As high-profile figures—including Buffy Sainte-Marie and Sacheen Littlefeather—have been found to have falsely claimed Native identity, it feels like more and more people are pretending to be Native. At the same time, Native communities continue to grapple with identities shaped by adoption, blood quantum, disenrollment, and tribal histories that have left some communities without federal recognition.

As many of you know, I’ve written about people who falsely claim Native identity before (looking at you, Elizabeth Warren), because I believe ethnic fraud is a serious threat to tribal sovereignty. It’s a difficult topic to wade through–made worse by the pressures of colonization. But these are conversations we have to have for the health and future of Indian Country.

I sat down with Dina to discuss her new book and the challenging questions it raises. The following interview has been edited for length, flow, and clarity.

RN: And so the first question I have for you is kind of big, but, why do you think Native identity is so fraught?

DGW: It has to do everything with our history of being colonized and the US government’s impulse to eliminate us, right? So there’s a zillion reasons why in this effort to eliminate our existence as Indian people not just physically, but discursively led to confusion about what being Native is. And ultimately I would say it’s because of the historical push to racialize us–to understand Indian people as a separate racial category–as opposed to the separate societies and nations that we were before the arrival of Europeans.

RN: When I talk about it with non-Native people, for a lot of them, that’s a new concept: The idea that being Native isn’t just a racial category. It’s a political category. That I am a citizen of my tribe and my tribe has a treaty relationship with the US federal government. And that’s a specific designation that’s different than just “I’m Native.”

DGW: Right, because there’s no comparison. There’s no other group in the United States that is a reality for.

RN: One of the reasons that I think Native identity is so fraught is because I think that (this is gonna sound really academic) part of the settler colonial project of the United States is to be able to turn a switch on and off of who is Native and who is not.

I feel like the United States government has a long project of being able to control our identity. I think the most obvious example of this is blood quantum, especially during the termination era. But you can see that even in the 19th century with these weird laws of saying, okay, you’re Native if you live on the reservation, but if you leave the reservation you forfeit being Native.

DGW: Either way it always comes down to the need to erase our existence.

RN:  For people who maybe haven’t ever heard of it, what is a pretendian? And how did this phenomenon get started?

DGW:  Pretendian is of course a portmanteau [a word created by blending two words together] of the words pretend and Indian. So bringing those two words together to denote somebody who’s pretending to be an Indian. Right?

 I make the argument that “Pretendianism” as we know it today corresponds to the rise of the film industry, and how that intersects with the late 19th century Wild West shows. The commodification of Nativeness in the film industry opens this door where people want to become Indian.

RN: I feel like our awareness as Native people of how much of a problem pretendians are has changed in recent years. The most I’ve been involved in this issue was around Elizabeth Warren and her false claims of being Cherokee. And I feel like I got a lot of pushback from Native people.

DGW: There was that whole narrative too, about we have bigger fish to fry. We have bigger problems than to have this fight.

RN: Yes, exactly.

DGW: Which is a stupid argument.

RN: Tell me why are pretendians a threat to tribal sovereignty?

DGW: We’ve had two incidents now where tribal sovereignty has been challenged in the Supreme Court through the Indian Child Welfare Act. And so these right wing groups are trying to undermine or eliminate tribal sovereignty based on the argument that Native people have special rights based on being a racial group. Of course, the counter argument to that is, no, these rights are granted not based on race, but on political status.

RN: I think the other reason that pretendians are a threat to tribal sovereignty is the extent to which pretendians are trying to infiltrate Native communities and take what actually belongs to Native people. I don’t think people realize how aggressive pretendians can be.

You see it in academia where people are writing and publishing on issues. There are places where land back efforts are going to fake Native groups instead of tribes that are actually Native.

DGW: I’m also in the environmental world, and we’re increasingly seeing the appropriation of Nativeness being deployed for grants around conservation and climate change.

So often the impulse for pretendians is tied to the desire for material gain, right? To get something out of it. But it doesn’t answer the question about why people keep claiming it despite all evidence to the contrary.

RN: I have a theory. Because there are regions where these stories are really popular. They’re really popular in the American South and they’re really popular in Oklahoma. And in Oklahoma it wasn’t that long ago (the early 1900s) that white people were illegally squatting on our land and we were overrun by white settlers. And often those settlers were violent and deeply racist. And so instead of families telling the story that they were part of this wave of violent white settlement, they can tell the story of oh, we have high cheekbones and we’re part Cherokee.

It’s not wanting to tell the story of being a settler. I think it’s wanting to tell the story of being Indigenous

DGW: Right. As somebody who was born and raised in Los Angeles, I was literally born in Hollywood. So the 1960s and the 1970s were an era where things really started to shift and pretendianism really started to take on these new valences. It’s the point at which being Indian became cool. I’m old enough to remember when it wasn’t cool to be Indian.

And growing up in a family with my mother’s stories about being Indian–my mother being from a reservation community in Washington, at least for part of her childhood. And her mother was a boarding school survivor. So we have a story in our family that’s a true lived Native experience, and the trauma from that. And I grew up with that.

RN: We have people who are falsely claiming to be Native. But then on the other side are people who are genuinely Native that are cut off from that identity–whether it’s through disenrollment or blood quantum or adoption.  How do we embrace those people while at the same time showing pretendians the door?

DGW: I actually propose a model in the book that talks about American Indianness or Nativeness as a spectrum. On one end of that spectrum you are enrolled in a federally recognized tribe. On the other end of the spectrum is ethnic fraud–you are somebody who has knowingly lied about being Native. But in the middle of that spectrum is this huge gray area.

I want people to talk about it publicly. What makes you think that you’re Native? What is that based on? And let’s put you somewhere on that spectrum.

RN: Where do you think Indian country goes from here? If you could chart a path forward, what would that path be?

DGW: I think the path forward is to develop processes for accountability. This is what this is all about. It’s about accountability to tribal communities and transparency about who you say you are. We have to demand both things. And that means that in these spaces where we see the most egregious Native claiming–academia, Hollywood, publishing, government contracting, the conservation world, environmental spaces, competing for grants, philanthropy, all of those–we have to demand that kind of accountability.

If you’re entering academic spaces or applying for scholarships or fellowships or things that are tied to material benefits, then you’ve gotta be able to answer questions and not be offended by it. You don’t get to claim to be a veteran without receipts. So people have to be willing to show paperwork. And if you can’t, if you are in that gray area category where you can’t show who you are, tell us why. Just explain yourself and let the people in charge make those determinations.

So we’re trying to do that right now on our campus down at Cal State San Marcos. We’re forming a Native faculty and staff association. And we have created a process that lays out exactly what I just said: Asking people to tell us who they are and if you’re enrolled in a federally recognized tribe, great. If you’re enrolled in a non-recognized tribe, then what tribe, right?

RN: I think most Indigenous people aren’t offended by that question. Among Cherokee people, when you’re introducing yourself, people ask: Who are your parents? Who are your grandparents? Because they wanna place you within the broader community.

DGW: In my tribal community, the Colvilles, that’s what you do. That’s protocol. When you are in community, you introduce yourself by who you’re related to. That is literally how you make those relations and establish that accountability. And why can’t we institute something like that in our non-Native public spaces?

RN: I think it goes back to that tension we’ve been talking about this whole time where it’s not a racial category. It’s political, but it’s also kin, right? It’s not just a box that you check. It’s who you are, who your family is, where you come from, and that’s how Indigenous people understand it, right? It’s trying to assert that understanding into non-Native spaces where people have a hard time.

DGW: Exactly.

First America, in partnership with Tulsa Artist Fellowship, has released a new book: From The Heart of Our Nations. The book is a collection of futuristic flash fiction from young and emerging Indigenous writers. The stories emerged from a series of workshops led by Kashona Notah, who also edited the anthology. Last Friday, in front of a packed room, the young people read their stories, signed books, and shared their visions for our future. If you want a copy, you can order one here.

As you probably know, this past summer I released a podcast about the founding story of the United States. First America was a collaborative project with Indigenous scholars to tell the true story of the founding of the United States. And how our current political moment is 250 years in the making.

While developing the project, I also wanted to hear from Indigenous young people and the next generation of Indigenous writers and thinkers. While the Indigenous scholars looked 250 years into the past, in writing workshops we invited Indigenous young people to look 250 years into the future. From The Heart of Our Nations is the result.

The political moment we are living through feels urgent. But Indigenous people have always understood history on a longer timeline–not only going backward, but also forward. We know that whatever the future holds, our communities are resilient. We will still be here–carrying forward the things that matter most.

And so, for your inbox today (and hopefully also your heart) here is one of those stories in full: Daksi 7-TC by A.J. LeBeau.

I sneak through the depths of the docking bay, into forgotten corners where broken ships lie dormant and in disarray. Searching on a hunch, while wearing an iridescent cloak that absorbs the sound of my footsteps, a familiar voice guides me, preventing me from being seen. I really must go unnoticed since I’m stealing from the guard’s inventory. I’m fueled by a pressing need to get to Earth, so I sweep away blankets of dust from ships that are rusted out and mostly junk. Finally, I unveil the last ship that remains intact, one with Daksi 7-TC imprinted on its kinetic shell. A forgotten texture pulls over its exterior and lined canals are embedded amongst its dome, lit by interactive channels. Daksi is a sleeping turtle shell turned into a spacecraft and she waits patiently to be activated.

How did Noisey tell me to wake this ship up again?

Noisey was the last elder from my Tribe. She was a part of the Tribal Space Council fleet that flew these ships in their prime, back when Tribes worked with the founders of The Colony. Unfortunately, they were overthrown by T.O.P.O.S., Thanatology Optics Parliament Of Space, which was a board of scientists driven by their fear of death and how to overcome it, how to evolve past it. T.O.P.O.S. became scared of Earth and believed life was sent there to die. They forbade our society from leaving, forbade Tribes from returning to land, saying there wasn’t any left. They removed anything that was a threat and threw all the Tribal spacecraft in a museum, or in the back of warehouses like this one.

“The more you know, the less you can be controlled,” Noisey used to say.

I’m forced to remember her role in all of this. I approach the Daksi spaceship. On the side of its rounded walls, I use my finger to write an old phrase that Noisey also used to say:

Daksi, time to sunbathe.

As I barely move my hand away, the yellow markings begin to glow gold. The words twist and morph, almost a dance of light fighting for more time, a kaleidoscopic story taking form. The engine ignites and an array of colors swim on the exterior walls. Gathering all of its strength to exist, Daksi rises in the air.

I don’t care to look back, only forward, and step foot onto the spacecraft. I feel its weight drop gently, like a paper boat floating in water. Ducking my head as I let myself in, my feet shift Daksi’s balance, swaying her gently side to side. I get to my seat in one step and prepare to take off. It takes me a minute to get a sense of the controls, a wide panel with floating handles. And I soon notice there are scriptures written on her interior ceiling:

I am your guide.

I have been waiting my whole life for this. I feel Daksi’s ribcage and it responds with chirping hollowed beeps. Soon we’re buoyant in the air and gliding through the rafters silently.

As soon as I reach the outside of The Colony’s structure, my ship becomes more agile, ancient tech that the new T.O.P.O.S. fleets can no longer detect. Daksi turns multi-colored and starts whirring, almost fidgeting. As she shifts into hyperspeed, I see The Colony disappear.

I feel things now… which is not something I’m accustomed to. As I look to the spine of this ship and see rhythmic colors woven in a round dance, I can’t help but feel connected.

“Daksi, I feel alive,” I say.

ᎬᏃᏓ… alive

The words appear across her interior dome and keep fizzling in and out.

“Daksi… are you alive?”

ᎬᏃᏓ… alive

It’s like I’m inside a turtle, inside a riverbed, and the animal is echoing things throughout its shell to my skin. I wonder who made Daksi, what they were like. I wonder if they imbued prayers into each of her fiber optic wires. The ship would have had no choice but to come alive.

Maybe it was Noisey; she would be capable of such a thing. She was supposed to be here with me; we were supposed to find land together. Her old age had started to affect her, and somewhere along the way, she started acting unusual. For a whole month, she barely spoke, hardly ate. All I could do was sit next to her and hold her hand. I once saw her talking to an empty chair. Faint specs of light glimmered off its surface like small beacons radiating warmth. She was in the middle of a conversation without me.

“And when I return to land, will the sun still embrace me?” she said with tender eyes that glistened. “Will I get to feel the grass beneath my feet?”

Noisey passed just a few days after that, while I was holding her hand. I saw her chest rise tall for the last time, then it released her whole life in one pure breath. The wrinkles on her face softened, and the wrinkles in mine hardened. I was filled with intense emotion. She was gone. The heart monitor said she was gone, but I could still feel her.

“Noisey, can you hear me?!” I said, grabbing her lifeless hands and holding them to my heart. “I’m going to get myself to Earth, all right? I know that’s where you’re going. I’ll meet you there.”

⁂

In floating letters next to the controls, the dashboard lights up:

Approaching Earth’s Breath

While I descend from the heights of intergalactic energies, the vastness that can inhabit a planet astounds me. For I was born into everything, never seeing an end, infinite grids on my radar now collide to form land. Is this the end of the universe? No, this must be where it first began. This is where you get sent to feel everything. To become more than a being, given a form of true meaning. I’m overcome with an overwhelming sense of clarity, something that’s been disconnected for centuries.

⁂

Noisey is growing in sound. I hear trapped pebbles from a creek shifting with her feet. I hear an old man releasing cries of woe, then singing in a language I can’t quite understand. In my mind’s eye, we’re dancing around an orb of light connected to the ground. In The Colony, they say there is no land. But how do you explain this sound?

