The Daily Spark

A Gun Lake Tribe Potawatomi citizen currently incarcerated by the Michigan Department of Corrections has sued jail officials over harassment that allegedly happened when a racist AI-image was created and posted in common areas for inmates to see.

Dylan Leenheer said corrections officers at the Newberry Correctional Facility altered his inmate identification card to superimpose over his face a feathered headdress, beaded earrings and buckskin clothing.

According to the Northern Michigan Journalism Collaborative, the flyer caused further issues after it was removed from other inmates' view.

Leenheer, a Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi citizen, said other inmates made racial jokes and comments about Native stereotypes, asking “where his headdress and tomahawk were, and how many buffalo his family owned,” according to the report.

“It’s just a whole bunch of crazy s*** every single day,” he was quoted as saying.

Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte served as the country’s first Native American medical doctor, and in 1907 her brand-new home on the Omaha Tribe Reservation doubled as her hospital.

There, she treated Omaha tribal members with modern medical services she learned after graduating as valedictorian in 1889 from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania.  

Picotte also offered her home for assistance on other tribal matters, such as government regulations and programs thrust into reform by the Dawes Act, a federal program passed in 1887 that broke up Native lands and reallocated them for private ownership. She died in 1915. Her home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2010.

Now that home is owned by the Picotte Center, a nonprofit organization that does historic preservation for the doctor’s work.

According to the Nebraska Examiner, the Picotte Center will take community input and work with historic preservation societies to forge the house into part of its larger cultural heritage plans, which also include the first proper hospital she had built shortly before she died.

Amid ascendant costs for many everyday necessities in the U.S. and scarce housing stock on reservation land, two Oregon-based tribes have been awarded competitive federal funding to build more affordable housing for tribal members.

The Warm Springs Housing Authority and the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians will each receive $5 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Indian Housing Block Grant Competitive Program, according to reporting by the Oregon Capital Chronicle’s Mia Maldonado. 

Each of the Oregon tribes receiving grants will construct seven single-family homes for citizens. 

Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation voters can now request absentee ballots to vote by mail in tribal primary and general elections.

Voters must meet certain conditions and have their application approved by tribal election officials. Registered voters can qualify by demonstrating they will not be in the Fort Berthold Reservation on Sept. 22 for the primary election or Nov. 3 for the MHA Nation general election. 

Students, active duty military and people hospitalized outside Fort Berthold who are registered to vote should qualify.

Other voters encouraged to apply are people who can demonstrate “extreme physical disability where physically traveling is impossible” according to the MHA Nation election notice. 

Qualified voters must be enrolled with the Three Affiliated Tribes and be a legal resident of Fort Berthold Reservation. Tribal officials encourage requests be made in person but can accommodate requests made by mail.

In a major decision with implications for Native voters in the upcoming midterm elections, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled against changes that would have curtailed mail-in voting access.

“The Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge,” the court stated in its decision Monday, preserving mail-in voting options that are disproportionately utilized by Indigenous voters in many states. 

Civic engagement groups and human rights advocates have been outspoken critics of the proposed changes to mail-in voting that were pushed by President Donald Trump. These activists have pointed out that in addition to Native voters, older adults and rural people rely heavily on vote-by-mail options too. 

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from the majority opinion striking down the federal government’s hoped-for changes to mail-in voting.

A significant renewable energy project on the Navajo Nation has exposed gaps in lease and tax policies and the reason a lack of community input can force these developments to stumble.

According to High Country News, the Painted Desert Power project brought immediate skepticism that it could actually scale and complete its plan to cover 1,000 acres of rangeland with solar panels. 

What was supposed to be one of the largest solar project installations in the United States turned into another example of tribal government priorities disregarding concerns from tribal citizens. 

“That made this whole project, as it kept progressing, more and more like we were being sold down the river. Or being taken advantage of, and not given any real voice,” Tyrel Jones, a local Navajo land use planning committee member for the project told High Country News.

Twelve tribal law enforcement officers from Wisconsin, Nebraska, Wyoming, Washington and North Dakota are the first class to complete basic training at Camp Grafton’s Indian Country Police Officer Training Program.

Recruits must complete the 14-week course in order to work as police with the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, which oversees law enforcement operations across Indian Country. Until now, that training was only offered at the federal law enforcement training facility in New Mexico.

The Camp Grafton training gives cadets an opportunity to complete their work closer to home, federal and tribal officials told the North Dakota Monitor. There, cadets take part in core law enforcement classes like report writing, court testimony, emergency response driving, marksmanship and an introduction to the web of jurisdictions that make up policing in Indian Country.

The training started after congressional funding was secured in 2020 by North Dakota Senator John Hoeven.

The next cadet class begins training at Camp Grafton on Oct 5.

The first Tlingit opera in recorded history took the stage Sept. 11 in Juneau, Alaska, depicting the early 1800s Tlingit-Russian wars. The original opera–which runs until Sept. 20–is based on historical accounts and Tlingit oral traditions. 

“Kutulagaaw: The Tlingit – Russian Battles” came together through a partnership involving the Sealaska Heritage Institute and Perseverance Theatre. 

