Our lead story: a look at some of the MMIWG events across the country for Monday's National Red Dress Day, when communities gathered to honour and remember the lives of missing or murdered Indigenous women and girls.
MONTANA, USA: https://youtu.be/bbuOPWniKTI?si=8WH0PW5hbJ7iH4x7
Herb shot this photo in the Badlands. He was so happy.
Now is the time, we are the ones we have been waiting for... —Hopi Prophecy
By Trace Hentz, blog editor
My entire childhood I had plenty of food. This is not true for all humans, I know. Look at the news across the world, like in Gaza. When it comes to writing about adoption or world events, I know I’m doing something right if I am afraid.
I spent most of my life afraid of upsetting people, avoiding that. Some might say that is low self-esteem but I think being afraid, fear itself, is a call to action. If you are afraid, then you know you are doing something right. You are challenging yourself and breaking down your thoughts into something you can fix or not.
I could not change what happened in my childhood but I could change how I looked at being adopted. I could drop judgment. I could stop blaming my adoptive parents and my natural parents. I could turn “being adopted” into something good—or try to make my life and other lives better.
Years ago, I heard Noam Chomsky on Democracy Now describe how the occupiers of Palestine are using food insecurity to keep Palestine children alive but not enough to thrive! Too little food and starvation can be used as a weapon of war—with long-term consequences. Brains and bodies are affected long-term.
That is exactly what has happened here on American soil. YES! The American government only feeds American Indians junk with commodities (boxed or canned food and very little vegetables). The diabetes epidemic is living proof it’s working. Plus there are not enough jobs to feed ourselves. That way we Indians will be too weak to protest reservation living conditions. That way we’ll stay depressed or immobile. That way we’ll self-medicate with alcohol or drugs. That way many of our men will be imprisoned. That way we won’t be in the way when the government and industry wants to take more resources like copper, coal, uranium and shale gas. Reservations were purposefully isolated so American (and Canadian) governments could totally control what we received—especially food, blankets, housing, medical care, etc.
Governments still keep Indians poor. The occupiers claimed they wanted Indians to be farmers, settle in one place, but not exactly on “farm-able land.” Think of the Badlands, a dry arid remote place, not exactly farmland.
Most of us Lost Birds who were adopted out didn’t have food insecurity or starvation growing up. It was not something we had to worry about. Lost Birds/Adoptees need to realize the WAR is still being waged on Indians in many subtle ways. And if we use our minds in a good way, and come together, maybe WE can tackle food insecurity on reservations that still exists!
Maybe just maybe being adopted out was destined to give us the mind and ideas and courage necessary to feed our tribal families who have been occupied and starved into submission.
2004:
When I got married in 2004, my husband Herb flew out to Rapid City, South Dakota (where I was visiting my relatives) and I drove us through the Badlands to Porcupine (Oglala Lakota Reservation) to see my relative Ellowyn Locke. (Herb had never been to South Dakota and I also drove him to see the town of Deadwood.)
One of the chores we needed to do was to go pick up commodities.
We drove my Chevy Tracker to the distribution center and Herb had many boxes of canned food on his lap. My small SUV was stacked and packed and Ellowyn was holding a box of cans as I drove us to her house.
Mostly this food was canned, but there were some cans of peanuts, powdered milk, lard, flour, boxed cereal, etc. None of this food is good for you... long-term. Ellowyn was on dialysis for her diabetes, and it's true the food sent from the federal government is not healthy and meant to harm their health. (Porcupine and Wounded Knee is a food desert, with no grocery stories close by, but Sharp's Corner had a gas station filled with junk food, snack foods, and sugary drinks.)
Herb told Ellowyn that he grew up in Harlem (New York City) and his family had the same commodities - boxed cheese, powdered milk, and cans of fruit and vegetables. Nothing was fresh.
It was not the first time I noticed that Ellowyn had one head of cabbage to last one month, along with a few carrots and a few potatoes. That was all the fresh food she had until the next distribution. We usually drove south to Chadron, Nebraska to buy meat, when I was there every summer.
