National Native News

Today, we’re featuring the Northern Arapaho Reentry Agency as part of our ongoing Native American Justice Series . The reentry program is helping people return home from out of state federal prisons and state incarceration to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Terri Smith moves around boxes in her office filled with blankets and other supplies. She’s the program’s administrator. Smith is...

Photo: The Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation office in Utqiagvik. (Courtesy Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation) The federal government is in the process of rewriting the rules for how it issues federal contracts and some Alaska Native organizations, which depend on federal contracts to pay out benefits to shareholders, are concerned that it could impact their business. The Alaska Desk’s Alena Naiden...

In what the South Dakota Attorney General calls the end of a three-decade legal saga, courts have upheld the extradition of John Graham. Graham was convicted of the 1975 murder of Annie Mae Aquash. South Dakota Public Broadcasting’s C.J. Keene has more. Annie Mae Aquash was an American Indian Movement activist whose long-unsolved kidnapping, rape, and murder shocked South Dakota and the nation in...

Photo: This street sign was defaced in 2021 in County Tyrone, Ireland. (Courtesy Cllr. Barry Monteith / Facebook) A number of streets signs in Northern Ireland which include the island’s Indigenous language have been damaged throughout the summer. And now police are investigating the incidents as “hate crimes,” as Seo McPolin reports. Several dual-language street signs in the Iri...

Some groups are sounding the alarm on potential scams that target people who were exposed to radiation linked to U.S. nuclear weapons, which includes Native Americans. As the Mountain West News Bureau’s Yvette Fernandez reports, Congress approved and expanded funding to help the victims. It was a big win for victims of radiation exposure, when the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was ren...

California’s only Native American state lawmaker is calling on the University of California (UC) to return Native American remains and cultural items still in its possession, despite federal and state laws requiring repatriation. Christina Aanestad reports. California lawmakers condemned the University of California campuses that have failed to return thousands of Native American remains and hundr...

Photo: Kometos employees atop a new reindeer processing facility in Savoonga. (Wali Rana / KNOM) On St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, the remote village of Savoonga has long struggled with limited jobs and food security. A new reindeer processing facility hopes to help change that. KNOM’s Wali Rana visited the site to learn more about how the development could benefit the community, while als...

Photo courtesy Protect Oak Flat / Facebook A federal judge in Phoenix, Ariz. Friday seemingly cleared the way for a massive copper mining project – until the Ninth Circuit suddenly stepped in. As KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio reports, the latest court order came less than 24 hours before Oak Flat inside the Tonto National Forest would have turned into private property. That pending land exchange betw...

Photo: Knight Hall at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyo. (Kamila Kudelska / Wyoming Public Media) Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho students will have a crack at a new scholarship at the University of Wyoming (UW). Wyoming Public Radio’s Hannah Habermann has more. UW is creating the “Wind River Promise Fund”. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars will be available to tribal members to...

The 42nd annual Indigenous Journalists Association (IJA) conference wraps up Friday in Albuquerque, N.M. Buffalo’s Fire senior reporter Brian Bull was there. Nearly 400 reporters, editors, and influencers assembled at the Isleta Resort and Casino this week. Congress’ rescission and its effects on tribal radio stations were one new topic since last year, as were President Trump’s cuts to federal pr...

Hunters from Point Lay, Alaska will collaborate with an anthropologist from Russia this summer to document traditional knowledge about walruses. It’s an important part of recording traditions – and, as the Alaska Desk’s Alena Naiden from our flagship station KNBA reports, for maintaining collaboration across the Arctic. Growing up, Robert Qaummaluk Lisbourne remembers walruses starting to be...

Photo: Shishmaref, Alaska, which will receive some of the EPA clean-up funds for tar. (Courtesy Dennis Davis) It’s been more than 50 years since Alaska’s Native corporations and villages received land from the federal government under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). Some of those lands were contaminated when they were distributed, but the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has...

