2015 Archives

In Montana, the 49th parallel marks a 545-mile-long line along which the state rises to meet three Canadian provinces. This International Boundary, commonly referred to as the border, distinguishes two nations and was born of negotiations that helped end the American Revolutionary War.

But to members of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and the Blackfeet Nation, among others, the U.S.-Canada border is an arbitrary line demarcating ancestral lands, separating families and undermining tribal sovereignty.

Continue to Customs agents lack cultural awareness and respect for Indian tribes along the US-Canadian border →

Below is a list of federally recognized Native American tribes that have laws either defining marriage as between a man and a woman or explicitly prohibiting same-sex marriages, along with excerpts of those laws. At least 10 other tribes recognize same-sex marriages, while many more are silent on the matter.

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More than 100 Native American tribes have reached out to FoxBarry Farms, a management firm building the nation's first marijuana facility on tribal land, to express interest in the cannabis industry.

Continue to More Than 100 Native American Tribes Consider Growing Marijuana →

Each year, thousands of American Indian and Alaska Native patients are diagnosed with life-threatening blood diseases such as leukemia and aplastic anemia. For most, their only hope for a cure is a transplant of healthy marrow or blood stem cells from someone who shares their tissue type.

Continue to Native american bone marrow donors needed →

n 2007, Cherokee Nation citizens voted to kick out descendants of Freedmen and other non-Indians. The dispute has been in and out of the courts ever since.

The Cherokee Nation and descendants of black slaves once owned by its citizens, now known as Freedmen,  are asking a federal court to sort out their longstanding dispute over tribal citizenship rights.

Continue to Cherokee Nation and Cherokee Freedmen to let judge decide citizenship →