Ellowyn tried to grow fresh vegetables on her land, and had a small patch down by a creek that was totally hidden from the road and her brother's roaming horses could not get to it, or they'd eat it all.
Since the 1990s, if I drove to Pine Ridge, I'd stop at a grocery store first to buy fresh lemons, oranges, veggies and fresh meat, before I got to her house. And I'd buy the biggest bag of dog food I could carry, since Ellowyn usually had at least one big dog guarding her house in Porcupine.
I also brought her supplies, like beads and fabric, since she sewed quilts, to sell to tourists. I never went there without a carload of gifts and supplies. And I never left without a carload of gifts she made me! (She made my wedding dress!)
Please be generous with your relatives, and send money, or bring gifts and supplies if you go to visit. Many of us do not live on the rez, and we don't learn generosity growing up.
If you do go home, bring them seeds and fresh ideas on ways to grow fresh food.
Note: This American Life is produced for the ear and designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
Sierra Crane Murdoch has been on our show before. She reports on Indigenous communities out west. Back in 2023, she got a call from a man in Montana, Kevin Howard. He said his daughter Mika had been killed in a hit-and-run. Local police were dragging their feet. He thought the driver might get away with it. The driver was white. Mika was Native, a citizen of the Blackfeet Nation.
Lots of Native people are killed in hit-and-runs, and the drivers are rarely brought to justice. And Sierra thought she might be able to document why by diving into Mika's case, because Mika's parents had recordings of nearly all their interactions with law enforcement. Mika's parents did some other things, too. They were very strategic and did some extraordinary things other families had not tried to make sure Mika's case was one that the authorities could not ignore.
That story and how it unfolded, and what it's like to be a couple making that happen, that's going to be our whole show today. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. And with that, I hand it over to Sierra.
LISTEN: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/858/transcript
Native America Calling MMIWG May 5th
OTTAWA — The Federal Court has rejected the federal government's motion to dismiss a claim for monetary relief in a class-action lawsuit brought by non-status individuals and Métis who were involved in the so-called "'60s Scoop."
It's also granting the plaintiffs' request for a motion declaring that the Crown had a duty of care to these kids — but only the ones placed or adopted through Saskatchewan’s Adopt Indian Métis [AIM] program.
The '60s Scoop refers to a period when governments in Canada oversaw the large-scale removal of Indigenous children from their homes to live outside of their communities, mostly with non-Indigenous caregivers.
A class-action settlement for survivors saw the federal government pay about $750 million in compensation — but Métis were largely excluded from that because child welfare services for them were run by the provinces.
Métis and non-status individuals who were apprehended as children from their families filed a class-action lawsuit arguing Canada should compensate them as well — but the Federal Court says Ottawa is not liable.
"This is because the federal government directly funded AIM, which, in the context of the historical relationship, creates the proximity necessary to establish a duty of care," wrote Justice Sébastien Grammond in the decision released April 29. "The harm was foreseeable and there are no countervailing policy considerations negating such a duty."
The AIM program ran newspaper campaigns that advertised Métis children available for adoption.
Grammond wrote that when the federal government funded that program, it would have known the outcome would be the permanent separation of Indigenous children from their families and communities.
"This was obvious from the grant application, and even from the name of the program itself, as adoption severs the relationship between a child and their biological parents," he wrote.
"What matters is that funding the program enabled the harm it allegedly caused to class members."
Manitoba Métis Federation president David Chartrand, whose organization was an intervener in the case, said he was disappointed by the decision.
"But I think at the end of the day, the question really has to (be) to the federal government of Canada," he said.
"How can you settle the First Nations and leave the Métis and non-status out? The federal government will definitely have to look in a mirror and ask themselves that question."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 1, 2025.
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In southern California, a coalition of Native American tribes, community advocates, and law enforcement are holding their first-ever summit to address Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP).
Danielle Bush is the program director for MMIP San Diego, which will host the summit this Saturday at the Viejas Casino and Resort. She says one of the breakout sessions will be on human trafficking.
