thorpe waiting 110 years for recognition to Abby Roque’s breakthrough and subsequent absence from Milan, from Billy Mills’ impossible victory to the Haudenosaunee awaiting a path to Los Angeles, the pattern holds: Native athletes prove themselves on the field, then face questions about belonging afterward.

The 2028 Los Angeles Olympics could break that pattern, or extend it.

The Haudenosaunee case raises a question that extends beyond lacrosse: should international sports bodies recognize Native nations that predate the countries now drawn around them? The IOC's June 2025 ruling deferred that question rather than answering it. Whether the Haudenosaunee compete under their own flag in 2028 may depend on whether Coventry's IOC treats sovereignty as a procedural problem or a historical one.

A quick reintroduction: I’m Teddy, an enrolled citizen of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians living in Denver. I work in community development finance at Native American Bank and chair the Colorado Intertribal Policy Alliance. Most of my waking hours go toward building power and opportunity in Indian Country, on reservations and off.

The Native Ledger started because I kept finding myself in conversations where people, Native and non-Native alike, wanted to understand what was happening in tribal policy and in our communities. The fights that don’t make the front page. There’s no shortage of news that affects Native people. There is a shortage of people writing about it in plain language, with context, and without parachuting in from the outside.

That’s what this newsletter does.

What to expect going forward:

One to two posts a week covering current affairs and breaking news in Indian Country, history that didn’t make it into your textbook, policy fights worth paying attention to, and occasional pieces drawn from my own experiences in tribal communities, policy making, and organizing.

Some weeks will be a long look at a single story. Other weeks might be a handful of shorter items that caught my attention. I’m not interested in covering everything. I’m interested in being useful.

If you know someone who’d get something out of this, send it their way. If there’s a story or topic you think deserves attention, just reply to any edition.

Good to be back.

• Elouise Cobell, a Blackfeet banker, discovered the U.S. government had been mismanaging billions in Native American trust funds for over a century

• She filed one of the largest class-action lawsuits in history in 1996, fighting for 13 years until winning a $3.4 billion settlement in 2009

• The case proved government accountability isn’t automatic, it requires citizens willing to demand answers

• Montana celebrates November 5th as Elouise Cobell Day, but most Americans have never heard her name

• Her legacy includes compensating 300,000 people and creating a $60 million scholarship fund for Native students

For over a century, the United States government stole billions of dollars from Native tribes and its citizens. When a Blackfeet banker from Montana discovered the theft and asked for the money back, four different cabinet secretaries told her to go away.

Most of us would give up. Elouise Cobell didn’t.

Today, November 5th, Montana celebrates Elouise Cobell Day, honoring a Blackfeet woman who died in 2011 but whose legacy touches every American who believes government should be held accountable. What she uncovered reveals something troubling about how easily injustice can hide in bureaucracy when it affects people most Americans never think about.

The Accountant Who Asked Questions

In 1976, Elouise Cobell became treasurer of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. She wasn’t an activist or a lawyer, she was a banker trying to understand why the numbers she was seeing didn’t make sense. The federal government managed money from Native American-owned lands. These were mostly proceeds from oil leases, mining rights, and grazing permits. But when Cobell asked basic questions about where the money went, officials told her condescendingly that she should learn to read a financial statement.

She did. What she found was worse than she imagined.

Since 1887, when the government took control of Native property rights under the General Allotment Act, it had promised to hold money “in trust” and pay Indians all income from their own land. But the money kept disappearing. According to whistleblowers, it was stolen, skimmed, redirected, or simply mixed into general government accounts. When Cobell asked for an accounting, she discovered the government couldn’t provide one. They had no records. No receipts. No documentation of where billions of dollars had gone.

Congress had known about the problem since the 1960s. Multiple reports condemned the mismanagement. In 1994, Congress even passed a law requiring reform. Nothing happened.

Why This Impacted Government Accountability

Elouise helped to reveal how our government operates when it thinks no one is watching.

For more than a century, the Department of Interior functioned as a trustee for over 300,000 individual Native Americans and tribes. If you or I served as someone’s trustee and couldn’t account for their money, we’d face criminal charges. But when the government does it, the response for 100 years was essentially: “Stop asking questions.”

This wasn’t about welfare or government handouts. This was about Native Americans’ own land and the income it generated. The government was legally obligated to manage it properly, took fees for that management, and then couldn’t (or wouldn’t) show where the money went.

If the government could do this to Native Americans for over a century, what does that say about accountability? About whose rights get protected and whose get ignored?

Thirteen Years in Court

In 1996, Cobell filed one of the largest class-action lawsuits ever brought against the U.S. government. She didn’t ask for money at first, just an accounting. Show us the records. Explain where the money went. Basic transparency.

The government fought her for thirteen years. Court after court found the government in breach of trust. Court after court ordered them to produce records. They couldn’t.

Cobell funded much of the litigation herself, even donating the $310,000 she won from a MacArthur “genius grant” to keep the case alive. Throughout those years, colleagues remember her repeating: “I know I am doing the right thing. The stars are aligned.”

