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Three generations of Anita Yellowhair’s family, including her daughter, Noel Alvarez, left, and her granddaughter, Sierra Alvarez. Each generation has been impacted in some way by intergenerational trauma.

Over 60 years later, boarding school survivor Anita Yellowhair shares her story of 10 years at the Intermountain Indian School, one of thousands of children taken from their home to one of more than 400 boarding schools, where they would learn how to live the white man’s way. Read more»

The Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma, one of hundreds across the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries that worked to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children into Western culture, often separating families and punishing use of tribal language and traditions. Arizona had 47 such schools over the years.

Over a year after the Department of the Interior released the first volume of its Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, which lays the groundwork to address intergenerational trauma created by federal policies, its second report will be made public later this year. Read more»

More names are added to the MMIW Bike Run USA motor home at its last stop, in Washington, D.C., Friday.. Organizers said they chose to write the names in red to represent the blook of missing and murdered Indigenous women that 'is on America’s conscience.'

As part of the U.S. departments of the Interior and Justice’s work to combat the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples, the Not Invisible Act Commission will be hosting its first round of field hearing sessions this spring. Read more»

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland speaks at the screening of a documentary on a former secretary, Arizona native Stewart Udall, who supporters credit with pushing a range of environmental gains during his tenure.

A new documentary - “Stewart Udall and the Politics of Beauty” - paints the former Interior secretary, who died in 2010, as a uniting force revered for pushing forward the environmentalist movement in addition to promoting desegregation and tribal sovereignty. Read more»

The Coolidge Dam and San Carlos reservoir impound the Gila River on the San Carlos Indian Reservation.

Five tribes in Arizona - including the Tohono O’odham Nation - will receive more than $306 million in funding to help each tribe develop infrastructure projects as the U.S. Department of the Interior has allocated nearly $580 million to start fulfilling Indian water rights claims. Read more»

April Ignacio, a citizen of the Tohono O’odham Nation, shares her family’s experiences with boarding schools during the Road to Healing tour hosted by the Department of Interior at the Gila Crossing Community School on Jan. 20, 2023.

Arizona indigenous people shared their stories during The Road to Healing tour, part of the Federal Indian Boarding School initiative, began in 2021 by the Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland to examine the legacy of federal Indian boarding school policies. Read more»

Oklahoma delegates to the summit included, from left, Cheyenne and Arapaho Gov. Reggie Wassana, Peoria Chief Craig Harper, Muscogee Chief David Hill and Muscogee Second Chief Del Beaver.

For the first time in six years, leaders of federally recognized tribes from across the country gathered in Washington last week to meet with Biden administration officials in a gathering one Oklahoma leader called “extremely powerful.” Read more»

A mural is displayed along the side of U.S. 191 in Chinle, Arizona, where the health center has four traditional healers on staff to provide services.

President Biden is poised to designate Avi Kwa Ame, a sacred site for Native American tribes in southern Nevada, as a national monument, and announced economic, climate and land management actions the administration is taking to foster a strong relationship with Indian Country.  Read more»

Despite the gray wolf population’s low numbers, the service has routinely attempted to remove protection from the species, most recently in 2020 under former President Donald Trump.

Accusing the government of failing to comply with the Endangered Species Act, a conservation group asked a federal judge on Tuesday to demand a nationwide recovery plan for the gray wolf. Read more»

Sen. Mark Kelly during a press conference in downtown Tucson in May.

U.S. Senator Mark Kelly pushed federal officials to withhold funding California's Salton Sea project in order to force the state to conserve more water from the Colorado River. Read more»

The sweet baidaj fruit has ruby red pulp that can make juice, syrup, and jellies. The saguaro fruit harvest marks the beginning of the O’odham New Year and the arrival of the monsoon storms.

The Department of Interior is launching an initiative to support Native American health and nutrition efforts through Indigenous food hubs - utilizing Indigenous knowledge to develop holistic approaches to support Native food sovereignty movements. Read more»

The Canyon Mine, about 15 miles south of the Grand Canyon. The new policy will allow some tribes to share management responsibilities with federal agencies.

The federal government and some states hope recent policy changes will address the question of who should manage public land that is sacred to Native Americans by a policy called co-management, giving Indigenous people greater input into managing sacred landscapes. Read more»

The physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual abuse of Indigenous children caused by the compulsory attendance mandate employed by the federal boarding school system has finally prompted an investigation by the Department of Interior - but there remain countless untold histories. Read more»

One of the peaks at the Santa Rita Mountains, about 40 miles south of Tucson, will be renamed to Santa Rita Peak to eliminate the use of a racist and sexist slur against Native Americans. The U.S. Department of Interior announced Thursday that almost 650 sites on public lands nationwide will remove the term from their names.

Hundreds of geographic sites nationwide, including two locations in Southern Arizona and 66 across the state, have been renamed to remove a racial and sexist slur against Native Americans, the U.S. Interior Department announced Thursday. Read more»

The Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma, one of hundreds across the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries that worked to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children into Western culture, often separating families and punishing use of tribal language and traditions. Arizona had 47 such schools over the years.

Indian boarding schools led to more than a century of abuse, systematically seizing Indigenous land, separating children from families and destroying communities - while advocates say modern schools are not perfect, they are a far cry from horrors of the past. Read more»

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