Here is a look at some of the top Native American-related stories making headlines this week:
New York nixes bill to protect Native burial sites from desecration
New York’s governor has vetoed a bill that would have protected ancient Native American burial sites from private land developers.
The Protection of Unmarked Graves Act passed the state legislature unanimously in June. It would have required construction companies to stop work on private property if they encountered human remains and set up a committee including the state archaeologist to coordinate their removal and reburial elsewhere.
Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed the bill on December 30. In a memo she said she recognized the need for a to handle human remains “in a way that is respectful to lineal descendants or culturally affiliated groups,” but vetoed it because she said it failed to “balance the rights of property owners with the interests of the families of lineal descendants and other groups.”
New York, New Jersey and Wyoming are the only U.S. states that do not have laws protecting unmarked graves on private land from being desecrated.
According to Native News Online, there have been several grave desecrations on Long Island. In 2003, a developer unearthed a mass Native burial site on his property, then built a horse barn over the site.
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On August 13, 1954, Public Law 588, Western Oregon Indian Termination Act was signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Feds to return long-held funds to Klamath Tribes
President Joe Biden has signed a law giving the Klamath Tribes of Oregon self-governance over money that has been held in trust for more than half a century.
In 1954, the federal government terminated its relationship with the Klamath and Modoc Tribes and the Yahooskin Band of Snake Indians — now collectively known as the Klamath Tribes. This occurred during the so-called “termination era,” in which 109 tribes were terminated from federal benefits and lost treaty rights to more than a million acres of timber-rich land.
That land was the subject of legal claims against the U.S. for mismanagement of tribal assets. Tribal funds were set aside by members recorded on the “final roll” taken in 1954 to pursue that litigation. Later, funds the tribes won in judgments against the U.S. were added to the fund.
Congress in 1986 restored federal recognition but held those funds in trust.
The Klamath Tribe Judgement Fund Repeal Act, which became law on December 21, requires the Interior Department to disburse to those funds to the tribe “as soon as practicable after the date of enactment.”
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Questions, accusations of racism over death of Native woman in South Dakota jail
The family and community in Rapid City, S.D., are grief-stricken and demanding answers in the case of young Lakota woman who died in jail just days after giving birth to a baby.
In May 2021, then-19-year-old Abbey Lynn Steele gave birth to a baby whose urine tested positive for methamphetamine. South Dakota is the only state in the U.S. that makes ingesting a controlled substance a felony. Steele was charged and released, pending trial.
On November 16, 2022, Steele was brought to the Pennington County Jail for failing to comply with conditions of her initial release. The arrest came five days after she had given surgically-assisted birth to a second child. Later that day, she was found not breathing and taken to the hospital and put on life support. She died on December 2.
Her death has opened debate about whether the state’s ingestion law should be changed. The law’s supporters say it holds drug users accountable in a state where meth use is on the rise. Proponents of the bill, including the American Civil Liberties Union, say South Dakota spends a disproportionate amount of money incarcerating people for drug ingestion — money that would be better spent on addiction treatment programs. They also argue that felony convictions make it harder for released prisoners to find work.
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A red handprint is a symbol that is used to indicate solidarity with missing and murdered Indigenous persons.
Colorado beefs up efforts to find Indigenous missing and murdered
Colorado has launched a new statewide alert system to address the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous persons.
“It’s needed, because we … as Indigenous people, have been silenced too long, and abused too long and not taken seriously,” said Daisy Bluestar, a Southern Ute advocate and member of the Missing & Murdered Indigenous Relatives Taskforce of Colorado, which pushed for the new system.
When an Indigenous person is reported missing, law enforcement now has eight hours to alert the Colorado Bureau of Investigation in cases of a missing adult and two hours to report a missing child.
In the case of a missing Indigenous child, an Amber Alert will now go out statewide, messaging residents’ phones; local and state law enforcement, media outlets and other stakeholders will then be alerted.
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Native American students high fiving as they pass each other at the University of California, Riverside, June 26, 2014.
California bill would speed up university repatriations of remains, artifacts
In a related story, three decades after NAGPRA was enacted, thousands of Native American remains and funerary objects linger in collections across the U.S., many of them at colleges and universities. But these institutions complain the repatriation process is complicated and expensive.
University of California campuses hold hundreds of thousands of remains and artifacts, but a state audit released in November revealed that NAGPRA compliance has been spotty; only two out of the university’s 10 campuses had repatriated the majority of their collections.
State Senator Bill Dodd, a Democrat, has introduced legislation that would require the campuses to allocate sufficient resources for repatriation efforts and to consult with tribes.
“Universities said, ‘We’ll do it, we’ll do it, we don’t need new laws,’” Dodd said. “Well, obviously, we do, because they haven’t been able to adhere to that.”
“The least we can do is budget adequately so that the time and money can be found to return those items to the tribes,” he added.
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