Governor Inslee signed Bill 1725 which creates an endangered missing person advisory. Continue Reading Nationwide Alert System Created for Missing Indigenous PersonsRead More
New funding for VAWA aims to help more communities / Photo: AP Listen NWPB’s Johanna Bejarano reports on new groups that could see extra protections in the federal Violence Against Women Act Read President Joe Biden signed the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act of 2022. The $1.5 trillion omnibus spending package reauthorizes the current VAWA grants until Read More
The story of some Native American Scouts and their complicated reasons for working with the United States government. Continue Reading Past As Prologue: The Complicated Relationship Between Indian Scouts And The U.S. Read More
Tribes across the Northwest called for immediate action to remove the four Lower Snake River dams during a two-day Salmon and Orca summit in western Washington. The group called on President Biden and congressional members to “take bold action, now.” Read More
When Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced a sweeping investigation into burial sites on current and former school sites that have historically served Native Americans, it was met with amazement, even among people who’ve been searching out Indigenous remains for years. Read More
Leaders of Indigenous groups in Canada said Thursday investigators have found hundreds of unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school for Indigenous children — a discovery that follows last month's report of 215 bodies found at another school. Read More
Many levels of government, private foundations and charities are handing out economic recovery grants these days. A Native-led nonprofit serving the Pacific Northwest is carving out a niche by offering grants specifically to help Indigenous communities and artists rebound from the uneven effects of the pandemic. Read More
Pope Francis expressed sorrow Sunday for the gruesome discovery of a mass grave in Canada containing the remains of hundreds of Indigenous children. The remains were found at a boarding school for Indigenous Canadians, operated by Catholic clergy. Read More
For generations Marcus Whitman has been widely viewed as an iconic figure from early Pacific Northwest history, a venerated Protestant missionary who was among 13 people killed by the Cayuse tribe near modern-day Walla Walla, Washington, in 1847. Read More
The company Gameloft tackled the redesign of Oregon Trail for Apple Arcade just in time for the increase in worldwide play because of the pandemic. Its target audience: the now-40-year-olds and their kids. And more Native American players. Read More
Fifty years ago this week the federal government’s experiment with termination was crushed at the ballot box on the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington. Termination was a policy that was designed to end the United State government’s role in Indian affairs. It would have abrogated treaties, eliminated federal funding, and “freed the Indians” from Read More
Washington has a new law that bans schools from using Native American imagery without a tribe’s consent. The Spokane Tribe says it won’t be endorsing any such proposals. Continue Reading After New State Law, Spokane Tribe Read More
Mary Big Bull-Lewis sees the way forward for Native people in Washington: ownership of the land and the stories attached to it. Continue Reading In Wenatchee, A Wenatchi Designer Has A Plan To Buy Back Native LandsRead More
Washington public schools with Native American-themed team names or mascots have a decision to make now that Gov. Jay Inslee has signed into law a ban on such symbols. The schools have until year's end to find a new mascot or try to win the blessing of a nearby tribe for continued use under an exception. Read More
The 500-student Lapwai School District takes an all-bases-covered approach to student well-being, including leveraging partnerships with the Nez Perce tribe and local community to address youth mental health. The small North Idaho district is among only nine rural districts in the state to provide four key behavioral health supports for all of its students, according to an Read More
The Indian Health Service has been lauded for the success of its vaccination campaign. But not every Native American got to be part of that. Tribes that aren't recognized by the U.S. government have received none of the resources directed to Indian Country to help them survive the pandemic. Read More
The Billy Frank Jr. statue would replace one of Oregon Trail pioneer Marcus Whitman. The larger-than-life bronze of Whitman has stood in the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall for nearly 70 years. Continue Reading It’s Read More
A measure to honor the late Billy Frank Jr. with a statue at the U.S. Capitol cleared the Legislature Monday. On a 44-5 bipartisan vote, the Democratic-led Senate approved the bill that seeks to replace Washington’s Marcus Whitman statue in the National Statuary Hall Collection with a statue of Frank, a Nisqually tribal member who championed treaty rights. Read More
The author of two poetry books and a member of the Lhaq'temish (Lummi) Nation, Priest is the sixth poet and first Native person to be selected for the two-year term, a program of the Washington State Arts Commission and Humanities Washington. Continue Read More
The Goldendale Energy Storage Project would be a solution to generate energy when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. But, to the Yakama Nation, the destruction of those sites would add another heartbreak to an ever-expanding list. Countless important cultural areas have faced destruction across the Northwest, largely because they’re not understood by Read More
Deb Haaland, the former Democratic congresswoman, made history Monday by becoming the first indigenous interior secretary. She's promising to begin repairing a legacy of broken treaties and abuses committed by the federal government toward tribes. It's one pillar of a long and ambitious to-do list of reforms the administration is planning at the sprawling agency that is Read More
The Senate voted 51-40 Monday to confirm the Democratic Congresswoman to lead the Interior Department, an agency that will play a crucial role in the Biden administration's ambitious efforts to combat climate change and conserve nature. Read More
The Cherokee Nation's Supreme Court ruled this week to remove the words "by blood" from its constitution and other legal doctrines. The words, added to the constitution in 2007, have been used to exclude Black people whose ancestors were enslaved by the tribe from obtaining full Cherokee Nation citizenship rights. Read More
So far the vaccine supply pipeline is expected to remain relatively steady, unlike in many other jurisdictions in the country. Tribal leaders say they plan to keep holding the Biden administration accountable to the U.S. government's treaty obligations to deliver health care. There's an obvious legacy of mistrust toward the federal government throughout Indian Country. Read More
The roads taken by the family in The Removed, Brandon Hobson's new novel, are essential ones in this moment of national reclaiming. The story in this book is deeply resonant and profound, and not only because of its exquisite lyricism. It's also a hard and visceral entrance into our own reckoning as a society and civic culture with losses we created, injustices we allowed, Read More
Public schools with Native American-themed mascots and logos would need to find new team names under a proposal that drew supportive testimony to the Washington Legislature on Friday. The pending phase-out bill hews closely to an earlier, hard-fought policy in Oregon to change names and mascots.
