Free Republic

The Aztec Empire once hosted an expansive trade network that brought volcanic glass to its capital from right across Mesoamerica, coast to coast. The largest compositional study of obsidian artifacts found in the ancient Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan has now revealed the far-flung influence of the Mexica culture – the largest and most powerful faction of the Aztec Alliance. The 788 precious obsidian objects analyzed include weapons, urns, earrings, pendants, scepters, and decorated human skulls. They appear to have been sourced from across the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, even from the lands of rival governments. The discovery speaks to the commercial...

Canada is pulling funds from groups still searching for alleged bodies buried at Indigenous residential schools funded by Catholics and other Christians. An organization and a committee of experts formed to search for the elusive remains have both lost funding in the past month, following four years of searches that have found zero remains. The Survivors’ Secretariat and the committee both say they have lost funding this year, the CBC reported. One of the committee’s founding members, Crystal Gail Fraser, told the outlet in mid-February that the National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools Missing Children and Unmarked Burials would have...

Melbourne -- Australians celebrated and protested across the country on Sunday as Australia Day drew attention to political differences over Indigenous rights months out from a federal election. Australia Day marks a British colony being established at Sydney Cove on Jan 26, 1788, which eventually led to Britain claiming the entire country without a treaty with its Indigenous inhabitants. Indigenous rights advocates call Jan 26 “Invasion Day” and protest rallies have been held in major cities. Many argue that Australia's national day should not commemorate such a divisive event. Australia Day is usually a public holiday and because it fell...

He committed a fowl. A hunter in the Canadian Arctic ruffled the feathers of a group of student “goose detectives” after he killed and ate one of the birds the youngsters were tracking from more than 3,500 miles away. Devon Manik, an Inuit hunter, made a meal of the goose after shooting it dead, unaware that students in Dungarvan, Ireland had tagged about 100 brent geese for a school project to monitor the species’ flight path as it migrated between Ireland and the polar region, according to The Irish Times. Manik said the waterfowl trek to the area in June...

Indigenous lawmakers broke into a tribal dance to protest a bill in New Zealand's parliament.To reject a piece of legislation proposed by the island country's libertarian party, a bunch of Māori members of Parliament (MPs) staged a protest by busting out the "haka," a Māori war dance traditionally used to terrify enemies on the battlefield.Māori members of New Zealand’s parliament disrupted the passage of a bill that would reinterpret the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, which uplifts Indigenous peoples. The MPs performed a haka—a traditional Māori dance and chant—causing the session to be suspended. pic.twitter.com/89VhB1aqAS— red. (@redstreamnet) November 14, 2024The disruption...

While the second Monday in October has historically been celebrated as Columbus Day and is still federally recognized as such, many have pushed for moving away from the holiday to acknowledge the atrocities Columbus committed against the Indigenous People of the hemisphere.

In South Dakota, the president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe has ordered President Trump to cancel a planned visit to Mount Rushmore on July 3 for his Independence Day celebration. Julian Bear Runner told The Guardian, “The lands on which that mountain is carved and the lands he’s about to visit belong to the Great Sioux nation under a treaty signed in 1851 and the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and I have to tell him he doesn’t have permission from its original sovereign owners to enter the territory at this time.”

The largest dam removal project in US history is finally complete, after crews last week demolished the last of the four dams on the Klamath River. It’s a significant win for tribal nations on the Oregon-California border who for decades have fought to restore the river back to its natural state. The removal of the four hydroelectric dams — Iron Gate Dam, Copco Dams 1 and 2, and JC Boyle Dam — allows the region’s iconic salmon population to swim freely along the Klamath River and its tributaries, which the species have not been able to do for over a...

“I want to apologize to the people of Israel for the horrible thing the South African government did. We are sorry.” Regent Xami Thomas, leader of the Khoi Kingdom of Southern Africa, delivered this message to a packed audience at the Friends of Zion Museum (FOZ) in the heart of Jerusalem on the night of February 1. The crowd cheered their approval. This was, after all, words of support from the citizens of the nation that had dragged Israel to the International Court of Justice on accusations of genocide. Thomas was not done, though. “The government does not represent all...

truth should triumph over nationalistic narratives. And the truth about Thanksgiving should be learned by all Americans, as it is a part of our complicated history of savage betrayal and removal of indigenous people and the colonization of their land. The actual date for the first Thanksgiving is somewhat disputed. Most put the first Thanksgiving in 1621, when the Pilgrims had a feast with the Wampanoag, an Indigenous Nation in and around Plymouth. Scholars say "Thanksgiving" is a misnomer, since the Pilgrims would have given thanks by fasting and "quiet contemplation." It would have been referred to as a "Rejoicing."...

