Perspective

The Power in Place

ArtmanM — Thu, 22 May 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Perspective

The Power in Place

From Issue: Spring 2025 / Vol. 26 No. 1

by Daniel R. Wildcat

Many of the most pressing problems humankind now faces are so complex that they cannot be solved by the knowledge produced within a single academic discipline or discoveries obtained through classic research methods alone. Tribal colleges and universities in the United States offer unique knowledge that is advancing science by drawing on Indigenous peoples’ worldviews, values and intellectual traditions. Such traditional knowledge has roots in their homelands, but it is never confined within conceptual boxes. Although many educators as well as organization and corporate leaders have yet to recognize this “power in place” and the contributions that these institutions can make to society, their valuable work is now coming to light.

Daniel Wildcat leads the research that Haskell Indian Nations University students are conducting about environmental impacts to Indigenous communities in Alaska, Hawai‘i, Louisiana and Puerto Rico.

Photo courtesy of Daniel R. Wildcat

University of Kansas Lab and Field Research Assistant Courtney King (left) and Haskell Indian Nations University student Aysa Benally collect data from a trail camera in the Haskell Wetlands. They are documenting impacts of Kansas Highway 10 on this ecosystem.

Photo by Brendan McInerney/Rising Voices Changing Coasts

The first tribal college, the Navajo Community College, opened its doors on the Navajo Reservation in Tsélání, Arizona, in 1968. Today, 35 accredited tribal colleges and universities exist in the United States: 18 in the Great Plains, six in the Great Lakes, six in the Southwest, two in the Northern Rockies, one in the Northwest, one in California and one in Alaska. Most are located on reservation lands and primarily serve Native students, although many also have non-Native students from surrounding areas. These institutions vary in enrollment from a couple of hundred to almost 2,000 students. Some are two-year community colleges granting associate degrees and specialized certificates. However, many now have baccalaureate degree programs, and several offer graduate degrees.

Two of these institutions—Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas—are run by the federal Bureau of Indian Education. They are chartered to serve exclusively Native students of federally recognized tribes. Because of its location, most of SIPI’s students are primarily American Indians of the Southwest. Haskell, having been established in the heartland more than 100 years ago, has averaged an enrollment of approximately 800 students from more than 100 federally recognized tribes in 40 U.S. states.

The many Indigenous cultures these institutions lift up are as varied as the landscapes on which these tribal colleges and universities sit. Native cultures, knowledge and intellectual traditions are included in the education and research conducted on these campuses. Indigenous peoples see their communities as part of the natural world. Community-based research adds an essential, rich element to convergent science, in which many disciplines work together.

The late ecologist and sociobiologist E.O. Wilson talked about the need to develop a “science of consilience,” in which the domains of biology, ethics, environmental policy and social science come together to create a conceptually unified body of knowledge about the world we live in. Many Indigenous thinkers might agree yet note two omissions: the spiritual dimension that is inherent in Native worldviews as well as the natural life cycles and regenerative features of our Mother Earth.

However, unlike many religious traditions based on an explicitly stated theology, what Wilson and many other scientists think of as “religion” fails to grasp that many Indigenous ceremonial traditions convey what is sacred through actual experience in the natural world and this culminates in a way of life. This engagement of Indigenous students with traditional ways of living is creating opportunities for scientific research collaboration around those problems that defy easy disciplinary categorization.

In 1994, the U.S. Congress passed a law designating tribal colleges and universities as “land grant” institutions, which enabled them to develop agriculture-related education and research. One such program that resulted was FALCON (First Americans Land Grant Consortium), which provides information, expertise and resources about food, health and other topics to tribal college and universities.

This is just one program that is growing because of community engagement. Other environmental and agricultural programs include the Salish Kootenai College’s natural resource management degree that synthesizes Indigenous research methodologies such as tribal members’ oral histories and observations of environmental changes over time with academic science conducted today. This can help provide students with the necessary skills to conduct studies for tribal nations and communities. The College of Menominee Nation’s Sustainable Development Institute and the Northwest Indian College’s Bachelor of Science program in Native Environmental Science embrace tribal culture–informed and relevant research, which have produced numerous research publications. Haskell’s Rising Voices, Changing Coasts Hub applies convergence science in which Indigenous peoples of Alaska, Hawai‘i, Louisiana and Puerto Rico are collaborating with an established research institution to create data-rich science by honoring the power in places.

The value of Indigenous knowledge, traditions and wisdom cannot be overstated. Public and private colleges and universities as well as other research institutions are beginning to recognize that Native peoples with ancient relationships to specific landscapes and seascapes and the life that resides there know much about what has happened, is happening and might happen in these places they call home.

Authors

Daniel R. Wildcat

Daniel R. Wildcat, a Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma, is a scholar, an author, a speaker and the principal investigator for the Rising Voices, Changing Coasts Hub at Haskell Indian Nations University.

Clearing a Path for Indigenous Teachers

ThorneLE — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 18:28:28 +0000

Perspective

Clearing a Path for Indigenous Teachers

From Issue: Fall 2024 / Vol. 25 No. 3

by Leilani Sabzalian and Michelle M. Jacob

During fall, many families and communities are busy getting their children ready for school. Yet when students get to class, they rarely have the experience of being taught by an Indigenous teacher. This is troubling, as all education in the United States takes place on Indigenous lands.

Sapsik’ʷałá class of 2023 graduate Geena Talley (Karuk), here leading her first class of elementary students through an activity about traditional Indigenous foods, is now teaching Karuk, Yurok and Hupa youth in her home community of Somes Bar, California.

Photo by Rachel Budai-Fieberg

There is a dire need to increase the number of Indigenous teachers in public and tribal schools nationwide. Indigenous educators serve as vital role models for Indigenous students. Moreover, all students benefit from having Indigenous educators as diverse identities, experiences and perspectives can foster respect and cultural understanding, prevent bias and stereotypes, and enrich student learning and achievement. Also, the increase in states mandating Native-focused K-12 curriculum has revealed that, without proper resources and training such as those provided by National Museum of the American Indian’s Native Knowledge 360° initiative, many teachers are unprepared to teach such topics responsibly. However, Indigenous educators bring a wealth of knowledge and experiences that equip them to excel in this work.

In contemporary times, education is often conflated with schools. Yet Western education systems are very young entities on Indigenous lands. Our elders and other community members have been teaching, learning, thinking critically and problem-solving on our Indigenous homelands since time immemorial. Today, Indigenous education systems continue to honor the teachings of our elders and teach students how to contribute to their communities by living in respectful relation with place.

So rather than a shortage of Indigenous educators, Indigenous communities have a plethora of potential educators. Yet they face an array of barriers that prevent them from becoming licensed to teach in public and tribal schools. This is evident in Oregon, where according to the 2024 Oregon Educator Equity Report, less than 1 percent of teachers identify as American Indian or Alaska Native. In addition, those who manage to become teachers are leaving the profession at alarming rates, with 21 percent of Indigenous educators who began teaching in 2021 leaving the field within the first three years.

As Indigenous faculty who lead the Sapsik’ʷałá Education Program at the University of Oregon, a collaboration between the University and the nine federally recognized Native nations in the state, we are working to clear a path for the abundance of possible Indigenous educators. This requires dismantling barriers to Indigenous teacher recruitment, preparation and retention that often privilege Western knowledge and systematically exclude the identities, experiences, knowledges and language skills that strengthen Indigenous educators’ teaching and enrich learning for all youth.