⁂

As the clouds form around me, shapeshifting color wheels land like tears on the outside of Daksi’s force field. I see it take on elements of ionized gas. Loud claps in the sky startle my attention toward my dashboard. Sensors pinging, I am given an electrical storm warning. Electric? Right, this world materializes all sorts of energy. Outside claps again, with bright blue wings extending out all around me, stretching veins above the crashing sea of billowed clouds. I’m trying to get a hold of my ship. WARNING: 100 mph winds. This birdlike creature formed of lightning in the sky screeches. Deafening light grabs hold of Daksi, talons piercing her protection barrier. Rains drill into the glass, and sirens cry in my head. Red alerts bounce off my hands as I try to catch each one before a new one lands. Thunder splits my ears, and it tethers my heart to its energy, which tethers an image to my mind.

Soon I will meet my end, though unlike T.O.P.O.S., I do not fear death. I’m somehow enjoying this all too much; it feels like my life just began. These targeted bouts of electricity short-circuit Daksi’s programming, now completely offline, and I feel my velocity increase. A thick layer of sun engulfs me, and I’m sure this is the fastest I’ll ever go. Glass becomes a mirror to lightning, valleys running down the ship’s frame. I remember Noisey teaching me something about this. When glass gets overheated, it begins to break.

As I’m pulled further into my seat, I’m given no other option than to take it all in. I’ve never seen such a clear image of striking white winds swirling blue. Sharp light penetrates the cabin, then shoots out of my view. Like a camera flash, I smile for the picture while my fingers press the glass. The cabin swelters in thick, hot air. I reach out to grab it and smell it straightening my hair. I look through the shattered windshield, barely visible through my swollen eyes. Shapes form beneath me. All this time, I knew Noisey was right.

There is land in abundance. Approaching, I no longer have to put up a fight. My throat begins to swell from the pressure of the heat. Instead of crying, my eyes start to bleed.

I’m overcome with a multitude of feelings. They couldn’t explain this up in The Colony if they tried. I swear I can hear singing, and I’m sure it’s Noisey calling out to me.

I see her now, as she extends out a hand. I feel the weight of the world pressing against my chest, bound by gravity. My efforts outweigh the odds here in this falling Daksi. I manage to lift my arm as my hand connects to her palm. In my final attempts to grasp this world, something comes over me, and the pressure is gone.

⁂

I’ve died, but death is not what they think. Hand in hand with Noisey, who acted as my guide, we finally made it to land. Just like she asked, we get to feel the grass beneath our feet, and a breeze that whispers with sweet winds.

Not much is being said, but Noisey points down and I suddenly become aware that I’m holding something. It’s a hollowed-out turtle shell, just the size of my hand. Its yellow markings are in the same position as those on the ship that brought me here. This seems to be the little spirit that was imbued in the spacecraft. I had a feeling Daksi was sentient, chirping rhythms and responsive vibrations.

Noisey, with a sleepy smile on her face, still doesn’t say much but points again at the turtle. I feel the sun enter through the clouds as it tattoos my skin, and I flip the turtle to its side. I write with my finger, just as I did when we first met. I don’t wish to leave a mark, only a feeling, putting my memory to its shell and leaving it for the sun to soak in. For the sun to hear me:

You and I

Were born from the ground

You guided me

To land I knew could be found

You in my hands

I in your faith

I’m choosing to be human now

Daksi, time to sunbathe.

A.J. LeBeau is Cherokee from Oklahoma and is a descendant of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. She received her Associate’s in Liberal Arts from Haskell Indian Nations University. In 2024, she was named the AIHEC (American Indian Higher Education Consortium) Poet Laureate, winning the slam poetry contest for original works, as well as winning first place in contemporary drawing. In 2025, Tribal College published one of her poems titled “A Path Passed Down.” She plans on furthering her education in storytelling and film.

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Voting rights advocates scored three legal victories last month–and those victories matter for Native votes.

The Supreme Court upheld mail ballot grace periods in a landmark ruling last month. Republicans had challenged a Mississippi law that allows ballots to be counted if they are postmarked by election day, but received up to five days later. The legal victory for voting advocates protects similar grace periods nation-wide. For rural & Tribal voters this is key; many Native Americans living in rural areas face longer mail delays. Two Trump executive orders restricting voting were also struck down.

But the fight isn’t over. Trump is continuing to push Congress to pass the SAVE Act, which would be devastating for Native voters in more ways than one. The bill seeks to place new hurdles on people registering to vote. Under its provisions, rural and reservation-based Native voters would have to travel long distances to even register to vote. The bill also doesn’t allow new voters to use tribal IDs–which are issued by sovereign nations and legally recognized–to register. Native voting advocates are calling on Congress members to vote no. Trump is demanding that the Republican-controlled Senate cancel its upcoming summer break until his signature legislation passes, but with Republicans’ slim majority it is unclear if he has the votes to get it through.

Representation for Indian Country continues to grow.

Peggy Flannagan, a citizen of White Earth Nation and progressive Democrat, is running for U.S. Senate in Minnesota. She currently serves as the state’s Lieutenant Governor. If elected, she would be the first Native woman ever elected to the Senate. But, like many Democratic primaries this cycle, the fight is fierce. Dark money groups have spent about $12 million to knock her out of the primary. Some recent polls have Flannagan pulling ahead, but the race is still neck and neck.

Next year, the U.S. Senate could see two Native women serving in the chamber. In Alaska, former Congresswoman Mary Peltola is running for Senate as a Democrat. Although Alaska leans remarkably red (Trump won the state by 15+ points), Peltola has won a statewide race before. Because of its population size, Alaska has only one member in Congress. And so when Peltola was elected in 2022, she represented the entire state. Democrats are hoping a Peltola victory in Alaska might help the party win back the Senate in the 2026 midterms. With control of the Senate potentially riding on her race, Peltola has seen a flood of donations.

Former Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland is running for Governor in New Mexico. Earlier this year, Haaland won her Democratic primary in a landslide with over 70% of the vote. Haaland is favored to win in November. If she does, she would be the first Native woman to ever serve as a state’s Governor in the U.S.. Haaland has already made history as one of the first Native women ever elected to Congress and the first Native person to serve as a U.S. Cabinet Secretary.

And in more election news, a Ysleta del Sur Pueblo citizen was part of the progressive sweep in New York. Claire Valdez won the Democratic primary for New York’s 7th District. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed Valdez. She’s one of 10 Native candidates advancing to November.

In tribal election news, Lumbee voters rejected a constitutional amendment tied to casino plans. For tribal members, the referendum wasn’t about gaming; it was about governance. Voters wanted more say in decisions affecting their community.

Land Back and Sacred Sites

Tribes are fighting to protect ancestral lands and sacred sites against new–and old–attacks.

Last month, President Trump shrunk Bears Ears by 91% and Grand Staircase-Escalante by 90%. Bears Ears was the first national monument co-managed by tribes. The site is sacred to the Ute, Navajo, Hopi and Pueblo. The area contains over 100,000 cultural and archaeological sites–including cliff dwellings, petroglyphs and burial grounds. All that is now vulnerable to mining and drilling.

The Ute Tribe is also fighting to recover more ancestral land in Utah, but a state lawmaker is trying to block them. The tribe wants to buy back land in the state, but instead a Utah Republican is advocating for the land to be set aside for recreational hunting. And a herd of wild horses in California is sacred to the Kauk and other Native people, but against the objections of the tribe, the federal government started rounding the horses up. Tribes asked for a 2-year delay and real co-management, but so far the courts have said no.

Telling the Truth About America’s Past

On the 4th of July, the Trump administration released a 162-page report targeting the Smithsonian’s treatment of Native history. The report calls the acknowledgment of genocide and land dispossession “ideological” rather than historical fact. During Trump’s second term, we’ve seen increasing attacks on how Americans learn and tell our history. The fight over history is about more than the past. What we tell ourselves about who we are and where we’ve been as Americans is a fight over what kind of country we will become.

The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs is pressing 15 universities—including the University of Oklahoma—to finally comply with NAGPRA. NAGPRA requires universities that receive federal funding to return human remains and funerary objects to tribes. The remains were often dug up and desecrated during older and racist practices of archeology and anthropology. OU still holds 1,477 Indigenous remains and 7,798 funerary objects. Tribes have waited over 35 years for their people to come home. It’s time.

The fight for climate justice

Data centers are trying to come to tribal land. But tribes are pushing back. The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma became one of the first tribal governments to ban them. The Cherokee Nation is studying impacts. Osage Nation is weighing Google’s Project Spring. Many communities are fighting data centers because they can contaminate local water and lead to soaring energy costs. According to the United Nations, by 2030, AI data infrastructure is predicted to consume water equal to the needs of 1.3 billion people.

The Ponca Nation became the first Tribe in the U.S. to endorse the Fossil Fuel Treaty, a global agreement for an equitable phaseout of oil, gas, and coal. 37 Indigenous nations and 18 countries have now joined. This matters because Oklahoma is the 6th largest oil and gas producer in the U.S., and the Ponca Nation sits at the epicenter of fracking and extraction. Decades of pollution have contaminated their water, soil, and air. For years, the Ponca have been at the forefront of climate justice, banning fracking on their land and passing Rights of Nature legislation.

Tribes continue to be on the front lines of the climate crisis, and nowhere was this more evident than during the devastating Canadian wildfires. Both Namaygoosisagagun First Nation and Whitewater Lake First Nation were devastated by fast moving fires, while other tribes saw significant damage. Click here for ways you can donate to impacted communities.

July also saw some victories for Indigenous climate justice. The state of Alaska tried to control Native subsistence rights, but tribes fought back–and won. Alaska now must pay $1.8M in legal fees to four Native groups after losing a federal lawsuit over Kuskokwim River fisheries management. And lastly, the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians just wrapped a 2.23-megawatt solar carport project that will cut their electricity nearly in half. The project was paid for by a $3.2 million federal grant and a 25-year power purchase agreement.

What federal funding cuts mean to survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence

Since Trump was reelected, there has been increasing attention on how federal funding cuts have affected everything from air traffic control to public health. A new reporting offers a sobering look at what federal funding cuts have meant for Native survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. The report–“Sacred Responsibility, Protecting Our People“ from UIHI–documents how federal funding cuts since January 2025 have devastated programs serving Native survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP).

Key findings from a survey of 201 programs show that 64% report being substantially impacted, 84% rely on federal funding for more than half their budget, and 44% say services for victims have been or will be cut. The stakes are life and death: CDC data shows AIAN homicide rates are nearly five times higher than for white people. 58% of AIAN women experience intimate partner violence in their lifetimes.

Connect with me!

My new podcast First America uncovers the true story of how the United States came to be, and how our current political moment is 250 years in the making. The full season is out now! Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

I got to speak with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! about how the U.S. remembers its past. I also joined Stacey Abrams and Heather Cox Richardson in a conversation about the history this country keeps trying to skip—and why that’s a problem for all of us, not just Native people. We get into what’s been erased, what’s been rewritten, and how it all shapes where we go from here. I sat down with The Intercept to talk about America 250 and what it costs when Native people are left out of America’s origin story.

And check out these in person events!

THIS FRIDAY, celebrate Indigenous futures and a new fiction anthology authored by Indigenous young people. Earlier this year, First America hosted two creative writing workshops—one in Tulsa and one virtual—bringing together emerging Indigenous writers representing Native Nations from across the United States. Led by Kashona Notah (Iñupiaq), participants were invited to imagine Indigenous communities 250 years into the future. Their visionary stories now come together in this new anthology, FROM THE HEART OF OUR NATIONS published by OK Stamp Press. The book launch event is this July 31 in Tulsa and online. Click here to learn more.

On Saturday, August 1, I’ll be in conversation with author Barbara Kingsolver at the Post Oak Lodge. If you’re in the area, I’d love to meet you.

First America is headed to Santa Fe Indian Art Market. Catch me in conversation with Maggie Blackhawk at MOCNA on Sunday, August 16.

Let me know in the comments what other topics and content you want me to cover!

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The escalating conflict has reignited a familiar debate in Washington: Can a president take the United States to war without Congress? Lawmakers have challenged whether Trump has the constitutional authority to wage war against Iran without congressional approval. And after berating Republican Senators, Trump narrowly defeated a Congressional bill that would have ordered him to end hostilities.

Trump’s actions may be controversial, but they are not unprecedented. US Presidents have been fighting wars without formal approval from Congress for over two centuries–since the George Washington administration. And it all started with wars with Indigenous nations.

Trump’s actions may be controversial, but they are not unprecedented. US Presidents have been fighting wars without formal approval from Congress for over two centuries–since the George Washington administration. And it all started with wars with Indigenous nations.

On a dark, warm autumn night in 1790, US General Josiah Harmar marched his troops toward the capital of the Myaamia nation–Kiihkayonki. At the time, the US Army was so small that most of the fighting force was from state militias. Their goal was to occupy Kiihkayonki and build a fort there.

When American forces arrived, the village was deserted. Rather than risk civilian lives, most Myaamia people had evacuated. Quickly, the Americans turned to destruction. They burned homes, crops, and food stores — including more than 20,000 bushels of corn. Believing they had won, the Americans relaxed and started looting valuables left behind like jewelry. But the Myaamia warriors were watching from a distance. They saw how easily the Americans were distracted by silver and other fine things. And the Myaamia decided to use their greed against them.

When US soldiers moved a little further north, Myaamia warriors scattered trinkets and other valuables on the ground. When the soldiers stopped to pick them up, Myaamia warriors attacked. Nearly 200 Americans were killed. The rest ran away. The Myaamia remember this as the Battle of Kiihkayonki. But history books call it Harmar’s defeat, because instead of building a fort at Kiihkayonki, General Harmar retreated.

Listen to the full story on this week’s episode of FIRST AMERICA. Wherever you get your podcasts.