Photo: Kettle River. (AndrewEnns / Wikimedia ) Colville Tribal officials are hailing the discovery of a Chinook salmon in British Columbia’s Kettle River as another sign of success of their salmon reintroduction program. Spokane Public Radio’s Steve Jackson reports. It has been decades since a Chinook was last seen upstream from Coulee Dam in the Kettle River. “It’s significant because Grand Coule...

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he wants to improve Indigenous peoples’ access to traditional foods. Patrick Gilchrist has more. Standing outside a tribal health center in Fairbanks, Alaska, Sec. Kennedy told reporters last week he’s collecting ideas, but isn’t exactly sure how to achieve that goal. “I’m trying to figure out ways I can use my agency and my relat...

This week, the nonprofit Native American Rights Fund hosted its biennial tribal water symposium in partnership with the Western States Water Council. As KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio reports, Interior Department (DOI) officials took time to reassure tribes that the Trump administration is behind them – despite recent staffing cuts and Congress clawing back federal dollars. Some of the federal agency’...

Photo courtesy Gila River Police Department / Facebook Members of the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona recently revealed that the tribe’s police chief was fired following a July town hall meeting to address violent crime across the nearly 600-square-mile reservation south of Phoenix, Ariz. While leaders would not publicly confirm these claims, KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio has new details. In a...

Photo: A sign welcomes travelers to the Navajo Nation on July 13, 2021. (Katherine Davis-Young / KJZZ) A pair of rural counties in eastern Arizona could soon start seeing significant investments in fiber and broadband networks. The funding is part of a multi-state settlement with two national telecommunications companies. KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio has more on how it may help some tribal members g...

Photo: Chilkat Indian Village environmental staff and outside researchers stand on the 23-mile slide area during a site visit in June. (Avery Ellfeldt / KHNS) The Native village of Klukwan, just north of Haines, Alaska is grappling with landslide risk that’s intensifying with climate change. It’s also posing a major obstacle to the community’s growth. The village is in the thick of a researc...

A lack of reliable infrastructure is tied to worse health and economic outcomes for kids in rural Alaska. That’s according to panelists at the final day of Arctic Encounter, a symposium that just wrapped up in Anchorage, Alaska last week. Francine Moreno of Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium says Alaska has the lowest rate of in-home plumbing in the nation, which directly leads to health issue...

Photo: The Native Professional Advancement Center classroom training participant Dominique Bluehorse (Diné) was the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute 2024 Student of the Year. (Courtesy National Indian Youth Council / Facebook) More than half of Native Americans in New Mexico live in urban areas and many rely on programs to help them transition from the reservation to cities, including wor...

The Gila River Indian Community south of Phoenix, Ariz. has been grappling with guns and gang violence, largely involving juveniles. The tribe quietly fired its police chief earlier this month, days after a town hall meeting to address the issues. As KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio reports, the tribe has refused to explain why. The reservation covers about 600 square miles, with many of the tribe’s 20,...

It’s been an up and down week for former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo). On the up side, Sec. Haaland has been deemed the 2025 recipient of the Chief Standing Bear Prize for Courage. The Nebraska Examiner reports that Haaland – the first Native person to serve as a cabinet secretary who addressed the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) crisis and the oppressive legacy of...

Photo: St. Paul Island, Alaska. (mazaletel / Flickr ) With the stroke of a pen Thursday, President Donald Trump has rescinded more than $1 billion in Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds. Buffalo’s Fire reports this loss will hit both large operations, including Koahnic Broadcasting, and especially small stations, such as KUHB on St. Paul’s Island in the Bering Sea. Such stations are very tri...

Photo: Mescalero Apache Conservation Officers with BIA OJS Officers participating in Active Shooter Training in 2022. (Courtesy Mescalero Apache Tribe / Facebook) Officials with the Mescalero Apache Tribe in New Mexico recently told state lawmakers during an interim legislative meeting that they’re concerned about the impact of potential cuts to federal law enforcement on the reservation. Jeanette...

The statewide Turquoise Alert system in Arizona, initially touted as a way to swiftly disseminate info about Indigenous people who’ve gone missing, was enacted earlier this month. But as KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio reports, the first-ever alert helped safely locate a girl from Hawaii. “We are here because the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people demands our full attention and coll...