“What are the warning signs, red flags of that? And what to do if you or a loved one, or you just see someone who might be in that situation what steps you can take, because we’re trying to end that heinous crime in the community.”
Another breakout session will be with regional law enforcement.
“The goal of that is to educate people about the Savannah Act and about the Feather Alert, and what are your rights, and how to proceed if you have a missing relative or anything that law enforcement can provide support on and building those relationships.”
The final breakout session will be on healing and support services, specifically for the tribal community.
Bush says the San Diego area is close to the U.S-Mexican border, which poses challenges.
“With our proximity to the border and for other reasons, San Diego is a hotspot for human trafficking. I believe third in the country, it’s up there. It’s definitely an issue in the community that we’ve been trying a multi-pronged approach to attacking.”
Bush says MMIP San Diego hopes to grow its resources, so invites anyone in the southern California region to reach out and connect with the organization.
National Native News: https://www.nativenews.net/
KEEP READING:
Editor's note: The below interview contains spoilers for the Dark Winds Season 3 finale.
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Members of the Tsilhqot'in Nation were at the United Nations headquarters in New York City on Thursday calling for the British Columbia and Canadian governments to help expand support services in the battle against the toxic drug crisis.
Chief Francis Laceese said the crisis is a "continuation" of threats Indigenous Peoples have faced in the form of residential schools and the smallpox epidemic that devastated Indigenous communities in B.C. in the early 1860s.
"We weren't supposed to be here anymore. The drug crisis is a continuation of this threat to our survival," Laceese said of Canada's residential schools, which separated more than 150,000 Indigenous children from their families.
"I think the government has to intervene, especially the Canadian government and British Columbia, to help us with this crisis," he said.
There had been a meeting recently with B.C. officials to discuss the crisis and impending closure of a four-bed detox centre in Williams Lake, he noted.
Thursday's news conference, which the U.N. says was sponsored by Canada's permanent mission to the world body, came one year after the Tsilhqot'in National Government declared a local state of emergency following a spike in deaths from toxic drug poisoning in its six member nations in central B.C.
"I think the statistics will show how many people have passed just in our community or at the nation level, B.C. level," said Laceese, the chief of Tl'esqox First Nation and vice chief of the Tsilhqot'in National Government.
Asked about harm-reduction measures such as overdose prevention sites and B.C.’s program that provides prescription alternatives to toxic illicit drugs, the executive director of the Tsilhqot'in National Government said access is a challenge because of the remote nature of many communities.
“We don’t have a lot of those,” Jenny Philbrick said of harm-reduction services. “We’re looking for total wraparound services moving forward for our people.”
The First Nations Health Authority released data this month showing 427 members of First Nations in B.C. died of a toxic drug overdose last year.
It marked a 6.8 per cent decrease from 2023, but the death rate was still an average of 6.7 times higher than other residents of the province.
The health authority's chief medical officer, Dr. Nel Wieman, said that represents "the largest gap" between First Nations members and others since B.C. declared a public health emergency over toxic drugs in 2016.
The Tsilhqot'in Nation said last April when it declared the local state of emergency that toxic drugs, combined with the historical and ongoing harms of colonialism, were contributing to higher rates of overdose deaths among Indigenous Peoples.
The statement called on "all ministries and agencies to work together to end this loss of lives" and pointed to a lack of treatment facilities.
Chief Roger William with the Tsilhqot'in National Government told Thursday's press conference that they need help to address the crisis "in our own way," in part through culturally centred programming
"On-the land treatment processes. Supportive recovery through equine therapy. Funding to support our culture and language," he said.
He said Tsilhqot'in members often face racism and discrimination in health-care settings, such as hospital emergency rooms, and they need provincial and federal help to improve access to treatment and recovery services.
William said expanding supportive housing is also a key part of the fight against the toxic drug crisis. The basic needs of Tsilhqot'in members must be met in order to stop their "people from falling into using drugs," he said.
He said there had been some progress working with government.
"We're saying that it's not enough" to address the crisis, he said.
William noted his nation is not the only First Nation in B.C. grappling with the crisis, and others have also declared states of local emergency.