During our recruitment process, we have witnessed brilliant Indigenous applicants with strong Indigenous studies content knowledge and a wealth of cultural knowledge repeatedly fail state licensure requirements. These include the Oregon Education Licensure Assessment, a standardized test developed by the for-profit Pearson corporation. Each year, we have had to turn away potential Indigenous teacher candidates who met and exceeded all other admission criteria simply because they could not pass the high-stakes exam that serves as the measure of content knowledge for the licensure requirement. We view this as a systemic failure, not a failure of our students. This drove us to help transform our state’s licensure requirements, which as of 2019 uses multiple measures and a holistic approach that values Indigenous knowledge.

Cost is another prohibitive barrier for many Indigenous teacher candidates. With funding from a federal grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Indian Education, our program provides full funding for American Indian and Alaska Native graduate students to pursue their master’s degree and teacher licensure, including tuition, a living stipend, a laptop and books. In return, once they graduate, they teach in a school that serves a high proportion of Indigenous students. All universities should provide this level of support for any Indigenous student who wants to become a teacher.

Many barriers also prevent Indigenous students from graduating from college. Diné scholar Amanda Tachine argues they stem from the politics of belonging, meaning that educational policies and practices often oppress Native students and make them feel that they don’t belong. Creating teacher education programs that foster belonging is critical. Providing Native students a chance to learn in cohorts allows them to build relationships and a sense of belonging to a community. Engaging students in elder-guided and intergenerational learning, storytelling and land-based learning can nurture a deep sense of belonging by strengthening the kinship students feel with their families, communities, lands, languages and lifeways.

Focusing on outcomes that aren’t typically valued in Western education is also vital. We want our students to know and love who they are. Our identities and communities are a source of strength. Loving ourselves is a powerful weapon against colonialism. When students love who they are and where they come from, they can draw from the brilliance embedded in their people and the places they come from to stand strong.

We also want our students to enjoy learning and to leave a learning space feeling better, more grounded and connected to community and purpose. Too often, the focus of higher education is on persistence, achievement and long-term goals such as graduation or gaining a teaching license. Success matters, but if the process is harmful, the physical and emotional costs of success can undermine the value of those achievements. Creating learning spaces that are nourishing can sustain Indigenous students as they learn to become teachers—a feeling and experience they can draw on to inform their own practice as teachers. For those who may have experienced K-12 schooling as hostile or harmful, giving these teachers a safe space helps remind them that learning for their students can feel otherwise.

Since 2002, 124 brilliant Indigenous teachers have graduated from our program. To encourage our alumni to continue being passionate teachers, we try to sustain our relationships with them after graduation by helping them find mentors to support them in their first years of teaching. We also invite them to participate in programming and professional development opportunities. In addition, many alumni serve as mentors in our Grow Your Own Future Teachers Program. Although originally designed to support the recruitment of Indigenous educators, the intergenerational learning community has also provided our alumni with a sense of belonging and connectedness that has grounded them and reminded them of their purpose.

Indigenous educators serve as role models for Indigenous youth and leaders in their communities. They are also nation-builders as education is connected to the collective self-determination of Indigenous nations. This relationship is reflected in our program’s motto, "Sápsikw’at xtúwit naamí tananmamíyau in Ichishkíin," or “education strengthens our people.”

Indigenous educators also often serve as leaders outside of their communities. Many of our Sapsik’ʷałá alumni are leading professional development to help Oregon teachers fulfill the state’s Native studies curriculum mandate. Our alumni have served in key leadership roles within school districts, tribal education departments, the state’s Office of Indian Education and the State Board of Education.

Although we cannot quickly address the broader social, economic and political contexts that impact teacher recruitment and retention, these are several ways we approach this important responsibility. All of us working in institutions on Indigenous lands are responsible for dismantling barriers to Indigenous education. Indigenous students and communities have already paid for their education with their lands. Our work can help clear a path so that the many excellent potential Indigenous educators out there can learn, teach and shine. In this way, we can restore an Indigenous vision of education on Indigenous lands.

Authors

Leilani Sabzalian and Michelle M. Jacob

Leilani Sabzalian (Alutiiq) and Michelle M. Jacob (Yakama Nation) are co-directors of the Sapsik’ʷałá Education Program at the University of Oregon.

Keeping Our Promises to Nature

ArtmanM — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Perspective

Keeping Our Promises to Nature

From Issue: Summer 2025 / Vol. 26 No. 2

by Charles F. Sams III

I grew up on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in northeast Oregon, home to the Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla peoples. The creation story of these Sahaptin-speaking Indigenous inhabitants of the Columbia Plateau tells us there was a time before humans, and when they were created, they were tasked with protecting the Earth and all its living beings.

Charles Sams III served as the 19th and only Indigenous leader of the National Park Service from 2021 to 2025.

Photo by Ryan Redcorn, National Park Service

Leaders of the Karuk, Tolowa and Yurok Tribes discuss co-management approaches to enhance the health of the redwood forests and its watershed.

Photo by Mildred Jimenez

When the Creator decided to make a human, he called Coyote to the top of Pahto (now called Mount Adams in Washington state). He gave Coyote a medicine bag and directed him to ask all the other beings on Earth for gifts to help in the creation of this new being. As he slid down the mountain to begin his task, he looked up and saw Eagle flying above. He called out to Eagle, “Creator is making this being called human and wants to know if you can provide a gift.” Eagle replied, “I will provide a portion of my eyesight so this new being can see the splendor of the land and waters.” Coyote thanked Eagle and continued his task. Along the way, he collected other gifts, such as portions of Elk’s hide and Owl’s hearing as well as the roots of the plant Cous for food. Finally, Coyote made his way to Celilo Falls on Nč’í Wána (known as the Columbia River today). The Salmon were making their way back up the river when one eddied out and offered two gifts: his voice so humans would be able to speak and his body as nourishment. In return, Salmon asked that the Creator have a covenant with humans so that they would be good stewards of all of the natural world.

This covenant is my ethos. I must be a keeper of the flora and fauna of the lands, water and air. For the majority of my professional career, I have worked to fulfill my promise, in part by teaching others to do so by developing relationships with the environment that are reciprocal rather than transactional.

So when I received the call to become the 19th director of the National Park Service in 2021, I could hardly believe my good fortune. The 1916 Organic Act established the National Park Service (NPS) to oversee national parks, monuments and other designated public lands in order to “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life [sic] therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

Indigenous peoples managed and thrived on the landscapes of North America for millennia, maintaining a delicate balance with nature through sustainable practices, spiritual relationships with the land and intricate systems of governance. Westward expansion in the 18th and 19th centuries in addition to the establishment of national parks, forests and wildlife refuges displaced Native peoples as such lands were declared “wilderness” or “public” without regard for their original inhabitants.

Throughout the 20th century, several federal court cases began recognizing that treaties guaranteed tribes the rights to manage their lands and the wildlife that live on them. In the Pacific Northwest, many cases focused on tribal rights to co-manage salmon and other fisheries in the Columbia River Basin, such as United States v. Winans (1905) and United States v. Oregon (1969). In addition, landmark legislation—such as the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, which allows tribes to manage Department of Interior programs for their members on their lands—began to restore some measure of tribal authority over their own affairs. Yet the management of public lands and the recognition of tribes as their rightful stewards has remained a contested frontier.

