These are some of the Native American-related news stories that made headlines in 2023:
Biden commits to reforms
The White House hosted a third Tribal Nations Summit in December, detailing initiatives and investments in Indian Country over the past three years.
President Joe Biden has nominated or appointed a record number of Native Americans to positions in the federal government. Most recently, the U.S. Senate confirmed his nomination of the first Native American to serve on a federal court, former Cherokee Nation Attorney General Sara Hill.
The Interior Department this year continued its investigation into the federal Indian boarding school system and launched an oral history project to document survivor experiences.
Residents of Gila River Indian Community listen during a 'Road to Healing' event, Jan. 20, 2023, at the Gila Crossing Community School in Laveen, Ariz.
The administration announced 190 new agreements, including deals allowing tribes to comanage federal lands and waters, funding for fish and wildlife restoration and help in mitigating the impact of climate change on tribal land.
Biden issued a new executive order reiterating the administration’s commitment to strengthen the government-to-government relationship with tribes, to give tribes more say in their affairs, and to make it easier for tribes to access funding.
Like others issued in recent years, the order stipulates that it is “not intended to, and does not, create any right, benefit, or trust responsibility, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.”
Read the administration’s 81-page 2023 progress report to tribal nations here:
Photo shows Native Americans and allies in an impromptu celebration in Washington D.C. on hearing that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to uphold ICWA.
SCOTUS upholds ICWA, gives preference to Native adoptive, foster families
Native Americans this year celebrated a major victory in the U.S. Supreme Court after Justices in June affirmed the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) by a vote of 7 - 2. ICWA is a federal law that sets standards for the removal of Native American children from their homes and directs state welfare agencies to give preference to Native American families when placing Native children in foster or adoptive homes.
Challengers to ICWA say the law is racially discriminatory and deprives states of their rights to manage welfare cases.
Read what this means for tribes here:
Vatican Pope
Pope Francis officially rejects ‘doctrine of discovery’
The Vatican this year formally repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery, a legal and ideological concept rooted in a series of mid-15th century papal bulls (edicts) giving a blessing for the European conquest of “the New World.”
“Historical research clearly demonstrates that the papal documents in question, written in a specific historical period and linked to political questions, have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith,” the March 30 statement read. “The church is also aware that… these documents were manipulated for political purposes by competing colonial powers in order to justify immoral acts against Indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesiastical authorities.”
Jessica Walzer, archaeology collections manager with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, gathers unprovenanced prehistoric pottery and lithics on, Friday, March 19, 2021, outside the Two Museums' Archaeology Collections Storage room in Jackson, Miss.
Institutions pressured to return Native American remains and artifacts
The Interior Department in December issued new rules to spur institutions into complying with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).
Passed in 1990, NAGPRA directs all federally funded institutions and federal agencies to catalogue all Native American human remains, funerary items, and objects of cultural significance in their collections; submit the information to a National Park Service database; and work with tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations to repatriate them.
The new rules eliminate a loophole that allowed institutions to hold onto remains they deem “culturally unidentifiable” and extends the deadline for federally funded institutions to complete catalogs of their holdings.
Actresses JaNae Collins, Lily Gladstone, Cara Jade Myers and Jillian Dion in “Killers of the Flower Moon," Martin Scorsese's film based on a 2017 book by David Grann
Killers of the Flower Moon: A boost for Native American representation in film
The long-anticipated Martin Scorsese film "Killers of the Flower Moon” opened in October. Based on the 2017 book by David Grann, it explores the “Reign of Terror,” a dark period in 1920’s Oklahoma when a white cattle rancher orchestrated the murders of an untold number of Osage tribe members to get their oil headrights.
Most Native viewers have praised Scorsese for shedding light on acts of genocide against the Osage Nation, for consulting with Osage tribe members and for casting dozens of Osage and other Indigenous Americans as actors and consultants—most notably, Nez Perce/Blackfeet actor Lily Gladstone in a leading role.
Others complained that the story was not told from the perspective of the Osage people but from the view of the white men conspiring to kill them.
Read more:
Buffy Sainte-Marie playing a mouth bow at the Grand Gala du Disque in Amsterdam, Netherlands, March 6, 1968.
Record allegations of Indigenous identity theft
They are called “Pretendians,” “Indigenots” or “Wannabindians” — individuals who fabricate Indigenous identity to get ahead in academia, the arts and even government.
This year, Indigenous groups in the U.S. and Canada accused a record number of alleged fake Indians, including a Hollywood producer, university professors, politicians and a horror fiction writer.
But one accusation sent shockwaves around the world. In October, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that singer/songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie was not Cree from the Piapot First Nation in Saskatchewan but a New Englander of mixed English and Italian ancestry.
Sainte-Marie has strongly denied the report but has removed all references to Indigeneity on her website and declined calls to take a DNA test.