For years, US encroachment had been pressing on the edges of Myaamia homelands. With more than half a dozen tribes in the Great Lakes region, the Myaamia formed a military alliance called the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance. Tribes in that region had long seen each other like an extended family, and so when one family member was threatened they all showed up to help. The Alliance was led by a Myaamia, but also included Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatamie, Lenape, Shawnee, Wyandotte, Haudenosaunee and Cherokee fighters

The Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance threatened American plans for expansion. After the Revolution, the young government needed money and Myaamia homelands were some of the most fertile and valuable on the frontier. Those lands were part of what was then known as the Northwest Territory, a vast expanse of land that today extends from Ohio to Minnesota. To break apart the alliance and Myaamia resistance, the Americans decided to build a fort in Kiihkayonki. Their plan, however, would prove hard to implement.

Harmar’s campaign wouldn’t be the last. Instead, the US army and local militias would suffer a series of defeats at the hands of the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance. Those early battles would spur the first major military build-up in the United States and forever change what power the President has to go to war.

Wary founders

There’s this famous painting about the end of the Revolutionary War. Today, it hangs in the Rotunda of the US Capitol. In the painting, George Washington is standing in the middle of an official-looking room. A sword swings from his hip. Members of Congress are seated and watching him. In an outstretched hand, Washington is holding a piece of paper — it’s his resignation letter.

Normally someone quitting their job isn’t the type of thing memorialized in a painting, but this was an important moment. At the end of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Army disbanded. The soldiers that had fought and won the war went home — including Washington.

Our founding fathers didn’t want a big, centralized military. George Washington argued that keeping a large army standing around was “dangerous to the liberties of a Country.” You have to remember, British soldiers had occupied colonial towns. They shot and killed people in the streets. Our founders thought a big military could lead to tyranny, so the army they did keep around was small. At one point, the United States had only 80 enlisted men.

That founding vision feels like a far cry from the military we have today. The US spends more money on its military than any other country — it’s not even close. We have the most military bases, the highest tonnage of naval ships, and the largest air force. How did we go from founders who didn’t want a big military to having the most expensive, most powerful one in the world?

While our founding fathers didn’t want a large military, they had another problem. They wanted to control the land that is now Ohio. And the tribes that lived there were pushing back. And Harmar’s defeat was just the beginning.

Returning to Kiihkayonki

About a year after Harmar’s defeat, the United States sent a second general to attack Kiihkayonki — General Arthur St. Clair. For the campaign, Congress created a brand new regiment and gave St. Clair about twice as many regular soldiers. Because the army was still quite small, the fighting force was once again supplemented with men from state militias. This time, roughly 2,000 men marched to Kiihkayonki.

The campaign quickly unraveled. Desertion was rampant. Progress was slow. St. Clair got lost and didn’t know where he was. But the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance knew, and they were ready.

One night, St. Clair’s force camped near the Wabash River. By dawn, over 1,000 warriors from the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance had surrounded them. What followed was one of the worst military disasters in US history. The Indigenous fighters used the terrain to their advantage and attacked from higher ground. The Americans tried to fire back, but many of their bullets only hit the trees — for generations when residents chopped down trees in the small Ohio town they would find lead in the wood.

The Alliance strategically killed the American commanding officers, and from there chaos ensued. Over 80% of the US soldiers were killed or wounded that day during what’s now known as St. Clair’s defeat. It is still one of the highest casualty rates the US has experienced during war — ever.

The army of an empire

After St. Clair’s defeat, there was a lot of finger pointing. The militia blamed the US Army. The US Army blamed the Kentucky militia. Congress wanted to investigate what happened but had never done that before. Leaders were unsure of what authority they even had. After some debate, the House created an oversight committee, and it conducted the first ever congressional investigation.

During the political turmoil, Washington convened all his department heads to address the crisis. The group that came together would later be called the presidential Cabinet.

After two crushing defeats at the hands of the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance, George Washington changed his mind about what kind of military the US should have: the man who had resigned his commission at the end of the Revolutionary War and had watched the Continental Army dissolve now argued that the United States needed a larger, professional military. And Congress agreed. Our founders decided they needed an army not so different from the one England had. They needed the army of an empire.

This war also marked another important first. Congress funded this war against the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance, but never formally declared it. Some experts call it the first undeclared war the US ever fought. And it became precedent for all the undeclared wars we’ve fought since. When the Trump administration bombed Syria in 2017, it cited this war from the 1790s.

The US government spent the next year rebuilding. Congress created a new, centralized military — the Legion of the United States. The new army would rely on trained soldiers rather than militia. Congress expanded the military from fewer than 100 enlisted men after the Revolution to more than 5,000 by 1792. New supplies were purchased. War games were held. And to finish the job of building a fort in Kiihkayonki, they recruited another general — a man named Anthony Wayne.

Americans called him “Mad Anthony” Wayne because of his daring exploits during the Revolutionary War. But in this campaign, Wayne proved remarkably patient. Instead of leading a charge straight to Kiihkayonki, he spent years building a series of forts, slowly advancing into Myaamia homelands.

One of those forts was built at the site of St. Clair’s defeat. The ground was still littered with the bones of the soldiers who died there. Symbolically, the army named it Fort Recovery. In the system of US forts, Fort Recovery wasn’t that big — it was just a supply fort. When the US was invading Indigenous territory, it would build these forts 20 miles apart because that’s about how far a pack horse could travel in a day.

The Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance attacked the fort but couldn’t take it. The battle was not a decisive American victory — more American soldiers died than Indigenous ones — but it weakened the alliance. Seventeen soldiers from the alliance died, and for Indigenous leaders, those deaths were too many. “Because of the harm done to the community,” says George Ironstrack, historian and citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, “that loss of life is too high a price to pay.”

Some Indigenous leaders started reassessing the situation. One of those leaders was a Myaamia War Chief named Little Turtle. After the devastating losses at St.Clair’s defeat, he thought the Americans wouldn’t come back, but then they did. Ironstrack sums up his thinking: “How can we beat them? Who can endure this level of loss and come again?” And who can is the American empire.

The alliance continued to fight but shrank in size. And they lost their final, short battle against the Americans. By that time, the Myaamia had been at war for roughly 15 years. During American military invasions, Myaamia villages and food stores were repeatedly burned. The tribe decided it was time for peace. As Ironstrack puts it “they couldn’t pay the price of total war.”

The resulting Treaty of Greeneville was not a total surrender. In the treaty, the Myaamia kept most of their heartland; most Myaamia villages were able to rebuild and stay put. They ceded a large area of hunting grounds in Ohio.

But the Americans did build a fort in Kiihkayonki. They named it after General Anthony Wayne. And that is how Fort Wayne, IN, got its name.

There are other wars and moments in US history that made our military bigger — World War II and the Civil War among them. But one of the first and most consequential transformations happened during the war against the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance. And our country didn’t build up our military to defend freedom or liberty. We built it so the US could expand.

For the first century of our Republic our country was at war with Indigenous nations. We don’t often teach or talk about these wars, but they forever changed our military and our country.

Wars with Indigenous nations are why we have a central military, why it is so big, and why the President can go to war without Congressional approval.

Listen to the full story on this week’s episode of FIRST AMERICA. Wherever you get your podcasts.

The Ongoing Fight for Tribal Sovereignty

The Tohono O’odham Nation is suing the Department of Homeland Security to stop border wall construction on their sovereign lands. DHS notified them of plans to build on 62 miles of reservation land—without consent. The wall will separate families, desecrate sacred sites, and harm the environment. Meanwhile, DHS cites its “commitment to tribal sovereignty.”

Photo by Gabriel Pietrorazio

In Oklahoma, the state Supreme Court rejected a settlement agreement between the City of Tulsa and Muscogee Nation that would have upheld the 2020 McGirt Supreme Court victory and the tribe’s criminal jurisdiction on their reservation. Governor Stitt continues to fight the ruling in any way he can. Both Tulsa’s mayor and Muscogee’s chief say they’ll keep working together despite the ruling, calling Stitt’s opposition “baffling and shameful.”

But there’s progress too: Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek approved the first request to return civil jurisdiction to an Oregon tribe. Here’s why this matters: In 1953, Congress stripped most Oregon tribes of civil jurisdiction without their consent as part of a broader assimilation effort. For 73 years, state courts handled tribal civil cases like divorces and child custody. Now, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation are reclaiming that power. As Gov. Kotek put it: This “restores the Tribe’s independent power to administer justice” on their own terms.

And across South Dakota, all nine tribes have unified in calling on Congress to return public, federal lands in the Black Hills to tribes there. The Black Hills were protected by treaties, but illegally seized by the United States. The Supreme Court recognized in 1980 that the Black Hills were stolen. But instead of offering land back, the Court offered the tribes a settlement. The tribes have never accepted the money.

Religious Freedom + Cultural Protection

The Navajo Nation is in a drought–and it’s getting worse. This month, President Buu Nygren signed an emergency declaration as water sources continue to shrink. The first few months of 2026 were the hottest on record in Arizona. The declaration unlocks $6.5 million for windmill repairs and water infrastructure, but the need is far greater.

Environmental groups just sued to stop 400 acres of logging in Washington’s Elwha Watershed.

Photo courtesy of Scott McGee/Elwha Legacy Forests Coalition

The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe fought for decades to restore this river—winning one of the largest dam removal projects in U.S. history. Now state-approved logging threatens 140-year-old trees tribal members need for cedar gathering and cultural practices. It’s a bitter irony: after winning back their river, the tribe now has to fight to protect the forest around it.

After years of litigation, the federal government will pay North Dakota $27.8M for costs incurred during Standing Rock. This settlement ends years of litigation over who would fit the bill for the large-scale police response to one of the largest Indigenous-led protest movements in U.S. history. Water protectors faced militarized police, dogs, and water cannons in 2016—now taxpayers are footing the bill for the police response.

Land Back!

The Shawnee Tribe acquired two properties in their ancestral homelands in Ohio. One of the sites is a sacred effigy mound dating back millennia. The Shawnee were forcibly removed from Ohio in the 1800s—first to Missouri, then Kansas, and finally Oklahoma. For the mound site, the Shawnee are seeking World Heritage status to protect the site for future generations and recognize its global cultural significance.

First America out now!

My new podcast, FIRST AMERICA, is out now!

As our country gets ready to celebrate its 250th birthday, First America pushes back against the whitewashed version of the founding and the erasure of Native people from U.S. history. Without us, the American story is wrong. From the chief complaint in the Declaration of Independence, to the real reasons the founders rebelled, to what kind of government they built, First America tells the true story of the founding of the United States. And how our current political moment is 250 years in the making. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Connect with me!

On June 23, I joined Nick Estes on Red Nation Media to discuss my new podcast, First America. We talked about how Native people have been left out of the story of America—and why that matters. We also discussed St. Clair’s defeat, the Boston Tea Party, and what happens when a democracy never reckons with genocide.

Watch the full conversation.

And here’s something you need to know: To justify his actions, Trump keeps leaning on federal Indian law and precedent set by what our government did to Native Americans. Including in the new Jan 6th fund. I sat down with Maggie Blackhawk on NPR’s Code Switch to connect the dots.

With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaching, Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! asked me what’s missing from the conventional story of the American Revolution. Watch the full interview.

On CNN’s “First of All with Victor Blackwell,” I broke down the racial slur in the Declaration of Independence and what it means for Native people.

The U.S. is celebrating its 250th birthday this summer, but Native people are often left out of America’s founding narrative. Does uncovering that history change how we think of the country? Amory Siverston and I explored these questions on On Point.

On Saturday, August 1, I’ll be in conversation with author Barbara Kingsolver at the Post Oak Lodge. If you’re in the area, I’d love to meet you.

This year’s exhibition, States of Erosion: Reclaiming and Reshaping, opens at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. As we approach America 250, the show offers a critical reflection on land, sovereignty, and historical memory through Indigenous perspectives. Catch me in conversation on Sunday, August 16.

Let me know in the comments what other topics and content you want me to cover!

What I’m reading:

Dina Gilio-Whitaker has a great book out– Who Gets to Be Indian?: Ethnic Fraud, Disenrollment, and Other Difficult Conversations About Native American Identity.

I sat down with Dina and will be releasing my interview with her next month, so stay tuned.

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Support Native America!

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Last January, I flew to Minneapolis to interview historian Nick Estes, citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. Nick and I were working on a big project to try and put Native people back into the story of America.

We’re the chief complaint in the Declaration of Independence, but no one talks about it. The first armed conflicts between British soldiers and American colonists were over Native land, but no one talks about it. Even at the Boston Harbor colonists dressed up like Native Americans, but no one talks about it. For the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we wanted to correct the record. And so we decided to create a podcast–that comes out today–called First America.

On the second day of my trip, Nick and I visited Fort Snelling. Today, visitors encounter a reconstructed fort, interpretive signs, paved walkways, and parking lots. School kids go there on field trips. But in the 1860s, Fort Snelling was a concentration camp. As part of a broader effort to expel all Dakota people from the state of Minnesota–that also included death marches, mass executions, and open air prisons–Dakota families were held at Fort Snelling one cold and deadly winter.

In the car, Nick got a call from his wife. She asked if he had seen the news. Earlier that day, a woman named Renee Nicole Good had tried to block ICE agents with her car. An agent had just shot and killed her.

When I started this project, I thought I was making a history podcast. I read books. I interviewed historians. I visited important sites. I traveled across the country. But then this thing kept happening. I would be in a place, learning about America’s past. And the same thing would happen, right here in our present.

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I hadn’t come to Minneapolis to report on ICE. I’d come to interview Nick. But I canceled my flight home and stayed to report on what was happening.

The next day, I was back at Fort Snelling. But not to visit the historic site. I was there to report on a protest.

That is because where ICE was headquartered in Minneapolis is on the Fort Snelling campus–accross the highway from the replica fort. And ICE is headquartered there because it’s federal land. And it’s federal land because it was once a military reservation.

And it’s not just the same place. The same thing is happening. “People are being hunted in their neighborhoods in their schools. Places that were considered sanctuary sites such as hospitals and churches are no longer off limits,” Nick told me. “150 years ago they were hunting us down to kill us. And now they’re hunting down immigrants to deport them.”