In 2009, facing undeniable evidence of their failure, the government agreed to a $3.4 billion settlement. $1.5 billion to compensate the victims, $1.9 billion to buy back fractionated lands, and $60 million for Native American college scholarships. President Obama called it “a small measure of justice to Native Americans whose funds were held in trust by a government charged with looking out for them.”

The Victory and the Tragedy

Cobell died of cancer on October 16, 2011, just months after the court’s final approval of the settlement. She was 65. She never saw the first checks go out, checks many recipients called “Elouise checks” in her honor.

In 2016, President Obama posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Montana now recognizes November 5th, her birthday, as Elouise Cobell Day. The scholarship fund bearing her name continues sending Native students to college.

Why Her Story Should Matter to All of Us

Elouise Cobell’s story is really about what makes democracy work or fail. It’s about what happens when people in power think they can ignore citizens without consequences. It’s about the courage it takes to ask uncomfortable questions and the persistence required to demand answers.

Most Americans never learned her name, even though she won one of the largest settlements in U.S. history. That invisibility is part of the problem. When injustice affects communities we don’t see or think about, it’s easy to pretend it doesn’t matter.

But Cobell proved that government accountability isn’t automatic, it requires citizens willing to fight for it. She showed that one person with determination for the truth can challenge even the most powerful institutions and win.

The quiet banker from Montana who loved Elvis and raised cattle with her husband also happened to be a warrior.

On November 5th each year, Montana remembers her. Maybe the rest of us should too, not just to honor her legacy, but to remember what citizenship requires: vigilance, courage, and the refusal to accept “no” when asking for justice.

• Hickory Ground in Alabama is the spiritual capital of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, with human presence dating back 10,000 years.

• In 2001, the Poarch Band of Creek Indians and Auburn University excavated at least 57 ancestors for casino construction without consulting the Muscogee Nation and in violation of federal laws.

• Auburn University still holds Muscogee remains in inadequate storage after 20+ years and has one of the worst repatriation records in the country (less than 1% returned).

• The conflict is complicated by intertribal tensions between two federally recognized Creek tribes—the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and the Poarch Band—both claiming ties to the sacred site.

• “Justice for Hickory Ground” has become a national movement, with over 1,100 people signing petitions at the 2025 Santa Fe Indian Market and Native communities joining in solidarity.

Slot machines now sit where Muscogee ancestors once gathered in ceremony. A casino parking lot covers ground that held 10,000 years of continuous Indigenous presence. And in storage facilities at Auburn University, the remains of at least 57 people—pulled from their sacred resting place without permission—wait in plastic bags for a homecoming that may never come.

This is Hickory Ground, Alabama. The spiritual capital of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. A place so sacred that its desecration has sparked a national movement and exposed one of the most painful conflicts in contemporary Native America. It is a battle not just against institutional indifference, but between two Creek tribes themselves.

A Sacred Place

On the banks of Alabama’s Coosa River sits Hickory Ground: ”Oce Vpofv” in the Muscogee language. This was the final capital of the Muscogee people before their forced removal on the Trail of Tears. For thousands of years, their councils met here, ceremonies were held here, and generations were laid to rest here.

Archaeological evidence traces human presence at Hickory Ground back to 8,000 BC. Treaties signed here gave the young United States its legitimacy. For the Muscogee Nation, this ground is sacred and a beating heart connecting past to present.

A Promise Broken

In 1980, the Poarch Band of Creek Indians acquired Hickory Ground using federal preservation funds. They made a promise: the land would be protected “without excavation.” They even assured the Oklahoma Hickory Ground Tribal Town that their ancestral home “is being preserved.”

That promise lasted 21 years.

In 2001, excavations tore open the earth for Poarch’s second casino resort. Auburn University archaeologists unearthed at least 57 ancestors and thousands of funerary objects. Some remains ended up in plastic bags in moldy storage.

The Muscogee Nation wasn’t consulted. They didn’t even know their relatives were being dug up until years later.

The Law Was Clear And Ignored

This wasn’t just a moral failure, it was illegal. Two federal laws were violated:

The Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA) and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) both require consultation with Native tribes before disturbing graves or sacred sites.

Auburn and Poarch did neither.

Auburn was also required to deliver a complete inventory of the remains within six weeks. Twenty years later, the Muscogee Nation is still waiting. Auburn has one of the worst records in the country for returning Native remains with less than 1% of the more than 700 ancestors in its possession having been made available for repatriation.

Some Muscogee ancestors are still in trash bags.

Two Tribes, One Sacred Ground

This conflict is further complicated by a painful reality: both the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and the Poarch Band of Creek Indians are federally recognized tribes. Both call themselves Creek. And they’re now locked in bitter conflict over the same sacred ground.

The tension has deep roots. The Poarch Band descends from families who remained in Alabama during removal, some who sided with Andrew Jackson in the Creek War. Their survival meant relinquishing Muscogee citizenship. When they gained federal recognition in 1984, the Muscogee Nation supported it. Today, many Muscogee citizens deeply regret that decision.

The Muscogee Nation sees Hickory Ground as its spiritual heart and ancestral burial ground. Poarch insists it has sovereign control. The result? Public accusations, heated exchanges at conferences, and court battles. For many, the intertribal bitterness is as painful as the desecration itself.