During the past few decades, tribes and U.S. government agencies have begun to develop agreements to share management of public lands, waters and their cultural resources. Such co-stewardship is distinguished from mere consultation by its commitment to shared decision-making and mutual accountability. This can ensure the protection of sacred cultural sites and guarantee tribal members access to traditional foods, medicines and other resources. And integrating Indigenous knowledge with Western scientific research can help protect vital habitat and bolster resilience to ecological degradation while addressing environmental impacts such as biodiversity loss.

Across the country, tribes and their partners have developed diverse models of co-stewardship, ranging from cooperative agreements to joint management boards and restoration partnerships. For example, the Save the Redwood League purchased 125 acres of old-growth forest within the Redwoods National Forest in northern California and returned it to the Yurok Tribe. This land, named ‘O Rew, had been taken from the Yurok people during the California Gold Rush in the mid-1800s. The tribe signed an agreement with the National Park Service and California State Parks in March 2024 that ensures it will be able to steward this old-growth forest, which is critical to salmon, California condors and plants used for traditional medicines and food.

Also in northern California, the Karuk Tribe has been collaborating with the U.S. Forest Service to reintroduce traditional fire practices such as prescribed burns. This decreases dense undergrowth and therefore wildfire risk while promoting ecosystem health and forest resilience.

Following years of advocacy by the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, the federal government established the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah in 2016. The coalition—made up of the Hopi, Navajo, Ute Mountain Ute, Ute Indian and Zuni Tribes—formalized a co-management agreement with federal land managers in 2022. This partnership gives the coalition the opportunity to review federal policies about land use in the monument, which can help protect its cultural sites such as cliff dwellings and other ancient structures. In the monument, tribal resource managers also work alongside federal resource managers to ensure compliance with the National Environmental Protection Act.

Despite such successes, the practice of tribes co-stewarding public lands with federal and state governments often faces significant barriers. First, centuries of exclusion and broken promises by the U.S. government have fostered mistrust from tribes that must be actively addressed by trust building. In addition, jurisdictional uncertainties and conflicting interpretations of tribal sovereignty hinder progress and the slow modification of existing government policies and regulations can impede meaningful sharing of authority. Many tribes also lack the adequate funding, staffing or technical resources to engage fully in co-management planning and implementation.

Still, the momentum for Indigenous co-stewardship of lands with federal, state and local governments continues to grow. Some 150 co-management agreements between American Indian tribes and the National Park Service and more than 400 with federal agencies now are in place. Many of these include initiatives that center on Indigenous youth, which helps ensure knowledge continuity. Indigenous and government co-stewardship models are also thriving in other countries, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

By including Indigenous nations as equal partners in the care of lands, waters and wildlife, we honor their sovereignty, wisdom and deep-rooted connection to place. As ecological crises intensify, tribal co-stewardship is a pragmatic necessity. By embracing shared responsibility and learning from each other, we chart a more sustainable and equitable course for generations to come. We can all develop a stronger relationship with the land and become good stewards of natural resources. We can all keep our inherent promises to protect the Earth.

Authors

Charles F. Sams III

Charles F. Sams III (Wykanish Naknowee Thluma [Keepers of the Salmon]), is a conservationist and former director of the National Park Service.

Looking to Indigenous Pathways to Peace

ArtmanM — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 10:00:00 +0000

Perspective

Looking to Indigenous Pathways to Peace

From Issue: Winter 2024 / Vol. 25 No. 4

by Binalakshmi Nepram

About 476 million Indigenous peoples are living in 90 countries and territories in the world today. They represent 5,000 different cultures and speak the overwhelming majority of the estimated 7,000 human languages. Indigenous peoples also manage more than 50 percent of the world’s land, many areas of which are highly biodiverse. Unfortunately, more than 100 armed conflicts are ongoing across our planet today, many of which are in the areas where Indigenous peoples live, displacing 117 million people and devastating their lifeways as well as the land they and wildlife depend upon for survival.

Binalakshmi Nepram founded two international organizations dedicated to promoting peaceful resolutions of conflict.

Photo by Nuvea Lopez Torres

In 2024, Cree Chief Wilton Littlechild presented the first International Declaration on Indigenous Peacebuilding to the Chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, at her organization’s headquarters in New York City.

Photo by Binalakshmi Nepram

I grew up in Manipur, a beautiful border state in Northeast India that is home to 3.3 million Indigenous peoples. It has been under the shadow of internal conflicts for more than 70 years. I was determined to find peace for our communities, and so as a Manipuri scholar, I founded the Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network in Imphal in 2007 and the Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples, Gender Justice and Peace in New York in 2019. My colleagues and I have asked ourselves, “What wrong have we as humans done that instead of progressing, we are regressing as a global community?” We have thought hard and long about what are the root causes of such violence and what could be the solutions.

Indigenous peoples have lived for centuries with violence in their lives, yet the resilience that they have shown in the face of conflicts gives us the hope that we may find paths to peacebuilding. To heal people and the planet, we need to investigate what is happening in Indigenous territories and look to traditional methods of conflict mitigation in order to work toward a world in which peace is the norm rather than an aberration.

Indigenous peoples have unique ways of peacebuilding that they have employed for centuries. For example, the Haudenosaunee who live in what is now the border region of the northeastern United States and Canada have “The Great Law of Peace,” a guide to living among themselves and other nations that preferences reason over force. They and other Indigenous peoples of this region wrote their laws and treaties not on paper but on different materials, such as wampum belts. These agreements—which are recorded in the belt’s designs that are made with shell beads sewn together—have been passed down for generations.

Other Indigenous forms of governance and constitutions evolved during the 12th century in North America, Asia and many other countries. Indigenous manuscripts from the India state of Manipur called “Puyas” were written on tengna (a local grass), palm leaves, agar wood, bamboo pulp or jute and even inscribed on copper plates. These documents were written collaboratively and have been passed down for generations as a shared, living knowledge. One of these manuscripts is the “Umanglon” (“Dialectics of the Forest”), which outlines how humans can coexist with nature.

Indigenous women across cultures and nations also have developed peaceful mechanisms to confront decades of militarization, weaponization and structural violence that have marked their lives for decades. For example, in 1904 and 1939, Indigenous women in Manipur waged two nonviolent demonstrations known as “Nupi Lan” (Women’s War) against repressive British colonial policies. Their negotiations sowed the seeds of Manipur achieving freedom from British colonial rule in 1947.

In spite of such successes, peacemaking efforts for the past century have been usually negotiated at high political levels where Indigenous peoples are rarely represented. For example, Indigenous peoples have been trying to engage with the League of Nations since the 1920s and with the United Nations (UN) since the 1970s to resolve, mitigate and prevent violent conflicts. The 1982 Manila Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes drew attention to the need of peaceful resolution of international conflicts yet did not include a discussion of the needs of Indigenous populations. The first time that the United Nations involved Indigenous peoples in peacemaking was in 1996, when the UN moderated peace talks between the Guatemala government and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity. The resulting “Agreement on a Firm and Lasting Peace” ended decades of conflict in Guatemala during which 200,000 people were killed, 83 percent of whom were Indigenous Maya residents.