During the ICE surge in Minneapolis, I heard a lot of politicians say the same thing. They said this is “un-American”. They said it was “unprecedented”.

Violently rounding people up, putting people in detention, even shooting anyone who gets in a way our government has done this before. Not once, not twice, many times. We just don’t talk about that history, because it happened to Indigenous people.

When I started this project, I thought what was missing from the story of America was me, my community–Native Americans. But then I realized that without us, the story is wrong. What’s missing from the story of America? It’s the truth.

We don’t know how America got here, because we don’t know how it started.

This summer, as our country celebrates the 250-year anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, First America tells the true story of our country’s founding and how our current political moment is 250 years in the making.

Want to be part of disrupting the 250 nationalist propaganda? Want to help correct the record? Join us! Share the trailer!

Featuring:

• Maggie Blackhawk (Fond du Lac Ojibwe), New York University

• Ned Blackhawk (citizen of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone), Yale University

• Phil Deloria (descendant of the Standing Rock and Yankton Sioux tribes), Harvard University

• Nick Estes (citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe), University of Minnesota

Produced by Critical Frequency and distributed by Pushkin Industries.

Sign up for updates and more info:

https://www.firstamerica.info/

Want to partner with us on programming or to amplify this history? Email info.firstamerica@gmail.com

Pe’sla, a sacred site in the Black Hills, translates to “the heart of all that is.” The site is central to Lakota creation stories and is used for ceremonies. The Forest Service wants to open the site to a graphite mine. NDN Collective and others are suing the Forest Service to try and stop it.

In another part of the Black Hills, Oglala Lakota organizers are opposing yet another mine–this time for uranium. The proposed uranium mine would see drilling in a canyon lined with Native rock art. On the ground, things have gotten heated. At a hearing in January, a member of the board that oversees the permit process yelled at an Oglala Lakota organizer, “your goal in life is to be a jerk.”

In Alaska, residents of coastal Alaska Native communities can’t get commercial fishing permits–even though they live in the heart of the industry. Meanwhile, out of state commercial fishers come to Alaska every summer and reap huge profits. Indigenous leaders in the state are calling for reform.

And the Trump administration is trying to open up even more land for resource extraction. Navajo Nation is warning that a proposed federal rule could make it harder for tribes to stop hydropower projects. Historically, hydroelectric dams have flooded tribal lands and even Native homes. Leaders of Navajo Nation warn the new rule could bring back threats to Black Mesa, a place long eyed by energy developers.

And finally, after a years-long battle, exploratory drilling for a future copper mine has started at Oak Flat. Oak Flat is a sacred site to the San Carlos Apache and is still used for ceremonies. Even though drilling has begun, the Chairman of the San Carlos Apache says the fight is not over. Read his interview here.

Despite the battles, tribes saw big wins last month in #LANDBACK and truth & reconciliation

Last week, the Colfax-Todds Valley Consolidated Tribe in California got 300 acres back of their ancestral territory. The Tribe wants to use part of the site for a forest stewardship operations center.

Meanwhile, Congress is advancing a bill that would finalize the federal government’s water rights settlement with the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. It would affirm the Tribe’s water rights, put land into trust, and create a fund for water infrastructure and operations.

In the 1970s, a quarter of Native women of childbearing age were sterilized without their knowledge or consent. Little has been done about it. But the state of New Mexico is leading the first process towards truth and reconciliation. A proposed law could make the state the first to acknowledge and study this awful history. Both democratic candidates for New Mexico’s next governor (including, of course, Deb Haaland) have declared their intent to investigate the forced sterilization of Native women and potentially take legal action.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s one third of Native kids were sent to assimilation schools that systematically abused and neglected Native kids. The goal was to assimilate Native children to white society so that Native nations would no longer exist. Unlike Canada, the U.S. has never had a truth and reconciliation commission for the schools. But proposed Congressional legislation, introduced by Representative Tom Cole (Chickasaw) and Sharice Davids (Ho-Chunk) could change that.

Trump’s proposed budget includes big cuts for Indian Country

Trump sent his proposed 2027 budget to Congress a few weeks ago, and it wasn’t good for tribes. It included many of the same cuts as last year’s budget, including deep cuts to tribal housing, health programs, and economic development. The proposed budget would also see a steep increase in funding for war.

I broke the budget down on Instagram, if you want to see what tribal programs are on the chopping block.

At the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, global leaders raise concerns about violence, AI

The 25th session on the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues took place in New York last month. A new report found that of the 300 human rights defenders murdered in 2023, nearly A THIRD were Indigenous or working on Indigenous rights. Despite the fact that Indigenous people make up only 5 percent of the global population.

Participants at the UN Forum also discussed AI, which some argued is resulting in the same patterns of exploitation and extractivism as colonialism. Back in the U.S., we saw that play out just last week when a New Mexico data center developer tried to use Acoma Pueblo’s name for their company–calling it Acoma LLC. The Pueblo’s Governor issued a letter censuring the company, and now the company is backing down.

High profile scams target vulnerable Native people

In Montana, an insurance scam billed the state for $37.3 million in fraudulent insurance charges by targeting housing insecure Native people. The scammers promised the victims luxury access to health services. The scammers then took the victims across state lines, kept them in substandard conditions, and abandoned them far from home without the resources to get back–all while billing Montana medical insurance for their care.

Tribal citizens living on reservations have some of the lowest rates of internet access nationwide. A federal contractor appears to have scammed the Rosebud Sioux Tribe on a job that was supposed to help more tribal members get online. Federal prosecutors are suing the Arizona-based contractor for allegedly inflating costs and billing the tribe for nonexistent services.

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Trump’s birthright citizenship case reminds us that citizenship has long been a colonial tool

In April, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Trump v Barbara, the case that will determine whether or not President Donald Trump has the authority to end birthright citizenship in the United States. Trump’s lawyer made headlines when he argued that Native Americans don’t have a constitutional right to birthright citizenship. (I broke down what the 14th Amendment says about Native citizenship here). U.S. citizenship for colonized people is complicated–and isn’t always a good thing. Historically, many Indigenous nations and other colonized people fought to not be U.S. citizens. Check out this Instagram post to learn why.

What I’m reading (and watching)

• 30 years after Norman Finkelstein first wrote this article, “First the Cherokee, now the Palestinian,” nothing has changed. Current Affairs re-released the essay, which shows the similarities between tactics used against my Cherokee ancestors and Palestinians today.

• Check out the new Indigenous Guide to Route 66 and plan a trip for the summer!

• There’s a new book of Tlingit stories published in Tlingit! I think things like books and movies in Indigenous languages are so necessary to keep our languages alive. The book was developed using transcribed recordings and performances from Tlingit storytellers born between 1870 and 1915.

• I’m excited about this new book by Jake Skeets, the Navajo Nation poet laureate! The book is called Horses and is about drought, and hope, on the Navajo Nation.

Connect with me

• In April, I talked about Black and Indigenous solidarity with author and activist Brea Baker. You can read or watch it here, and let me know what you think about this format and who you’d want to hear from in the future!

• I got to talk with comedian and writer Amy Hoggart about where the left goes from here and how Indigenous issues don’t always map onto party politics. Check it out!

Let me know in the comments what other topics and content you want me to cover!

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Support Native America!

If you like what you’re reading, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. For as little as $2 a month you can support my writing. Another great way to support this newsletter is to share it!

The cover photo for this post shows Butch Laiti is president of the Douglas Indian Association, a tribal government in Juneau. The association has purchased a fishing boat and wants to buy a commercial fishing permit for its members to share, but a state law bars it from doing so. (Photo by Nathaniel Herz/Northern Journal)

After we were on a couple panels together and hung out at a festival, Brea invited me to join this new collective: Black Liberation Indigenous Sovereignty or BLIS for short. It’s a collective of Black and Indigenous thinkers, organizers, and activists building solidarity between our movements.

I’ve always really appreciated the deep and authentic way Brea considers Indigenous people and issues in her work. And I believe that we are not going to dismantle this thing called white supremacy if we don’t figure out how to work together. So I sat down with Brea for a conversation about how we do that. How do we build solidarity? Why is it important? And what gets in the way?

Watch our conversation or scroll down to read it.

The following conversation has been edited for length and flow.

Rebecca Nagle: This is kind of a basic question, but why do you think it’s important for Black communities and Native communities to build solidarity together?

Brea Baker: I don’t think it is basic. Because unfortunately I don’t think our solidarity is as widespread as I would like it to be. I don’t think that we are going to achieve the justice that our respective groups need without fighting alongside one another. And I don’t just mean that in the sense of like multiracial organizing is important, but specifically Black and Indigenous people. I don’t think we’re going to achieve land back, I don’t think we’re going to achieve reparations, without fighting side by side.

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RN: From a Cherokee perspective, I think if we’re not also confronting anti-Black racism–both within and outside of our community–we’re actually not fighting for all Cherokees. Because there’s a lot of folks who are Black and Cherokee. If we’re not conscious of anti-Black racism in Indian country, we’re not fighting for everybody who’s Indigenous.

You know, for Cherokee Nation, this is part of our history. From the early 1800s to the Civil War, we institutionalized chattel slavery. And then in our modern history as a tribe, we disenfranchised and disenrolled the descendants of people that we had enslaved. And so if we even just wanna be honest about Cherokee history, be honest about who we are as a tribe, we have to recognize that. Or we’re always gonna be telling a partial truth or a partial history.

BB: Exactly. I feel like the inclination towards partial histories is because we all feel so wronged. And so it feels like why do I have to always be the accountable party?

Same thing in Black history, and these are things that I included in Rooted. A lot of the early HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) were in line with boarding schools. Indigenous young people who’d been removed from their families and homes and communities were brought to HBCUs to learn from Black people on how to assimilate. And HBCUs–in the name of getting philanthropic dollars for Black education–they were participants in that. Same with Buffalo Soldiers, and same with so many other points in history.

RN: I think there’s a lot of ways that our communities have been pitted against each other by white supremacy,

BB: And that’s the thing. I think that we have to acknowledge that. It’s infantilizing to assume that being victims of harm on one hand means that we have carte blanche immunity on the other hand.

And we do have really great moments of solidarity. There were so many tribes that were abolitionists. If we’re really gonna have the conversation, we’re talking about a handful of tribes and nations that did participate in the institution of American slavery and hundreds more that never did.

RN: I think the other thing that gets in the way is just how different anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism is. I think sometimes people are like, well, the racism that I experience doesn’t look like the racism that you experience.

BB: I think this comes up in reparations conversations like, oh, well, Japanese Americans and Native Americans got reparations, so where’s ours?

And then on the flip side, I think that there are ways where Black people are so hyper visible. Sometimes when I talk to Native friends and community members, there’s this perception that all this conversation around anti-Blackness is taking all the air out of the room.

RN: I hear that a lot in Native communities. I don’t think Native folks understand that hyper visibility is also a function of anti-Black racism and that it’s not always good.

BB: I mean, I’m hyper visible with no true safety.

RN: I wanted to see if we could break down for folks the difference between anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism. I think one thing that’s really important to understand is how they’re almost opposite.

The example that I always use is when you start getting laws defining race in the early 1900s, like one drop laws saying if some is part Black then they’re Black. And at the same time, Congress is legislating blood quantum in Native communities. With the explicit goal for Native folks to intermarry with white folks and no longer be Native. Tribes that didn’t have a strict blood quantum policy were actually slated for what’s called termination.

It’s almost like the two sides of the same coin. Why is it this way? And what I keep coming back to is: what did white supremacy have to gain?

BB: I was just gonna say that.

RN: What were you thinking?

BB: Well, to your point, capitalism in particular needs plantations. And those plantations are run off of the labor of Black people who do not have access to being equitable stakeholders. You can’t allow Black families to have a way out of their Blackness.

Because then the sexual violence that enslavers were doing to the people that they enslaved would, over time, remove their labor force. And so they needed Black people to stay Black.

But then to free up land for those plantations, they needed Indigenous people to disappear and Indigenous nations to disappear. The presence of Indigenous people, Indigenous nations, and tribal sovereignty gets in the way of capitalism’s goal of having the land.

RN: Yeah.

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BB: So, you need Indigenous people to be going away over time, but you need Black people to stay put. It’s even why with the great migration when people think, “oh, wouldn’t white racist people be happy that Black people are leaving?” No. They were arresting Black people for trying to leave the South. They wanted the right to brutalize you and take your labor, but that didn’t mean that they wanted you gone.

RN: I always think of it as, well, less Indigenous bodies equals more land and more Black bodies equals more coerced, unpaid labor.

BB: Yep.

RN: It’s literally money. It always goes back to money.

BB: Literally money.

RN: One thing I wanted to say, following up on the example that you gave, is that anti-Black anti-Indigenous racism, they’re different, right? But then they work together.

And so in the 1820s and the 1830s, because of the plantation economy, the soil was depleted and planters needed new land for cotton production. And southerners’ need for more land drove what became the Indian Removal Policy where 80,000 Indigenous people were expelled from our homelands. This is what the Trail of Tears comes from. For some tribes a quarter to a third of the population died; it was extremely violent. Then right after removal, the cotton and the plantation economy moved into the deep south. And so when we think of the stereotype of slavery in the United States, when we think of the Antebellum South, that’s literally built on Chickasaw and Choctaw land.

BB: It’s so true. If you’re following the money, then we should be like, oh, the same people are invested in both of our demises.

RN: Yeah. And that actually kind of brings me around to one of the questions I wanna ask you: What do you think the role of white folks is in this today? What do you think people who are trying to be accomplices or allies, where do they fit in? Because what I feel like I sometimes encounter in white folks is almost this attitude of, “but the racism I signed up to dismantle, I wanted it to be simple.”

BB: The fullness of this, of this history and what we’re up against is so much more complex. Those who want it to be neat and easy are people who underestimate white supremacy.

