The Tongass National Forest in Alaska, a focus of political battles over old-growth logging and road-building in forests for decades, has received new protection from the Biden administration.
In 1872, John Gast painted ‘American Progress,’ showing trains and roads spreading across the American West.
John Gast, Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons
Government investment in roads, railroads and other public services has always involved social programming, both for good and for ill.
The Maricopa County Election Department counts ballots in Phoenix on Nov. 5, 2020. Arizona’s election laws are the subject of a pending Supreme Court decision.
Olivier Touron/AFP via Getty Images
In Brnovich v. DNC, the court will decide whether two Arizona rules unfairly hurt poor, minority and rural voters. The ruling could determine the fate of many states’ restrictive new voting laws.
The actions of a Crow Nation police officer were in question at the Supreme Court.
Crow Nation
Indigenous people in the US have high rates of food insecurity and dietary-related health problems. Any attempts to address the problem must start with land justice, argues a scholar of Native health and food.
The Puritans saw May Day celebrations as a test from God.
Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Poor indoor air on tribal lands can cause a range of respiratory illnesses, including viral infections. Here’s how people are fixing the problem while preserving traditional ways.
U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland speaks in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Oct. 1, 2018.
Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images
If confirmed, US Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico would be the first Native American to run the agency that interacts with tribal nations. But her agenda extends far beyond Indian Country.
‘Going To Church,’ N.C. Wyeth (1941).
Archival photograph, Brandywine River Museum library, Edward J. S. Seal Collection.
For centuries Native Americans intercropped corn, beans and squash because the plants thrived together. A new initiative is measuring health and social benefits from reuniting the “three sisters.”
Cahokia’s mound-building culture flourished a millennium ago near modern-day St. Louis.
JByard/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Five centuries before Columbus arrived, migrants were spreading across North America, carrying their culture with them and mixing with those they encountered in new places.
Native American protesters at the Black Hills, now the site of Mount Rushmore.
Micah Garen/Getty Images
Renaming a national holiday to celebrate Native culture is one thing, but many Indigenous peoples are looking for greater recognition of the land grab that deprived them of ancestral homes.
Jeanette W. Jones holds the September 1957 issue of Ebony magazine, which features the article ‘Mystery People of Baltimore: Neither red, nor black, nor white. Strange ‘Indian’ tribe lives in world of its own.’ She is pictured at center, with her hand on her hip.
Photo Sean Scheidt; author provided
Two Lumbee scholars who have mined local archives in search of tribal history raise the profound question: Who has the rights to memories and artifacts of their people’s past?
Peter C. Mancall, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Descendants from the Pilgrims were keen to highlight their ancestors’ role in the country’s founding. But their sanitized version of events is only now starting to be told in full.
Community groups, like this one in Phoenix, have been working to get people of color to contribute their information to the census.
AP Photo/Terry Tang
The census will likely count fewer Black Americans, Indigenous peoples, Asian Americans and Americans of Hispanic or Latino origin than there actually are.
The 18th-century Catholic missionary Junipero Serra at work in California.
Lawrence OP/flickr/St. Casimir’s church in Baltimore
Statues of the Spanish missionary Junípero Serra have been toppled by protesters in LA, San Francisco and Sacramento. Californians are questioning whether Serra was a saint or a colonizer – or both.
Delegates from 34 Native tribes at the Creek Council House in Indian Territory, now called Oklahoma, 1880.
National Archives
The Supreme Court’s July 9 ruling that half of Oklahoma belongs to the Muscogee Nation confirms what Indigenous people already knew: North America is ‘Indian Country.’