In 2000, Indigenous peoples called for the creation of new systems and institutions of peacemaking that are sourced in Indigenous values and that coexist with the policies of existing bodies such as the International Court of Justice. Seven years later, the UN adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which contains several articles that are very relevant to preventing conflict, such as the rights of Indigenous communities to self-determination; to their lands, territories and resources; to prevention of genocide of their people; and to prevention of forced transfers of their populations. It also ensured that independent Indigenous peoples’ own tribunals and commissions of inquiry are recognized as legitimate in any process of conflict resolution.

The UN pledged in 2015 to strengthen universal peace in part by reducing poverty by 2030. Yet conflict in Indigenous lands and territories have not decreased but rather increased. Today, Indigenous communities are in areas with contested borders and are on the frontlines of violent conflict, insurgency and organized crime with devastating humanitarian impacts and loss of life.

The challenges of obtaining peace in conflict zones were excluded from the original mandate of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues of 2007, and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) took 46 years to designate conflict, peace and resolution as the special theme for its 15th session in May 2016. In 2021, the UN’s Human Rights Council resolved to prepare a report on the militarization of Indigenous land to address the issue, but this has yet to be completed and released to the public.

On April 11 and 12, 2024, 120 Indigenous peoples from 30 countries and territories gathered in Washington, D.C., to attend the first Global Summit on Indigenous Peacebuilding. They came to share the wisdom of their ancestors so that attendees and future generations can help heal people and the planet. The event led to the adoption and signing of the First International Declaration on Indigenous Peacebuilding, which says decisionmakers must acknowledge and include Indigenous peacemaking practices and calls for a zero tolerance for violence on Indigenous lands. This was the first time that Indigenous peoples from around the world were able to gather to write such a document themselves rather than having doctorine written for them.

In addition, attendees formed a Global Network on Indigenous Peacebuilders, Mediators and Negotiators. This will help connect Indigenous leaders in peacemaking efforts, from elders to youth.

This historic summit also led to the inclusion of Indigenous peacebuilding in the outcome document of the 23rd UN Permanent Session of Indigenous Issues held in April 2024 as well as a resolution the UN passed on 17 November 2024 at its General Assembly that calls upon UN member states to emphasize “the importance of meaningfully engaging Indigenous Peoples in peace agreement negotiations, transitional justice processes, conflict resolution, mediation and constructive arrangements.”

We have seen that Indigenous peoples have a variety of traditions, cultures and religious practices to resolve violence and build peace. While often highly successful, these methods are underappreciated by the peacebuilding community or ignored entirely in formal peace processes. Yet the protection of peace, people and planet cannot be complete if Indigenous peoples are left behind.

Any efforts to end global conflicts must include Indigenous peoples at every level of decision-making. Indigenous knowledge, science, economies, governance, constitutions and diplomacy are all pathways toward healing conflict zones around the world.

Authors

Binalakshmi Nepram

Binalakshmi Nepram (Manipuri) is the founder of the Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network and the Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples, Gender Justice and Peace.

Hitting the Reset Button On Repatriation

ThorneLE — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 16:34:46 +0000

Perspective

Hitting the Reset Button On Repatriation

From Issue: Summer 2024 / Vol. 25 No. 2

by Jacquetta Swift

Recently, museums and their collections have been in the spotlight. On December 6, 2023, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced it had made revisions to how it implements the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), a federal law the U.S. Congress passed on October 26, 1990. This law was designed to protect and aid in the repatriation—or return—of ancestral remains and certain cultural items to lineal descendants, federally recognized American Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations by compelling museums and other institutions to work with these communities.

In Ecuador, Pueblo Kayambi President Denisse de la Cruz (right) prepares ancestral remains for a ceremonial blessing.

Photo by NMAI Staff

In Ecuador, Pueblo Kayambi President Denisse de la Cruz (right) escorts ancestral remains with NMAI staff member William Chimborazo (Kichwa) to the Museo del Centro Intercultural Transito Amaguaña in Chimba.

Photo by NMAI Staff

Following nearly a decade of consultation with American Indian tribes and others, the Department of Interior, which is tasked with interpreting and carrying out the NAGPRA, revealed that it had updated the law's regulations to strengthen the collaborations between museums and Native communities. Importantly, the regulation’s new Duty of Care section states that entities such as museums and institutions must “obtain free, prior and informed consent from lineal descendants, Indian Tribes or Native Hawaiian organizations prior to allowing any exhibition of, access to, or research on human remains or cultural items.” This empowers rightful claimants to speak out about how ancestral remains and cultural items in an institution’s collections are treated. As a result, some museums have opted to temporarily cover items that were previously on display or close exhibitions until they have addressed the NAGPRA new Duty of Care requirements.

Since its founding in 1989, the National Museum of the American Indian has always strived for strong partnerships with Indigenous peoples. A year prior to the NAGPRA, Congress passed a similar but different law called the National Museum of the American Indian Act (NMAI Act). This legislation not only established the NMAI but it also included the first piece of repatriation legislation in the United States. Yet the NMAI Act only applies to Smithsonian museums whereas the NAGPRA applies to other U.S. institutions or museums that receive federal funding.

Both laws serve to correct a historical wrong going back hundreds of years—the taking and displaying of ancestral remains and cultural items from Native communities without their consent. Such actions taken in the early days of museums were based on racist systems fueled by greed and power as well as laws and policies that served to alienate Native peoples from their lands, loved ones and culture. Collectively, the NAGPRA and the NMAI Act are foundational expressions of Native communities’ right to heal and reconcile their past on their own terms.

While the NAGPRA and the NMAI Act are separate, they have an often-forgotten parallel of intent. Both laws essentially have wording embedded in their respective legislation that nothing should stand in the way of museums and other institutions from going above and beyond the legislative requirements to repatriate Native American human remains and certain cultural items from their collections to lineal descendants, federally recognized tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations. In fact, that intent was made clear by the late Honorable Senator Daniel Inouye from Hawai‘i who said of the NAGPRA, “The bill before us is not about the validity of museums or the scientific inquiry. Rather, it is about human rights. … This legislation is designed to facilitate a more open and cooperative relationship between Native Americans and museums.” Yet, that intention seems to have gotten lost in translation.

These new regulations effectively hit the reset button on the repatriation process by empowering tribes to be part of the process and shifting a greater burden of compliance accountability to museums and other institutions. This update has probably had the greatest impact on the repatriation process, ironically because its reach is outside of that process. Rather, this new requirement holistically hits at the heart of museum work, namely the curatorial process for exhibitions. What it says to me is that museums and other institutions with Native American collections can no longer drag their heels on consulting in good faith with lineal descendants and Native communities.

I have often wondered how other institutions would legislate this kind of intent when the bar is already set so low for what must be done at a basic level. Today, almost 34 years following the passage of the NAGPRA, the revised regulations are attempting to do just that by creating a new paradigm for legislating intent. Museums must now reprioritize their resources and put their money where their mouth is at a time in our history when social justice matters. As we have seen, museums around the world are starting to take a serious inward look at their colonial past and their ethical future.

Although the Smithsonian Institution is not bound by the NAGPRA, each of its museums is guided by its own policy for how it implements its respective repatriation program. At present, two Smithsonian museums have repatriation programs: the NMAI and the National Museum of Natural History. Since its inception, NMAI has had a vision of what it was destined to become. The NMAI Act, like that of NAGPRA, says Smithsonian museums can go above and beyond the legislative requirements, so it has not been profoundly difficult to apply the founding values and principles to the NMAI’s repatriation policy. From the beginning the NMAI has stated that all human remains under its stewardship deserve to be returned to their communities of origin, regardless of geography or sociopolitical border. Later, that thought process was expanded to include their associated funerary items that accompanied those human remains. Since 1992, the NMAI has completed 124 repatriations, including 30 international repatriations working with First Nations in Canada and Indigenous communities in Latin America.

