The 2024 elections in the U.S. highlighted the growing impact of Native American voters, especially in swing states such as Arizona. Home to 22 tribes, Native voters played a key role in that state’s results.
Unfounded claims of voter fraud and election irregularities four years ago triggered a surge of restrictive voting laws across the United States for this year’s vote, raising concerns about potential harassment and intimidation of voters and poll workers.
Exit polls showed a shift in Native American support toward Republican Donald Trump, driven by economic concerns and alignment with his party’s traditional values.
Biden apologizes for federal boarding school system
During his October visit to the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, President Joe Biden delivered a long-awaited official apology to Native Americans for the Indian boarding school system that severed the family, tribal and cultural ties of thousands of Indian children over multiple generations.
“I say this with all sincerity: This, to me, is one of the most consequential things I've ever had an opportunity to do in my whole career as president of the United States,” Biden said, calling it his “solemn responsibility.”
In a related story, the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition in May launched the National Indian Boarding School Digital Archive, a public archive of information on boarding schools and students that includes documents, photographs and other ephemera.
FILE - The Supreme Court is pictured, in Washington, Oct. 21, 2024.
Supreme Court: Feds must pay for tribal health care programs
In a landmark June decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Indian Health Service (IHS) must fully reimburse tribes for the administrative costs of running their own health care programs.
Chief Justice John Roberts explained that if the federal government’s position had prevailed — opposing payment of administrative costs — it would have created a “systemic funding shortfall” for tribes that chose to manage their own health care programs, thus imposing “a penalty for pursuing self-determination.”
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued that the ruling could cost the government as much as $2 billion.
The 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act allows federally recognized tribes to contract with the Indian Health Service to operate their own health care programs, which IHS would otherwise manage. When a tribe opts for this arrangement, IHS provides the funds it would have used to run those programs.
FILE - Visitors pass a portrait featuring Sitting Bull, part of the Hall of North American Indian exhibit, at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Oct. 13, 2016.
Museums, institutions, under pressure to return Native remains
The Interior Department issued new regulations in 2024 to improve compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Passed in 1990, it calls on federally funded museums and other institutions to inventory and return to tribal communities all ancestral remains and funerary objects.
The new rules cut out a loophole that allowed institutions to hang onto “culturally unidentifiable” remains and give tribes a greater say in the process. Throughout the year, institutions have made some progress, but as ABC News reported in November, nearly 500 museums and federal agencies have so far failed to identify or make available for repatriation more than 90,000 remains and associated cultural objects.
FILE - South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem speaks, July 16, 2021, in Des Moines, Iowa. Nine tribes banned Noem from their reservations after she suggested that tribal leaders were “personally benefiting” from the drug trade.
South Dakota governor banned from nine Indian reservations
Since taking office in 2019, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has had a tense relationship with the nine tribes in her state. Tensions escalated in January when Noem accused Mexican drug cartels of operating on reservations and then later suggested that tribal leaders were “personally benefiting” from that drug trade.
Oglala Lakota tribal president, Frank Star Comes Out, who had earlier declared a state of emergency over drug use and violence on the Pine Ridge Reservation, accused Noem of being politically motivated and in February became the first of nine tribes to ban her from the reservation.
Land Back movement sees some wins
The Land Back movement, a push for the return of lands lost to colonization, grew in momentum in 2024, and several tribes regained control of land or ancestral territories.
Among the successes, the Yurok Tribe of coastal California signed a memorandum of understanding to co-manage with the National Park Service 50 hectares (125 acres) of land they lost after the California gold rush in the mid-19th century.
TheLeech Lake Band of Ojibwe reclaimed more than 4760 hectares (11,000 acres) of ancestral land that the federal government seized from them in the 1940s.
And in the largest ever return of Indigenous land, the nonprofit Trust for Public Land returned 12,545 hectares (31,000 acres) to the Penobscot Tribe in Maine, with no easements or restrictions on its use.
FILE - Charlene Hollow Horn Bear and Keith Ryder take down a buffalo hide painted with a depiction of a white buffalo calf after a naming ceremony for a recently born calf at the Buffalo Field Campaign headquarters in West Yellowstone, Montana, June 26, 2024.
Birth of white buffalo viewed as a blessing and a warning
A rare white buffalo calf was born June 4 in Yellowstone National Park's Lamar Valley, an event of profound cultural and spiritual significance for many Native American tribes.
According to Lakota tradition, White Buffalo Calf Woman appeared to the Lakota people during a time of great need, bringing them the sacred pipe and teachings of harmony, respect and gratitude for the Earth.
The pipe has been passed down for generations and is now held by Chief Arvol Looking Horse from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, who explains the tradition in the video below:
Looking Horse presided over a ceremony in Yellowstone June 26, naming the calf Wakan Gli, (“Sacred Return”) and warning that the calf’s birth was both a fulfillment of prophecy and a warning for people to unite and protect the earth.