"Colorado college reckons with a troubling legacy of erasing Indigenous culture" PBS NewsHour 5/10/2022
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SUMMARY: Over the course of more than 100 years beginning in the 1800s, hundreds of thousands of Native American children in the U.S. were removed from their families, placed in federal boarding schools and forced to abandon their Native languages and culture. One college in Colorado is now reckoning with that history. Hari Sreenivasan reports for our "Rethinking College" series.
"Sec. Haaland on the significance of Native American representation" PBS NewsHour 8/16/2021
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SUMMARY: The 19th, a nonprofit newsroom focused on stories of gender and politics, kicked off their Represents Summit Monday featuring various keynote speakers who will explore why representation matters in all areas like democracy, politics, sports, culture and more. NewsHour's Lisa Desjardins will be interviewing Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland about the significance of her role. Here's a sneak peak.
IMHO: Answer is YES!
"Should Native Americans control national parks? Examining an argument for reparations" PBS NewsHour 5/17/2021
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SUMMARY: Trekking to and through a national park is one of the joys of an American summer. As COVID restrictions lift, millions are expected to explore the great outdoors. Now, a provocative article examines the deeper history of how these parks came to be — and their complicated legacy. Stephanie Sy reports.
"What Debra Haaland’s confirmation as interior secretary means to Native Americans" PBS NewsHour 3/15/2021
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SUMMARY: Debra Haaland's confirmation in the U.S. Senate Monday as Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior makes her the first-ever Native American to serve as a Cabinet Secretary. She'll oversee energy and climate policy on millions of acres of public land, as well as the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Timothy Nuvangyaoma, chairman of the Hopi Tribe in Arizona, joins Lisa Desjardins to discuss.
Governor cites state’s history of violence, calls it ‘a genocide’
Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order Tuesday apologizing on behalf of the citizens of California for a history of “violence, maltreatment and neglect” against Native Americans in a rare move that some tribal leaders said could begin a healing process for their communities.
“California must reckon with our dark history,” Newsom said. “We can never undo the wrongs inflicted on the peoples who have lived on this land that we now call California since time immemorial, but we can work together to build bridges, tell the truth about our past and begin to heal deep wounds.”
Newsom offered an in-person apology during remarks at a blessing ceremony at the site of the future California Indian Heritage Center in West Sacramento. The Democratic governor said he had been discussing a formal apology with advisers for several months and decided to take action Tuesday when more than 100 tribal leaders from all over the state visited Sacramento for an annual meeting.
“It’s called a genocide. That’s what it was. A genocide. (There’s) no other way to describe it and that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books,” Newsom said. “And so I’m here to say the following: I’m sorry on behalf of the state of California.”
The governor’s order references an 1851 address from the state’s first chief executive, former Gov. Peter Burnett, in which he tells lawmakers to expect “a war of extermination” to continue “until the Indian race becomes extinct.”
A year earlier in the Legislature’s first session, lawmakers approved an “Act for the Government and Protection of the Indians” that allowed Native Americans to be sold into indentured servitude for minor offenses and separated children from their families. The state spent the equivalent of more than $1 million in currency at the time to subsidize militia campaigns against the native people, according to the governor’s office.
California’s American Indian population declined from about 150,000 to 30,000 between 1846 and 1879, wrote Benjamin Madley, an assistant professor of history at UCLA, in a 2016 op-ed calling for the state to acknowledge the genocide . Madley is the author of the 2009 book “An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873.”
Daniel Salgado, chairman of the Cahuilla Band of Indians, said Newsom’s formal apology is a recognition of a long history of what happened to native people in California.
“People can say it should have come a long time ago but I appreciate that this governor is stepping up and taking that first step in what we believe is a healing process,” Salgado said. “In any kind of relationship, there’s recognition of a wrongdoing, an apology and a healing starts to take place.”
Newsom’s office said the state has never formally apologized for actions against Native Americans.
The governor is also calling for a Truth and Healing Council to hear testimony and clarify the historical record on the relationship between the state and California Native Americans. Christina Snider, Newsom’s tribal adviser and a member of the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians, will lead the council and delegates from California’s tribes will work her to issue a draft report on its findings by Jan. 1.
Asked if the state should provide more formal reparations for California Native Americans, Newsom said he hadn’t engaged in those conversations and believed the council would provide a forum to discuss future steps.
Abby Abinanti, chief judge of the Yurok Tribal Court, said she hopes the council will serve as a model for other states.
