The Daily Spark

Multiple tribes headquartered in Idaho are maneuvering to start major development projects in the Treasure Valley area near the state capital of Boise. The planned projects, which are still many months away from breaking ground, would be aimed at generating revenue and supporting the tribes.

According to Don Day, a development reporter in the Boise area, there’s a joint proposal for a 557-acre development east of Boise that involves a partnership between the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe and the Coeur d’Alene Tribe. A local developer working with the tribes has stated they are putting together a mixed-use commercial and industrial project, and nearby the two tribes are planning a casino resort.

The Shoshone-Bannock Tribe is also eyeing land near Boise for a casino, which would be their fourth development of the kind. The tribe has submitted a proposal for a casino on 157 acres near the community of Mountain Home on a parcel purchased in 2020. Both the Shoshone-Bannock casino and the joint casino put forth by the Shoshone-Paiute and the Coeur d’Alene need to clear federal and state-level approvals to get underway.

On Nov. 3 Northern Cheyenne voters will have the opportunity to fill five open seats on the tribe’s council.

The council election is separate from the tribe’s special election to replace ousted president Gene Small.

Vying for the open council seat in the Ashland District are Donna Fisher and Eugene Little Coyote. Torrey Davie runs unopposed in his re-election bid to represent the Busby District.

In the Lame Deer District, six candidates are competing for three seats on the council. The candidates are Alan Joe Blackwolf, Dana Eaglefeathers, Sven Limpy, Melissa Lonebear, Henry Speelman and Corey Spotted Elk.

Election day voting will happen in Northern Cheyenne at district polling sites from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Voting will take place at the community halls in Ashland, Muddy and Birney, at the fire hall in Busby and at the Little Wolf Capitol Building in Lame Deer. 

Voters can also request an absentee ballot by submitting this form to the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Secretary.

The Northern Cheyenne Tribe's council set primary and general election dates to replace Gene Small, who was removed as president in September.

The tribe’s primary election will happen Tuesday, Nov. 24. The general election will take place Dec. 29. The new president will be sworn in Jan. 19, 2027, and will complete Small’s term, which ends in November 2028.

A resolution passed Oct. 14 and signed by Northern Cheyenne acting-President Ernest Littlemouth Sr., set in motion a special election process that is now underway. Any tribal member interested in running can file a declaration of candidacy until Oct. 23. Tribal election officials must post district voter lists in at least three public places.

Small continues to contest his removal.

Northern Cheyenne Tribal officials must appoint election judges and clerks by Oct. 23.

https://www.docdroid.com/FoYvCvK/resolution-no-doi-010-2027-special-election-pdf?

After a three-alarm fire erupted inside a south Minneapolis store on Oct. 11, the neighboring offices of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe were a mixed bag. The cause of the fire was still under investigation early in the week, Melissa Olson for Minnesota Public Radio reported. Individuals with the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa assessed some of the damage their building sustained. 

Archives from the Native bands appeared to be safe, and so did many of the supplies the tribe gives out as part of its urban community outreach. That includes food, clothing, diapers and baby formula — but the tribal team wasn’t sure where all of those items would be stored or where they’d be handed out in the near future. 

The small group of elders who were inside the building, beading when the fire broke out, safely escaped the blaze.

Native voters in eight states will have additional support services from legal observers, and poll watchers ready to help people with any issues casting ballots.

On Wednesday, the Native American Rights Fund said lawyers, law students and other volunteers will be in Alaska, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nevada and Montana during the midterm elections.

In a press release NARF said the volunteers will document any barriers, ensure election rules are followed and provide Native voters with legal counsel if necessary.

“What we want Native people to remember is this: your vote is incredibly powerful,” NARF senior staff attorney was quoted as saying. “It can influence everything from Tribal sovereignty to Native economies to having access to clean water. If you are experiencing voting trouble, do not give up. NARF can help you make sure your rights are not compromised.”

Native voters who encounter difficulties obtaining or casting a ballot can contact NARF at 866-OUR-VOTE or vote@narf.org.

On Oct. 12, three NFL teams expressed public support for Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The Minnesota Vikings, Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Rams all made dedicated posts on social media about Native culture, history and recognition. The holiday’s federal status has been the subject of some controversy under the second Trump administration.

Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2026 arrived as the influence of professional sports in shaping culture has garnered significant attention. And the holiday in early October is part of the complex relationship between Native American athletes, professional leagues and the long-running exploitation of Indigenous people.

For the next generation at the intersection of Native culture and athletic achievement, the Native American Athletic Foundation offers empowerment opportunities like the annual Native All-American Football Game. This season’s player application for the game closes Oct. 19.