Early in 2020, an Indigenous artist urged the owners of a new music venue in town to change its name. It was called The Winnebago, after the street on which it stands. Many Indigenous people and allies let the owners know that wasn’t the best name for a white-owned music venue. One of them was nibiiwakamigkwe, also known as Kay LeClaire, a founding member and co-owner of the queer Indigenous artists’ collective giige, and budding leader of Madison’s Indigenous arts community. It took several months, but the venue eventually relented and rebranded as The Burr Oak. “I’m glad the owners...

Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee held a recent equity summit that included a governor-appointed state education agency telling other state agencies that concepts like "objectivity" and "individualism" are rooted in "White supremacy culture" and should be rejected in favor of "indigenous relational pedagogy." During Inslee’s "2022 Governor’s Equity Summit" in Tacoma on Nov. 30, the interim executive director of the state’s Professional Educator Standards Board (PESB), which consists of 12 governor-appointed members dedicated to advancing "educational justice," gave a PowerPoint presentation titled "Internal Transformation: How an Education Agency is Transforming Itself in the Name of Justice." PESB’s presentation began with...

MINNEAPOLIS -- The federal government recently renamed hundreds of lakes, streams, summits and other places to remove an offensive term for Indigenous women. The new name for the lake formerly known as Squaw Lake, which is located in Pine County, is Manidoons Zaaga'igan Zhaawanor. It's one of the nearly 650 changes that have been made by the government in order to avoid the use of the slur. Among the states with the most instances include California, which had 80 name changes, and Arizona, which had 66. Wisconsin had 28 instances of names being changed, the closest of which is the...

Pope Francis issued a historic apology Monday for the Catholic Church's cooperation with Canada's 'catastrophic' policy of Indigenous residential schools, saying the forced assimilation of Native peoples into Christian society destroyed their cultures, severed families and marginalized generations. 'I am deeply sorry,' Francis said to applause from school survivors and Indigenous community members gathered at a former residential school south of Edmonton, Alberta. The visit, part of a greater tour across the country for the pontiff, marks a radical rethink of the Catholic Church's missionary legacy in the Americas, and was spurred by Francis and the discovery of hundreds of...

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) on Friday apologized for the state’s role in crimes against Native American children who attended boarding school. Sisolak met with Native American leaders on Friday amid a federal investigation into the government’s role in the potential deaths of children at the state's Stewart Indian School, which operated from 1890 to 1980, the Reno Gazette Journal reported.

“I didn’t drink because I’m Native," said Melissa Rose, an Akwesasne Mohawk midwife. "I drank to survive colonialism."

We apologize deeply for the email that was sent today. $14.92 was our average donation amount this week. It was an oversight on our part to not make the connection to a year of colonization, conquest, and genocide for Indigenous people, especially before Thanksgiving.

Hundreds of protesters led by Indigenous activists from across the country demonstrated in front of the White House on Monday to demand that Joe Biden stop approving fossil fuel projects and declare the climate crisis a national emergency. The rally marks the start of five days of demonstrations calling for greater attention to climate injustices as Native American leaders and tribal members head to the capital to publicize their demands. The demonstrations are part of People v Fossil Fuels protests, organized by a coalition of groups known as Build Back Fossil Free, who are urging the Biden administration take further...

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (CNS) — Bishop Douglas J. Lucia, whose downtown Syracuse office sits on the ancestral lands of the Onondaga Nation, hopes to meet with Pope Francis “to re-examine” 15th-century Vatican documents that justified colonization, land takeovers and oppression of Indigenous peoples. In the last decade, numerous congregations, denominations and faith-based organizations — including several women’s religious communities — have urged the Vatican to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery, which asserts European Christianity’s superiority and power over other lands. Bishop Lucia appears to be the first U.S. Catholic bishop to publicly call for the Vatican and the U.S. Catholic Church...

One autumn evening four years ago, Ivan Bender, a Hualapai man in his mid-50s, took a walk with his fluffy brown-and-white Pomeranian, Sierra Mae, to check on the ranchland he tends. Nestled in western Arizona’s Big Sandy River Valley, the ranch protects Ha’ Kamwe’ - hot springs that are sacred to the Hualapai and known today in English as Cofer Hot Springs. As the shadows lengthened, Bender saw something surprising - men working on a nearby hillside. “I asked them what they were doing,” Bender recalled. “They told me they were drilling.” As it turns out, along with sacred places...