A Movement Rising

But the fight for Hickory Ground is growing. “Justice for Hickory Ground” has become a national movement.

At the 2025 Santa Fe Indian Market, the campaign drew massive attention. Panels featuring Joy Harjo, Sterlin Harjo, and Mekko George Thompson packed rooms with overflow audiences. Over 1,100 people signed postcards demanding Auburn return the remains.

Native communities across the country have joined in solidarity. As RaeLynn Butler of the Muscogee Nation explains: “So many Natives have a similar story: sacred sites destroyed, ancestors stolen. That’s why this fight resonates everywhere.”

Why This Matters

Hickory Ground isn’t just about one tribe or one place. It’s about whether America still treats Native ancestors as specimens rather than human beings. It’s about whether “development” can still bulldoze sacred sites for profit. And it’s about whether promises, legal and moral, mean anything when it comes to Native peoples.

The Muscogee Nation is fighting in courts, running public education campaigns, and taking direct action against Auburn University. Their message is simple: let our ancestors rest.

👉 Learn more or support the campaign at muscogeenation.com/justice-for-hickory-ground or follow Justice for Hickory Ground on Facebook.

• The Klamath River is free for the first time in 100+ years after tribes led the world’s largest dam removal project.

• Salmon restoration isn’t just about fish, it’s about enforcing 170-year-old treaty rights that guaranteed tribes the right to fish.

• Tribes are tackling both big dams and small culverts, opening hundreds of miles of habitat across the Pacific Northwest.

• In California, salmon populations have collapsed by more than 90%, yet new water projects threaten to make things worse.

• Saving salmon means saving entire ecosystems, and tribes are showing that large-scale restoration is possible.

For the first time in more than a century, the Klamath River runs free.

Four giant hydroelectric dams that were built in the 1920s and long despised by tribal nations are gone. In their place: 420 miles of reopened salmon habitat, the largest dam removal project in world history.

It’s an environmental win, yes. But more importantly, it’s the fulfillment of promises the United States made to Native nations almost two centuries ago.

Across the Pacific Northwest, tribes are leading an unprecedented wave of restoration, tearing down dams, ripping out road culverts, and reviving salmon runs that once fed forests, rivers, and families alike. And this work isn’t just conservation. It’s the enforcement of treaty rights that guaranteed tribes access to salmon “as long as the sun shines and the water flows.”

The World’s Largest Undoing

The $500 million Klamath River project didn’t happen overnight. For decades, the Yurok, Hoopa Valley, and Karuk tribes battled in courtrooms, at statehouses, and in the press to force dam owners and the federal government to act.

“After more than a century, the Klamath River will flow freely again thanks to tribes that fought for decades,” environmental advocates declared as the final dam crumbled.

And the Klamath is only the beginning.

The Small Fixes That Matter

Big dam removals make headlines. But some of the most effective, and overlooked, restoration happens in places most of us never think about: under roads.

Culverts, those steel or concrete pipes that channel creeks beneath highways, are often salmon death traps. If they’re too steep, too shallow, or too narrow, fish can’t pass. Imagine running a marathon and suddenly hitting a brick wall.

That’s why this year, the federal government awarded $39.4 million to 10 tribes in Puget Sound to replace these barriers. The Tulalip Tribes alone will replace 38 culverts, unlocking 128 miles of salmon streams.

“It’s a lot easier to conserve existing habitat than it is to restore habitat,” says Ryan Miller of the Tulalip Tribes. “In many cases, fish just need a clear path.”

Treaties Still Matter

The reason tribes are at the forefront is simple: treaties.

In the 1850s, tribes in the Northwest ceded millions of acres but retained fishing rights in their “usual and accustomed” places. Courts later affirmed those rights meant not only the ability to fish, but the guarantee that fish would exist to catch.

That interpretation has teeth. A 2001 lawsuit over Washington’s culverts forced the state into a $7.8 billion fix, with a 2030 deadline. It’s one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the state’s history, all rooted in a treaty promise signed generations ago.

These aren’t relics of the past. They’re binding agreements and still the supreme law of the land.

A Race Against Extinction

Time is running out. Salmon populations have collapsed by more than 90% since colonization. Climate change is pushing water temperatures higher and drying out streams.

“We know climate change is catching up quicker than we can respond,” says David Blodgett III of the Yakama Nation. His tribe is spending $9 million not only to replace culverts but to reroute an entire state highway that blocks fish passage.

That urgency is shared up and down the coast.

California’s Salmon Crisis

While the Northwest is cutting barriers, California is piling them up.

Commercial salmon fishing has been shut down for three straight years. In 2024, just 99,274 fall-run Chinook returned to the Sacramento River, once home to millions. Winter-run Chinook hover at just 4,500 fish, a fraction of historic numbers.

And yet the state is pushing forward with the $900 million Sites Reservoir, a project that would release hot, stagnant water into rivers salmon depend on. “From a salmon standpoint, it’s an environmental disaster,” warns Scott Artis of the Golden State Salmon Association.

