Here are some Native American-related news stories that made headlines this week:
New count of Indian Boarding Schools: 523 and likely growing
The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) this week released an interactive digital map identifying 523 Indian boarding schools across the United States. That’s 115 more than were identified in the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report of May 2022 that counted Indian boarding schools operated, funded, or supported by the U.S. government.
The new map includes both federally operated boarding schools and institutions run by various religious entities. It also identifies known residential schools in Canada.
The project has been three years in the works, and the group’s Deputy CEO Samuel Torres (Mexica/Nahua) expects more schools will come to light.
“I believe this tool is going to greatly help our relatives who are seeking answers and who are on their own healing journeys,” he said in a statement. “Every Indigenous person in this country has been impacted by the deliberate attempt to destroy Native families and cultures through boarding schools. For us to visually see the scope of what was done to our communities and Nations at this scale is overwhelming, but this work is necessary to uncover the truth about this dark chapter in American history.”
Native News Online reports that NABS is hoping to launch a database in November containing nearly 50,000 records collected from boarding and residential schools.
Read more:
FILE - The University of California, Riverside.
University professor and accused ‘pretendian’ resigns
Andrea Smith, once a well-regarded scholar of Native American studies, has agreed to resign from the University of California at Riverside after more than a decade of accusations that she falsely claimed Cherokee identity.
VOA obtained a copy of the separation agreement signed by Smith in January 2023 and by university chancellor Kim Wilcox in December 2022. It states that Smith will teach through the summer of 2024 and will then retire as a professor emeritus with the following stipulation:
“Professor Smith agrees that her status as a professor emeritus will not be listed on the university directory information websites.”
In addition, the university will pay her related legal fees up to $5,000.
As VOA has reported previously, Native American scholars say ‘race shifting’ is prevalent in universities across North America. In a 2022 interview with VOA, Kim TallBear, (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate) a professor at the University of Alberta, explained why the practice is harmful:
"Non-Indigenous people with non-Indigenous community standpoints who pose as Indigenous and who rise through the professional ranks falsely represent our voices," TallBear said. "They theorize Indigenous peoplehood, sovereignty and anti-colonialism. They become thought leaders, institutional decision-makers and policy advisers to governmental leaders with regulatory and economic power over our peoples and lands."
Read more:
Lophophora williamsii, more commonly known as peyote, which grows in the wild in southern Texas and Mexico.
Native American Church to Washington: Protect our Peyote
The Native American Church of North America (NACNA) will next month hold a second “boots on the ground” effort in Washington, calling on federal agencies and lawmakers to help protect peyote from the effects of climate change, corporate agriculture and so-called “drug tourism.”
“We will remind federal government agencies that laws established by them in 1978 and 1994” allow Native American Church member to “exercise our rights,” church president Jon Brady posted to members on Facebook.
Peyote is a small, button-shaped cactus that contains psychoactive alkaloids and grows only in southern Texas and parts of northern Mexico. Indigenous people have used it ceremonially and medicinally for centuries.
It was banned in the United States in 1970, but the law was later amended to allow its use in “bona fide religious ceremonies of the Native American Church.”
Cherokee Nation boosts TV and film production
The Cherokee Nation has launched a new media company to consolidate its existing Cherokee Film Productions, Cherokee Film Studios, Cherokee Film Commission, and Cherokee Film Institute.
The new Cherokee Film company will continue sharing the tribe's stories through OsiyoTV and is planning new projects to tell Cherokee stories and boost the revitalization of the Cherokee language.
“Cherokee Nation has quickly become a leading hub for Indigenous storytellers in television and film,” Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said in a statement. “As we increase infrastructure, explore incentives, connect resources and remove barriers, Cherokee Nation and its businesses are helping grow and amplify television and film production in Oklahoma while making it possible for our citizens to be a part of it.”
Read more:
You can watch Cherokee Film’s documentary series Osiyo: Voices of the People, here:
Pacific Northwest tribes welcome Polynesian navigators
Hōkūle'a, a traditional Polynesian deep-sea canoe, is on a four-year voyage around the Pacific Ocean to raise awareness about climate change.
The canoe sailed into Elliott Bay in Seattle, Washington, early Wednesday morning, escorted by traditional Suquamish canoes with Muckleshoot and Hawaiian canoes there to greet them.
VOA correspondent Natasha Mozgovaya was there and filed this report:
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Tribes of US Pacific Northwest Greet Crew of Traditional Polynesian Canoe