Reporting from Indian Country

This article first appeared in  Yes! magazine in  February 2022. For more on topics like this, please see my book, American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle...  Photos courtesy Zuni Youth Enrichment Project, Joseph Zummo, and Cheyenne River Youth Project.     “The goal is to fill our bellies and our souls. The Zuni word for this is  yu’yashkwi,  to sustain life and be nourished as a people.”  T he main ingredients in the foods Indigenous people put up for winter are caring, sharing, and a big dollop of joy. Communities that work together to preserve the bounty of prairie, desert, forest, and garden thrive during challenging times. Sharing recipes with us here (see below) are the Pueblo of Zuni and the Ramah Chapter of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico; the Puyallup Tribe in Washington State; and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in South Dakota.  “Food is at the center of our culture, of our gatherings,” says Kenzi Bowekaty, food sovereignty leader of the Zuni Youth Enrichment Projec

Magnificent 2,000-year-old Indigenous earthworks in Ohio may be headed for equally grand accolades. In 2023, UNESCO  is expected to designate them  World Heritage sites. As such, the earthworks would join Machu Picchu, the Taj Mahal, Chartres Cathedral and other places UNESCO has deemed of historical and cultural importance to humanity. A version of my article below, about tribal involvement in the process, first appeared in 2019 on  Rural America In These Times .  For more on topics like this, please see my book,  American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle.... Ohio’s many monumental earthworks were laid out with a “god’s eye view” in mind, says a research team. C hief Billy Friend of the  Wyandotte Nation  addressed a crowd in Dublin, Ohio. The event was a celebration of the city’s new  Ferris-Wright Park , which features several of the state’s numerous ancient geometric earthworks and mounds, or artificial hills.  Ancestors of today’s Native people built the earthen sites betwe

Winter hasn’t hit hard yet in much of the country. Talk to gardeners in your area and see whether you still have time to plant trees and enable their positive effects on the climate. A version of this article first appeared in 2018, but its topic is even more urgent now. For more on related subjects, see my book, American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle.... D on’t despair about the immense challenges the planet faces. So says Clayton Apikan Brascoupé, a Mohawk farmer, shown left, who has lived and worked for many years at Tesuque Pueblo, in New Mexico. What to do? “Start by planting trees,” he says. “They are a positive answer to climate change and much more. Trees build up soils organically and increase their water-holding capacity. They sequester excess climate-altering carbon dioxide. They attract beneficial insects that help other crops and produce food, medicine, building material and other useful items. Planting them can transform a community.”  Brascoupé directs the Trad

OJ Semans, Rosebud Sioux organizer of the Nevada forum and co-director of the voting-rights group  Four Directions. Photo by Justin Poole. A version of this article appeared in Yes! magazine in August 2022. For more on topics like this, see my book, American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle... .  O ver the course of two days in June, a lively, engaged audience listened to federal and state candidates describe their positions and plans at a Native-run candidate forum at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, law school. These meetings are teaching moments, says OJ Semans, the Rosebud Sioux organizer of the forum and co-director of the  voting-rights group Four Directions . “We’ll learn about the candidates, and they’ll learn about us.” Candidates from the Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian parties answered questions posed by tribal leaders, by Native and non-Native attorneys, and by staffers from Native nonprofits, such as the National Congress of American Indians. Amber Torr