Here are some Native American-related news stories that made headlines this week:
Lawmakers seek to embed Indian child welfare protections into North Dakota law
With only weeks to go before learning the fate of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), North Dakota lawmakers Wednesday approved a bill that would ensure that Native American children in the state's welfare system will be placed with Native American families whenever possible.
ICWA was enacted in 1978 to help prevent the widescale placement of Native children in non-Native homes and institutions.
The U.S. Supreme Court in November heard arguments in Brackeen v. Haaland challenging ICWA as race-based and accusing the federal government of intruding on state affairs. The Court is expected to issue its ruling in late June or early July.
North Dakota Representative Jayme Davis, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, introduced House Bill 1536 in January to make sure that ICWA is codified in North Dakota law.
The state is home to all or part of five federally recognized tribes where nearly 40 percent of children in foster care identify as Native American.
The bipartisan legislation now goes to Gov. Doug Burgum.
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Detail of the exterior of the Metropolitan Museum of Art building on New York City's Fifth Avenue.
Is America's biggest art museum holding stolen or fake Native artifacts?
As part of its ongoing series on the repatriation of Indigenous ancestral remains, ProPublica reported Tuesday that Native American works donated to or on loan to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art may be stolen or fake.
At issue is a collection of works from more than 50 tribal cultures across North America, some of which date to before European contact. ProPublica found that only 15% of the 139 works donated or loaned by collectors Charles and Valerie Diker have documented histories of ownership, known as provenance.
Featuring 116 artworks from more than 50 cultures across North America, “Art of Native America” is the first exhibition of Indigenous American art to be presented in The Met’s American Wing since it was established in 1924. https://t.co/Nn5FBNtQQo #ArtofNativeAmerica pic.twitter.com/4RqmJ4FvVs
— The Metropolitan Museum of Art (@metmuseum) October 2, 2018
Further, ProPublica reports that some of the items are culturally sacred or funerary, in violation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. That law directs all federally funded institutions to catalogue Native American human remains, funerary items and objects of cultural significance and submit them to the National Park Service. They must also notify tribes of these holdings and help effect their repatriation.
The law does not apply to private collections or items on loan.
The Met is the largest art museum in America and operates on an endowment of $2.5 billion.
The report comes just a month after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported that more than 1,100 pieces in the Met's collection were connected to persons who have been indicted or convicted of crimes including looting and trafficking.
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In the video above, Theland Kicknosway, a member of the Wolf Clan, Potawatami and Cree Nation in Ontario, Canada, explains the significance of long hair to Indigenous North Americans.
Rights groups challenge schools' ban on long hair
The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) this week called on a North Carolina charter school system to reverse a policy mandating that males wear their hair short.
Classical Charter Schools of Leland operates four schools in the state's southeast. According to its handbook, the wearing of "distracting, extreme, radical, or faddish haircuts, hair styles, and colors," are forbidden and hair should be "neatly trimmed and off the collar.
"This School policy is a gross violation of students' religious and cultural beliefs that disproportionately impacts Native American students attending CCSL," reads a letter from NARF sent on Wednesday, one day before the school system met to discuss the matter.
"Since time immemorial, many Tribes and Indigenous communities have placed significant cultural and religious importance on hair and to many is an important aspect of Indigenous identity," NARF attorneys wrote.
NARF joins the American Civil Liberties Union in calling the ban discriminatory.
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Detail, Senex, Price, and Maxwell map of North America (1710) shows Quivira located between New Mexico and lands "incognita," or unknown.
Was Kansas the center of a long-forgotten Native American nation?
A Kansas archaeologist is challenging traditional understandings of precolonial societies of the Great Plains.
Contemporary thinking is that the Plains were home to scattered groups of hunter gatherers. But University of Wichita professor Donald Blakeslee says the Quivira society spanned most of eastern Kansas, northeast Oklahoma and a portion of western Missouri, and was the center of a wheel of trade routes that stretched from Florida through California and into Mexico.
First described as a village by Spanish military explorer Francisco Vazquez de Coronado in the mid-16th century, Blakeslee says Quivira was home to as many as 200,000 people who were ancestors of the present-day Wichita Indians.
"In its day, Quivira was probably the most important native political unit in what's now the United States," Blakeslee said in a university statement in March.
But the Wichita Eagle reported this week that others are skeptical, including the president of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes in Anadarko, Oklahoma, who has asked to see the evidence. The paper also quotes a retired state archaeologist as saying Blakeslee's rewriting history is "a little grandiose."
Blakeslee is currently working on a book manuscript that he says will explain everything.
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