The Albuquerque Isotopes received an award from Minor League Baseball for the best promotion or event this season. The award recognized the team’s Native American Heritage Night, which featured jersey designs by Pueblo artists and ceremonial buffalo dances for the crowd.

More than 9,600 people attended the game on Aug. 8, the fifth largest crowd for the team this season. It was part of the growing trend of professional baseball teams doing outreach with Native American communities in response to harm caused by stereotypical mascots. Native American Heritage Nights took place this season in Boston, San Francisco, Indianapolis and other cities.

The Isotopes partnered with the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center to work with local artists on jersey and hat designs worn by the players. Three thousand hats designed by Brittney Juancho (Isleta Pueblo) were distributed to fans for free, and thousands of jerseys designed by Evone “Snowflake” Martinez (Acoma Pueblo) were sold.

“We just asked for guidance,” Isotopes GM Chrissy Baines told Native News Online before the game. “How do we do this? How do we come across as being super authentic in creating this partnership?"

Organizers with the Missoula Public Library, local Native education and grassroots Indigenous activism are bringing back the unique multiday festival known as IndigiPalooza in July 2027.

The first two festivals each brought together hundreds of Native people and supporters from across the region to celebrate culture, resistance, art and relationships to the natural landscape. The crew behind IndigiPalooza recently shared that the upcoming two-day event is intended to be the last hurrah for this particular gathering. 

A key component of each IndigiPalooza has involved educational opportunities leading up to the convening. The prior years’ classes — Indigenous Studies for Everyone and Indigenous Resistance for Everyone — are now available online. The organizers have indicated the next IndigiPalooza class will be shared ahead of the final festival.

Jemez Pueblo purchased more than 400 acres in the Santa Fe National Forest recently, taking ownership of the site of a 19th-century abandoned logging camp. The site had been put through a land conservancy process and was managed by the Girl Scouts of New Mexico Trails, which announced the sale on Oct. 8.

The $4.5 million purchase of Rancho del Chaparral, a grassland site in the Jemez Forest watershed, gives the tribe stewardship over its ancestral homeland. The Jemez people have lived there since at least 800 B.C., according to the U.S. Department of the Interior.

In a statement about the sale, Jemez Pueblo leadership said the location will have a new management plan focused on providing tribal members with an “opportunity to rediscover and explore the cultural landscape that is mentioned in the Pueblo’s tribal history.” Plans for the Pueblo at the site include outdoor recreation, education and mental health programs, retreats and community events.

Jemez Pueblo said the purchase returns the tribe back to its cultural landscape, calling the site, “a living classroom, a church, hospital and playground.

In an up-and-down series of decisions at the end of September, California Gov. Gavin Newsom officially made Native American Day a paid state holiday, formalized an apology from the state to local tribes and then vetoed two bills pushing for greater tribal involvement in natural resource development statewide.

Newsom first declared a paid state holiday to celebrate Native American Day on the fourth Friday in September, accompanied with additional legislation to issue an official apology to tribes and place a plaque acknowledging past atrocities. 

Just a few days later, Newsom went on to veto two bills that tribal advocates hoped would give them greater say in land and water decisions. Indigenous leaders rebuked Newsom for failing to concretize the sentiments behind the holiday and the apology with formal legal mechanisms to support tribal leadership.

The Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho people who defeated Lt. Col. George Custer and the 7th Cavalry in 1876 at the Battle of the Greasy Grass were honored 150 years later with an emotional display in front of thousands at the Black Hills Pow Wow in South Dakota.

On Saturday, Native American veterans, dressed in their U.S. military garments, led the grand entry, dragging Custer’s flag into the powwow arena circle. During another song, a reenactment of Custer’s Last Stand began with a person grabbing the flag and waving it around traditional dancers in the arena. 

The dancers surrounded Custer, and eventually swarmed the person, who disappeared leaving just the flag on the ground to be stomped on by the dancers for the rest of the song.

The 38th annual Black Hills Pow Wow took place over the weekend at the Summit Arena at the Monument, in Rapid City, South Dakota.

In 2006, the Eastern Shawnee Tribe in Oklahoma elected Glenna Wallace from nearby Missouri to serve as its first female chief. Now, 20 years later, she is moving on from the role after being reelected four times for her efforts to reconnect the tribe with its history and bring about improvements for the community.

In a recent KOSU interview, Wallace described the initial hesitation she encountered in the community when she became chief two decades ago. She said that upon her initial foray into the position, the small tribal community was very divided. Over time, Wallace said the Eastern Shawnee have found greater unity as well as a better understanding of their roots through her dedicated research into the tribe’s history.

Among her many contributions to the tribe was deep investigative work into the Eastern Shawnee’s homelands in Ohio. She explained how in 1831 the ancestors of today’s Eastern Shawnee Tribe became the first group forcibly removed from Ohio and sent some 800 miles south to Oklahoma. 