Why Salmon Matter to Everyone

Saving salmon isn’t just about one species. These fish are a keystone of entire ecosystems. When they migrate inland, they deliver nutrients from the ocean to forests, eagles, bears, even the soil itself.

Every dam removed and culvert fixed doesn’t just help fish. It restores cold-water habitat, revives genetic diversity, and rebuilds traditional food webs. And healthy rivers mean cleaner water, stronger economies, and more resilient communities, for Native and non-Native people alike.

Collaboration Over Confrontation

Tribes could spend decades fighting lawsuits. But increasingly, they’re choosing collaboration.

The Yakama Nation works directly with farmers and agencies to solve problems together. That approach recognizes something essential: salmon recovery is too big for one side to win alone.

Looking Upstream

Already, young salmon are migrating through sections of the Klamath River they haven’t reached in 100 years. It will take decades to fully restore historic runs. But for the first time in a century, the path is open.

The Cowlitz Indian Tribe is next, with $3.3 million to take down the 55-foot Kwoneesum Dam, the part of a goal to restore 30% of salmon habitat on their homelands.

“The river runs free again,” as one elder put it. And with it runs the chance to keep promises, restore ecosystems, and offer future generations the same abundance their ancestors once knew.

Why this matters: Salmon recovery isn’t just a Native issue. It’s about the health of rivers, forests, economies, and communities across the West. The fight tribes are leading today is a fight for everyone’s future.

• Native families face an extreme housing crisis in 2025, teachers commuting hours and elders living in unsafe, condemned homes.

• Lawmakers tried to slash funding for Native housing programs in the federal budget.

• Plot twist: Congress reversed course and added $20 million instead.

• But the need is massive, Native communities require 68,000 new homes just to meet basic standards like safe roofs and working plumbing.

• This victory is only temporary, Native housing programs are threatened every single year, leaving families in constant uncertainty.

It's 2025, and somewhere in Indian Country, a young teacher drives two hours each way to work because there's simply nowhere to live in her own community. Meanwhile, her elderly parents stay in a house that should have been condemned years ago, not by choice, but because it's the only option they have.

This isn't a scene from a century ago. This is happening right now, in America, to American families.

When House Republicans quietly moved to slash Native American housing programs in the proposed 2026 federal budget, it looked like thousands more families would be condemned to these conditions. Just another line item eliminated in the name of fiscal responsibility. But this time, something unexpected happened: lawmakers from both sides of the aisle said no.

Not only did Congress reject the proposed cuts, but the House Appropriations Committee actually increased funding for the Indian Housing Block Grant Program by $20 million. It's a win worth celebrating—and a crisis worth understanding.

The Reality Most Americans Don't See

Native communities face the worst housing conditions in the country. We're talking about families crowded into spaces meant for half as many people, homes without basic plumbing, and structures that wouldn't pass inspection anywhere else in America.

The numbers tell the story: more than 68,000 new housing units are needed just to meet basic needs in tribal communities. That's not luxury housing or suburban developments—that's safe, decent homes with working bathrooms and roofs that don't leak.

Think about what this means for real families. Young couples can't start families because there's nowhere to live. Kids grow up in overcrowded conditions that affect their health and school performance. Elders stay in unsafe homes because there are no alternatives.

These aren't just statistics. These are American citizens—many who serve in the military, contribute to the economy, and preserve cultural knowledge that benefits all of us.

Why This Matters to Everyone

You might be wondering why Native housing should matter to you if you don't live near a reservation. Here's why: when any group of Americans lacks safe housing, it says something about our national priorities.

Native communities contribute significantly to American life through military service, economic activity, and environmental stewardship. Many tribal lands contain natural resources and biodiversity that benefit the entire country. Supporting stable housing isn't just about fairness—it's about recognizing contributions that serve everyone.

Plus, stable housing creates a ripple effect. When families have secure homes, children do better in school, adults can focus on careers, and communities can invest in growth instead of constantly managing crises.

The Real Solution

While the recent budget victory is encouraging, it's just a band-aid. The real fix requires Congress to fully update the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act (NAHASDA)—the law that governs tribal housing programs.

Right now, tribes have to fight for funding every single year, never knowing if their housing programs will survive the next budget cycle. Full reauthorization would modernize the law, give tribes more flexibility, and allow long-term planning instead of annual panic.

What You Can Do

The recent congressional victory proves that public attention works. Here's how you can help:

Contact your representatives. Call or email your members of Congress and ask them to support full NAHASDA reauthorization. Many lawmakers don't fully understand the scope of this crisis.

Share the story. Most Americans have no idea that Native housing is funded differently or so precariously. Spreading awareness builds the public support needed for lasting change.

Support the advocates. Organizations like the National American Indian Housing Council work year-round to protect these programs. They combine policy expertise with grassroots advocacy to make real change happen.

The recent budget fight shows that progress is possible when people pay attention and lawmakers recognize what's at stake. But lasting change requires sustained effort to ensure Native families don't have to wonder each year whether their housing programs will survive.

Every American family deserves a safe place to call home. Native families shouldn't be the exception.

• In 1890, U.S. soldiers massacred 250–300 Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee.