"(We) want to find space for all First Nations to come together and talk about solutions," he said.
Sierra William, a member of the Xeni Gwet'in community where Roger William serves as chief, also took part in Thursday's press conference.
She said smallpox, residential schools and the Sixties Scoop — during which children were taken from their homes and adopted by predominantly non-Indigenous families — had all led to trauma in Indigenous communities.
Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission outlined a decade ago what must happen to improve the well-being of Indigenous Peoples, she said.
"If the calls to action were to be realized, some of our people wouldn't have a reason to turn to drugs," she said.
William said for her, self care doesn't mean taking a bubble bath.
"Self care for us is doing things to connect us to our culture, to our ways of life. The exact things (that) were taken away from us through colonization."
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission had called for sustainable funding for existing and new healing centres to address the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual harms caused by residential schools, William noted.
The commission, which was tasked with researching Canada's residential school system, found the institutions were rife with abuse.
The commission estimated 6,000 children died in the schools, the last of which closed in 1996, though experts have said the actual death toll could be much higher.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 24, 2025.
More than three decades after the passage of a federal law mandating the return of Native American remains, the University of Iowa has emerged as a national leader — making nearly all of its holdings available to tribes.
In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, a landmark law that compelled museums and universities to return thousands of stolen Native American remains and cultural items to their tribe of origin.
Over a decade prior, Iowa passed the Iowa Burials Protection Act of 1976, the first law in the nation to protect ancient Native American burial sites. It required that all discovered human remains be reported to the state archaeologist and allowed for their return to tribal communities — setting a precedent for repatriation long before federal law mandated it.
In response, the UI established an Indian Advisory Council to the Office of the State Archaeologist, creating a formal role for tribal voices in decisions about ancient human remains. Today, Suzanne Wanatee Buffalo, the daughter of founding member Don Wanatee, continues to serve on the council and said the UI has played a part in reshaping the relationship between the field of archeology and U.S. tribes.
“Of all the institutions that the tribes deal with, the University of Iowa has served as the template for how you do it right,” Wanatee Buffalo said.
Wanatee Buffalo said in the 1980s and 1990s, many Native Americans viewed the field of archeology as one that was inherently predatory and more interested in dealing with deceased Indigenous people than living ones.
“Fast forward to today, and we do have young people in our tribal communities who are archeologists and anthropologists,” Wanatee Buffalo said. “Because of laws like NAGPRA and laws like what Iowa passed, we have the opportunity to learn from each other and improve and increase the amount of information and education so everybody gets a more complete sense of the history of this land we call Iowa.”
As historic preservation director for the Meskwaki Tribe, Jonathan Buffalo has played a leading role for decades in reburying human remains returned to the tribe by the UI and other institutions.
“In the ‘90s, we decided that when we rebury human remains, we would not conduct any funeral ceremony,” Buffalo said. “We believe those people already received their funeral, and it wasn’t up to us to add anything to that.”
Buffalo said the reburial process is respectful and simple, as the human remains are returned to the earth with a brief expression of sympathy for the disturbance and a promise of respectful reburial.
Due to the challenges of determining the exact tribal origin of some remains, Buffalo said the Meskwaki Tribe has taken on the responsibility of reburying not only confirmed Meskwaki ancestors but also remains whose tribal affiliations are unclear.
“When it’s non-Meskwakis, we’re still respectful. We don’t say too much because we don’t know what language they spoke, what customs they had, so we’re just putting them back to the earth,” Buffalo said.
For decades, looters have deliberately targeted Native American burial sites, desecrating sacred ground in search of remains and artifacts. One such incident in 1971 — when the remains of white settlers uncovered during road construction in Glenwood were reburied while the remains of a Native American woman and her child were sent for study — prompted Yankton Sioux activist Maria Pearson to demand change, ultimately leading to Iowa’s 1976 Burials Protection Act.
Buffalo said the Meskwaki Tribe is familiar with such incidents.
“As recently as the 1900s, there were people coming into the settlement to raid our graves,” Buffalo said. “That’s [why] today we don’t talk about our cemeteries, their location to be well known.”
