Native Americans
Native American News Roundup June 18-24, 2023
Supreme Court Upholds Indian Child Welfare Act--For Now
The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Haaland v. Brackeen upholding the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) reinforces tribal sovereignty, but some Native American leaders worry the legal challenges there are not over.
Congress passed ICWA in 1978 to stop state welfare systems from placing Native American children in non-Native families, a practice that Native Americans viewed as a continuation of historic federal efforts to "civilize" and assimilate Indians. Among other provisions, ICWA requires states to make every effort to place children in Native American homes.
In 2017, Texas couple Chad and Jennifer Brackeen and two other sets of non-Native foster parents looking to adopt Native children took the U.S. government to court, arguing — in part — that ICWA is unconstitutional because it discriminates on the basis of race.
A U.S. judge initially ruled in their favor. That was overturned on appeal on the grounds that Native Americans are a political group, not a race. The conservative libertarian group the Goldwater Institute and two other groups then took the case to the Supreme Court.
As Justices readied to hear arguments in November 2022, Goldwater litigator Timothy Sandefur explained to VOA why the group opposes the law.
"Part of the problem with ICWA is that it … deprives states of the ability to protect Native children against abuse and, in fact, forces states to send Indian children back to abused homes that are known to be dangerous, where they are exposed to further harm," Sandefur said.
He cited three cases in which Indian children in foster care were returned to abusive families and killed. Among them was 5-year-old Antonio Renova, who was beaten to death by his biological parents 18 months after a Crow Tribe judge ordered his foster parents to return him to his biological parents.
Plaintiffs argued that Congress is "commandeering" states into enforcing federal law, in violation of the U.S. Constitution. And that gets at the heart of what's really driving ICWA detractors, said Sydney Tarzwell, an attorney with the Native American Rights Fund.
"I do not see Tim Sandefur, Goldwater or any of the other organizations involved in this case actively engaging in conversations centered in child welfare best practices and what actually works," she told VOA. "Tearing down federal Indian law via ICWA would serve their other interests."
Some environmental groups such as the nonprofit Accountable.US have suggested that Goldwater and allies with close ties to the fossil fuel industry are looking to erode tribal sovereignty on matters of resource extraction on public lands.
"That's my favorite conspiracy theory," Sandefur said. "It's ridiculous — but I don't know how to deny it."
The Court speaks
For now, tribal sovereignty in welfare matters is reaffirmed.
"Under our Constitution, Tribes remain independent sovereigns responsible for governing their own affairs," Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the Court majority. "In adopting the Indian Child Welfare Act, Congress exercised that lawful authority to secure the right of Indian parents to raise their families as they please; the right of Indian children to grow in their culture; and the right of Indian communities to resist fading into the twilight of history."
Sandefur notes that ICWA lawsuits are still pending in several states, including California.
"The Supreme Court chose not to decide the constitutionality of ICWA as far as its racially discriminatory provisions are concerned," he said. "What that means is that someday the Court will be forced to resolve whether Indian children can be relegated to second class status and stripped of their constitutional rights based on their race."
Erin Dougherty Lynch, managing attorney for the Native American Rights Fund in Anchorage, says Sandefur is probably right.
"Regardless of what happened in Brackeen, they [ICWA detractors] are going to keep bringing in cases," she told VOA. "I don't mean to put too fine a point on it, but these are people who, in my opinion, are not accustomed to losing. They're not accustomed to being told no. They're very accustomed to getting what they want."
U.S. President Joe Biden said the nation's "painful history" loomed large over the Brackeen decision.
"In the not-so-distant past, Native children were stolen from the arms of the people who loved them. They were sent to boarding schools or to be raised by non-Indian families — all with the aim of erasing who they are as Native people and tribal citizens," he said in a statement.
"These were acts of unspeakable cruelty that affected generations of Native children and threatened the very survival of Tribal Nations. The Indian Child Welfare Act was our Nation's promise: never again."
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Despite gains, Native Americans still face voting barriers
Native Americans today say they still face barriers to casting their votes, six decades after U.S. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.
Many live miles away from voter registration and polling sites and lack access to reliable transportation.
Others may not have traditional mailing addresses and cannot satisfy voter registration requirements. Voting by mail can be “iffy,” according to O.J. Semans, a Sicangu Lakota citizen living on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota and co-executive director of Four Directions, a voting rights advocacy group that has worked on behalf of tribes in several states.