• Twenty soldiers received the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award, for their role.

• Historians, veterans, and Native leaders have long called these awards a disgrace.

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Thursday they will not be rescinded.

• Keeping the medals insults Native lives lost and devalues the honor of those who truly earned it.

On December 29, 1890, the U.S. 7th Cavalry surrounded a Lakota band led by Chief Big Foot on the Pine Ridge Reservation. These Lakota weren’t warriors; they were starving, sick, and trying to find safety. Big Foot himself was dying of pneumonia, carried on a wagon under a white flag of truce.

That morning, soldiers tried to confiscate weapons. A accidental shot went off from a deaf Lakota man, Black Coyote. The response was brutal and indiscriminate. Soldiers opened fire with rifles and Hotchkiss cannons, mowing down families as they ran. By the end, hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children lay dead in the snow.

Three days later, their frozen bodies were dumped into a mass grave. Photographs from that grave are still some of the most haunting images in American history.

The Medals That Should Never Have Been

For this slaughter, 20 soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor. Their citations praised “gallantry” and “bravery.” Some explicitly mention chasing down fleeing Lakota or firing artillery into the camp.

To be clear: these men weren’t honored for holding their ground against an enemy force. They were honored for killing women, children, and elders.

Even by 1890 standards, the awards were questionable. Today, they look like medals for war crimes. And keeping them cheapens the honor itself. It demeans those who earned it with true valor: the soldiers who risked everything, and in many cases lost their lives, in acts of real bravery and sacrifice.

Why It Still Matters

These medals aren’t just old history. They’re symbols that tell us what America chooses to honor.

For decades, Native leaders, historians, and even some veterans have pushed to revoke them. Congress formally expressed “deep regret” in 1990, but the medals remained. Multiple review boards have since acknowledged that Wounded Knee was a massacre not a battle.

By keeping the medals, the U.S. government sends a message: the killing of Native families can still be decorated as “heroism.”

A Political Statement, Not a Historical One

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s announcement that the medals will stand fits a broader pattern. He’s resisted renaming military bases named after Confederate leaders, framing such debates as “woke politics.”

But this isn’t about politics. It’s about truth. The Army’s own historians call Wounded Knee a massacre. To call it anything else is revisionism.

What Wounded Knee Represents

Wounded Knee marked the end of the so-called Indian Wars, a final act in the U.S. campaign to destroy Native resistance. The Ghost Dance, the spiritual movement that so terrified the government, was peaceful. It promised buffalo herds and reunion with loved ones, not war.

But to U.S. authorities, Native spirituality was threat enough to unleash cannons on starving families.

For Lakota people, Wounded Knee is sacred ground. It is also an open wound. To honor their killers with the highest military medal is to rub salt into that wound, generation after generation.

Why You Should Care

This isn’t just a Native issue. It’s an American issue.

What we choose to honor reflects who we are. Keeping these medals means our nation is still willing to decorate mass killing when the victims are Native. And beyond that, it erodes the meaning of the Medal of Honor itself. Every soldier who earned that medal through real courage, charging enemy fire, protecting their brothers and sisters in arms, or giving their own lives, has their sacrifice diluted when the same award is handed out for slaughtering unarmed families.

Conclusion: What Kind of Nation Do We Want to Be?

We can’t change what happened at Wounded Knee. But we can decide what values we honor today. By refusing to rescind these medals, America not only dishonors the Lakota lives lost it betrays the soldiers who truly earned the Medal of Honor through acts of selfless valor.

The medals stay, for now. But the questions they raise about honor, memory, and justice are not going away. As America grapples with its complex history, Wounded Knee reminds us that the past isn’t really the past, it lives on in the symbols we choose to keep, and in the stories we tell about who we are.

• September 30 is Orange Shirt Day, also known as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada.

• It honors Indigenous children forced into residential schools and the survivors who carry that legacy today.

• The movement began with Phyllis Webstad’s story of her stolen orange shirt on her first day of school.

• The day is about remembrance, education, reconciliation, and action.

• Wear orange, learn the truth, and support Indigenous communities.

Tomorrow, September 30, millions across Canada and the US, will put on orange. But this isn’t a fashion trend. It’s a bold act of remembrance and reconciliation. It’s a way to say clearly: Every Child Matters.

The Story That Started It All

Orange Shirt Day traces back to Phyllis (Jack) Webstad, a third-generation survivor from Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation in British Columbia.

In 1973, six-year-old Phyllis showed up to her first day at St. Joseph Mission Residential School proudly wearing a brand-new orange shirt her grandmother had bought for her. It was immediately taken away. She never saw it again.

That shirt symbolized love, hope, and identity. Losing it became a permanent reminder of how residential schools stripped children of not just clothing, but culture, language, family, and dignity.

Phyllis began sharing her story in 2013 at a commemoration event. Today, she leads the Orange Shirt Society, traveling across Canada to ensure her story, and the truth of residential schools, is never forgotten.

Why September 30?

