Confronting The Blind Spot In The Great American Protest Song ‘This Land Is Your Land’

By NPR News
Picture of Woody Guthrie performing
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

Congress Formally Acknowledges 155-Year-Old Betrayal Of Warm Springs And Wasco Tribes

By Emily Cureton
Warm Springs first tribal council in 1928. From left to right: George Meachum, Isaac McKinley, Charley McKinley, Nathan Heath and Jackson Culps. Courtesy of The Museum at Warm Springs
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

Washington Supreme Court Reverses Itself In Century-Old Case, Affirms Yakama Nation Treaty Rights

By Enrique Pérez de la Rosa
File photo. The reservation of the Yakama Nation in south-central Washington covers over 2,000 square miles, with areas patrolled by tribal, city and county law enforcement.
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

Louis Mann: A Yakama Nation Interpreter, Educator, Advocate Is Heard Again After 100 Years

By Enrique Pérez de la Rosa
Louis Mann, photographed by Lucullus Virgil McWhorter, was an interpreter for the Yakama Nation in the early 1900s who also defended water and fishing rights of other tribal members through correspondence to U.S. government officials.
The Treaty of 1855 created the Yakama Nation reservation as we know it today. In the decades after, the Yakama, Washington state, and the United States were trying to figure out their new relationship. At the turn of the century, Louis Mann was in the middle of it all, working as an interpreter for the tribe. Now, audio recordings of Mann’s strong voice have resurfaced. Read More
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