The NMAI has worked hard to be progressive and proactive with its repatriation policy and vision that takes a natural deference towards lineal descendants, tribes, First Nations and Indigenous communities. At its core, the NMAI's intent has been to respect Native voices who provide critical context and understanding from their traditional knowledge perspectives. As Senator Inouye told us, repatriation is human rights legislation for Native peoples. This intention has always been the standard bellwether for me in repatriation, from which everything else emanates. It is a belief I carry with me today, as a good intentional place to start.

Authors

Jacquetta Swift

Jacquetta Swift (Comanche and Fort Sill Apache) is the repatriation manager for the National Museum of the American Indian.

Dreaming of a Protected Ocean

ThorneLE — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 17:00:00 +0000

Perspective

Dreaming of a Protected Ocean

From Issue: Spring 2024 / Vol. 25 No. 1

by Angelo Villagomez

Saipan is the capital island of the Northern Mariana Islands, a string of 14 limestone and volcanic islands straddling the western edge of the Pacific Ocean. About 4,000 years ago, intrepid voyagers from southeast Asia first migrated to our islands in wooden canoes. Today my people who inhabit these islands call ourselves Chamorro. After 500 years of Spanish, German and then Japanese colonial rule, in 1976, the U.S. Congress designated our islands a Commonwealth of the United States—America’s newest territory.

On Saipan Island, Chamorro activist Angelo Villagomez speaks to students and business owners about ocean conservation across the Pacific region.

Photo courtesy of Angelo Villagomez

Saipan is the capital island of the 14 Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific. Just miles offshore is the Mariana Trench, which at 7 miles below sea level is the deepest point on Earth.

Photo courtesy of Angelo Villagomez

As a boy growing up on Saipan, I used to dream of the ocean. I dreamed of a bounty of yellow, red, blue and green fish darting over mounds of brightly colored coral. These visions of the daytime hours I spent in the water rolled and bobbed in my mind throughout the night. The ocean was my playground, my teacher and a place to catch fish.

Since then, the ocean of my childhood has changed. The marine environment has been ravaged by industrial fishing fleets, plastic pollution as well as rising sea levels and warming waters due to climate change—all outgrowths of colonialism. Now the fish are smaller and fewer, and many of the sharks, turtles and corals have vanished. To help heal ocean ecosystems around the world, Indigenous communities such as my Chamorro people are working with governments and philanthropic partners to combine our ancient knowledge and values with modern ocean conservation measures that can safeguard these precious ecosystems and the living resources within them.

All aspects of our unique way of life, of knowing and being, of how to survive as an islander, are derived from our big ocean and humble islands. We begin training to be fishers from an early age.

My father, a “talayeru” (throw-net fisherman), learned his trade from his father and older brothers. When I was old enough to wade in waist-deep water, I was allowed to follow him, carrying his faded black fish bag. When I was strong and adept enough to swim in the pounding surf, he invited me to help retrieve the fish from his net, and I handed the task of carrying the fish bag off to my younger brother.

Dad taught me not only how to catch fish, but also which small, young fish should be returned to the sea to be able to grow and reproduce. During midnight walks through the jungle he taught me to never take an “ayuyu” (coconut crab) when she is carrying eggs. He also taught me to ask permission of our “taotaomo’na” (our ancestors) to enter certain lands and to “man nginge” (show respect to) our elders to ask them to share their wisdom and blessings.

These lessons are how I learned “respetu,” a word that means in essence “respect” and that was derived from the Spanish “respeto” but unique to Chamorro people, as it encompasses honoring our ancestors, our culture, our land and our ocean. I also learned “inafa’maolek,” which translated literally means “making good” but applies to many things, including striving for harmony with ourselves, with others and with the environment.

My father, newly returned from years abroad earning his law degree (only the second Chamorro to do so), was one of the delegates our people elected in 1976 to write our constitution and create our local government after the Covenant was established. He purposely included aspects of both “respetu” and “inafa’maolek” in our founding documents. Article I, Section 9 of our constitution promises that “each person has a right to a clean and healthful public environment in all areas, including the land, air and water.”

The values of “inafa’maolek” and “respetu” are the reasons why I dedicate my life to protecting my islands’ Mariana Trench. I can see Dad nodding to the peak of Mount Tapochau at the center of our island, saying while grinning, “We are standing on the tallest mountain on Earth.” His rough hands busy sorting bright netted fish, he drops the punch line, “Mariana Trench is deeper than Mount Everest is tall.” At its deepest point, it stretches nearly 7 miles below sea level, the deepest chasm on Earth. More than 1,500 miles in length, the crescent-shaped trench and surrounding waters are home to a vast array of marine life ranging from coral reefs to volcanic hydrothermal vents, abyssal plains and underwater mountains called seamounts. The waters in the trench and around the islands north of Saipan are some of the last global havens teeming with tunas, sharks, turtles and whales, not to mention unquantified, undiscovered creatures in the deep.

President George W. Bush designated the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument in 2009, protecting an ocean area about the size of Denmark around three of our northern islands from commercial fishing and banning deep-sea mining inside the trench itself. This would never have happened without the guidance of the Friends of the Mariana Trench, an organization founded by Indigenous leaders including Cinta Kaipat, Ignacio Cabrera, Agnes McPhetres, Andrew Salas and myself, who advocated and explained modern conservation policies to island communities deeply skeptical of U.S. government intentions. We spent months listening to our elders and had conversations with thousands of community members, from school children to lawmakers.

During the 15 years since designation, the Friends of the Mariana Trench continue to work with local communities, governments and nonprofit organizations to advocate for the active conservation of the Mariana Trench. We have seen mixed results for both our ocean and community, as too many decisions on how to manage the monument are still made in federal offices in Honolulu, nearly 4,000 miles away.

Our ancestors, voyagers who sailed across the vast ocean in “sahguans” (wooden canoes), plied the seas using the most advanced technology available at the time—hulls carved from breadfruit trees, sails woven from pandanus leaves and lines made from coconut fibers—as well as courage to tackle the impossible. Today our people do the same, but our tools are marine protected areas, fisheries management and federal-to-territorial negotiations.

At night I still dream of the ocean. But now in my dreams, my people use the wisdom and values of our ancestors as well as modern tools to nurture an ocean full of fish and free of plastic. And when I wake up, energized by dreams of colorful fish, I roll out of bed to see my father’s eyes looking back at me in the bathroom mirror. I promise him, just as he promised his father, “Let’s go make some good.”

Authors

Angelo Villagomez

Angelo Villagomez is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Chamorro conservationist who uses Indigenous knowledge and values to address modern threats to the ocean.

Blocked Smoke Signals

ThorneLE — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 18:00:00 +0000

Perspective

Blocked Smoke Signals

From Issue: Winter 2023 / Vol. 24 No. 4

by Francine Compton

While attending the Native American Journalists Association’s (now named the Indigenous Journalists Association) annual conference last August, one topic was being fervently discussed: the Canadian government just passed the Online News Act, or Bill C-18, new legislation meant to save a shuttering news industry. Across the main conference room, I was among those glued to their devices, staring in shock at social media pages, once showing breaking local news, now blank except for the phrase “People in Canada can’t see this content.”