Two years after a ProPublica investigation found Indiana University (IU) held the fifth largest collection of unrepatriated Native American remains in the US, the IU office responsible for returning those remains and cultural items has completed four more repatriations.
The IU Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act office works to review and return the thousands of Native American remains and funerary objects still in IU collections. It does so in accordance with NAGPRA, a 1990 law requiring federally funded institutions to repatriate the human remains or items held in their collections to their tribal nations of origin.
A ProPublica report updated in January says that IU’s original holdings included 6,100 remains, and IU has completed inventories, the first step towards eventual repatriation, for 1,640 of those remains. Jayne-Leigh Thomas, director of the IU NAGPRA office, said the original number was closer to 5,200 remains, and the office has repatriated from that number.
NAGPRA seeks to address centuries during which museums, federal agencies and universities routinely dug up Native American gravesites for display or for research that often amounted to pseudoscience. This desecration of sacred areas and gravesites contributed to the attempted eradication of Native American cultural practices.
IU obtained its collections through donations from museums, universities or private donors, or through excavations beginning in the 1930s.
An IDS investigation in 2023 found a loophole in NAGPRA allowed IU, along with other institutions across the country, to go decades without repatriating any of the remains in its collections. Current and former faculty alleged at the time that IU avoided the responsibility and pushed the work to untrained anthropology faculty with full-time research and teaching responsibilities.
Updates to NAGPRA regulations closed that loophole in 2010. Three years later IU hired Thomas, who has a PhD in Archeology from the University of Edinburgh, to direct its NAGPRA office.
Since then, ProPublica says the office has completed inventories listing possibly affiliated tribal nations for 1,640 of the remains in its collection.
Thomas said those lists could include upwards of 50 tribal nations for a given set of holdings or remains.
Once an institution determines the possible tribal affiliation of a set of ancestral remains or cultural items, regulations require institutions to consult — virtually or in person — with representatives from tribal nations. But that can take time.
“Consultation requires the development of a relationship,” Thomas said. “That's not something that can happen overnight.”
In 2019, Martha Only A Chief, the NAGPRA coordinator with the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, visited IU to determine the affiliation of several cultural items in IU’s collections. She said the in-person consultation allowed her to fully assess whether those items were Pawnee.
“There are certain items where, when they have an inventory, it’ll just say rattles,” Only A Chief said. “Well, a rattle can mean a number of different things, but ours, we have certain rattles that are used in our sacred ceremonies or sacred dances, and some of them that we still use.”
That consultation resulted in IU repatriating 27 cultural items to the Pawnee Nation last November, allowing Only A Chief to bring certain items back for eventual display in the Museum of the Pawnee Nation, where tribal members can see them for the first time.
“The reason, I feel, for my job, is to bring these items back so our people could see them, and our, you know, our children and grandchildren after that,” Only A Chief said.
Thomas said during the consultation process she accommodates the needs of tribal representatives, who may be too busy to start new repatriations or accelerate existing projects.
Only A Chief said the workload for tribal nations has increased since January last year, when revised NAGPRA regulations went into effect and added multiple new deadlines for institutions to file inventories and contact tribal representatives.
Since then, the number of institutions reaching out for consultations has skyrocketed. Two years ago, Only A Chief was handling two to five consultations. Right now she’s handling 34, with more requests waiting in her inbox.
Thomas also said tribal nations also may need time to find reburial land for holdings that include ancestral remains, so that collections can be removed from campus and reburied once repatriated. Thomas said she doesn’t try to rush that process.
“It would be disrespectful to treat the ancestral remains as just objects you're trying to hurry up and get out the door,” Thomas said.
As an enrolled member of the Chaui band of the Pawnee Nation, Only A Chief said she has helped rebury the remains of her ancestors in Nebraska, on land owned by the Pawnee Nation.
“They don't have to be on that shelf in that box in plastic, or however they were before I was able to take possession and bring them to Nebraska and put them back into Mother Earth,” Only A Chief said. “That's what gratifies me.”
These Mass. towns were founded on the killing of Native Americans ...
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