Performed in the Tlingit language, the opera also draws on traditional Tlingit musical and performing arts approaches. According to the Sealaska Heritage Institute, Tlingit performances formerly took place in natural amphitheaters located within mountain valleys.  

Many local Juneau businesses are also offering deals for viewers traveling to the city to take in the first-of-its-kind opera.

On Sept. 11, Tex Hall told a group at the Harvard Kennedy School that free press restrictions in Indian Country played a role in his disqualification from a tribal chairman election on the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation in North Dakota.

He appeared on a panel alongside several other Native Americans and voting rights groups from across the country at an event hosted by the Project on Indigenous Governance and Development at the Harvard Kennedy School. The event was held in collaboration with Buffalo’s Fire and the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance.

During four panel discussions, speakers said that the 2026 election has already brought access issues for Native American voters and prospective candidates. The issues include administrative changes not made public, regular polling sites suddenly closed, mail-in ballot misinformation and other potential violations of the Voting Rights Act.

Addressing the lack of free press rules or ordinances within tribal communities was described as an effective and critical means to improve access and information for elections. Tribes that have implemented free press protections have noticed better tribal governance overall and more civic participation in elections, panelists said. 

Only 5 of the 575 federally recognized tribal nations have free press protections in their tribal charters or constitutions.

In eastern Montana, a specialized charter school that’s part of Billings Public Schools now offers the district’s first standalone class to teach students how to speak the Crow language. 

The district teaches approximately 16,000 students, many of them from the nearby Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations. This school year, for the first time, certified Crow instructors are teaching a unique class to middle and high-school students at Billings Multilingual Academy.

The Crow language is classified as “definitely endangered” by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. The Billings Gazette’s Alex Mitchell reports that earlier efforts by Billings Public Schools paved the way for the new class, and three other Indigenous languages are offered online by the Billings Multilingual Academy. 

The new class utilizes resources from the Crow Language Consortium, which offers many of its instructional materials on its website. 

A delegation from Native communities in the U.S. are in Derry, Ireland, this week for a public meeting to affirm agreements that develop “International Solidarity” between Irish and Indigenous people.

The Derry Peace and Conflict International initiative is organized by the Bloody Sunday Trust.

On social media, the host, Museum Free Derry, pointed out that the experiences of Irish people and Indigenous peoples in the United States are connected through “the impact of colonization, displacement, and attempts to suppress culture, identity and history.”

According to the Derry Journal, in 1985, Indigenous activists, including Clyde Bellecourt of the American Indian Movement, traveled to Derry and took part in the Bloody Sunday Commemoration in solidarity with the Bloody Sunday families and their campaign for truth and justice.

This week’s visitors include people from the Indigenous group Honor the Earth. The group brought several Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne organizers, including Krystal Two Bulls, Cheyenna “Chey” Morgan and Joseph White Eyes. Big Wind Carpenter, from Wind River Tribe, is also in Ireland for the event.

One of the largest oil and natural gas reservoirs recorded in United States history sits approximately 7,000 feet below the ground in the San Juan Region Basin, through a dense rock layer known as the Mancos Shale Formation.

The Southern Ute Indian Tribe and federal officials have started to move forward with a development plan that would target the energy resource. Now, the public has a window to give its say on the matter. If the plan is approved by the Bureau of Land Management, it would develop approximately 108,000 acres, including 64,000 acres of tribal mineral trust for tribal energy development.

A 30-day scoping period for this project began on Sept. 5. An in-person meeting will happen on Sept. 24 from 6-8 p.m. MST at the Sky Ute Casino in Ignacio, Colorado.

Written comments are also accepted by the BLM.

According to the federal government notice, issues that could result from developing energy in the Mancos Shale system include impacts to air and water quality that could impact people, vegetation and wildlife. Cultural and historic sites will also have to undergo review to reduce or prevent harm.

The public comment period ends Oct. 5.

The Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage recently changed hands from federal government ownership to the local Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. The campus dates back to the 1990s, and the Indian Health Service officially owned the building since it opened – although tribal organizations have operated programs and services at the center.

A significant shift that will accompany the change in ownership involves funding opportunities to maintain the building and modernize its facilities, according to Alaska Business Magazine. Under the new ownership, the Tribal Health Consortium can now pursue federal facility-cost funding that’s available to eligible tribally owned or leased facilities. Additional financing and philanthropic tools are now on the table too, according to the magazine’s reporting. 

Even before the Tribal Health Consortium took ownership of the Anchorage medical center, the consortium invested $462 million in the building – the largest investment in the hospital’s history. That investment included $257 million to create additional spaces for patients in the emergency services department, as well as a drive-through ambulance entrance and dedicated spaces for patients with mental health and substance use concerns. 

The Tribal Health Consortium also proposed a second phase of improvements that would address the hospital’s overall capacity with the addition of three floors of inpatient beds, room conversions to provide private inpatient spaces and the construction of a helipad. 

After years of duplicative efforts around supporting the Lower Trinity River’s salmon populations in California, the Hoopa Valley Tribe and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife are finally teaming up.

