Free Republic

James Swan parked his old Dodge alongside the South Dakota visitor center, where grungy hippies were sprawled on a lawn and passing around a feather. The two-dozen vagabonds are planning to unleash thousands of their brethren into the Black Hills for prayer and free thinking. But Swan wasn’t feeling the peace and love. “We don’t want you here. You have no f—king respect for Lakota people!” the 54-year-old Native American yelled into a mic attached to his truck. His T-shirt bore another message: portraits of warriors who had shellacked the U.S. Army in the Battle of Little Bighorn, alongside the...

High-profile tribal activists backed a Long Island school in its fight to keep its team name despite a state ban on Native American logos – joining a President Trump rallying cry. Frank Black Cloud, a member of the Spirit Lake Nation in North Dakota, said Tuesday that rebranding the Massapequa Chiefs would be a “terrible thing to do.” “Historically, we are Chiefs, we are Warriors,” said Black Cloud, 60, referencing neighboring Wantagh’s Warriors team — which may also have to drop its name. He pointed to a pair of 2004 and 2016 polls that found nine in 10 Native Americans...

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...

American citizens, including citizens of Native tribal nations, have been pulled into the vast immigration operations ordered by President Donald Trump in accordance with his campaign vow to conduct mass deportations since Day 1. Those who are getting caught in Immigrations and Customs Enforcement raids are being targeted because of their race or skin color, according to witnesses.

Hunter Biden is once again embroiled in mor controversy as newly surfaced bank records and corporate documents link him to a fraudulent bond transaction involving Burnham Asset Management. The firm, tied to a multi-million-dollar securities fraud scheme, saw Biden’s business partners arrested and convicted while Hunter himself avoided accountability. The fraud centered on a scheme to defraud the Oglala Sioux Native American tribe out of tens of millions of dollars. Hunter’s former business partners, Devon Archer and Jason Galanis, were convicted for misappropriating funds meant for the tribe.

Oy veh — it’s gonna get mashugana out there. In the waning days of the Biden administration (which also coincides with the waning days of Joe Biden), a few uncomfortable truths have emerged. First, Biden is destined to be remembered as one of the least consequential presidents in American history. His tenure was a speed bump -- a thin slice of bologna that’s sandwiched between the two Trump terms. For a guy like Biden, who so clearly covets adulation, recognition, and public praise, that’s gotta sting. Two, it’s now apparent that Biden’s presidency coincided with a national realignment. The public...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and “First Partner” Jennifer Siebel Newsom are being mocked for a tone-deaf Thanksgiving message that name-checked indigenous Californians and illegal aliens but largely ignored everyone else. “Thanksgiving is an opportunity to especially celebrate the native peoples of this lad and reflect on their perseverance and endurance,” Mrs. Nesom said. “We’re grateful for all that you do and all that you are,” the governor chimed in.

Indian Country, just like the rest of America, has a choice to make in this election. One party wants to roll back excess regulation, shrink the administrative state, and promote personal agency and individual responsibility; the other side wants big government to dictate nearly every aspect of American life — from the car you can drive to how you can use your own land. In my view, as a member of the Cherokee Nation, our Native values of tribal sovereignty and self-determination are best aligned with President Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party. I have spent my entire life...

Many ethnic groups moved rightward in the 2024 election, and Native Americans are among them. Seventeen counties with majority-Native American populations swung toward President-elect Donald Trump by ten or more percentage points. Just as with black and Hispanic voters, Native Americans had concerns that extended beyond the identity politics and left-wing virtue signaling of Democrats and the Kamala Harris campaign. Nationally, a whopping 65 percent of Native American voters went for Trump.

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.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has ordered the Department of Defense to review the Medal of Honor awarded to 20 soldiers for their actions in the Wounded Knee Massacre that took place in 1890.Austin wrote in a memo, “The [special review panel] may consider the context of the overall engagement as appropriate, including as necessary to understand each [Wounded Knee Creek Medal of Honor] recipient’s individual actions.”In a separate statement, a senior defense official shared, “It’s never too late to do what’s right.”The official added, “And that’s what is intended by the review that the secretary directed, which is...