“You must remember, the old Pony Express [mail delivery on horseback] wasn’t meant for reservations. It was for outposts and settler towns,” Semans said. “The U.S. Postal Service has neglected every Indian reservation in the United States when it comes to ensuring we have equality.”
A 2023 study of mail service on the Navajo Nation — the largest reservation in the U.S. — notes that when deciding where to open post offices during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the U.S. Postal Service picked locations that would “advance military objectives and serve the interests of Anglo-American settlers.”
“Post Offices are fewer and farther from each other on reservation communities; there are fewer service hours; and we show in a mail experiment that letters posted on reservations are slower and less likely to arrive," the study said.
Post offices exist on Seman’s Rosebud Reservation, but they no longer accept general delivery.
“So, if you want to vote by mail, you can request an absentee ballot and fill it out. But you’d never get the ballot back,” he said.
States pass restrictive laws
The 1965 Voting Rights Act banned traditional forms of voter discrimination such as literacy tests, character assessments and other practices widely used to disenfranchise minority voters.
It authorized the federal government to oversee voter registration and election procedures in certain states and localities with histories of discriminatory practices, and it also required those jurisdictions to obtain “preclearance” from the Justice Department or a federal court before changing voting laws or procedures.
In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the formula for deciding which localities needed preclearance as unconstitutional, opening the way for states to pass new voting laws.
During a Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing in 2021, Jacqueline De Leon, an enrolled member of the Isleta Pueblo and a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, or NARF, described some conditions for Indigenous voters.
“In South Dakota, Native American voters were forced to vote in a repurposed chicken coop with no bathroom facilities and feathers on the floor,” she testified.
In Wisconsin, Native Americans were required to cast their ballots inside a sheriff’s office.
NARF, tribes fight back
In 2021, President Joe Biden created the Interagency Steering Group on Native American Voting Rights to report on barriers facing Native voters.
“Native American communities have not been immune, but indeed have been packed or divided by district lines that dilute their vote or otherwise discriminate,” the group reported.
In November 2021, North Dakota’s Republican-led legislature approved a new legislative map that separated state House districts on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation and the Fort Berthold reservation, home to the Three Affiliated Tribes.
The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and Spirit Lake tribes filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the new map violated the Voting Rights Act by packing the Turtle Mountain band — that is, concentrating them into a single electoral district to reduce their influence in other districts, and cracking — or dividing — the Spirit Lake tribe across districts to dilute their voting power.
“A conservative judge found this was a clear violation of the Voting Rights Act,” De Leon told VOA. “And rather than protect its Native constituents where there was a violation, the state has appealed, trying to just block the cost of action as opposed to remediating the discrimination.”
Arizona passed a law in 2022 requiring voters to provide proof of their physical address.
“And that was really an attack on the Native vote because about 40,000 homes in Indian Country in Arizona don't have traditional addresses on them or any way to prove residential location,” De Leon said.
With NARF’s support, the Tohono O’odham Nation and the Gila River Indian Community in 2022 filed suit in U.S. District Court for Arizona. In 2023, the court ruled in their favor, finding that the address requirements violated tribe members’ constitutional right to vote.
With five months to go before November’s general election, Semans said, Indigenous voting rights activists must stay vigilant.
“With this new Supreme Court, even rulings that we got years ago that were positive for Indian country could change before then,” he said. “Things can change on a dime.”
Native American news roundup, June 9-15, 2024
Catholic bishops apologize to Native Americans
The Catholic Church on Friday issued a carefully worded apology to Native Americans for a “history of trauma” caused in part by its “abandonment” of the community.
During their spring assembly in Louisville, Kentucky, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) approved a document titled, “Keeping Christ’s Sacred Promise: A Pastoral Framework for Indigenous Ministry,” which cites “epidemics, national policies, and Native boarding schools” as sources of that trauma.
The 56-page document also notes that “European and Eurocentric world powers” used language from 14th and 15th century public decrees known as Papal bulls to justify the enslavement and mistreatment of Native Americans and dispossession from their lands. “Let us be very clear here: The Catholic Church does not espouse these ideologies,” the document reads.
The document stops short of formally rescinding the bulls, as Indigenous groups have long requested. Nor does the document reference widespread abuse of Indigenous children by Catholic clergy.
“Many Christians have committed evil acts against indigenous peoples for which recent Popes have asked forgiveness on numerous occasions,” it states.
Bishops originally commissioned the document in 2020 but put it on hold in November 2023 concerned that certain language could create liability issues for the Church. The language in question referenced “past sins” and “wounds inflicted on Native peoples” by “some members of the Church,” the Catholic news site The Pillar reported.