The new partnership will feature one jointly utilized weir – a type of small dam – on the Hoopa Valley Reservation. This weir will temporarily contain fish for both scientific examination and selective harvest by the tribe, according to a press release from CDFW.

Previously, each entity maintained its own independent weir in a unique location along the river. The hope is that coordination at the new single site will enable more effective sharing of personnel and equipment. The state and the tribe will be able to maximize funding opportunities too, and removing in-river infrastructure from the two other weirs is expected to improve fish passage and survival in the Lower Trinity.

The Advance Native Political Leadership organization seeks to capture up-to-date information about Native elected officials throughout the United States. According to its research, just 0.07% of U.S. elected officials are Native American, Alaska Native or Native Hawaiian. The organization, which aims to address barriers to Native political power, estimates it would take electing more than 17,000 Indigenous leaders to all levels of government to reach representational parity in elected office alone. 

Indigenous women, in particular, are underrepresented in U.S. politics, the nonprofit adds on its website.

With prominent Native leaders heading to the fall general elections – like Alaska’s Mary Peltola (Yup’ik) and Minnesota’s Peggy Flanagan (White Earth Nation) – the nonprofit notes demographics are changing. In 2024, Advance Native Political Leadership reported 253 Native candidates ran for office, representing 113 tribal nations across 25 states. The website states this was the highest number of Indigenous candidates in U.S. history.

The organization maintains an active Native candidate map, as well as research insights, current endorsements and resources to support Native leadership. 

Kansas University, alongside artistic advocacy partners in the state, hosts The Indigenous Arts Initiative in the city of Lawrence. According to KU News, the program will feature Lakota artist Rhonda Holy Bear and award-winning casting director Stacey Rice in mid-September. 

Holy Bear offers a series of free, public workshops exploring connections between Lakota philosophy and artistic expression. Her sessions will primarily focus on moccasin pattern making and Pahá Stitch, a style of traditional Lakota beadwork. Holy Bear’s multi-day offerings run from Sept. 14 to Sept. 16.

Then on Sept. 19, Rice will hold a Casting for TV & Film: Indigenous Perspectives workshop. Rice brings her Tuscarora heritage to her work as a casting director in Los Angeles, and her portfolio includes “Reservation Dogs” and “Fancy Dance” as well as “Euphoria,” “The Leftovers” and “MaXXXine.” Her presentation will cover ways for Indigenous artists to get started in the entertainment industry, and she’ll introduce guidance on building skills, finding opportunities and sustaining a career in the field. 

Last week, the federal government said it will fund Ojibwe, Diné, Acoma Keres, Lakota/Dakota and Lushootseed language programs through $6.5 million in grants awarded by the Bureau of Indian Education.

Traditional language programs in rural tribal nations across the southwest and Great Plains received some money for digital resources and in-person instruction to support language revitalization services.

This includes funding for an elementary education degree program at Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University in Wisconsin, for Acoma Keres cultural and language instruction that expands to students as young as 3 years old in New Mexico and for resources to build out digital libraries for language immersion schools in Standing Rock and the Navajo Nation.

The Chief Leschi Schools in Washington was awarded money to hire a full-time high school instructor to teach Lushootseed, the language for the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, which wants the high school program to develop into a pipeline where advanced learners go to area schools and teach the language.

In a statement, BIE director Tony Dearman (Cherokee Nation) said the funds affirm federal support for Native American language revitalization within schools: “Tribal languages and cultures are important to Tribes and to the cultural identity of our students and communities. Each of these communities is finding its own path to strengthen language and culture, and these investments help sustain that work for generations to come.”

Funding came in part through an agreement with the National Fund for Excellence in American Indian Education, a foundation chartered by Congress to lead these language initiatives with tribes.

Program coordinator for the National Fund, Roo George-Warren (Catawba Nation), said the tribal ground funded by the BIE “represents a significant expansion” for language revitalization models.

“We're connecting schools with world-class experts in revitalization and immersion schooling,” George-Warren said.

In the first year since Wisconsin’s Wild Rice Stewardship Council launched to protect the culturally significant crop, wild rice harvests have increased thanks to a wet spring followed by dry late summer conditions. The Bad River Reservation, headquarters of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, hosts the largest natural wild rice bed in the Great Lakes basin.

Wisconsin Public Radio’s Danielle Kaeding reported from the state’s inaugural Wild Rice Week, where Ojibwe leaders celebrated the plentiful harvests of “manoomin.”

Wisconsin wildlife officials told Kaeding that when the plant is in its floating leaf stage around early summer, sudden increases in water levels can cause substantial problems. Shoreline development on Lake Superior, pollution and storms driven by climate change all threaten wild rice harvests as well. Many lakes where wild rice no longer grows are targets for the council to eventually try to replenish the natural resource.

The National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center based in Lame Deer, Montana, is highlighting a pair of Tribal Consultation deadlines for written testimony advocating for women, children and families.

Submissions for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children & Families Tribal Consultation is due by Friday, Sept. 25, at 5 p.m. ET. The NIWRC offers Talking Points and information about providing testimony on its website. 

Additionally, testimony for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women Tribal Consultation is due by Monday, Oct. 12. The NIWRC provides further resources for engaging in this process online.