Wallace said the arduous journey over the course of four months — starting in September — decimated the tribe and left only about 60 people by the late 1800s. These days, she said, there are over 4,000 members of the tribe, and she hopes her successor continues the effort of reconnecting to their Ohio homelands.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced $43 million in post-disaster and mitigation funding for projects in the Pacific Northwest late last month.

Among the communities that will see local work funded are the Tununak Native Village and the Metlakatla Indian Community in Alaska and the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation in Washington State. Funds are also going to projects in Anchorage and the Oregon cities of Astoria and Eugene.

Some of the money is intended to help regions recover from previous disasters like ex-Typhoon Halong in Alaska by supporting fixes to critical infrastructure, public building restoration, road repairs and reimbursements for costs incurred by post-disaster efforts to ensure public health and safety.

Another portion of the FEMA awards will go to hazard mitigation, including reimbursements for the costs of generators and emergency power during the 2024 Slide Ranch Fire in Yakima County, Washington.

Additionally, the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program administered by FEMA is giving funds for proactive measures to protect against natural disasters. One of these projects is an effort to raise Alaska’s Chester Lake Dam 10 feet to benefit the nearby Native community of Annette Island Reserve. Raising the reservoir, FEMA stated in a press release, is meant to increase water storage capacity, reduce power limitations and mitigate concerns about potable water availability during drought conditions.

Richard Moves Camp arrived at Alcatraz Island with elder pains, wit and prayers.

“I got a pin in my back, and it’s keeping me together,” said Moves Camp (Oglala Lakota), who’d  traveled from South Dakota. “I have to oil it once in a while, and then I got a new organ transplant.”

Moves Camp spoke to a crowd of nearly 3,000 Monday at the beginning of a sunrise gathering prayer to begin Indigenous Peoples’ Day in California. There, he honored Indigenous activists who occupied Alcatraz from 1969 to 1971 and acknowledged 19 Hopi people who were imprisoned there in 1895 for refusing to send their relatives to boarding school. Several relatives from those Hopi people also spoke. 

“As we fade off into the old spiritual world, we know now that 50 years from now the great grandchildren will still be here,” Moves Camp said. “The fire will still be here. That is the prayer that was made by the ancestors. So at this time, I'm very happy to be here. I'm glad to see all the old relatives and some of the new ones.”

Indigenous Peoples’ Day is celebrated as a federal holiday every second Monday of October in cities and tribal communities across the U.S. This year, events across the country happened over the weekend to celebrate the holiday.

The first Indigenous Peoples’ Day happened in 1992 in Berkeley, California. The day is to celebrate Indigenous culture, community and share it with non-Indigenous people.

The International Indian Treaty Council, which was founded in Standing Rock in 1974, hosted the event at Alcatraz.

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition confirmed reports and identified 14 Native American girls who were buried at Milwaukee’s Calvary Cemetery during the dark assimilation era in which boarding schools operated by churches and the federal government separated Native children from their families.

Sherri Catanach (Pojoaque Pueblo), spokesperson for the coalition, told Buffalo’s Fire that at least 11 of the girls were from the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. She said they were all between the ages of 9 and 20.

The statement came days after the National Week of Remembrance and Orange Shirt Day, awareness events about government boarding schools that took Native and First Nations people in the U.S. and Canada to force assimilation and break up tribal communities. 

The names of the girls were first published by ICT News and later confirmed by the boarding school coalition that has tracked documents and testimony outlining the history from that era. 

The 14 girls, whom burial records show died between 1884-1891, are Angeline/Angela Lafornoise, Alphonsine LeDoux, Rosalie Gladu, Ellen Laventure, Marie Jane Morris, Rosa Zuis, Mary Clementine Gladu, Madleine Wilkey, Justine Gladu, Ernestine Gladu, Matilda Smith, Virginia Plante, Maggie Nolan and Mary A. Spearry (Sperry).

Catanach said the coalition’s work documenting oral histories from boarding school survivors and  hosting events around the country to share their stories is vital today for overall child well-being.

“We want to be able to make sure that our relatives can heal from these traumas and fully understand what happened to our people,” she said. “This is American history, and educating all of us about it is essential to building a more honest and healed future for our children.”

From a private university in Ithaca, New York, to public school K-12 enrollment throughout California, Native students are losing ground when it comes to representation in educational settings. 

Last week, The Cornell Daily Sun analyzed enrollment figures for its freshman class. The data revealed a striking decline of nearly 45% in the collective representation of Black, Hispanic and Indigenous enrollment since before the 2023 ban on affirmative action. 