And I think when you really understand how much money has been made, do you think they would leave this up to chance?

And if we are trying to upend that, we have to get serious about understanding how much we’re asking the opposition to lose. They know how much they have to lose, and that’s why they’re fighting so hard.

RN: Yeah. And for us to see it as interconnected. And so to actually take white supremacy apart, we gotta take the whole thing apart.

BB: That is it right there. If you leave any piece of it intact, it will regenerate and repair itself and come back stronger.

RN: It has done that a million times.

BB: Yes. We have to tear it apart completely, which means we need one another.

Let’s connect!

• I’m a few months into the Tulsa Artist Fellowship residency! Through December 2028, I will join nine other artists working across painting, sculpture, film, sound, photography, writing and social practice. During my time in Tulsa, I’ll be working on a community-led research project examining how violence against Native peoples shaped Oklahoma’s oil industry and Tulsa’s early wealth. Come see me at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship on First Fridays in downtown Tulsa!

• Last week we announced the Indigenous Futures Workshop Cohort, part of the First America project! I’m so excited to work with these amazing youth.

I want to hear from you!

I’m just starting this newsletter and I would love your feedback! As a freelance writer, I was frustrated with my writing living in multiple places and wanted a space to connect with my readers directly. I’d love to hear your thoughts! What topics are you curious about? Where would you like to see this newsletter go?

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On his first day in office, Trump signed executive order 14160 which sought to end birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship means, in short, that if you are born on U.S. soil, you are a U.S. citizen. Trump wants to take U.S. citizenship away from children whose parents are in the United States either temporarily or without documentation. Legal challenges were filed almost immediately, and the order has never gone into effect.

So far, every lower court has ruled against Trump. But the Supreme Court, which now has a conservative majority, will have the final say. The Court will hear oral arguments today. Legal experts anticipate a decision this June.

You might be surprised to learn that to defend his executive order in the courts, the Trump administration is relying on federal Indian law. Lawyer for Trump arguing there have been people born on U.S. soil excluded from U.S. citizenship. And that previously the Supreme Court has said this is okay. And they’re not wrong–generations of Native Americans were born on U.S. soil, but denied citizenship.

At the heart of this case is the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment was passed at the end of the Civil War during reconstruction. It is the part of the Constitution that guarantees birthright citizenship. The citizenship clause reads “All persons born… in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” It was originally drafted to extend U.S. citizenship to formally enslaved people, but since then, the amendment has applied to lots of other people, including the children of immigrants. But the 14th Amendment was written with a carve out. And that carve out reads “excluding Indians not taxed.”

John Elk was born in 1845 on the Winnebago reservation in Nebraska. He was a young adult when the 14th Amendment was drafted and ratified. Later in life, Elk moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where in 1880, he attempted to register to vote. His application was denied. The local voting registrar said Elk couldn’t vote, because he was not a U.S. citizen. Elk appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court. In Elk v. Wilkins, the high Court sided with Wilkins, the voting registrar. The Court ruled John Elk could not be a citizen of the United States because he was not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” under the 14th Amendment. And that was because Elk was Native American and born on his reservation.

In their briefs to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration cites Elk v. Wilkins heavily. They are using the 1884 ruling to argue the 14th Amendment was intended to extend citizenship to Black and formerly enslaved people only. Elk v Wilkins helps the Trump administration out with this narrow and rare interpretation. To justify denying John Elks citizenship and the right to vote, the high Court wrote the purpose of the 14th Amendment “was to settle ‘the citizenship of free[d] [slaves].’”

Today, Native Americans are citizens of the United States. That is by Congressional statute, however, not a constitutional right. It varies somewhat by tribe, but most Native Americans achieved citizenship over 100 years ago through the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. Most Native Americans are mixed race, which means they also have a constitutional right to citizenship through their parentage.

Native Americans aren’t the only group of people born on U.S. soil who have been denied U.S. citizenship. You can think of the history of federal Indian law as the first level in a building of legal scaffolding. That’s because our government took what it did to Native people and applied it to other peoples we colonized. After a brief war with Spain in 1898, the United States took over Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam. U.S. lawmakers had to decide whether or not they would grant citizenship to the people they had colonized and now governed. Most did not want to. And so, they looked to Native Americans as a model. (In the Philippines, U.S. lawmakers even considered legally designating a portion of the population as “Indians”.)

The President at the time (with the help of leaders at the Bureau of Indian Affairs) came up with a new rule to classify people born in U.S. territories not as U.S. citizens, but as colonial subjects. This ran counter to over 100 years of precedent. Before they were states, places like Indiana and Oklahoma were U.S. territories, and all the white people born there, for generations, had been considered U.S. citizens. The Executive Branch made this new citizenship rule out of whole cloth. As one might expect, people in places like Puerto Rico challenged their exclusion from U.S. citizenship. Some of these cases from the early 1900s even made it to the Supreme Court.

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And what did the Supreme Court do? Nothing. It stayed silent. It issued vague decisions that side-stepped whether or not a President had the authority to reinterpret the 14th Amendment.

As Sam Erman writes in Almost Citizens, the Court’s continued silence on the status of people in U.S. territories created “an invitation to resolve the matter politically and administratively” rather than through the courts. In other words, it helped create the political vacuum Trump is stepping into.

The Supreme Court has ruled in other cases–most notably United States v. Wong Kim Ark–that the children of immigrants do have a constitutional right to citizenship. That case, from 1898, upheld the citizenship claims of Wong Kim Ark who was born to two Chinese immigrants in San Francisco. When he was denied reentry to the United States after a trip to China under the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Supreme Court ruled he had a right to be here because he was a U.S. citizen.

Each year, tens of thousands of children become U.S. citizens not because their parents are, but because they are born here. (Most of these children live their entire lives in the U.S. Rates of “birth tourism”–women traveling to the U.S. just to give birth–are marginal.) As immigration started to make the U.S. less white, conservatives started attacking birthright citizenship. We can see this in the idea of “anchor babies” popularized by right-wingers in the 2000s and 2010s. Even Republican Senator Lindsay Graham proposed ending birthright citizenship as early as 2010. The most extreme backlash to immigration shows up in “great replacement theory,” a xenophobic conspiracy theory that white people are being systematically replaced by immigrants and people of color. (As an Indigenous person, the irony is not lost on me that this right wing theory describes what actually happened to Native Americans.)

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The central question in Trump v. Barbara is whether the language of the 14th Amendment–and its long-held understanding–will hold, or if the Supreme Court will let Trump rewrite the rules. Legal scholars agree, of course, that the President does not have the power to rewrite the Constitution. The problem is that our democracy has a long tradition of giving the President a lot of power in certain arenas without the normal checks and balances of our Constitution. As legal scholar Maggie Blackhawk has pointed out, that power was granted so we could impose our will on those living at the margins of U.S. empire–first Indigenous people, then people living in U.S. territories, and now immigrants.

You can think of federal Indian law like a fault line in U.S. democracy. It is America’s achilles heal. It is the place where our government threw constitutional norms out the window, so that we could take what we wanted through raw power, not liberal democracy. After the office of the President of the United States accumulated all that unchecked power, we never took it away. And so now, when Trump wants to detain immigrant children without a warrant, separate families at the border, or deny citizenship to people born here, he is borrowing from a very old American playbook.

Now, the fault lines in our democracy are opening up.

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Devastating floods hit Hawaii last week, and thousands were forced to evacuate as a dam owned by the Dole Food Company was at risk of “imminent failure.” Here are a few ways you can support those impacted:

• Kako’o O’ahu: The Hawaiian Council, a non-profit serving Native Hawaiians, is matching donations up to $200,000.

• ‘Aina Momona is a nonprofit supporting Indigenous Hawaiian land stewardship. Their land base and learning center were damaged during the storm.

• The Lāhui Foundation: donate or, if you’re local, volunteer.

• More resources are listed in this Hawaii Public Radio article.

Markwayne Mullin confirmed as the first Native American DHS Secretary

Markwayne Mullin, a Republican Senator from Oklahoma and citizen of Cherokee Nation, was confirmed as the first Native American secretary of the Department of Homeland Security at the end of March. I really appreciated the thoughtful comments from Cherokee folks on my post about this. In case you missed it, Mullin now holds the highest office of any Native person in the U.S. today and will be only the second Native person to serve in a Presidential Cabinet. But if history teaches us anything, it’s that representation doesn’t always mean progress for Native Americans.

Charles Curtis, citizen of Kaw Nation, served as Vice President from 1929 to 1933. Before that he was the Senate Majority leader and the first Native person to ever serve in Congress. Curtis thought the best thing for Native Americans would be to assimilate to white society. In this vein, he supported a policy called allotment which divided up and privatized communally held tribal land. The results for Native communities were disastrous.

Robert Owen, citizen of Cherokee Nation, served in the Senate between 1907 and 1925. He also used his post to push for assimilation policies. He advocated for the creation of the state of Oklahoma on top of tribal land and the elimination of laws put in place to protect Native land owners from sale, swindle and theft.

Trump is calling for Jimmy Kimmel to be canceled (again) after the late night host made fun of Mullin for being a plumber. And while the media debates whether or not plumbers everywhere should be offended, it’s clear the late night show has no Native people on staff. Because they wouldn’t have made the following jokes. First, in his opening bit, Kimmel called Mullin “part Native American.” Mullin is not “part” Native American, he is a citizen of Cherokee Nation. Saying “part” comes from blood quantum. To “get rid of the Indian problem” in the early 1900s Congress decided that anyone less than half or a quarter Native would no longer count. Tribes who didn’t kick those people out were slated for termination. Today, the federal government still tracks what percent Native blood each tribal citizen has–including Mullin–by issuing a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood.

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Then Kimmel joked that a Native Secretary of Homeland Security might not do a good job, because after all, Native America “let” Europeans in. Cherokee Nation did not “let” white people in. We fought white encroachment on our land, first militarily and then through diplomacy for over 250 years. We lost that fight when the US army rounded us up at gunpoint and put us into concentration camps. That’s not letting someone on your land.

If Kimmel wanted to take a swipe at Mullin, he could have talked about the time the Secretary called the Trail of Tears a volunteer walk, canceled a townhall at a local high school over “security” concerns, or threatened to fight a labor leader on the Senate floor.

Threats to Native voters

Meanwhile, Congress is considering legislation that could disenfranchise voters across the U.S., and the impacts for Native voters would be huge. Here is what the SAVE Act could mean for Native voters:

• What is the SAVE Act? Trump wants Americans to have to prove their citizenship before they can vote. The proposed legislation would require voters to have paperwork like a birth certificate or passport to register. It would also limit online or mail-in voter registration. Arizona has already implemented a similar law, and it’s blocked about 35,000 voters from registering to vote. A disproportionate number of those folks live on tribal lands.

• Here’s the problem: Many Native folks don’t have easy access to birth certificates or passports. In short, it’s because getting that paperwork can be really expensive and time consuming. It can easily cost $200 to get a passport. And, under the proposed legislation, Native Americans would not be allowed to use tribal IDs to register to vote. Many Native Americans use their tribal IDs as their primary form of identification, and some may not have a state-issued ID.

• Under the law, voters would have to register in person, at an election office. This disproportionately harms Native folks in rural communities. Take Alaska, for example, it’s a huge state with 229 federally recognized tribes. But in the entire state there are only 6 election offices.

Check out Native American Rights Fund for more information.

March was a big month for #LANDBACK!

Through purchase, legislation, and gifts tribes are regaining ownership and control over their land. Here are some of the tribes that got #LANDBACK in March.

• The Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center and Haudenosaunee community members just purchased 600 acres in the Adirondacks for long‑term cultural and ecological use.

• Federal lawmakers from Washington state introduced legislation to return the federally owned Clear Creek Hatchery to the Nisqually Indian Tribe.

• In California, the Agua Caliente Tribe regained ancestral lands in the mountains near their reservation, and two California senators introduced legislation that could return over 800 acres of federal land to the Pechanga Band of Indians. The land is sacred to the tribe and putting the land into trust would safeguard protections.

• The California Coastal Commission ordered a developer to return land to the Wiyot Tribe, Blue Lake Rancheria and the Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria. The developer ignored planning and environmental regulations to build a coastal residence on a site that sits on a historic village of the Wiyot Tribe. When tribal representatives identified and reported the violations, they say they were met with racism and threats.

• And finally, California announced a pledge to return 7.5 million acres to tribal stewardship! Its the first time the state has adopted a land back policy. At statehood, California funded civilian militias and bounty hunters to systematically kill Native people. In some Native communities, 90% of the people died. It was nothing short of genocide. Returning the land is one small step towards repair.

The movement for #LandBack goes beyond just land. Native communities are fighting for culture back, language back, and the restoration of so much of what we lost. That includes buffalo. In the late 1800s, the US government killed more than 3 million buffalo to intentionally starve Native communities and disrupt cultural lifeways. Today, tribes are working to bring the buffalo back. Over 1,500 buffalo were returned to tribes last year.

Another important thing tribes are fighting to get back is sacred objects. Often, these important and sacred items are held by museums and universities–not tribes and our citizens. Last month, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe reclaimed dozens of cultural items from the University of Montana.

Threats to tribal land and sovereignty

While March was a great month for #LandBack, threats to tribal land and water continue. And while tribes are fighting to protect their land and water, in some places the opposition is winning.

After a years-long fight, ownership of the Apache sacred site Oak Flat (Chi’chil Bildagoteel) was transferred to Resolution Copper. Over the next four decades, the mining company plans to turn the holy site into a giant crater.

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The Trump administration is rushing the approval of other mining projects on tribal lands. The administration approved a uranium mine in Utah in 11 days–when the process usually takes years. The department gave tribes only 7 days to respond to a request for comment.

Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation wants to take over the historic site of a boarding school where hundreds of Native children were sent in the 1800s. At such “schools” Native kids faced forced labor, abuse, malnutrition, and neglect. The Tribe wants to create a healing site, but the state is standing in the way. The state of Kansas says they should control the site.

The federal government has approved an energy megaproject on a site sacred to Yakama Nation near the Columbia River. It’s been used by the Yakama people for centuries in ceremonies and for fishing and root gathering–rights the Yakama Nation were promised in treaties. Meanwhile, in southeast Alaska, residents and neighbors of the Chilkat Indian Village, in Alaska, are organizing to stop a proposed mine that residents say will pollute the river with acid.

And in Michigan, Line 5 is moving forward while four tribes are still fighting to stop it. They claim if the pipeline bursts it would contaminate the Great Lakes–the largest source of fresh water in the world. Their case is now in front of the Michigan Supreme Court.

In California, an environmental trust spread “human compost”—soil created from human remains—along the banks of the San Joaquin River. The soil was provided by Earth Funeral, an alternative to burial or cremation. The area is the ancestral land of the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians who say the use of human remains is deeply disrespectful to their culture and home.

Pe’sla is a site sacred to Lakota tribes and translates to “the heart of all that is.” Nestled within the Black Hills, the site is central in Lakota creation stories. Last month, the Forest Service approved a permit for exploratory drilling for a graphite mine.

And in Guam, Trump’s Dept of War wants to detonate old bombs. The beach where they want to explode those bombs sits on top of 80 percent of the island’s drinking water. The Supreme Court will have the final say in a case that could jeopardize the rights of the CHamoru people of Guam–and Indigenous people throughout U.S. territories.

Tribal lands are also threatened by climate change. Last fall, the Alaska Native village Kipnuk was devastated by Typhoon Halong–with 90% of buildings destroyed. As the village decides what to do next, they have to deal with the contamination the typhoon left behind–sewage, garbage, household chemicals, even dead animals. The contamination threatens the community’s subsistence and drinking water.

Tribes fight data centers as new report finds many tribal lands still lack internet

Across the country, data centers threaten local communities’ drinking water and clean air, and also cause electricity prices to sky rocket. While big tech companies are eyeing tribal land, Native people are pushing back. In March, Seminole Nation of Oklahoma took action to ban AI data centers on their land. Cherokee Nation created a task force to study the impact of data centers. And two Muscogee women stopped a mega-AI data center from being built on their tribe’s land.

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At the same time AI data centers pop up over the country, many tribal communities still don’t have internet access. A new report says that geography is a big reason. During relocation, many Native communities were forced to move to more rural areas, and this is just one way tribes continue to feel the effects.

An end to South Dakota’s case against Nick Tilsen!

Last month, all charges against Nick Tilsen were dropped! Tilsen, who is Oglala Lakota and the founder of NDN collective, was facing criminal charges that he allegedly accelerated his vehicle toward a South Dakota cop in 2022. Tilsen claims that didn’t happen and he was observing a police interaction with an unhoused person. The cop was not struck by the car and the police didn’t press charges until a year after the incident. Tilsen has maintained the case was brought for political reasons. In January, the case ended in a mistrial–meaning the jury couldn’t come to an agreement on his guilt or innocence and the state had 45 days to decide if they would try the case again. The state declined to retry the case, meaning the years-long legal saga is finally over.

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I just hit 10k subscribers on Substack! Thank you so much to everyone who has read, shared, and subscribed to Native America! I started my Substack less than a year ago because Indigenous communities deserve the same standard of journalism as the rest of the country, but rarely receive it from non-Native media outlets. I bring a Native perspective to breaking news, and show how the history of Native people in the U.S. is echoed in today’s headlines–from breaking down the ways the Trump Administration’s plans in Gaza and invasions of Iran and Venezuela mirror U.S. policies toward Native Americans, to analyzing what it means for Billie Eilish to say “everyone is illegal on stolen land” at the Grammy’s. Please help me find the next 10,000 readers by sharing this email with a friend or posting on social media!

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And, if you listened to S2 of THIS LAND you might remember an adoption attorney named Mark Fiddler who was trying to overturn ICWA. Despite his loss at #SCOTUS he’s still at it in Minnesota. And he is losing there too.

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For February, America celebrated Black History Month. It is important to remember that Black history is part of Indigenous history too. For my tribe, Cherokee Nation, we cannot tell our history honestly without Black history.

Cherokee Nation adopted a system of chattel slavery from the U.S. South and codified it into our first written constitution. Cherokees first had contact with the European concept of chattel slavery through the Indigenous slave trade, where Cherokees were kidnapped and enslaved by the Spanish and then the British. In the early 1700s, a third of the enslaved population in South Carolina was Indigenous.

Traditionally, Cherokee identity was based on one’s maternal clan; if your mother was Cherokee, you were too. By the late 1700s individual Cherokees enslaved people of African descent, but Black Cherokees who had a clan through adoption or birth still had full citizenship rights. But in the 1820s, all that changed. Cherokees started to define citizenship not by clan, but by race. People who were Black were not allowed to be citizens–even if their mother was Cherokee.

During the U.S. Civil War, Cherokees were divided. Some supported the Union, some the Confederacy. The Tribe was invaded by both armies and offered little protection from either. Many were forced into refugee camps and one historian estimates a quarter of the population died.

After the Confederacy lost, Cherokee Nation negotiated peace with the United States in 1866. Part of that treaty guaranteed citizenship to “freedmen”--the people Cherokees had enslaved and their descendants. Formerly enslaved people became Cherokee citizens, and even served on Tribal Council.

In the early 1900s the federal government divided up Cherokee land for a process called allotment. Federal officials made official rolls of Cherokee citizens and decided to place Black Cherokees on a separate list–called the “freedmen” roll. During this era, Cherokee sovereignty was greatly diminished and the tribe was not allowed to elect its own leaders for the next 70 years.

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When Cherokee Nation reconstituted its government in the 1970s, anyone who descended from that early 1900s roll was eligible for citizenship. But starting in the 1980s, the Tribe disenrolled Freedmen descendants, claiming tribal citizenship was reserved for Cherokees “by blood.” After decades of court battles and legal advocacy, Cherokee freedmen descendants won a federal court case in 2017 ordering the tribe to allow enrollment based on the 1866 treaty. Today, freedmen descendants can enroll in Cherokee Nation and enjoy full citizenship.

If Indigenous nations are truly sovereign, then we are responsible for our mistakes. Like any other government, we are responsible for the harm we have caused. We cannot hold the United States accountable for the wrongs of history committed against us, while refusing to take account for our wrong of chattel slavery. The people we enslaved did not choose to become Cherokee–we made that choice for them. They and their families endured the hardships of the trail of tears and slavery, allotment and segregation. On the long path of repair, citizenship is only the first step.

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Remembering Jim Gray

Last month, Indian Country lost a beloved leader and community member. I’m joining the Gray family and many others in remembering and celebrating the life of Jim Gray. As the former Chief of the Osage Nation, Jim led a brave and audacious effort to overall their tribal government that allowed more Osages to be full tribal citizens. More recently, Jim worked to bring awareness to the Osage murders, including behind the scenes on Killers of the Flower Moon. Jim is a direct descendant of one of the historical figures featured in the movie. As a person, Jim was an incredibly generous and kind leader. Sometimes he would call me just to tell me I was doing a good job or share a word of encouragement. From talking to him, I learned a lot about politics, leadership and service. It’s hard to believe I’ll never get one of those calls again. His absence will be felt by many.

Native representation at the Olympics, Superbowl and the Grammy Awards!

It was a big month for Native representation on the national–and international–stage.

In February, the Seattle Seahawks won Superbowl LX. A lot of defenders of racist mascots claim that team names like the Chiefs or Braves “honor” Native people. But the Seahawks show how it is actually done. The Seahawks logo is based on a mask made by members of the Kwakwaka’wakw tribe in the 1800s. The original logo was designed in the 1970s. Today, the team maintains a formal partnership with the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and also collaborates with contemporary Indigenous artists to design merchandise like t-shirts and hats.

At the winter Olympics in Italy last month, three Indigenous athletes from North America competed. While none were from the U.S., the winter competition saw three Métis athletes from Canada and two Inuk athletes from Greenland (representing Denmark). One of them–Jocelyne Larocque, a hockey player from Canada–won her fourth Olympic medal and became the most decorated Indigenous athlete from North America.

Unfortunately, the winter games also saw a moment of anti-Indigenous racism–showing how pervasive stereotypes about Native people are. The official Olympics account posted a “fan of the day” picture featuring a Czechia fan in Native American costume, including a painted face and feathered headdress. The outfit seems to have been inspired by the Czech team, HC Škoda Plzeň, which has a racist mascot.

And Native issues were on center stage at the Grammy Awards. During her acceptance speech last month, Billie Eilish said “no one is illegal on stolen land”. Republican and right wing leaders lost their minds, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s, who asked during a Senate hearing “are we right now on stolen land?” With everyone talking about Eilish’s speech, I wrote a piece on how the theft of Native land created the blueprint for how ICE operates today. While I agree with the moral conviction behind “no one is illegal on stolen land,” legally it’s wrong. In fact, the opposite is true. It is because the land is stolen that U.S. immigration policy is so inhumane.

ICE on Native land

Native nations and Indigenous activists continue to push back against ICE. Red Lake Nation in Minnesota banned ICE raids on their reservation. ICE cannot enter Red Lake without a warrant from a judge. With ICE detaining tribal citizens, tribes are helping more people get tribal ID cards and even speeding up the printing and processing times. Many Native Americans are not eligible to enroll in their tribe, but still have strong and recognized ties to their communities. To protect those folks, Native nations are expanding their operations to offer non-enrolled descendants tribal ID cards.

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And in Minneapolis near ICE headquarters there, Indigenous activists established a prayer camp. The camp is also near the historic Fort Snelling, which was a concentration camp for Native people during the Dakota Wars in 1862.

Land + the Environment

There was exciting news last month for #LandBack! The Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California acquired 10,274 acres of their ancestral homelands in California. The Tribe was forcibly removed from these lands during the state-funded “extermination” of California Natives in the 1850s.

In Alaska, one Native community is facing the possibility of losing their home. Last fall the Alaskan Native village of Kipnuk was devastated by Typhoon Halong–a natural disaster many linked to climate change. The community is now voting on whether to relocate in its aftermath or rebuild.

And resource extraction is threatening tribes across the country. The Native village of Nuiqsut, on Alaska’s northern coast, is suing the federal government to protect an important caribou habitat they rely on for subsistence. A legal agreement with the Department of the Interior protected the land, but the Trump admin canceled the agreement. The area is threatened by the ConocoPhillips oil drilling “Willow” project. Trump also wants to open U.S. waters to deep sea mining–allowing companies to scrape the ocean floor in order to make electric vehicle batteries and military technology. The burgeoning industry threatens Indigenous people in Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Alaska.

Meanwhile, the federal government is encouraging tribes to partner with data centers, offering financial and technical assistance, but tribes aren’t buying it. When one data center tried to move onto Muscogee land, two Muscogee Nation citizens fought back. Jordan Harmon and Mackenzie Roberts organized their fellow citizens to block construction, and the Muscogee National Council shot down the proposal. One council member called it “a modern day land run.”

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And lastly, the Trump administration is trying to rewrite landmark environmental legislation so tribes have less say over pollution on their land. Under current environmental law, Indigenous nations can set their own standards for clean water and clean air with federal approval. Tribal environmental standards are often more stringent than states’ and can impact what pollutants are allowed in the water upstream and the air upwind of tribal land. Like many communities of color, tribal lands have faced decades of environmental racism, with Indigenous communities often used as a dumping site for everything from nuclear waste to oil pipelines. So the power to regulate pollution is important. Trump’s EPA is trying to roll that power back. Leaders at the EPA have announced a plan to change the Clean Water Act, with revisions that would weaken tribal authority.

Broken Treaties

The federal government has a unique treaty obligation to Native nations. The federal services Native nations receive are not a hand out, but a legally binding duty. A new report from the Government Accountability Office found that, due to DOGE-style staffing cuts across the federal government, those treaty obligations are not being met. And while access to healthcare for Native Americans is also a treaty right, that too is under attack. After Congress allowed the enhanced subsidies under the Affordable Act to expire in December, Tribally sponsored health insurance plans are threatened. Tribes offer the plans to fill in gaps in Indian Health Service.

As states debate the future of the Colorado River, tribes are being left out. 22 tribes have rights to 25% of the basin’s annual water! But tribes weren’t included in the states’ water compact–first negotiated in the 1920s. Now, those states can’t agree on a solution and the federal government is pushing to implement its own plan.

Stories I’m watching

Some important policies that impact tribes moved forward in February. In the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. government forcibly sterilized Native women–without their consent and often without their knowledge. The practice targeted full-bloods. By 1975, one quarter of Native women of child-bearing age had been sterilized. Last month, New Mexico launched an official investigation into the practice, becoming the first state to do so. The Army Corps of Engineers released its final environmental review document on the Line 5 Pipeline! Ojibwe tribes have been protesting the pipeline for years and say it threatens their hunting and fishing rights. The pipeline goes through the Great Lakes and could threaten the largest body of fresh water in the world! After a 30 day waiting period, the Corps will decide whether or not to grant the permit. And in Maine, two bills that could restore sovereignty to the Wabanaki Nations are moving through the state legislature. A 1980 land settlement significantly limited the Tribes’ ability to self-govern.

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And this story of police violence hasn’t received enough media coverage! In 2024, BIA police shot Cody Whiterock in the face, back and chest after chasing him for over an hour in the snow. Whiterock, who is Shoshone-Paiute, was unarmed. Native men face the highest rates of police killing in the U.S., but their stories rarely receive national attention. Now, his family is suing for justice.

And some good news for Native representation! The new season of Dark Winds is out now! This season follows the search for a missing Navajo girl and includes some Native all stars including Zahn McClarnon and Kiowa Gordon!