This date marks the time of year when Indigenous children were historically taken from their homes to attend residential schools. Communities had been observing Orange Shirt Day for years before Canada made it an official federal holiday: the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Why It Matters

Residential schools operated in both Canada and the U.S. for over a century, with the explicit purpose of erasing Native identity. Children were forcibly removed, punished for speaking their languages, and subjected to horrific abuses. Thousands died and never returned home.

The impact didn’t end when the schools closed. The trauma has echoed through generations, shaping families, communities, and nations. Orange Shirt Day reminds us:

• Remembrance: Honor those who survived and those who didn’t.

• Education: Learn the history that was buried for too long.

• Reconciliation: Commit to building a future based on truth and respect.

• Action: Move beyond acknowledgment — support Indigenous rights and wellbeing today.

What You Can Do

• Wear Orange: Show solidarity. Buy from Indigenous designers if you can.

• Learn: Read the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action. Seek out survivor stories.

• Share: Talk with your family, friends, and coworkers. Spread awareness on social media.

• Reflect: Ask yourself what reconciliation means in your own life.

• Support: Donate to Indigenous-led organizations, shop Indigenous businesses, and push for policy changes.

Every Child Matters

Tomorrow, when you pull on an orange shirt, remember Phyllis. Remember her grandmother’s gift. Remember the children who never made it home.

Reconciliation isn’t just about the past. It’s about building a future where every child truly matters.

Wear orange. Learn the truth. Take action.

• 19 Native children buried at Carlisle Indian School over a century ago are finally being returned to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.

• Boarding schools removed children from their families, sending them hundreds or thousands of miles away to be stripped of culture and identity.

• My great-great-grandmother Carrie was exploited by Carlisle’s superintendent, sent home pregnant, and lost her stillborn son; her sister Lillie vanished into the system.

• Repatriation is not just about remains, it’s truth-telling about abuse, erasure, and generational trauma.

• Each return is a sacred act of healing, bringing our children home and ensuring their stories are never forgotten.

This week brought news that would have seemed impossible just decades ago: the U.S. Army announced that 19 Native American children will be disinterred from the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, where they were buried after being taken from their families more than a century ago. These children, whose remains will be returned to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe of Oklahoma, represent just a fraction of the thousands of Native children who died far from home at federal Indian boarding schools.

Their homecoming is both a victory and a heartbreaking reminder of what was lost. They were taken as children, carried hundreds or even thousands of miles away, and laid to rest in foreign soil that was not their own. For over a century, they became part of an earth that did not belong to them culturally, spiritually, or ancestrally. Now, generations later, they are being brought home completing journeys interrupted by violence and assimilation.

“Kill the Indian, Save the Man”

The Indian boarding school system, which operated from the 1870s through 1996, was designed with an explicit mission captured in the infamous phrase: “Kill the Indian, save the man.”

Children as young as five were forcibly removed from their families, shipped across the country, and placed in institutions where their hair was cut, their languages forbidden, and their ceremonies outlawed. They were renamed, punished for speaking their mother tongues, and trained for menial labor instead of education.

The most notorious of these institutions was the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, founded in 1879 by Captain Richard Henry Pratt. Carlisle became the blueprint for over 350 other schools, shaping a system of cultural genocide that spread across the nation.

The cost was staggering. Research to date has documented at least 973 child burials across 65 schools and surrounding communities, though the true number is likely far higher. Many children’s deaths were never reported; many graves remain unmarked.

My Family’s Story: The King Sisters

The statistics and records tell one part of the story, but the lived experiences of families reveal the human cost of these institutions. My own family’s history with Carlisle illustrates both trauma and survival.

My great-great-grandmother, Ay Un Dus, was forced to attend Carlisle in 1910. Upon arrival she was stripped of her identity and renamed “Caroline” or “Carrie” King. Her sister Taybusegeshig was renamed “Lillian” or “Lillie” King. Both had already endured the Episcopal-run White Earth Boarding School in Minnesota before being shipped even farther east to Pennsylvania.

Carrie quickly came under the attention of Carlisle’s superintendent, Moses Friedman. Records show that she was considered “favored” by him, a status that masked something far darker. Evidence from her letters suggests they were engaged in a sexual relationship. In several letters, she signed her words to Friedman as “I am yours, lovingly, Caroline King.”

In 1913, Carrie became pregnant. She was abruptly sent home, and within months gave birth to a stillborn child she named Peter. Around the same time, Friedman was investigated by Congress for misconduct, though the investigation was swiftly dropped and he was reinstated. The trauma of that time followed Carrie for the rest of her life, a wound carried forward through the generations.

Lillie’s story is even more tragic. She struggled with health and academics at Carlisle, visiting the school doctor more than 50 times. She briefly returned home with Carrie in June 1913, but re-enrolled at Carlisle later that year. After that, she disappeared from the record entirely. No death notice, no grave, no closure. She was simply gone, one of the countless Native children who vanished into the system.

My family’s story echoes thousands of others. It is a reminder that “assimilation” was not an abstract policy, it was intimate, violent, and devastatingly personal.

The Sacred Work of Repatriation

Today’s repatriation efforts are not just about returning bones to tribal lands. They are sacred acts of healing.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), passed in 1990 and strengthened by new federal regulations in 2024, provides tribes with greater authority to reclaim ancestral remains and sacred items from museums and federal institutions. For tribes, each return represents a spiritual restoration, ensuring children who died far from home can finally rest in their ancestral homelands.