Francine Compton, associate director of the Indigenous Journalists Association, is blocked from checking a news feed on a social media site in a coffeeshop.

Rojay Raymond

Although the act is not scheduled to go into effect until December 19, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, had already began blocking news in Canada. Needing to see the damage for myself, I went to Instagram first, looking at news outlet pages such as ABC News, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), CNN, NBC News, CBS News, CBC News, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Indigenous, Indian Country Today, IndigiNews and Ku’ku’kwes News—all of them had their content blocked. I then tried Facebook, where I was restricted from posting news links on my own personal feed.

Since the 1990s, newspapers and other media outlets have had their budgets slashed by a lack of advertising once reserved for print. The internet led to a boom in online publishing where content was consumed for free, leading to the allusion that it could be produced for free. Banners of ads once seen printed in newspapers and placed on news websites were supposed to be a similar source of revenue, but they didn’t live up to expectations. According to the Canadian government, online advertising in the country in 2022 was $14 billion, with two platforms receiving roughly 80 percent of this.

The act is intended to support media outlets by requiring platforms to negotiate a payment to news organizations for news content on their sites. However, this barrier to sharing news has cascading consequences for Indigenous media outlets and the communities that depend on them.

The APTN in Canada launched its first newscast in April 2000, at a time when Indigenous stories were barely being covered by other media. I served as APTN’s executive news producer. We broadcasted our federally licensed signal to homes across the country, from a studio in the shape of a tipi.

Our tiny news team was tasked with bringing stories from more than 630 First Nations across Canada to thousands of our television viewers. While doing so, we gained trust from Indigenous people who were historically underserved and misrepresented in the news. APTN made huge impacts on the media industry by covering the stories that nobody else would, asking the questions that no one else could and by fighting for a front seat at press conferences. It didn’t take long for other outlets to start following our coverage. Our smoke signal was strong.

However, like many other media outlets, we soon learned that to reach our audience, we would have to “meet them where they’re at,” and for those in small, Indigenous communities, that meant following them on social media. I was tasked with forming a social media department made up of writers and a new social media editor position to oversee our website, post daily news, monitor our livestreams and interact with our consumers.

We found our audience was primarily using Facebook. Indigenous people use it like a smoke signal, to share news and community updates. Our relatives went every morning to see what the aunties, uncles, sisters, brothers and cousins were up to, and as journalists, we sought news tips by scouring the comments and community pages. Nearly every Indigenous community across North America has a presence on Facebook, with government pages, school pages, trading pages, groups to plan weddings and social events, concerned citizen groups as well as groups raising awareness of missing and murdered Indigenous peoples. In addition, the Facebook live function was often used by First Nations and Tribal governments to broadcast meetings. News outlets would go live with their nightly newscasts to reach people who might only have online access or who cut their cable.

Meta says news outlets receive value when choosing to use their platforms. From my experience at APTN, it appeared to be the other way around. Our content on their platforms brought value to these sites, and our audience followed us there. In addition, when I became assignment producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Indigenous Unit, I noticed social media is a key tool for finding stories and connecting to people in remote communities. We adapted our content for various platforms and shifts in the industry, including the way we delivered news on a deadline, with reels for Instagram in between gathering and writing.

Meta’s response to the act by blocking news on its platforms, however, puts all of those community connections at stake. At the end of August, after devastating wild fires swept through British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, Canadian politicians spoke out against Meta for blocking the sharing of news in Canada when time was of the essence and called on Facebook to open its users’ access to news.

Social media sites banning news can happen anywhere. In the United States, Assembly Bill 886, the California Journalism Preservation Act, would require social media platforms to remit a journalism usage fee payment to eligible news outlets—referred to as a tax by critics of the bill. Meta has threatened to block news in California as it did in Canada should Bill 886 pass. In 2021, Facebook temporarily blocked news in Australia in reaction to a similar law being proposed by the Australian government, but lawmakers amended the legislation and the ban was lifted. Meta and Google made agreements with media organizations in Australia similar to what critics of Canada’s Bill C-18 would like to see.

Google once called Canada’s Online News Act “unworkable,” but the smoke has cleared. They announced a deal with Canada’s government on November 29 that said Google will pay $100 million to news companies in Canada to ensure its users can share news.

Since time immemorial, Indigenous peoples have been sharing stories and adapting to the ways in which our stories are shared worldwide, long before every available platform. Through the decades, newsrooms have adapted in a similar manner, having started with printing newspapers, then sending signals via radio frequencies and broadcasting on television, and finally sharing stories online and creating their own digital platforms. If Indigenous people can change how we share our signal over generations and if the media can change how to distribute news over decades, then I believe a 19-year-old social media company such as Meta can change so it doesn't get smoked out of our signal.

Authors

Francine Compton

Francine Compton (Anishinaabe/Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation) is the associate director and former president of the Indigenous Journalists Association.

Creating Reflective, Relevant and Responsive Museums

ThorneLE — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 16:00:00 +0000

Perspective

Creating Reflective, Relevant and Responsive Museums

From Issue: Fall 2023 / Vol. 24 No. 3

by Shana Bushyhead Condill

In 1997, I was a sophomore at a small liberal arts college in the middle of Illinois when I first heard about a new museum on the National Mall for Native people. That was my lightning moment. I have always loved museums and the idea that I could work somewhere doing what I love, while serving my people, was simply mind blowing. Today, as I serve as the executive director of the Museum of the Cherokee People and collaborate with other Native museum professionals, we can together see the future of tribal museums.

Executive Director Shana Bushyhead Condill has led the latest revitalization of the Museum of the Cherokee People in North Carolina.

The Museum of the Cherokee People

In summer 2023, Condill read "Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story" to attendees of Children’s Week at the Museum of the Cherokee People.

The Museum of the Cherokee People

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, my tribe, founded the Museum of the Cherokee People in western North Carolina in 1948. One of the oldest tribal museums in the country, tribal leadership initially created it to address a need. Some sources of income for our people such as logging and manufacturing were drying up, so they looked to a new one: destination tourism. With foresight, they negotiated an entrance of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to be on the Qualla Boundary, my tribe’s territory. About 3 million people travel through that entrance every year. Historically, our primary audience has been non-Native visitors; we host approximately 84,000 visitors annually.

Our museum remains as relevant today as it was when we were founded. We preserve and perpetuate the history, stories and enduring culture of the Cherokee people. This museum is just one of many Indigenous museums and cultural centers throughout the world doing the same for their people. These community museums have become one of the best platforms to respectfully teach others about not only their peoples’ histories but the issues impacting them today.

In contrast, mainstream museums could do better at representing Indigenous cultures. In my 25 years of thinking about this, I remember an early example that sticks out in my mind. In the 1990s, an exhibition about powwows was installed at the Milwaukee Public Museum. It was beautiful and colorful. Life-sized mannequins modeled after tribal citizens moved in a circle. It was the first time I had seen Native people in museums represented as living, contemporary beings. Unfortunately, it was installed next to an aged diorama of a Native man in a breech cloth sitting next to a fire—a common stereotypical depiction of Indigenous peoples seen in museums since their creation in the United States beginning in the late 18th century.

