Here is a summary of some of the top stories related to Native Americans this week:
Senate passes bill to lock stolen Indigenous artifacts inside U.S. borders
The U.S. Senate has approved legislation criminalizing the theft, trafficking and export of illegally obtained Native American, Native Alaskan or Native Hawaiian remains and ceremonial objects.
H.R.2930, the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act of 2021 (STOP Act), supplements the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which banned the trafficking of Indigenous remains, funerary and sacred artifacts.
The bill does not ban the general trade in Native art and artifacts made for commercial purposes. But it does ban the export of sacred items stolen from tribal land.
“There is a clear difference between supporting American Indian art ethically and legally as opposed to dealing or exporting items that tribes have identified as essential and sacred pieces of their cultural heritage,” said Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich, who with Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski has pushed this bill since 2016.
The new measure also increases from five years to 10 years the maximum prison term for violators.
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View of a Bureau of Land Management controlled burn in the Paynes Creek Wetlands portion of the Sacramento River Bend in California.
Study shows restoring Indigenous fire practices could thwart climate-Induced wildfires
A new study led by Southern Methodist University suggests that the Indigenous practice of setting small, controlled fires to revitalize wildfire-prone lands could help mitigate effects of climate change that contribute to wildfires.
A research team including four members of federally recognized tribes studied “cultural burning” through a network of more than 4,800 fire-scarred trees in Arizona and New Mexico, homelands of the Apache, Navajo and Jemez tribes.
Over a 400-year period, the study found that the typical climate-fire pattern includes one to three years of above-average rainfall — which allows vegetation to grow — followed by a fire-fueling year of significant drought. But when Native American tribes conducted controlled burns, that pattern was broken.
The report comes just a week after the Biden administration announced the first-ever government-wide guidance for federal agencies to recognize and include Indigenous knowledge in federal research, policy and decision-making.
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Hitch minnows, which the Pomo Tribes call "chi," jumping in Clear Lake, Lake County, California, have lost more than 90 percent of its spawning habitat.
California tribes to Interior Department: Save our fish
The Center for Biological Diversity and the Pomo Tribes of California are calling on Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to use her emergency powers to invoke the federal Endangered Species Act on behalf of the hitch minnow, a fish that the Pomo call “chi.”
For thousands of years, the fish was central to the Pomo people’s diet and culture in the Clear Lake area of Northern California. Today, climate change, drought, pollution and predatory non-native fish have radically diminished the hitch minnow population.
“I remember catching chi as a young boy and now can only hope that my children will one day have that same experience,” said Jesse Gonzalez, vice chair of Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians. “If the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service doesn’t give the chi emergency endangered species protections, we fear that our future generations will never have that opportunity.”
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An unidentified citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma convalescing in an American tent hospital in Auteuil, France, c. 1918.
Honors may be due Native Americans who fought in World War I
A team of researchers and historians is looking for Native American and Alaska Native soldiers who served in World War I who may be eligible for posthumous valor medals.
The University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Sequoyah National Research Center is working with the George S. Robb Centre for the Study of the Great War at Park University in Missouri. Together, they have identified about 12,000 Native Americans who served between 1914 and 1921.
To qualify for a review of what, if any, other medals they might be due, service members must have received a Distinguished Service Cross/Navy Cross and/or the French Croix de Guerre with Palm or have been recommended for a Medal of Honor but were downgraded.
So far, the research team has identified two dozen Native Americans who qualify for a case review. That list includes Alaska Natives but no Native Hawaiians.
“We have worked on the Modern Warriors of World War I database since 2017 and have yet to find any Native Hawaiians who served,” University of Arkansas archivist Erin Fehr told VOA.
More than 9,800 Hawaii residents served in World War I, according to a 1998 report by Hawaiian statistician Robert C. Schmitt. One hundred and two lost their lives.
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Search service members names or add a name to the list here:
1749 deed of sale for 60,000 hectares of land which includes present day Pittsburgh, Pa., in what was then Augusta County, Virginia.
Historic land deed shows Haudenosaunee traded Pittsburgh for cloth, weapons and tobacco
A 275-year-old document recently discovered in a rural Virginia courthouse sheds new light on how easily Native Americans were dispossessed of their land.
A James Madison University graduate student digitizing historic records held in the Augusta County, Virginia, courthouse discovered a 1749 deed showing that the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and its surrounding 60,000 hectares were purchased from six leaders of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy for cloth, clothing, blankets, guns, tobacco and four dozen mouth harps — small brass musical instruments held against the teeth and plucked to create a melody.
A tinted engraving of Mohawk leader Hendrick Theyanoguin published in London in 1755. His face is tattooed and he holds a strand of wampum.
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