But the work of repatriation also forces us to confront the full reality of what boarding schools were. These institutions were not only places of cultural erasure, they were places of violence. Many children endured systemic physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at the hands of those charged with “civilizing” them. My great-great-grandmother’s story at Carlisle, where the superintendent exploited her as a young teenager, is only one example of the exploitation that was widespread but rarely acknowledged.

When children are brought home, ceremonies honor not only their lives, but also the silenced stories of abuse and exploitation they endured. Repatriation acknowledges these truths openly, giving families the chance to grieve what was taken while affirming the dignity of the children who never returned.

Every homecoming, every prayer spoken over a traditional and sacred burial ground, is both a restoration and a reckoning. It is the return of a child to their people, and a refusal to allow their suffering to remain buried in silence.

Truth-Telling and Accountability

While the Department of the Interior briefly launched a Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, the most consistent work of research, documentation, and advocacy is now led by Native-led organizations. Particularly, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS). Their research and resources continue to uncover the scale of loss and provide critical tools for truth-telling, education, and policy change (boardingschoolhealing.org).

This work matters because the scars are still with us. Boarding school policies tore apart families, disrupted cultural transmission, and left intergenerational trauma that Native communities live with today. Naming, documenting, and repatriating is how we begin to stitch together the fabric of what was broken.

The Ongoing Journey

The Army continues to hold the remains of nearly 150 Native children at Carlisle, and tribes are fighting for their return. Beyond Carlisle, unmarked graves remain scattered across former school grounds nationwide. Legal, cultural, and spiritual battles continue to bring each child home.

Repatriation is slow, painstaking, and often met with resistance from institutions that still hold Native remains and cultural items. Yet every ceremony marks progress, a reminder that these children are not forgotten, and their stories will not remain buried.

Healing Across Generations

The return of these 19 children to Oklahoma is more than historical correction, it is a message to survivors, descendants, and the world: Our children are coming home.

For families like mine, who lost sisters, brothers, and grandparents to the boarding school system, these homecomings are sacred. They speak to resilience, survival, and the enduring bonds of kinship.

The boarding school era cannot be undone. But we can confront its legacy with honesty, accountability, and the sacred work of repatriation. Each child who comes home carries not just their own spirit, but the memory of all who were lost.

As these children are laid to rest in the embrace of their homelands, we are reminded that healing is possible, but only if we continue to tell the truth, honor the dead, and fight for justice for the living.

For more resources, history, and ongoing repatriation efforts, visit the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition at boardingschoolhealing.org.

• Native voters from Spirit Lake Nation and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa have filed a writ of certiorari asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their voting rights case.

• At issue: whether ordinary voters can sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to challenge discriminatory maps, a right recognized for decades.

• The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in May that only the federal government can bring such cases, stripping voters of a key protection.

• Tribal leaders say the case is about fair representation and the basic right to be heard at the ballot box.

• If the Supreme Court takes the case, it could become one of the most consequential voting rights battles in a generation, with implications nationwide.

Native voters from North Dakota are knocking on the doors of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Spirit Lake Nation, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, and several individual Native voters have filed a writ of certiorari, the formal request for the Court to take their case.

In plain terms: they’re asking the justices to hear what could be one of the most important voting rights battles of our time.

Why This Case Matters

At its core, this fight is about whether Native communities, and all Americans, have the power to challenge unfair voting maps.

For decades, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has given voters the right to go to court if politicians draw districts that dilute their communities’ voices. But in May, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals said private citizens don’t actually have that right, only the federal government does.

If that ruling stands, voters would be shut out of the courts. And the ripple effects could threaten voting rights nationwide.

Voices From the Front Lines

For tribal leaders, the stakes couldn’t be clearer.

“The current North Dakota voting map gives my community a chance to elect who we want to represent us, just like other communities across the state,” said Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Chair Jamie Azure. “Instead, the Eighth Circuit is saying Native voters and Tribal Nations don’t even have the right to fight for a fair map. That goes against the principles this country was founded on.”

Spirit Lake Tribal Chair Lonna J. Street didn’t mince words either: “We deserve representation just like everyone else. It is shameful that, when we finally succeeded in court, the state turned its attack against the Voting Rights Act itself. We need the Supreme Court to protect our fundamental right to vote and be heard.”

Individual plaintiffs echoed the frustration. “It is unacceptable that we must go all the way to the United States Supreme Court just to defend our right to a fair map,” said plaintiff Collette Brown of Spirit Lake. “Politicians should not be able to manipulate district lines to decide which voters get a voice.”

A Radical Ruling

Here’s what happened: after Native voters won a fair map in trial court, the state appealed. But instead of weighing whether the map was fair, the Eighth Circuit dropped a bombshell: voters can’t sue under Section 2 at all.

That means if your voting rights are violated in those states, your only hope is for the U.S. Department of Justice to step in. And history shows the DOJ can’t possibly take on every case.