On the other hand, the Museum of the Cherokee People had just undergone a renovation in 1998, the year I interned there. The result was amazing. It had impactful films, Indigenous voices throughout, mannequins who were modeled after tribal citizens and even holograms. I never imagined that 25 years later I would be called upon to help lead this museum through its next iteration as its executive director.

Last summer we had an opportunity to travel to tribal museums in Oklahoma to learn from our incredible colleagues. We learned so much, and we were struck, specifically, by the Osage Nation Museum, which was founded 10 years before ours. We had the pleasure of touring and talking with museum Director Marla Redcorn-Miller (Osage/Kiowa/Cado) and Curator and scholar Jordan Poorman Cocker (Kiowa). We were inspired by their history and legacy of being of the community and for the community. The exhibition we viewed was “Voices from the Drum,” which was also of the community and for the community. It shows artworks centered around the drum and explains how the artists approached talking about it through their culture and art in relationship to the annual In-Lon-Schka dance.

Inspired, our museum staff used that experience to inform our strategic planning and, specifically, how we can better reflect and serve our community. Our tribe had adopted seven values with which we wanted to align: spirituality, harmony, integrity, stewardship, preservation of culture and serving as a positive role model, all while maintaining a sense of humor. We also wanted to be a repository of the Cherokee peoples’ history, material culture and knowledge. We decided to follow four guiding principles: be accessible to our Cherokee people and non-Native visitors for research and inspiration; be protective of our Cherokee material culture and knowledge; be humble, in that we understand we always have more to learn and that our work builds upon the foundation of those who came seven generations before us and is for those who come seven generations from now; and be adaptable, so that we honor our Cherokee resilience and innovation.

We began by evaluating what we had in our exhibitions. We formed a Collections Division and our new Director of Collections and Exhibitions, Evan Mathis, inventoried every object. Our tribe is fortunate to have a robust Tribal Historic Preservation Office and one of our Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians archeologists, Beau Carroll, unfortunately confirmed our fears. Our museum was inadvertently doing what so many others are doing: we had funerary and ceremonial objects on display. We took more than 100 objects off view. To fill the empty exhibition cases, we invited Cherokee artists to respond. The result is “Disruption,” a powerful intervention of the permanent exhibit by 36 contemporary Cherokee artists.

As a tribal museum, we have the power and responsibility to pivot and respond to our communities. As our museum's Board Chair Samantha Ferguson (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians) always says, we must be “bilingual”: we need to speak the language of mainstream museums’ best practices while also being able to speak to Cherokee worldview and protocol. As a tribal museum, we have an important role to play in these conversations, within and beyond our community.

Our Native museum colleagues are changing the game and leading the way for what is possible in these unique spaces—places where in many museums these kind of conversations about how to best represent Indigenous peoples and cultures weren’t even happening a decade ago. We are no longer content with just Native representation in museums. We expect Native self-representation.

At tribal museums, we will continue to make our own spaces and define best practices for the care and display of our objects. We do this work as those who came before us did—not for themselves or their own glory—but for those who come after. We envision this future, and it is what drives us.

Authors

Shana Bushyhead Condill

Shana Bushyhead Condill (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians) is executive director of the Museum of the Cherokee People in North Carolina.

Kicking Indian Country into High Speed

ThorneLE — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 18:14:22 +0000

Perspective

Kicking Indian Country into High Speed

From Issue: Summer 2023 / Vol. 24 No. 2

by Taylar Stagner

The year was 2006. My sister and I gathered around our Gateway computer, waiting for a YouTube video to load. As teenagers, life around the computer was our favorite pastime. We would parrot YouTube slang back and forth to each other as we laid 20-foot-wide white irrigation pipe on the Wind River Reservation during the hot Wyoming summers. My family lived on a cattle ranch, tucked away from any town, so we relied on our tiny computer screen to connect us to the outside world. Looking back, waiting 20 minutes for a video to load was a welcome respite from cows and irrigation ditches.

Fiber-optic cable being laid on the Wind River Reservation is bringing broadband to hundreds of homes and businesses formerly without access to the internet.

Photo by Timothy O'Neal, Courtesy of Wind River Internet

Access to the internet is an essential part of everyday life now, but like a lot of other utilities in Indian Country, access has been subpar. When the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Appropriation Act in 1851, the reservation system was created. The federal government pushed American Indians into remote locations; resources and infrastructure were deliberately siphoned away to non-Native towns. Food and healthcare were kept from those most in need, while it was made illegal for Native people to leave these reservations, making them effectively prisons. The U.S. government continued to put resources into nontribal communities, while many reservations lacked access to funds and infrastructure. Water, housing and infrastructure continue to be affected by the long arm of colonization.

In the information age, internet access became another essential resource lacking on reservations. However, these days just having internet connectivity isn’t always enough. Broadband via fiber-optic cables is faster and often required to enable wireless access and video conferencing in rural locations. In spite of tribal nations making great strides to connect its citizens to the internet during the past two decades, only about half of residents in Indian Country reported in the 2018 Census that they have broadband.

When the COVID-19 pandemic swept through reservations in 2020, it highlighted the lack of “digital inclusion” in Native communities. Many intergenerational Native families live together, so many sheltered in place to avoid contracting and spreading the coronavirus to elders and others who were highly vulnerable. Homes became classrooms and offices, from which students and adults connected to teachers, coworkers as well as community and family members through video. Staying up-to-date on tribal, county and state COVID-19 restrictions as well as world news became even more vital.

Researchers at George Mason University looked at factors that contribute to lack of broadband in Indian Country. The study that they published this year found difficult terrain was a factor as well as limited knowledge within tribal systems of how to maintain broadband. Federal and state governments continuously deny Native peoples access to their sacred places, infringe upon Native nations's access to water and fail to recognize state tribes as sovereign nations. All this and more has contributed to the continued lack of trust Native people have in the U.S. government. In addition, internet expansion projects are still struggling to receive funding, despite federal money finally being made available.

In 2019, the Federal Communications Commission awarded the Northern Arapaho Tribe’s internet provider, Wind River Internet, $4.1 million dollars to connect more than 850 homes to the internet. The funds also helped support broadband expansion for the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, who share the Wind River Reservation. Other funding sources included the Connect America Fund, National Telecommunication and Information Administration and a new market tax credit providing, in theory, around 6,000 homes with the funds to install access to broadband services.

Patrick Lawson, the director of Wind River Internet, felt good about receiving this patchwork of funding. The tribally owned provider has spearheaded efforts to get better internet access on the Wind River Reservation for the past five years. Yet about 2,162 reservation homes are still waiting for appropriate funding.

“It’s kind of tricky because you can’t have applications to cover the same area, no double dipping. But if one doesn’t get awarded, then you have a hole in the project,” Lawson said. Even though Lawson was supposed to hear back from the federal government last spring about the 2,000 homes that might not be covered under this patchwork of funding, as of early July, he said he had not received a response to his application.

In 2022, the Biden administration announced that it would provide an additional $401 million for high-speed internet access in rural areas. This pool of funding went to around 11 states, including western states such as Montana, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada, with the goal of helping tribal communities. Wyoming was not among them.