Connect with me

I am so humbled & excited to be joining the Tulsa Artist Fellowship community! If you’re in Tulsa, come visit my studio on #FirstFridays at TAF. The next one is on March 6!

Also, if you read By The Fire We Carry, you learned a bit about the amazing Rosemary McCombs Maxey. She just published a novel! Papa’s Pills is a journey into the lives of people living on the Muscogee reservation in the 1990s written by a Muscogee first language speaker. You can buy it from this independent press or wherever you get your books! https://www.meadowlarkbookstore.com/s/stories/papas-pills

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The day ICE shot and killed Renee Good, I was in Minneapolis. I was driving to historic Ft Snelling with historian NIck Estes (Lower Brule) when he got a call that ICE had shot and killed someone. The coincidence was eerie. During the Dakota Wars, the U.S. army rounded up Dakota people and held them in a concentration camp at Fort Snelling. Dakota people were later exiled from the state and laws banning them from Minnesota are still on the books.

The next morning I was back at Fort Snelling, but not for a history lesson. This time, for a protest. The ICE facility in Minneapolis where detained immigrants are taken–the Whipple Building–is at Fort Snelling. Because the area is still federal land. History is repeating itself in the same place.

After Renee Good was killed by ICE, I spent the next couple days at the Minneapolis protests. Despite knowing the risk involved– ICE had just killed someone–people still showed up. When I asked protesters why, they talked about what they saw happening to their immigrant neighbors. They also talked about the stakes of preserving U.S. democracy against growing authoritarianism.

During its ongoing raids in Minneapolis, ICE also shot and killed Alex Pretti, a Minneapolis resident and ICU nurse. Sandy White Hawk, an adoption survivor and advocate for the Indian Child Welfare Act people may remember from This Land, was one of Pretti’s patients. White Hawk released a public statement that Pretti took “exceptional care” of her when she was hospitalized. “Even in his final moments, he was trying to help his neighbors,” she said.

Despite being Indigenous to this land and citizens of the United States, Native Americans are being targeted and detained by ICE. Nationwide, tribal governments are warning their citizens to carry a tribal ID on them, and tribes have even held events to help all citizens get updated identification. In Minneapolis, a Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribal citizen was arrested by ICE agents while protesting the murder of Alex Pretti, with DHS claiming he was an “agitator.” Also in Minneapolis, a descendant of the Red Lake Nation was detained by ICE for six hours after being violently pulled from his vehicle. Jose Roberto “Beto” Ramirez told ICT news, “I felt like I was kidnapped.” A citizen of Navajo Nation was detained by ICE in Phoenix. Peter Yazzie was reportedly carrying a tribal ID, but was still violently arrested. An officer put a knee on Yazzie’s back–a move that can be lethal. A Republican Congressman shrugged this off, saying “there will be mistakes”. Addison McDowell, a member of the House from North Carolina, added about ICE raids, it “is not going to be a perfect process trying to get all of them out.”

On its face, ICE targeting the Native community in Minneapolis seems weird, until you look at Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s history as South Dakota’s governor. You can’t get much further from the US-Mexico border than South Dakota. But Governor Noem made immigration a top priority saying that “every state is a border state.” To make the case people in South Dakota should care about immigration, Noem went after tribes. She made baseless and public accusations that drug cartels were operating on reservations in collusion with tribal leaders. In response, tribal governments banned her from tribal land. At one time, she was banned from nearly every reservation in the state.

Just as South Dakota tribes resisted Noem when she was governor, tribes across the U.S. are resisting her Department of Homeland Security. The Oglala Lakota Nation unanimously voted to ban ICE from their reservation, and the Yankton Sioux Tribe declared DHS must have permission before entering theirs. On the streets of Minneapolis, AIM is back on patrol. The American Indian Movement started in Minneapolis in 1968 in response to police violence against Native Americans, and historically patrolled their community to keep it safe. Today, AIM is patrolling Minneapolis streets again–to protect the Native community from ICE. Amid rumors ICE wanted to open a detention facility in Durant, OK, Choctaw Nation passed a bill opposing the facility. After public outcry and criticism from tribal members, many tribes have canceled ICE contracts. One Alaska Native Corporation had been inking lucrative contracts with ICE, but now its shareholders are pushing back.

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An eye on free speech in South Dakota

While we worry about attacks on free speech and the right to protest nationally, we also need to pay attention to what’s happening in South Dakota. Nick Tilsen, who is Oglala Lakota and the founder of NDN collective, is facing criminal charges that he allegedly accelerated his vehicle toward a South Dakota cop in 2022. Tilsen claims that didn’t happen and he was observing a police interaction with an unhoused person. The cop was not struck by the car and the police didn’t press charges until a year after the incident. After three days last week, Tilsen’s trial ended in a mistrial–meaning the jury couldn’t come to an agreement on his guilt or innocence. Tilsen remains indicted and the state has 45 days to decide if they will try the case again.

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Agencies beyond DHS and Congress are also threatening tribes

Federal agencies and Congress are also taking swipes at tribes. At the end of January Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth began to make good on threats to slash a business development program that creates opportunities for disadvantaged small businesses, including those owned by Alaska Native corporations. Hegseth suspended over 1,000 contractors.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post is reporting that history and science signage at 17 national parks have been flagged for removal, including signs about Native Americans. The take down comes amidst a Trump administration directive to remove content that “disparages Americans past or living”. It’s not an accident that tribes keep getting swept up in the Administration’s nationalist and racist project. The fight over history is so bitter because it has everything to do with our present moment.

If you can’t get past the Post paywall to learn more about the signs, check out this post from NDN Girls Book Club.

Many tribal programs have been on a funding rollercoaster since Trump took office. In mid-January, the Department of Health and Human Services announced $2 billion in immediate cuts to mental health and addiction services. That same day, mental health programs that serve Indigenous people across the country received emails that their grant funding was gone–with no warning. They spent the next day scrambling, calling partners, canceling contracts, and terminating life-saving programs. Two days later, they received notice the funding had been restored. It is good that these programs were ultimately saved, but the instability left many service providers living in fear of future cuts. The Institute for American Indian Arts, a bedrock institution for Native American art, has been on a similar roller coaster, but after a bipartisan vote this month, their funding stands protected–for now.

Under the U.S. environmental law, Indigenous nations can set their own standards for clean water and clean air on their land with federal approval. Tribal environmental standards are often more stringent than states and can impact what pollutants are allowed in the water upstream and the air upwind of tribal land. Like many communities of color, tribal lands have faced decades of environmental racism, with tribal land often used as a dumping site for everything from nuclear waste to oil pipelines. So the power to set environmental standards is important. Trump’s EPA is trying to roll that power back. Leaders at the EPA have announced a plan to change the Clean Water Act, with revisions that would weaken tribal authority.

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And finally, who controls the Senate might be in the hands of one Native woman. Democrats have a very narrow path to winning the Senate in the midterm elections. And that small chance relies on the election of Mary Peltola in Alaska. In 2022, Peltola became the first Alaskan Native to serve in Congress when she was elected to the House of Representatives. It was a state-wide election because Alaska’s population is so small, and some are hoping that although Peltola lost her reelection, she can turn her popularity into a Senate seat. She announced her candidacy last month. If elected, she would be the first Native woman and the first Alaskan Native to serve in the Senate.

The fight over Greenland ignored the Inuit people

Headlines about Greenland focused on the government and people of Denmark, but Greenland is 90 percent Inuit. The Indigenous people of Greenland have never stopped fighting to maintain their sovereignty and today operate largely independent from Denmark. Framing the conversation about Greenland as a European-American conflict ignored the people who actually live there. It also ignores what Trump is actually doing. Trump is threatening to take over the lands of Indigenous people–something the U.S. has done many times before. With Trump’s actions in Venezuela, Greenland and elsewhere, some have claimed Trump is “bringing back” the age of U.S. imperialism. From Indigenous nations, to Guam and Puerto Rico, to migrants detained at our border, the U.S. has always controlled the lands and lives of people who had no say. The U.S. has always been a colonial empire. What Trump is doing is nothing new.

Let’s connect!

I’m thrilled to announce I have been selected as an awardee for the 2026-2028 Tulsa Artist Fellowship residency! Through December 2028, I will join nine other artists working across painting, sculpture, film, sound, photography, writing and social practice. During my time in Tulsa, I’ll be working on a community-led research project examining how violence against Native peoples shaped Oklahoma’s oil industry and Tulsa’s early wealth. Come see me at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship on First Fridays in downtown Tulsa!

I want to hear from you!

I’m just starting this newsletter and I would love your feedback! As a freelance writer, I was frustrated with my writing living in multiple places and wanted a space to connect with my readers directly. I’d love to hear your thoughts! What topics are you curious about? Where would you like to see this newsletter go?

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Support Native America!

If you like what you’re reading, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. For as little as $2 a month you can support my writing. Another great way to support this newsletter is to share it!

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The plan for Gaza and the controversial Board of Peace have drawn sharp criticism internationally. Building a resort on top of the debris of genocide feels like something from a dystopian future–or even an Orwellian novel–but it actually comes from history. To reconstruct the Gaza strip, Trump is drawing on a very old playbook—one that dates back to the 19th century. What Trump is proposing to do to Gazans, the U.S. has already done to Native Americans.

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After two years of war on Gaza, a U.S.-brokered ceasefire was reached last October between Israel and Hamas. The ceasefire was based on a 20-point plan put forward by the Trump administration. Phase two of the plan focuses on disarming Hamas, governing the Gaza Strip, and reconstruction. What the reconstruction will look like, however, is the big question. The public got some insight into what the Trump administration is planning from last week’s announcement and a bizarre powerpoint that was leaked last fall. According to a slide deck published by The Washington Post, the Trump administration is planning to buy up all the land in Gaza and flip it through real estate speculation so the high cost of rebuilding the war-torn strip could be recouped from the profits of development. The plan has been painted as a “humanitarian” solution to the inhumane living conditions in Gaza and promises that any Palestinians who want to stay can. According to the leak, they call the plan the “GREAT Trust.”

In the 1820’s, American leaders were using similar language to talk about what they wanted to do to Native Americans. They called their plan the “great system” and claimed it was a “humanitarian” solution to the “difficulties” facing Indigenous nations. At the time, southern states needed more land to expand cotton production and the slave economy. But they had a problem. Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole and Muscogee Nations nations still controlled huge swaths of land within their states–a fifth of Georgia, nearly half of Mississippi, and a large portion of Alabama. When Andrew Jackson was elected to the White House in 1828 southern states won their biggest ally. With southern leaders, Jackson came up with a plan. That plan was called the Indian Removal Act.

It is eerily similar to the GREAT Trust and Trump’s plan for Gaza. Here’s how:

Humanitarian solution

The Indian Removal Act was billed as a “humanitarian” solution by its advocates. In the natural order of things, Southern politicians claimed, it was bad for Indigenous people to live too close to white people. At the time, Southern states tried to make life so unbearable for Indigenous nations they would agree to leave. Indigenous people who refused to leave faced violence, torture, starvation and even murder. With profound hypocrisy southern states pretended to offer a solution to the humanitarian crisis they created.

What followed the Indian Removal Act was the Trail of Tears. 80,000 Indigenous people were forcibly relocated. On the scale of today’s U.S. population, it would be like forcibly relocating the city of Houston. Between the concentration camps, open air prisons, and death marches, thousands died. Tribes lost a quarter to a third of their population. It is unbelievable to look back at such grave human rights abuses and think the architects could paint their actions as humanitarian. But those on the wrong side of history seldom portray themselves that way.

The authors of today’s GREAT Trust (Trump’s plan for Gaza) have called it a rational mechanism for financing “humanitarian efforts and development.” After two years of war, Israel has damaged or destroyed almost all the infrastructure that supports human life in Gaza including water, sanitation, shelter, schools and hospitals. Letting people escape those dire conditions can sound humane. The hypocrisy stems of course that the call for a “humanitarian” solution comes from the very mouths who created these inhumane conditions in the first place.

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Leaving is voluntary

According to the ceasefire agreement, no one in Gaza will be forced to leave, and those that choose to leave will have the right of return. “We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza,” the ceasefire stipulates.

When Andrew Jackson first proposed Indian Removal to Congress, he promised, “this emigration should be voluntary, for it would be as cruel as unjust to compel the aborigines to abandon the graves of their fathers and seek a home in a distant land.” The bill Congress eventually passed stipulated that existing treaties (which protected Indigenous nations’ right to stay) could not be violated. But that is not what happened.

When Cherokees refused to leave, 7,000 soldiers went into the hills and valleys of Cherokee Nation to round them up. 15,000 people were herded into open-air stockades. When a deaf man did not understand the soldiers’ orders, they shot him. When Seminoles refused to leave, the army hunted them down. After seven years of war, the army captured about 4,000 Seminoles. Historians estimate 20% of the population died.

Compensation for land

Trump’s GREAT Trust promises to pay Gazans for their land and property. But the devil is in the details. Rather than being paid in cash for lost property, Gazans will be paid in “tokens” using blockchain financing. If Gazans wish to permanently relocate, they can exchange their token for housing elsewhere. Those who wish to return will someday be able to exchange their token for housing in the rebuilt Gaza strip. Rather than belonging to Gaza or Palestine, the land and all the money from its sale will be held in trust by the United States. (The plan side-steps the complicated reality of property ownership in Gaza, including that most property has been damaged or destroyed after two years of war and that many Gazans are already refugees from the 1948 Nakba.)

What will the United States do with all that land in Gaza? The Trust purports to use an “innovative funding model” in which the land of Gaza will be turned into “initial capital and assets” to pay for Gaza’s reconstruction. To translate, while the government is holding the land of Gaza “in trust”, it will sell that land to private companies. Rather than getting money from those sales, the people of Gaza will be given “tokens”.