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Florida parole board to decide on clemency for Leonard Peltier
American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier appealed his case before a Florida parole board Monday after having served most of his life in prison.
Peltier, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota, was convicted in 1977 of killing two FBI agents during a 1975 standoff on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.
Nick Tilsen, president and CEO of the Indigenous-led advocacy group NDN Collective, was allowed to testify at the parole hearing.
“Face to face with the federal government, I got to tell them that Leonard is revered globally as a political prisoner fighting against the unjust systems that oppress our people,” said Tilsen as quoted on the collective’s Facebook page.
Peltier, 79, claims he is innocent of the charges. The parole board is expected to announce their decision in mid-July.
Makah hunters in Washington state to resume whale hunts
The U.S. government announced this week it will allow the Makah Tribe in Washington to resume hunting grey whales, a right guaranteed them by the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service will allow the Makah Tribe to resume hunting up to 25 Eastern North Pacific gray whales over a 10-year period in U.S. waters.
“This final rule represents a major milestone in the process to return ceremonial and subsistence hunting of Eastern North Pacific gray whales to the Makah Tribe,” said Janet Coit, assistant administrator for NOAA Fisheries. “The measures adopted today honor the Makah Tribe's treaty rights and their cultural whaling tradition that dates back well over 1,000 years and is fundamental to their identity and heritage.”
The Marine Mammal Act of 1972 banned hunting, harassing, capturing or killing any marine mammal and prohibits the import and export of marine mammals and their parts or products.
The Makah Tribe in 2005 asked NOAA for a waiver that would allow them to hunt gray whales for ceremonial and subsistence purposes and to make and sell items created from harvested whales.
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Rare white buffalo calf of special significance to Lakota
While camping recently in Yellowstone Park’s Lamar Valley, Montana photographer Erin Braaten captured one-of-a-kind photographs of a white buffalo calf moments after it was born.
White buffalo calves are a rarity; though no formal studies have been conducted, cited statistics say only one in 10 billion buffalo is born white.
They have special spiritual significance to Plains tribes and are featured in many traditional stories.
Before his death in 1950, Lakota spiritual leader and visionary Nicholas Black Elk related to author Joseph Epes Brown why: nineteen generations ago, he said, a mysterious holy woman dressed in white buckskin came to Lakota chief Standing (or High) Hollow Horn and presented him a sacred stone pipe. She also taught him the seven spiritual rituals in which it should be used.
“’Always remember how sacred it is, and treat it as such, for it will take you to the end,’” Black Elk quoted her as saying. “’I am leaving now, but I shall look back upon your people in every age and at the end I shall return.” As she left, tradition holds that she transformed into a white buffalo calf.
The pipe has been passed down from one generation to the next. Today, Miniconjou Lakota spiritual leader Arvol Looking Horse is the 19th pipe holder. It was given to him when he was 12.
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Reported birth of rare white buffalo calf fulfills Lakota prophecy
The reported birth of a rare white buffalo in Yellowstone National Park fulfills a Lakota prophecy that portends better times, according to members of the American Indian tribe who cautioned that it's also a signal that more must be done to protect the earth and its animals.
"The birth of this calf is both a blessing and warning. We must do more," said Chief Arvol Looking Horse, the spiritual leader of the Lakota, Dakota and the Nakota Oyate in South Dakota, and the 19th keeper of the sacred White Buffalo Calf Woman Pipe and Bundle.
The birth of the sacred calf comes as after a severe winter in 2023 drove thousands of Yellowstone buffalo, also known as bison, to lower elevations. More than 1,500 were killed, sent to slaughter or transferred to tribes seeking to reclaim stewardship over an animal their ancestors lived alongside for millennia.
Erin Braaten of Kalispell took several photos of the calf shortly after it was born on June 4 in the Lamar Valley in the northeastern corner of the park.
Her family was visiting the park when she spotted "something really white" among a herd of bison across the Lamar River.
Traffic ended up stopping while bison crossed the road, so Braaten stuck her camera out the window to take a closer look with her telephoto lens.
"I look and it's this white bison calf. And I was just totally, totally floored," she said.
After the bison cleared the roadway, the Braatens turned their vehicle around and found a spot to park. They watched the calf and its mother for 30-45 minutes.
"And then she kind of led it through the willows there," Braaten said. Although Braaten came back each of the next two days, she didn't see the white calf again.
For the Lakota, the birth of a white buffalo calf with a black nose, eyes and hooves is akin to the second coming of Jesus Christ, Looking Horse said.