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Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" has long been offered as an "alternative national anthem," performed by musicians from Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger to Chicano Batman and Sharon Jones. Its message seems fairly simple — we are all equally entitled to the rights of this country, including the land we stand on. But Native Americans will just as soon point out Read More
Leaders of seven Northwest tribes testified this week in favor of replacing a statue of Oregon Trail pioneer and missionary Marcus Whitman in the U.S. Capitol. A proposal pending in the Washington Legislature would install a statue of the late Native rights activist Billy Frank, Jr. in Whitman's place of honor. Read More
Cassandra Tate’s recent book on the storied white missionaries sheds light on a poorly understood chapter of our state’s settler past. Continue Reading Sifting Through ‘Unsettled Ground’ Of The Whitman Read More
COVID-19 cases are hitting record highs throughout the state. And the reservation's borders are fluid, so even the tribe's extensive precautions haven't been enough to fully protect Colville members. About 300 people on the Colville Reservation have tested positive for the coronavirus. Read More
The Nez Perce Tribe is reclaiming an ancestral village site in the Eastern Oregon town of Joseph more than a century after being pushed out the area. This month, the tribe purchased 148 acres of an area known as “the place of boulders,” or Am’sáaxpa. Read More
Native American civil rights advocate Hank Adams died at the age of 77 this week. Once referred to as the "most important Indian" by Native American rights advocate and author Vine Deloria Jr., Adams was central to the fight to uphold tribal treaty rights during the 1960s and 1970s. Read More
If confirmed by the Senate, Rep. Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, would be the country's first Native American Cabinet secretary. Fittingly, she'd do so as head of the agency responsible for not only managing the nation's public lands but also honoring its treaties with the Indigenous people from whom those lands were taken. Read More
Bringing salmon back to the Upper Columbia has been a goal since the habitat was blocked by the Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams more than eight decades ago. Tribal members held a Ceremony of Tears 80 years ago when the final run of salmon returned. Read More
The Pulitzer winner has released his first memoir, "Silences So Deep: Music, Solitude, Alaska." It's a personal account of Adams' formative decades making art in the Artic. Continue Reading Composer John Luther Adams On The Arctic Sounds Read More
A portion of the first coronavirus vaccines have been designated to go to Indian Country, but some tribes are skeptical about the federal government's ability to deliver and distribute the vaccines. Continue Reading Read More
"Despite 'Leave No Trace' ethics, there are so many white fingerprints on public lands that it’s like a setting for a CSI episode. Ebey’s Landing, a national historic reserve, is no exception," Claudia Lawrence writes in this opinion piece first published by Crosscut. Read More
One of the first artists to introduce North American audiences to her style of Latin American music, the folk singer was named a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellow. Continue Reading NEA Heritage Fellow Suni Paz Sings For Read More
This year Thanksgiving comes as chronically under-resourced Native populations are contracting COVID-19 at record rates. In August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that Native Americans are 3.5 times more likely to get COVID-19 than white people. Read More
Dozens of House Democrats have called on President-elect Joe Biden to make the New Mexico congresswoman the first Native American Cabinet secretary in U.S. history. Continue Reading Possible Native American Read More
Artist and writer Lauren Redniss mixes art, design, and rigorous research with a prose style that is at once assertive, journalistic and poetic to create a book like no other. Continue Reading ‘Oak Flat’ Tells The Read More
Washington Supreme Court Justice Raquel Montoya-Lewis didn't meet a lawyer until law school. Now she wants others from underrepresented communities to picture themselves in the legal system. Continue Reading Read More
The two Puget Sound-region Democrats running to be Washington’s next lieutenant governor had the chance to distinguish themselves in a statewide debate Thursday night. Washington’s election system advances the top-two vote getters from the primary to the general election. Read More
The book is called “Journey of the Freckled Indian.” It tells the story of a young girl called Freckles who gets bullied by her classmates after sharing that she’s Native American. Author Alyssa London says it’s loosely based on her experience growing up in Bothell and sharing her Tlingit heritage in a show and tell. Read More
Sarah Deer, citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and University of Kansas professor, discusses the measures to strengthen investigation procedures and why it's taken so long to address the issue. Continue Reading Read More
The Yakama Nation seeks to stop gravel mining near a historic village and burial ground near Selah, Washington. The litigation could change the way tribal sites can be developed. Continue Reading Yakama Nation Case Could Read More
Faced with the threat of forced removal or worse, in 1855 leaders of the Warm Springs and Wasco Tribes forfeited their claim to roughly ten million acres, and moved to a reservation. In exchange for land to offer white settlers, brokers for the United States government made promises. Among those: Tribal members would not be stopped from traveling off the reservation to Read More
In the wake of George Floyd's killing, Confederate monuments have fallen, food companies have scrubbed racist imagery from labels, and now, pro sports teams names are under fresh review. Continue Reading The Racial Justice Reckoning Over Sports Read More
The Washington State Supreme Court reversed a century-old ruling Friday against a Yakama Nation tribal member for fishing outside the reservation. The 1916 ruling mandated criminal charges against Alec Towessnute for fishing outside the Yakama reservation on traditional fishing grounds – a right assured by the Yakama’s Treaty of 1855 with the federal government. Read More
"Today we are asked whether the land these treaties promised remains an Indian reservation. ... Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word," wrote Justice Gorsuch. Continue Reading Supreme Court Rules Read More