The Shasta Indian Nation will be returned 2,820 acres of ancestral land in northwestern California, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday. The land return is the largest in California history and comes as a reconciliation effort to apologize to Native communities for historical injustices, the release said. Newsom's office said he discussed the land return with the Shasta Indian Nation earlier this month after visiting the Klamath River dam removal project, which is on ancestral lands near the California-Oregon border. The project is the largest dam removal and river restoration in the country intended to restore land and more than 300...

The U.S. government on Tuesday acknowledged, for the first time, the harmful role it has played over the past century in building and operating dams in the Pacific Northwest — dams that devastated Native American tribes by inundating their villages and decimating salmon runs while bringing electricity, irrigation and jobs to nearby communities.

Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) has been banned from all nine of South Dakota’s tribal nations. On Tuesday, the final tribe that had not yet banned her, the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe, voted in favor of banning Noem from its reservation. Flandreau President Tony Reider called an emergency meeting in response to some of the governor’s comments. “President Reider informed the governor that a ban from our territories is imminent and requested that the Governor refrain from making future blanket statements that offend the tribes within the boundaries of the State of South Dakota, some of which depend on state services...

CNN — In a sweeping win for climate and environmental advocates, the Biden administration on Friday finalized a rule to ban fossil fuel drilling on nearly half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, alongside other major conservation actions. The Interior Department will block oil drilling on over 13 million acres in the Western Arctic, including about 40% of the land of the NPR-A – a remote area that is home to protected animal species including polar bears and caribou. The reserve is more than 23 million acres of public land and an underground emergency oil supply for the US...

Sacramento County is joining a growing list of places around the United States offering no-strings-attached payments to its lowest-income residents. The Sacramento Board of Supervisors approved the basic-income pilot program last week. It's set to offer $725 a month to low-income Black and Native American families. The county is funding the program through a partnership with United Way. Sacramento County has partnered with United Way for other basic-income programs in the past. About 100 families received $300 monthly from the county in its first program, which began in June 2021 and lasted through May 2023. United Way is still tracking...

Like most African Americans, I come from a family with a history that includes generations of enslavement. But unlike most, the men and women who held my ancestors in bondage were not white, they were Native American—people who were themselves oppressed by the process that led to my family’s freedom.

The Biden administration is facing heavy criticism from Native Alaskans over its crackdown on oil and gas drilling in Alaska, activity which generates tax revenue vital for key state and local programs. Native Alaskan leaders have particularly taken issue with the Department of the Interior's (DOI) recent actions blocking future oil and gas development in the National Petroleum Reserve (NPR), an area in North Slope Borough, Alaska, specifically set aside by Congress for resource development, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), and in federal offshore waters off the state's coast. "My community unapologetically supports the leasing program," Charles Lampe,...

Lawsuit highlights dispute over Washington team's identity and the ramifications of cancel culture.. A lawsuit advocating for restoring the name Redskins to the National Football League (NFL)’s Washington team alleges that a rival Native American organization improperly prompted the change to the team now called the Commanders. The Native American Guardian Association (NAGA) filed its complaint in the U.S. District Court of North Dakota against the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) and Josh Harris, who acquired the team in July for $6.05 billion. “NAGA’s members were huge Redskin fans precisely because they were the Redskins,” the complaint states. “It...

Since 2013, Rubenstein, 72, who co-founded the private equity giant the Carlyle Group, has given millions to entities that repair and upgrade historical monuments and landmarks like the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument as well as Monticello and Montpelier, the homes of US presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. But some say the restoration at the presidential homes has recast the presidents as sinister racists while downplaying their accomplishments... But a quick dive into Rubenstein’s backstory shows he’s not so pure himself. He made his initial fortune in the 1980s by exploiting a tax loophole in Alaska allowing him...