Lakota legend says about 2,000 years ago — when nothing was good, food was running out and bison were disappearing — White Buffalo Calf Woman appeared, presented a bowl pipe and a bundle to a tribal member, taught them how to pray and said that the pipe could be used to bring buffalo to the area for food. As she left, she turned into a white buffalo calf.
"And some day when the times are hard again," Looking Horse said in relating the legend, "I shall return and stand upon the earth as a white buffalo calf, black nose, black eyes, black hooves."
A similar white buffalo calf was born in Wisconsin in 1994 and was named Miracle, he said.
Troy Heinert, the executive director of the South Dakota-based InterTribal Buffalo Council, said the calf in Braaten's photos looks like a true white buffalo because it has a black nose, black hooves and dark eyes.
"From the pictures I've seen, that calf seems to have those traits," said Heinert, who is Lakota. An albino buffalo would have pink eyes.
A naming ceremony has been held for the Yellowstone calf, Looking Horse said, though he declined to reveal the name. A ceremony celebrating the calf's birth is set for June 26 at the Buffalo Field Campaign headquarters in West Yellowstone.
Other tribes also revere white buffalo.
"Many tribes have their own story of why the white buffalo is so important," Heinert said. "All stories go back to them being very sacred."
Heinert and several members of the Buffalo Field Campaign say they've never heard of a white buffalo being born in Yellowstone, which has wild herds. Park officials had not seen the buffalo yet and could not confirm its birth in the park, and they have no record of a white buffalo being born in the park previously.
Jim Matheson, executive director of the National Bison Association, could not quantify how rare the calf is.
"To my knowledge, no one's ever tracked the occurrence of white buffalo being born throughout history. So I'm not sure how we can make a determination how often it occurs."
Besides herds of the animals on public lands or overseen by conservation groups, about 80 tribes across the U.S. have more than 20,000 bison, a figure that's been growing in recent years.
In Yellowstone and the surrounding area, the killing or removal of large numbers of bison happens almost every winter, under an agreement between federal and Montana agencies that has limited the size of the park's herds to about 5,000 animals. Yellowstone officials last week proposed a slightly larger population of up to 6,000 bison, with a final decision expected next month.
But ranchers in Montana have long opposed increasing the Yellowstone herds or transferring the animals to tribes. Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte has said he would not support any management plan with a population target greater than 3,000 Yellowstone bison.
Heinert sees the calf's birth as a reminder "that we need to live in a good way and treat others with respect."
"I hope that calf is safe and going to live its best life in Yellowstone National Park, exactly where it was designed to be," Heinert said.
Washington state's Makah tribe clears hurdle toward resuming whale hunts
The United States granted the Makah Indian Tribe in Washington state a long-sought waiver Thursday that helps clear the way for its first sanctioned whale hunts since 1999.
The Makah, a tribe of 1,500 people on the northwestern tip of the Olympic Peninsula, is the only Native American tribe with a treaty that specifically mentions a right to hunt whales. But it has faced more than two decades of court challenges, bureaucratic hearings and scientific review as it seeks to resume hunting gray whales.
The decision by NOAA Fisheries grants a waiver under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which otherwise forbids harming marine mammals. It allows the tribe to hunt up to 25 Eastern North Pacific gray whales over 10 years, with a limit of two to three per year. There are roughly 20,000 whales in that population, and the hunts will be timed to avoid harming endangered Western North Pacific gray whales that sometimes visit the area.
Nevertheless, hurdles remain. The tribe must enter into a cooperative agreement with the agency under the Whaling Convention Act, and it must obtain a permit to hunt, a process that involves a monthlong public comment period.
Animal rights advocates, who have long opposed whaling, could also challenge NOAA's decision in court.
Archeological evidence shows that Makah hunters in cedar canoes killed whales for sustenance from time immemorial, a practice that ceased only in the early 20th century after commercial whaling vessels depleted the population.
By 1994, the Eastern Pacific gray whale population had rebounded, and they were removed from the endangered species list. Seeing an opportunity to reclaim its heritage, the tribe announced plans to hunt again.
The Makah trained for months in the ancient ways of whaling and received the blessing of federal officials and the International Whaling Commission. They took to the water in 1998 but didn't succeed until the next year, when they harpooned a gray whale from a hand-carved cedar canoe. A tribal member in a motorized support boat killed it with a high-powered rifle to minimize its suffering.
It was the tribe's first successful hunt in 70 years.