“It’ll be a long process, an education process,” Abinanti said. “Truth is a good thing. Healing is a good thing. We’re at a time and place in the world where it’s essential for us to try to do those things.”
Sitting in a circle of plastic chairs under an oak tree with the governor, tribal leaders shared stories of past trauma at the hands of settlers. Some cried and sang songs.
Several expressed optimism that Newsom would continue a meaningful dialogue and work collaboratively with Native Americans.
Erica Pinto, chairwoman of the Jamul Indian Village, reminded him that her people judge actions more than words.
“It’s healing to hear your words, but actions will speak for themselves,” Pinto said. “I do look forward to hearing and seeing more of you.”
SUMMARY: Traditionally, movies and books about Native American life have focused on tragedy and defeat. Now, a new work of history and reporting urges readers to consider a more complex culture that is not only still living, but evolving. Jeffrey Brown sits down with David Treuer, author of “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee.”
SUMMARY: School children in the U.S. often celebrate Thanksgiving by dressing up as pilgrims and “Indians.” But these traditions tend to perpetuate myths that are offensive to Native American communities. Education correspondent Kavitha Cardoza takes a look at a new movement aiming to reinvent the way schools teach Thanksgiving.
SUMMARY: The tradition of the U.S. President’s pardoning a turkey at Thanksgiving was repeated once again at the White House, as President Trump performed the ritual before heading to Mar-a-Lago. But what started this peculiar custom? Yamiche Alcindor reports on the surprising history behind the holiday practice.
SUMMARY: On South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, a substantial number of Native households earn income by creating and selling art. But many of these residents lack access to the transportation and financing that would enable them to market and grow their businesses. Jeffrey Brown explains how a refurbished airport shuttle, called the Rolling Rez Arts Bus, connects home-based artisans with resources.
SUMMARY: Part of the GOP tax overhaul tax bill that has not gotten a lot of attention is the possibility of opening up a pristine and long-protected part of Alaska to oil extraction. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is 19 millions acres of rich ecosystem. Why are lawmakers talking about drilling now? William Brangham joins Miles O’Brien to take a closer look.
SUMMARY: The Dakota Access Pipeline and Keystone XL Pipeline were put on hold during the Obama administration. But new executive orders by President Trump begin putting them back on track, as part of efforts to undo former President Obama's legacy. How do these moves fit into the broader Trump agenda for energy and the environment? William Brangham talks with Valerie Volcovici of Reuters.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): Two of those moves gave new life to two of the most contentious oil pipelines in America, the Dakota Access Pipeline, which hundreds of Native American groups have been protesting, as well as the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Both of these had been delayed or put on hold by the Obama administration.
To understand how these moves fit into the Trump administration's broader plans for energy and environmental policy, I'm joined by Valerie Volcovici. She covers this for Reuters.
Welcome.
VALERIE VOLCOVICI, Reuters: Thank you.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So let's talk about these two pipelines in particular.
The Dakota Access pipeline, what did Trump's order say about that?
VALERIE VOLCOVICI: So, Trump's order this morning basically said that he wants to expedite the process.
As you well know, the Dakota Access protest has really galvanized Native American tribal sovereignty issues. It's brought together so, wide coalition of environmentalists, social activists, in addition to tribes.
So it's been one of the more high-profile protests that we have seen in a while. Right now, it's kind of stalled because former President Obama ordered an environmental review of a kind of contentious section of this pipeline that the tribe argues crosses into some sacred sites. His aim is really to move it along, because…
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: He wants to get this built.
VALERIE VOLCOVICI: He wants to get it built, and he said so on the campaign trail, and he is following through on day four, whatever it is, of the administration.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Yes, this one really wasn't that much of a surprise, if you had been listening to him all along.
VALERIE VOLCOVICI: Right.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And then what about the Keystone XL? That is a slightly different issue. This was another pipeline that goes from Canada down to the Gulf.
And this was one that Obama for many, many years seemed to wrangle with and debate what to do, and then eventually denied the permit for it. What did Trump do today?
VALERIE VOLCOVICI: Well, what Trump did today is, first of all, it invited Canada to reapply. TransCanada is the company that wants to get it built. As far as I'm aware, TransCanada has said it wants to reapply.
And then it will have the State Department. They will do an environmental impact assessment of the permit and decide whether or not to issue it. And it needs to be done within 60 days.
So, again, another sign that Trump wants to fast-track this, because, as we remember from the Keystone fights, it lasted a long time and kind of became a symbol of President Obama's environmental goals and it really also galvanized the environmentalists.