Though the Cornell University Factbook currently only details expected enrollment for the Class of 2030, rather than actual enrolled student populations for this semester, the factbook indicates the university expected to enroll just two American Indian students this fall, accounting for just 0.1% of all first-years. 

The Daily Sun’s Christine Savino noted these figures display the lowest level of Black, Hispanic and Indigenous student enrollment at Cornell since the Supreme Court ended race-conscious college admissions practices.

Likewise, EdSource reporters found the number of Native American students enrolled in California public schools in 2025-26 is down 30.5% from 2015 school year levels. Data also shows Native American students trailing other racial and ethnic groups in test scores and graduation rates, while chronic absenteeism is highest for these students.

The reporters note Native American students made up less than 0.5% of the public school student population in California in 2025. However, they point out the California Department of Education may undercount Native American students by as much as 90% because of the way students who identify as both Native American and Hispanic, or those who are multiracial Native American, are classified by the state.

According to Headwaters Economics, an independent nonpartisan research firm that tracks rural and tribal data, outdoor recreation in the U.S. generated $1.3 trillion in economic output throughout 2024. 

“The outdoor recreation economy is a significant and growing contributor to the U.S. economy,” the Headwaters team noted in a March report. Tourism is closely tied to outdoor recreation financial gains in the Headwaters research, and only one state, Hawaii, experienced a larger contribution to its economy from outdoor recreation in 2024 than Alaska. 

Alaska is home to 229 federally recognized tribal nations — almost half of the 574 tribes that the U.S. federal government currently recognizes. The increasing impact of tourism and outdoor recreation, as well as the tradeoffs that come with rising visitation, climate change and land use decision making, highlight the unique role of places like the Kodiak Brown Bear Center and Lodge, which is owned and operated by Alaska Natives.

Journalist Gwen Pratesi describes in a recent Outside feature how the Alutiiq-run lodge on Kodiak Island offers support for local youth to prepare for potential careers and pathways in Indigenous-led tourism. Young Alutiiq people have opportunities to learn about the Kodiak bears that draw many tourists to their area, and they can participate in apprenticeship programs and hands-on training for various related job tracks.

In her piece, Pratesi notes the Kodiak subspecies of brown bear is only found in the archipelago that includes the Alutiiq lodge, and these isolated brown bears can grow about as large as polar bears in size. The bear population there, she notes, is one of the densest in the world, with nearly one bear per square mile. 

The Alutiiq people have coexisted with these massive creatures for millennia, and the sacred importance of the bears in Alutiiq culture informs the wildlife viewing experience these guides offer.  

With early voting underway in New Mexico, President Barack Obama shared a video on Wednesday endorsing Democratic governor candidate Deb Haaland. 

Haaland is from Laguna Pueblo and is ahead of her Republican opponent Gregg Hull in the polls. A poll released Oct. 4 by KOB 4 and SurveyUSA showed Haaland with a 7% lead in the race; 12% of voters said they remain undecided.

Early voting started in the state on Oct. 6, which was also the last day to register to vote. Voters who requested absentee ballots should receive those in the mail soon, and people can vote in person at county clerk offices statewide. Early voting expands Oct. 17 with additional early voting centers opening across the state. 

Obama praised Haaland’s start as a community organizer and canvasser. Haaland worked on his 2012 re-election campaign as a Native American Vote Director in the state.

“That's what Deb did on my campaign, knocking on thousands of doors in Indian Country,” Obama said in the video. “And all these years later, she's still listening to folks in every corner of New Mexico. As governor, Deb will lower costs, strengthen education, build safer communities and protect your healthcare because she knows what families are up against.”

Haaland said she was honored to “earn” Obama’s endorsement.

At the Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s 2026 Summit for America’s Youth, a contingent of 22 Boys & Girls Club members representing Native communities traveled to Washington, D.C., to influence nationwide policymaking.

According to a press release from the organization, the group on The Hill included teenagers from the Flathead Reservation and Lake County, Montana; Gila River, Arizona; United American Indian Involvement in California; Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation in Kansas; and Nowata, Oklahoma.

The program involved pairing Native youth with club mentors who supported them in leading service projects throughout the year in their local communities. During their D.C. trip, the participants also spent a week building effective leadership and advocacy skills before applying those skills and their firsthand knowledge to communicate their priorities to congressional officials and staff.

One group member from the Gila River Indian Community worked on addressing substance abuse among Indigenous youth for her project. She collected data about the issue and demonstrated how it intersects with mental health and community challenges that go back through many generations. Her advocacy in D.C. focused on the need for stronger support systems and expanded mental health resources in Indian Country. 

In the press release describing this project and the summit, the Boys & Girls Club wrote, “When Native youth have the opportunity to tell their stories and speak about the issues that matter most to them, powerful things can happen.”