Plaintiff Zachery S. King from Turtle Mountain summed it up: “They claimed that we don’t have the ability to fight back against lawmakers who treat us unfairly. That flies in the face of decades of court decisions. Of course, the Voting Rights Act gives us rights, and of course we can sue to enforce them.”

Why Everyone Should Care

This isn’t just about North Dakota. If the Supreme Court sides with the Eighth Circuit, it will gut one of the most powerful tools Americans have to fight racial discrimination at the ballot box.

“The protections of the Voting Rights Act must be enforceable by all Americans,” said Mark Gaber of the Campaign Legal Center. “If private individuals and organizations cannot bring lawsuits, the most important civil rights law Congress ever enacted will be gutted.”

Native American Rights Fund Staff Attorney Lenny Powell put it bluntly: “The Eighth Circuit’s decision is counter to democracy and decades of case law. We expect the Supreme Court to reverse this anti-democratic ruling.”

What Happens Next

By filing their writ of certiorari, the tribes and voters are asking the Supreme Court to step in. The justices don’t have to take the case, but if they do, it could become one of the most consequential voting rights cases in a generation.

The immediate question: will Native communities in North Dakota keep the fair maps they fought for?

The bigger question: will ordinary Americans still have the power to enforce their voting rights in court, or will that power be stripped away?

For Spirit Lake, Turtle Mountain, and Native voters across the Eighth Circuit, the answer will determine whether their voices matter at the ballot box. For the rest of the country, it will decide whether the Voting Rights Act remains a living law or a broken promise.

• Native communities face staggering health disparities: higher rates of diabetes, obesity, and shorter life expectancy.

• Traditional foods once sustained long, healthy lives, but federal policies replaced them with processed commodities.

• Programs like SNAP and FDPIR often provide unhealthy foods, fueling the very diseases they aim to address.

• Tribes are reclaiming health through farm-to-table projects, cultural revitalization, and policy pushes for food sovereignty.

• Real change requires systemic reform—flexible federal programs, infrastructure investment, and community-led solutions rooted in sovereignty.

For generations, the Pima people of Arizona lived long, healthy lives. But today, their life expectancy has dropped to just 47–53 years, decades shorter than the U.S. average of nearly 75.

Here’s the twist: Pima communities in Mexico, who still follow their traditional diets, live much longer and have far lower rates of diabetes and obesity.

The difference is so dramatic that U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently described it as “genocide”, the systematic loss of Native food systems, replaced by cheap processed foods often delivered through government programs.

The Health Crisis in Numbers

• Native Americans are 1.5x more likely to have diabetes than white Americans

• 1.6x more likely to be obese

• Many tribal communities face chronic disease rates far above the national average

This wasn’t always the case. For thousands of years, Native peoples had thriving, land-based food systems, salmon in the Northwest, wild rice in the Great Lakes, buffalo on the Plains, and the “Three Sisters” (corn, beans, and squash) in many regions. These foods nourished bodies, sustained cultures, and supported strong communities.

How We Lost It

Forced removal from traditional lands and restrictions on hunting, fishing, and farming broke the connection to these foods. Today, programs like SNAP (food stamps) and the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations feed hundreds of thousands of Native people, but too often with the very processed foods that cause diabetes, obesity, kidney failure, and heart disease.

As Kennedy put it: “We’re feeding people food that we know causes disease and we’ve been doing it for decades.”

Reasons for Hope

Some solutions are starting to take root:

• Policy ideas – Kennedy has agreed with tribal suggestions such aa allowing SNAP benefits to be used for hunting and fishing gear, so people can return to traditional harvesting.

• Community action – Native-led programs are bringing back ancestral recipes, growing traditional crops, and teaching young people how to hunt, fish, and gather in sustainable ways.

• Farm-to-table projects – Tribes are producing food locally for schools and community programs.

Why Traditional Foods Work

• Better nutrition: Wild salmon, venison, heritage grains, and Native plants are rich in nutrients that regulate blood sugar and protect long-term health.

• Cultural connection: Food is more than fuel, it’s identity, language, and ceremony.

• Economic strength: Local food systems create jobs, keep money in tribal communities, and reduce dependence on expensive imports.

The Policy Gap

While there’s talk of food sovereignty, funding often falls short. Kennedy’s own agency recently cut $32.5 million from the CDC’s Healthy Tribes program, removing more than 30 chronic disease prevention positions.

Real change means:

• Letting SNAP and FDPIR support traditional food harvesting and processing

• Building local food storage and distribution systems

• Funding Native-led initiatives at the scale of the crisis

Food Sovereignty = Health Sovereignty

Food sovereignty means having control over the foods that sustain life. When Native communities rebuild traditional food systems, health improves, cultural pride deepens, and local economies grow.

As former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland put it:

“You can’t impose solutions on us and call it support. Real partnership starts with listening.”

The Bottom Line

This is more than a nutrition issue, it’s about justice, survival, and self-determination. Every garden planted, every youth taught to fish or gather, every seed saved is an act of resistance and renewal.

The question isn’t if Native communities can reverse these trends, we know we can. The question is whether policymakers will support the tools and flexibility needed to make it happen on a large scale.