SUMMARY: At least 140 people were arrested while occupying land in the path of the controversial Dakota Access pipeline in the past week. President Obama has urged peaceful protests and restraint from law enforcement. William Brangham speaks with Lynda Mapes of The Seattle Times about the extreme tension and fear of violence on the ground, reaction to the Oregon standoff acquittals and more.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): In North Dakota, the standoff over the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline keeps growing, as riot police cleared protesters blocking the pipeline's construction.
William Brangham has the latest.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): In the past week, at least 140 people were arrested while occupying land in the pipeline's path, including one woman charged with allegedly shooting at police. No one was injured.
Native Americans and environmentalists say the pipeline will destroy sacred sites and threaten the drinking water of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The 1,200-mile-long, nearly $4 billion pipeline would carry 500,000 gallons of crude oil daily across four states.
Yesterday, President Obama weighed in on the fight in an interview with the Web site Now This News.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: There's an obligation for protesters to be peaceful. And there's an obligation for authorities to show restraint.
And I want to make sure that, as everybody is exercising their constitutional rights to be heard, that both sides are refraining from situations that might result in people being hurt.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: For more on this, I'm joined now by Seattle Times reporter Lynda Mapes, who's just back from North Dakota.
Lynda, thank you so much for being here.
Could you just tell us, what has it been like? You were just there recently. What is it like? What did you see?
LYNDA MAPES, The Seattle Times: Well, it was scary, honestly.
I was there with a Seattle Times photographer, Ellen Banner, and we truly were wondering minute to minute whether someone was going to get killed. We were in camp the night before with tribal members who were singing their death songs. I mean, they were very worried about the possibility of violence.
And who wouldn't be? You have seen law enforcement marshaled from six states, armored personnel carriers, hundreds and hundreds of law enforcement officers with concussion grenades, mace, Tasers, batons. And they used all of it. I mean, it was frightening to watch.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And when you say that they were using this, can you sort of describe the situation in which — we tend to see images of riots or protests, and we think of an equal clash between both sides. What kinds of things did you witness?
LYNDA MAPES: Well, the demonstrators are vastly outnumbered. There's no question about that.
And, in many cases, they were literally sitting, arms locked, praying when they were arrested. This changed as the standoff went on. It all started on Thursday morning around 10:30. It went on all through the day, all through the night, into the next day. And, by the next day, Friday morning, demonstrators had burned two trucks on a bridge and had erected a makeshift plywood barrier. They had a pile of rocks.
Meanwhile, the law enforcement officers had advance more than 100 yards with five armored personnel carriers side by side, hundreds of law enforcement officers advancing on them. And it finally took an [Tribal] Elder to actually walk by himself in between the two lines, stand there, face his people, and say: “Go home. We're here to fight the pipeline, not these people, and we can only win this with prayer.”
Advocates talk about the country's “silent, comfortable genocide.”
As In These Times reported in “The Police Killings No One Is Talking About,” Native Americans are shot by police—or die in their custody—at the highest rate of any group. Yet the general public has almost no awareness of this. Or, as Darleen Tareeq, whose fiancé Philip Quinn of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe was shot and killed by police in September 2015, puts it, “Everyone is cool with it.”
In a recently released study of this national blind spot, Claremont Graduate University researchers Roger Chin, Jean Schroedel and Lily Rowen agree, writing that the minimal coverage of the issue indicates that Native people are ignored and their issues devalued.
As Black Lives Matter, Idle No More and other social justice movements have proliferated, “Native Lives Matter” has been taken up as a rallying cry by Natives grieving the loss of loved ones to police violence, as well as those calling attention to numerous other injustices—such as the routing of the Dakota Access Pipeline so as to imperil the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation's water source, which the tribe opposes.
In These Times spoke with five advocates who devote their time and energy to promoting the concept that Native Lives Matter.
Troy Amlee, or Akicita Sunka-Wakan Ska (White Horse Soldier), a hip-hop and dubstep musician from the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribes, and JR Bobick, a French Canadian descendant from St. Paul, Minn.—both activists with 'Idle No More Twin Cities'—were outraged by the December 2013 police-shooting death of Cheyenne-Arapaho teen Mah-hi-vist Goodblanket. Together, they posted on 'Idle No More's' pages, then created the Native Lives Matter Facebook page in 2014 to document and bring awareness to the deaths.