While access to more funding is certainly needed, other issues need to be addressed to make this happen. The George Mason University paper points out the issue that applying for funding requires access to broadband and knowledge of the intricacies of the application process. Also, federal appraisals of the issues facing broadband access in Indian Country can undercut the issue and misrepresent gaps in financing. While the Biden administration allocated $2 billion for the expansion of Native American broadband access, according to the George Mason study, the needs are more likely around $8 billion.

Despite the funding challenges, 1,700 homes and businesses on the Wind River Reservation formerly without internet access are now connected to the internet. Of these, a third are connected to the miles of high-speed, fiber-optic cable Lawson and his crew have laid. When the project is complete in the next few years, the Wind River Reservation will have some of the best internet access in the region.

During the past five years, I have served my Native community as a radio reporter. I’ve covered the continual efforts of the Northern Arapaho tribe to connect the Wind River Reservation to the internet. I am thrilled to see far-flung houses nestled in rolling hills and sagebrush now plugged into the outside world. From Ethete to Fort Washakie, the Wind River Reservation has the most beautiful and breathtaking landscapes. Soon it will have the technology needed to serve its citizens in a way we deserve.

Authors

Taylar Stagner

Taylar Stagner (Arapaho and Shoshone) is an award-winning radio reporter based in Wyoming.

Ancestral Voices from the Archives

EhrlichK — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 20:00:55 +0000

Perspective

Ancestral Voices from the Archives

From Issue: Spring 2023 / Vol. 24 No. 1

by Deborah A. Miranda

I first saw a drawing of an 1879 Mass being held in the ruins of Mission San Carlos Borroméo de Carmelo in central California while reading Steven Hackel’s 2005 book “Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis.” In this illustration by American artist Joseph Strong, an elderly Indigenous man, whose head is covered with a shock of white hair streaming past his shoulders, stands barefoot with his legs spread. In his right hand, the old man holds a long cane that is planted on the flagstones at his feet. With the other, he holds the hand of a young Native American boy.

Isabel Meadows (left) was so committed to having her Rumsen people’s history and stories recorded that she traveled to Washington, D.C., and worked with Smithsonian ethnographer John Peabody Harrington (right) for five years until her death in 1939.

National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution 30390

Hackel’s caption asserts that “little is known” about the elderly American Indian in this drawing beyond his name, “Old Ventura.” But that name rang a bell for me. I had discovered this drawing while researching my book “Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir” on a sabbatical fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles. There I had access to microfilm of ethnographer John Peabody Harrington’s field notes, which he recorded during his work with Indigenous peoples across North America from 1907 to 1959. His original records are housed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in the National Anthropological Archives.

Harrington’s records contain rich, meticulously gathered material about Indigenous languages and culture, but his wild handwriting, invented abbreviations, codenames for consultants and eccentric organization make them a challenging puzzle for researchers. Additionally, while Harrington’s zeal is obvious so are his assumptions and misconceptions about the tenacity of Indigenous survival, the effects of long-term trauma and, often, the ways in which his obsession with gathering “facts” overshadowed the humanity of his consultants. “Underpay the Indians,” he wrote to one assistant on multiple occasions, also instructing assistants to interview elders literally on their death beds, pursuing them to the end. Harrington’s habit of going to extremes often feels like a kind of expedient extraction of natural resources, and can be painful for Indigenous researchers or descendants to read.

Still, Harrington’s notes include much information from Isabel Meadows, an Indigenous consultant who helped me solve the mystery of “Old Ventura.” Isabel’s mother, Loreta Meadows, was born at the California mission at Carmel in 1818, about 17 years before the missions were secularized. She was one of the few Rumsen or Esselen Indigenous people of the central California coast to survive missionization by Spanish and then Mexican Franciscans. Loreta gave birth to her daughter Isabel there on May 9, 1846. Isabel Meadows inherited a wealth of oral stories about her culture, family and community as well as knowledge of her mother’s Rumsen language, California Spanish, English and a limited Esselen vocabulary. Yet Isabel could not read or write in any language. “If I had known how to write, [I] would have written up the life of those Indians,” she told Harrington. Even so, she discovered the next best thing: someone who could faithfully record her vast repository of recollections.

Yet reading primary ethnographic records like these requires time, patience and luck. Harrington was anxious that other researchers not “steal” his work, using private codes and abbreviations for which he left no key. Deciphering his notes is still an ongoing effort. In addition, he often broke up or scattered Isabel’s stories in different parts of his notes, making reassembly of a narrative difficult. Isabel also provided her own challenges as she often switched between Spanish and English, sometimes within the same sentence.

Despite these obstacles, Isabel Meadows and Harrington’s extraordinary partnership allowed me to trace the outline of Ventura’s life and identify him as not only the cantor in Strong’s drawing but also my great-great-great-great uncle, Buenaventura Cantua (sometimes Soto), known throughout his life as simply “Ventura.”

I knew from mission records that my ancestor, Ventura, was born at Mission San Carlos in 1816. His parents are recorded as Dorotéa and Emerano. Isabel’s stories corroborate this. She notes, “[Ventura] lived with his mother, Dorotéa, at Pt. Lobos,” and that this same man “. . . was cantor de la iglesia, and knew how to read, and to read Latin. ...Ventura [also played] el tambor [the drum].”

But could I prove that this cantor, Ventura, was the man in the drawing? Fortunately, Robert Louis Stevenson (author of “Treasure Island” and “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”) was also present at that Mass in 1879. In his 1892 book “Across the Plains,” Stevenson describes the cantor as “An Indian, stone-blind and about 80 years of age, [who] conducts the singing,” adding that this man and the Indians in the choir “have the Gregorian music at their finger-ends, and pronounce the Latin so correctly that I could follow the meaning as they sang.”

Once again, Meadows’s stories make the connection. She notes that Ventura’s wife, “Teodosia agarro un puño de ceniza y le echó en la cara, pobre hombre, y lo dejó, pero se hizo ciego,” which translates as “Teodosia grabbed a fistful of ashes and threw them in his face, poor man, and left him, but he became blind.” After this, she relayed, “he went to live with his mother.” The 1860 Federal Census does indeed show Ventura living with Dorotéa.

Stevenson guesses that the cantor was “about 80 years of age” at the time. Meadows reports, “[Ventura] lived to be very old.” The Carlos Borromeo Catholic Church in Monterey records Ventura’s burial as being on July 6, 1883. This means he was 63 years old when Stevenson saw him and 67 when he passed away—astonishing in a time when life expectancy for an Indigenous child born in a California mission was on average only about 11 years.

In Isabel Meadows’s stories deep within the Smithsonian’s records, my ancestor Ventura’s life story emerges from historical chaos. Her devotion to making sure her people’s history was known was such that, at Harrington’s invitation, Isabel traveled with him around 1934 to Washington, D.C., and lived with him there, relaying information about languages and telling stories. She died thousands of miles from her community on May 22, 1939. True to his word, Harrington accompanied her body home on a train and saw that she was buried next to her mother at San Carlos Cemetery in Monterey, California.

Isabel Meadows once told Harrington, “If those Indians had not died here [at the mission], the country would be full of them here [now], telling stories.” But thanks to her commitment to preserving these stories and her partnership with Harrington, our access to some of those stories brings us close enough to hear—and honor—ancestral voices such as Ventura’s and many others.

Authors

Deborah A. Miranda

Deborah A. Miranda (Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation) is professor emerita at Washington and Lee University. A poet and an author, she wrote “Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir,” the 10th anniversary edition of which is being released in 2023.