The hunts drew protests from animal rights activists, who sometimes threw smoke bombs at the whalers and sprayed fire extinguishers into their faces. Others veered motorboats between the whales and the tribal canoes to interfere with the hunt. Authorities seized several vessels and made arrests.
After animal rights groups sued, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned federal approval of the tribe's whaling plans. The court found that the tribe needed to obtain a waiver under the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Eleven Alaska Native communities in the Arctic have such a waiver for subsistence hunts, allowing them to kill bowhead whales — even though bowheads are listed as endangered.
The Makah tribe applied for a waiver in 2005. The process repeatedly stalled as new scientific information about the whales and the health of their population was uncovered.
Some of the Makah whalers became so frustrated with the delays that they went on a rogue hunt in 2007, killing a gray whale that got away from them and sank. They were convicted in federal court.
Native American news roundup, June 2-8, 2024
Native American veterans honored at D-Day commemorations in Normandy
World leaders and veterans, including service members from several Native American tribes, gathered in France to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the allied landing on the beaches of Normandy that changed the course of World War II.
Charles Norman Shay, a citizen of the federally recognized Penobscot Nation in Maine, was in the first wave that landed on Omaha Beach. A combat medic assigned to the First Infantry Division, Shay was awarded the Silver Star and the French Legion of Honor for his efforts to save wounded soldiers from the rising waters of the English Channel.
Delegations from several Native American tribes were also in Normandy to pay tribute to Shay and to the tens of thousands of Native Americans who served in World War II, including an unknown number of Native Americans who landed at Normandy in 1944.
Shay, who turns 100 later this week, is the last surviving Native American soldier to have fought on D-Day.
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Ho-Chunk congresswoman: States ‘deprive’ Native Americans of right to vote
June 2 marked 100 years since President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act, also known as the Snyder Act, granting full U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States.
Native American lawmakers marked the occasion with a series of editorials.
In a guest essay for Native News Online, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, argues that Native Americans have always been citizens.
“My people were here long before the Mayflower and the Pilgrims, and before the cow was introduced to North America. We have always been citizens of this continent. Our citizenship runs deep, and in spite of every Indian war, assimilation policy, and outright assault on our land, animals, and ways of life by newcomers, we have persevered,” she wrote.
Representative Sharice Davids, a citizen of the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin, reminded readers of Indian Country Today that while the 1924 law may have given Native Americans official citizenship, some states still “deprive” them of rights guaranteed to citizens.
“Before this, my ancestors were treated as foreigners in their own land without a voice in the country's most important systems,” Davids wrote. “While the act was a monumental leap in tribal sovereignty, it didn't prevent states from enacting laws that deprived Native communities of their right to vote.”
Davids, Senator Ben Ray Lujan and Representative Tom Cole (Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma) introduced the Native American Voting Rights Act of 2021 (NAVRA), to improve Native Americans’ access to voter registration, polling places and drop boxes.
Leonard Peltier to appeal again for his release
American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier and his supporters will plead his case next week before a parole board for what may be the last time.
Peltier, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota, was convicted in 1977 of killing two FBI agents during a 1975 standoff on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.
As VOA reported in 2016, the FBI Agents Association insists Peltier is an “unremorseful, cold-blooded killer” who deserves to remain in prison. His defenders say he was framed for a crime he did not commit.
Peltier is nearly 80 and has spent more than half his life in prison. He has always proclaimed his innocence and has twice been denied parole.
Amnesty International USA followed the case for years and recently wrote the U.S. Parole Commission to plead for Peltier’s release on humanitarian grounds.
Parole was abolished for federal convicts in 1987, but Peltier remains eligible because he was convicted before that time.
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Tribes distinguish between co-managing and co-stewarding federal land
As part of his commitment to allow Native American tribes a say in the use of federal lands and waters, President Joe Biden expanded the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument in Northern California to include a 17.7-kilometer-long (11-mile-long) north-south ridgeline that is sacred to the Patwin people in the region.
Biden’s May 2 proclamation renamed the ridgeline, previously known as Walker Ridge, to Molok Luyuk, or Condor Ridge, in the language of the three federally recognized Patwin tribes: the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, the Cachil DeHe Band of Wintun Indians of the Colusa Indian Community and the Kletsel Dehe Wintun Nation.
The proclamation also called on Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to explore “co-stewardship” with those tribes. But co-stewardship doesn’t mean co-management. Those are powers only Congress can grant.
“Co-management means decision-making authority,” monument manager Melissa Hovey recently told Grist online magazine. “Co-stewardship means one entity still has the decision-making authority.”
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