Darleen Tareeq, of White Earth and Leech Lake Ojibwe heritage, spoke to In These Times a year to the day after police killed her fiancé, Philip Quinn. Before getting on the phone with In These Times, she, Amlee and Bobick attended a vigil for Quinn. The event included a dinner, honor songs, speeches by Quinn's family and friends, fireworks and a traditional giveaway of gifts from the family to supporters. “It was a beautiful night,” says Tareeq.
Attorney Chase Iron Eyes helped raise the movement's profile by hosting a Native Lives Matter rally in Rapid City, S.D., in December 2014 and penning a report on the subject for the Lakota People's Law Project in 2015. A member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Iron Eyes is running for Congress as a Democrat from North Dakota.
In early 2015, Marlee Kanosh, of the Paiute Tribe of Utah, began administering the Facebook page Native Lives Taken By Police. The loss of her brother Corey in a 2012 police shooting drew her to the online community of people suffering similar tragedies, and what she describes as “a whole world of people going through the same thing for a very long time.”
How do you define Native Lives Matter?
Chase: It's a movement for reclaiming our inherent spiritual dignity. Native Lives Matter is a healing and a way to move beyond what has been imposed on us for 500 years—since the arrival of Europeans.
Black Lives Matter brought attention to police brutality and institutional racism, and we were very aware of that when we coined our version of the term. We want Native Lives Matter understood as expansive—including improvement in many quality-of-life issues that affect our communities, in addition to police shootings specifically. As such, it's a comprehensive call to action for social justice reform.
JR: The mainstream media doesn't follow Native issues, so we base the content of our Facebook page, Native Lives Matter, on what our community wants, not on what we want as organizers. As a result of listening to the people, we have covered many subjects in addition to police brutality. The issues relate to each other. This approach has brought the page nearly 100,000 “Likes” so far.
Troy: We have also tried to make our page a reliable source for news about the Dakota Access Pipeline, a big concern for Native people these days. As a group, we support positive issues and projects. We advocate for healthy eating and living, encourage planting of backyard gardens and hold clothing drives. We are showing up for the people.
Marlee: As administrator for the Facebook page Native Lives Taken By Police, I focus on police brutality. My posts are also very personal. In addition to research, I talk to the families, find out who the victims really were and get permission to use their photographs and other material. I have met some of the families, including Daniel Covarrubias's mother and sister at Rise Up October in New York City in 2015. [As reported in In These Times, Lakewood, Wash., police shot and killed Covarrubias earlier that year.]
What moment brought you to this issue?
Marlee: My brother Corey was shot and killed [by police] in 2012 in Millard County, Utah. There are so many questions about his death. It doesn't add up. The medical examiner said no major organs or veins were hit, so the shots weren't immediately fatal. It seems that he was just allowed to die. [Kanosh reportedly did not receive care after he was shot, but rather lay face-down in the dirt until morning, when his mother was notified he was dead.] Why was Corey not given medical aid? Isn't there a law requiring this? We are citizens of this country, and we have rights. We feel lied to and betrayed. I didn't know how to deal with this other than to use my feelings, my pain and my hurt, to be helpful—to share others' stories. I know how the families feel when this happens.
Chase: In December 2014, friends and I organized a rally in Rapid City to make clear the contrast between what Natives contribute to the local economy and what we suffer. We were attending the Lakota Invitational Basketball Tournament, which brings a significant amount of money to Rapid City. In addition, the nearby Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations have few businesses, so money from local Native residents and people living on the reservations flows directly to Rapid City business owners throughout the year. And you know the statistics—just about every quality-of-life indicator for Native people is very bad. We suffer disproportionate incarceration, and our children are taken from their families and placed in foster care far more often than non-Native children.
[A local man named] Allen Locke, who is Lakota, happened to attend the rally. The next day was the championship game. I went to buy Christmas gifts, and when I returned to the tournament, everyone's Facebook timelines were going crazy with the information that cops had shot someone in a development called Lakota Homes.
Some of us went over and learned it was Allen. His family asked us for help dealing with the police and the media. We said, “Yeah, absolutely,” and hung out to make sure they had what they needed. After that, we went to the Lakota People's Law Project office in Rapid City, which became the base camp where we held press conferences, produced literature and got information out. I wanted to document what was occurring and wrote the report “Native Lives Matter.”
Troy: Five years ago, a lot of tokala warriors [members of a traditional warrior society] attended the funeral of my uncle Beau Little Sky, who was in AIM, the American Indian Movement. I was 19 at the time and observed that they had a consciousness about them. So I was curious. I joined AIM and did homeless feeds and cop-watch patrols, which involved going around Minneapolis/St. Paul with a police scanner and listening for minority-related calls. Through cop-watching, I got involved with Occupy Minnesota and 'Idle No More Twin Cities.' The Native Lives Matter page JR and I put together now has nine admins in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Colorado.
Darleen: Today is the one-year anniversary of the day my baby's father was murdered by police. Marking that anniversary is an Ojibwe tradition, which we did at Indian Mounds, an ancient burial mound in St. Paul. There was a lot of support. Families of other victims, such as Marcus Golden, also killed in 2015, joined us. His dad is indigenous, and his mom is African American. Family members of Jamar Clark, an African-American man shot last fall, were there as well.
I got involved in this grassroots Native Lives Matter group because I wanted to be part of listening to and protecting the people. Native people nationwide are being murdered at a higher rate than other people. We have been living a silent, comfortable genocide. Everyone is cool with it—us dying and our cultures being taken away.
How has the idea spread?
Chase: Everywhere there are reservation bordertowns or large Indian populations, there is tension—from Oklahoma and states surrounding the Navajo Nation to rural areas of Montana and Minnesota. As the Native Lives Matter idea has grown, it has also come to include cities like L.A. and Denver. Natives everywhere have taken it over in ways that let them get out their own message.
Marlee: Without the Internet and social media, each of us would be talking to small communities. With online connections, we can talk to the larger community.
Chase: Indians are tribal people. There are few degrees of separation between any of us. We're also highly involved Internet users, with the ability to go viral even though we're a small percentage of the U.S. population. Tweets about opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline were trending high on Twitter long before there was any mainstream media coverage, long before elected officials were talking about it. They live in a world that doesn't exist anymore, a world where you had to get a [TV] network to cover you. That's old school.
How does your work affect you?
Marlee: I have so many dreams. Every night after I do a story for the page, I dream about it. Today, opening up the page and seeing all the stories there overwhelmed me. I have done about 80 and have a couple of additional names to get to as well. I know there are even more. Being helpful makes me feel better, though. I also do a lot of praying and meditating.
Any more thoughts?
JR: Our Native Lives Matter page is about helping build a community.
Marlee: Through Native Lives Taken By Police, I want to help people keep their family member's story alive. It has been important for my own family to do this, so I am doing what I can for others.
Chase: It is painfully clear that some people can't expect justice. We want to stop being ignored. In our eyes, Allen Locke gave his life for that.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now the substantial problems that Native Americans in the U.S. face, particularly with education.
That was the focus of a new report issued today and a meeting President Obama had with Native Americans in Washington. The President announced a series of initiatives to prepare young American Indians for college and the work force.
They include a push to strengthen tribal control of education on reservations. The Federal Bureau of Indian Education is responsible for educating nearly 50,000 students in 23 states. The high school graduation rate is for Native Americans the lowest of any ethnic or racial group. The bureau is part of the Department of the Interior.
And Interior Secretary Sally Jewell joins me now.
Welcome to the “NewsHour.”
SALLY JEWELL, Secretary of the Interior: Thank you very much.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, we know the problems in the Native American community, they’re deeply entrenched. They go back a long time, to the very beginning of this country. What are just a couple of the ways the administration thinks it can make a real difference?
SALLY JEWELL: Well, the report that the White House just issued on Native American youth does a very good job of chronicling the challenges.
And they are deep-seated. They have been around for, not just decades, but literally hundreds of years, policies that tried to kill the Indian to save the man, policies of assimilation, of squishing cultures. And, in so doing, they really diminished the confidence and the pride of Native Americans.
What the President has done — and he’s charged his Cabinet with this — and this was really powerfully brought home to him in a visit with young people at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe — is that he doesn’t want to stand by and let this happen anymore.
So, he’s charged his administration very directly with being part of the solution, with charting a different course. And that’s what we’re doing.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Over the last few years, a number of academic gains have been made by historically disadvantaged students, including African-Americans and Latinos. But Native American students have lost ground since 2008, with only about half earning a diploma.
In Alaska, an effort is under way to turn that around by creating more teachers within the Native community.
The “NewsHour's” April Brown reports as part of our American Graduate series.
APRIL BROWN (NewsHour): Alaska is often called the last frontier. A phrase that seems fitting for the town of Dillingham, which sits on a remote inlet near Bristol Bay.
For thousands of years, the area has been a hub for the Yup’ik people. Today, more than 50 percent of the roughly 2,000 residents are Alaska Natives, who continue to survive on subsistence traditions passed down through the generations. Home addresses are not a must here because everyone picks up their mail at the post office.
And when school begins in the fall, finding Alaska Native students, who have graduation rates that hover around 50 percent statewide, can be a challenge.
INA BOUKER, teacher: Sometimes, families go moose hunting in the fall, right when school starts. And families will take their kids and go to moose camp for a week, and so they will miss a whole week of school.
APRIL BROWN: Alaska Native Ina Bouker has been a teacher in Dillingham’s schools for more than 30 years, and she’s well aware of the challenges and the legacy of mistrust that exists around education here.
Bouker was raised in the nearby village of Manokotak, at a time when American Indians and Alaska Natives were still being educated by mostly white teachers and told to shed their cultural identities.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): A battle over the question of local control vs. federal power is playing out in the Western U.S. once again, and this time, it involves a prized Native American archaeological site.
It’s happening in Utah, where federal prosecutors filed criminal charges of conspiracy yesterday against five men who organized an illegal all-terrain vehicle ride into a canyon closed to motorized vehicles. Seven years ago, federal land managers closed the canyon to ATVs and the like to protect it. Since that time, the dispute has come to stand for a much larger fight.
Jeffrey Brown visited the canyon and the protest organizers for his series Culture at Risk.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): It’s called Recapture Canyon, 28 miles of rocky cliffs, juniper trees and wildlife in southeast Utah.
And for hundreds of years, beginning around 500 A.D., it was home to a large Native American Pueblo population.
So how many people would have lived in a place like this?
JODY PATTERSON, Archaeologist: In a structure like, you would have probably had an extended family, 10, 12, maybe up to 15 people.
SUMMARY: More than 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle, Alaska’s North Slope is ground zero for global climate change. NewsHour producer April Brown reports the melting ice has opened up opportunity for shipping and other development – industry that could be catastrophic for the way of life of residents.
APRIL BROWN (Newshour): It's a day of fishing out in the Arctic Ocean for brothers Brower and Jack Frantz. They are checking on nets they have recently set near the shoreline of Point Barrow, the northernmost tip of America that sits more than 300 miles above the Arctic Circle. Today's catch is seen as a moderate success.
The brothers were born and raised in nearby Barrow, Alaska, one of eight villages in the North Slope borough, an area that sprawls across more than 90,000 square miles and that for most of the year can only be reached by plane, or, depending on the sea ice, ship.
Nearly 5,000 people call Barrow home. Roughly half are native Inupiat Eskimos. For Brower and Jack, today is simply another day at the office. They are often in search of walrus, seals and, when the season is right twice a year, they go for the biggest prize of them all, bowhead whales.
The marine mammal that has been at the center of Inupiat culture for generations. All of their catch will later be shared with their family and friends.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): The little girl at the center of this case is known as Baby Veronica. She's caught in a custody battle, the kind normally heard in local courts. But the case was heard today by high court justices since it raises larger questions about federal law because the girl is part Cherokee Indian.
The Indian Child Welfare Act was passed in 1978 to protect children and the stability of Indian tribes. It allows tribal involvement in custody decisions, so Indian children aren't unnecessarily removed from their ethnic origins.
Marcia Coyle of the National Law Journal was in the courtroom this morning, and is back with us tonight.
And, Marcia, when people hear custody battle, they tend to think mother vs. father, but this was kind of a three- or even four-way legal argument, wasn't it?
MARCIA COYLE, National Law Journal: Absolutely, Ray.
You had the lawyer for the adoptive couple here who had custody of the child for about 27 months. You had the lawyer for the guardian ad litem for the child. And then on the other side, you had a lawyer for the biological father of the child and a lawyer for the United States arguing.
SUMMARY: Located west of Olympic National Park, La Push, Wash., is idyllic at first glance. But the beauty of the place is matched by danger and vulnerability. Located at sea level, La Push lies directly in a flood and tsunami zone. Hari Sreenivasan reports on how the Quileute tribe culture is adapting to new climate challenges.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): ..... a woman is attacked and the life of her 13-year-old son, Joe, is altered forever, along with his family. That's the dramatic outline of the new novel "The Round House" by Louise Erdrich, which has been nominated for a National Book Award.
The story is set on a Native American reservation in North Dakota, and it explores clashes of culture and law between tribal and state jurisdictions in investigating a crime.
I talked with Louise Erdrich recently and asked her first how she came to write the book.