Similar to the GREAT Trust, the Indian Removal Act promised that relocated families would be paid for any property left behind. For some tribes, those who did not want to leave could stay with the promise of private property and a permanent home. But that is not what happened.

In Choctaw Nation, 95 percent of families who lost their homes received nothing. The private companies buying up Choctaw land colluded to drive down prices, so little money was made from its sale. Even the federal agents charged with selling Choctaws’ cattle and pigs sold the livestock to friends for “almost nothing”. What little money was made from those sales was held by the United States–which then embezzled much of it.

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Facing the threat of removal, Muscogee leaders negotiated a treaty under which tribal citizens who wanted to stay could. According to the treaty, those families would be given private property. This property was supposed to protect Muscogee citizens from their land-hungry neighbors, but land speculators only saw millions of acres in the hands of people with no legal rights. Speculators tricked Muscogee citizens into signing over their land, used torture and physical assault to coerce sales, and bribed often starving Muscogee citizens to impersonate their neighbors to draw up fraudulent papers. “If they cannot get it in any other way,“ U.S. agents reported at the time. “They take the Indian… & [choke] him until he gives it up”.

Like the plan for Gaza, private companies played a key role in Indian Removal. Although they were promised they could stay, the United States eventually forced Muscogee people to leave their homelands at gunpoint. To oversee the deportation, the United States hired a company that had already defrauded Muscogee citizens out of their land. While traveling on the Trail of Tears, one Muscogee woman sold her land to a company employee. Another Muscogee woman traveled in a detachment overseen by an employee who still owed her $2100. The contractors had told Muscogee leaders to not weigh down the wagons with too many personal items–including winter clothing. To cut costs, the items would be shipped by boat, but the contractors lost the freight. While Muscogee citizens walked through 8 inches of snow, their winter clothes were stranded in the gulf of Mexico. Of the 12,648 Muscogee citizens forced to march west that year, 3,500 died.

While the mess and tragedy of Indian relocation did not fulfill the promise of protecting Indigenous land or people, it did succeed at one thing. It made some people very rich.

Expelling our tribes from our homelands was one of the largest–and most expensive–projects the young United States had ever attempted. As historian Claudio Saunt has tabulated, the federal government spent, in today’s currency, one trillion dollars—or $12.5 million per deportee–on removal. Some years, it was nearly half of the entire federal budget. Despite the high cost, the policy actually made money because the government turned around and sold Indigenous lands for profit.

But the profits claimed by the U.S. Treasury pale in comparison to the money reaped by enterprising US citizens and corporations. Because land speculators acquired the land for almost nothing, the profits they reaped were unimaginable. One recovering gambling addict–who was born “poor and friendless”--was able to purchase 275 square miles of Muscogee land–an area the size of New York City. Much of the land he obtained by fraud. Land speculation companies garnered investors from New York City and London, and so the market for Indigenous land made people money the world over.

The final wave of profiteers were the men who sat atop the slave economy. The Indian Removal Act cleared some of the most productive cotton land in North America. A decade after Indian Removal, cotton production in Mississippi increased tenfold, and by the time of the Civil War, the Mississippi River Valley had more millionaires per capita than any other place in the US. While the human suffering generated by the Indian Removal Act is too great to ever be calculated, so too are the profits.

You don’t have to look that hard at Trump’s leaked plan to see who might profit from the reconstruction of Gaza. In a proposed “Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone,” American companies will manufacture electronic vehicles with “skilled” and “low-cost” labor from Gaza. And since the United States will turn Gaza into a “free trade zone,” those companies wouldn’t have to pay taxes. The slide presentation even details how shipping those cars to Europe from Gaza will be much cheaper than from American factories.

Broken Promises

The people of Palestine, like colonized people around the world, have experienced a trail of broken promises and violated agreements. The first phase of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire has been no different. Since the ceasefire was reached last October, Israel has carried out near daily attacks on the Gaza strip killing over 470 people and injuring over 1300. An important provision of the ceasefire was the free flow of humanitarian aid, but experts estimate Israel has allowed less than half the promised supplies into the besieged strip. While Gazans live in makeshift tents this winter–without enough wood to build fires–children are dying of hypothermia. Many in Gaza are skeptical that phase 2 of the peace plan or the controversial Board of Peace will alleviate their suffering. As Manal al-Qouqa, a displaced mother in Gaza told Al Jazeera, “Every time they announce something regarding the Palestinian people, our suffering only increases.”

Last week, international leaders balked at Trump’s proposal for a “Board of Peace.” Speaking at the World Economic Forum, the Canadian prime minister urged other countries to act, arguing that global politics are “in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.” On the world stage and at home, Trump continues to be treated as a singular phenomenon—something new and unprecedented. His actions are repeatedly described this way, as if they emerged from nowhere. In reality, they come from our past. Trump is not an abrogation of history; he is a product of it.

Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza would not be possible without the material and political support of the United States. While there have been massive protests and public outcry, there has still not been enough public pressure for the United States to withdraw that support, even under a Democratic president. There are many reasons people in the United States fail to see the genocide in Gaza with moral clarity. The main one, I believe, is that it is too close to our own history. The United States has never truly reckoned with the violence through which it took Indigenous land. No wonder that violence is repeating.

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Further reading on the history of Indian Removal:

Akers, Donna L. “Removing the Heart of the Choctaw People: Indian Removal from a Native Perspective.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 23, no. 3 (1999): 63-76.

Foreman, Grant Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians. University of Oklahoma Press, 1974.

Green, Michael. The Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and Society in Crisis. New York: Bedford/ St. Martin’s Press, 1985.

Haverman, Christopher D. Rivers of Sand: Creek Indian Emigration, Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in the American South, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016.

Saunt, Claudio. Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory. NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2020.

ICE + Native America

Last Wednesday an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a Minneapolis resident and mother of three. While Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claims the shooting was in self defense, video of the incident shows Good attempting to drive away from the scene.

Since the Trump administration sent 2,000 ICE agents to Minneapolis, at least five Native American community members have been detained. The area where Good was killed is near a historic urban Native community and the Little Earth housing project. Near Little Earth, ICE agents detained four men who are Oglala Lakota. One man was released after a 12 hour hold, but the whereabouts of the other men are unknown. In a separate incident, Jose Roberto “Beto” Ramirez was driving to his aunt’s house North of Minneapolis when he noticed he was being followed by people in an unmarked car. Ramirez is a descendant of Red Lake Nation. ICE agents pulled Ramirez out of his car. “I felt like I was kidnapped,” he told ICT news. After detaining him for 6 hours, ICE eventually released Ramirez.

Last month it was revealed that two tribes–Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation and Oneida Nation–were making money from ICE contracts. The same ICE that has been taking parents in front of their children, attacking journalists, and targeting Native Americans because of the color of their skin.

A business owned by Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation signed a $30 million contract with ICE in October to design detention facilities for the agency. After criticism from tribal citizens and Native communities, the Nation fired the leaders behind the deal, terminated the contract, and announced they would not work with ICE in the future. In the 1830’s the federal government forcibly relocated the Potawatomi from their homelands near the great lakes to land in present day Missouri and later Kansas. This relocation happened during an era of ethnic cleansing in which the U.S. exiled all Indigenous people living east of the Mississippi River. Many Prairie Band tribal citizens pointed out the similarities between ICE’s removal of undocumented immigrants today and their own violent history.

Other tribes also came under fire for signing contracts with ICE. A business owned by Oneida Nation was awarded two contracts to construct ICE facilities–one last December and another in September. Facing similar backlash, the Nation replaced the business’ leaders and plans to terminate the contract. As Politico reported, other tribes still have ICE contracts–and despite the backlash have not canceled them–including an LLC owned by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians and Akima, owned by an Alaska Native Corporation.

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Actress Elaine Miles, who became famous for her role in the 90s TV show Northern Exposure, was detained by ICE last month after officers called her tribal ID “fake.” When Miles appeared on Northern Exposure, she was one of only two Native people on popular television between 1987 and 2007. No wonder ICE agents don’t know what a tribal ID is–Indigenous people almost never appear in the media they consume.

Native American Boarding Schools in the News

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, over a third of Native children were sent to government-run assimilation schools, where many faced physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and thousands died. Many of those children are still buried in unmarked graves. In December, a provision to create a Truth and Reconciliation committee to address the legacy of boarding schools did not pass the House. Our country is unwilling to look at and understand this history. As ICE sends hundreds of immigrant kids to detention facilities, it is no wonder US history is repeating itself.

Even as America turns a blind eye, Tribes are still fighting to bring home the remains of the children who died at these boarding schools. Because of cemetery mismanagement, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes found out last month that they would be unable to bring two of their relatives home who were buried at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

Native issues before Congress

Last month, Congress failed to pass a bill that would a truth and healing commission to investigate boarding school history as well as an Act to establish the Wounded Knee Sacred Site. The Wounded Knee provision later passed on its own. In the same week, the Senate also approved a bipartisan measure from the House to expand the Miccosukee Tribe’s land base. That bill was vetoed by Trump on the grounds that the tribe had undermined his immigration agenda–a reference to the Tribe’s efforts to stop the construction of “Alligator Alcatraz” on top of sacred sites. The House failed to override that veto last week.

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(Good!) News from Oklahoma

After some Muscogee tribal leaders dug their heels into the ground, enrollment for Muscogee Freedmen descendants is finally moving forward. Last month, the Tribe’s highest court ordered the administration to comply with the ruling and provide status updates.

Also in December, Cherokee Nation acquired the cemetery where Elias Boudinot is buried. This means a lot to me! Elias Boudinot is a relative and published the first Native-run newspaper in the U.S. He was murdered not far from his grave for signing the Treaty of New Echota.

Criminal Injustice

Native kids are being punished more harshly in juvenile courts compared to white kids. A new study found that in Washington state, Native & Black kids are less likely to be offered diversion instead of prison time. And in South Dakota, a new study found that 59 percent of Native Americans released from prison return within three years, even though they account for just 39 percent of people incarcerated. The recidivism rate among Native women is even higher, at 66 percent.

Oil and Gas and Imperialism

After invading Venezuela and kidnapping their head of state, Trump has announced his plans to run their government and to tap their oil reserves for American profit. Venezuela has the largest known crude oil reserves in the world.

6,000 miles away, in Ambler, Alaska, the Trump administration is also exploiting natural resources. His administration approved a new mining road through the wilderness last year that threatens the lives of the Iñupiat people. The Iñupiat are facing warm temperatures and unimaginable changes–the regional caribou herd, once numbering at half a million caribou, has fallen by 66% percent in the last 20 years. The road threatens what remains.

Nearby, in Alaska’s North Slope, Alaska Native groups are suing the Trump Administration after it approved a new oil and gas project on top of ongoing drilling that is projected to generate billions in dollars in profits in the next several decades. In the past, the neighboring largely Alaska Native community has received a portion of that revenue back as compensation for the damages incurred by the drilling. Now, Alaska’s governor has unveiled a plan to take more of that money for the state’s general fund, taking it away from the communities whose way of life are threatened by oil production.

I want to hear from you!

I’m just starting this newsletter and I would love your feedback! As a freelance writer, I was frustrated with my writing living in multiple places and wanted a space to connect with my readers directly. I’d love to hear your thoughts! What topics are you curious about? Where would you like to see this newsletter go?

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Support Native America!

If you like what you’re reading, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. For as little as $2 a month you can support my writing. Another great way to support this newsletter is to share it!

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Once, I was at a grassroots social justice convening in Florida. On a break while people made small talk, a white woman came up to me and said, “I thought we killed all of you.” As in, she thought Native Americans were extinct like the woolly mammoth. It is a bewildering stereotype to encounter. The stereotype that you no longer exist. 82% of adults in the U.S. cannot think of a single, living, famous Native person. 98% cannot name two.

When you scroll through your phone, read the news, or watch TV, statistically, it is very unlikely you will see a Native person. Of the 2,336 regular characters on TV from 1987 to 2009, only two were Native. A recurring character on Northern Exposure. And a contestant on the reality show Survivor.

On the rare occasion Native people are portrayed in the media, we live in the past. In one study, researchers typed “Native American” and “American Indian” into the Google image search bar. 95% of the results were “antiquated portraits.” Once, someone told me that, even though she didn’t believe that I was Native, she knew that my ancestors were. Conveniently for a country built on our land, all of the real Indians are dead and gone.

In 2018, U.S. voters elected the most diverse Congress in our country’s history. For the occasion, USA Today made an infographic. The 116th Congress included two Native women–the first ever elected to the body. In their infographic, USA Today put the Native representatives in the “other” category. In the 2020 election, Native voters helped Biden win the swing state of Arizona. On election night, CNN published an exit poll capturing how people voted in the state. On it, Native voters were called “something else.”

Native people are not simply left out of the story. We are written out.

We don’t learn about most people through direct social interactions, but from things like movies and the internet. I have never been to France, but I have an idea in my head that French people like wine and cheese. When a group is negatively represented, that can lead to stereotypes and prejudice, like the idea that women are bad at math. What Native people face is different. The media, pop culture, and school curriculum do not just represent us poorly. It represents almost never. Our existence is erased from the public eye. Americans don’t think about our absence. They don’t think about us at all.

This erasure harms Native folks. Our near-total absence from the media Americans consume creates a stubborn prejudice in the minds of non-Natives. Over time, they see us as less real and even less human. Research has found that less exposure to contemporary Native people correlates with more prejudice against us and less support for tribal sovereignty. One study found that the more contemporary Native people were omitted, the more participants agreed that the U.S. should nullify all treaties, eliminate all reservations, and abolish tribes’ right to self-govern. It is active erasure.

Last summer, Homeland Security posted a famous painting of manifest destiny on Twitter or X with the caption “a heritage to be proud of”. The image depicts an angelic, white woman floating above the open prairie. Below her, pioneers move onto the land, while Native Americans and wild animals disappear into the dark edge of the landscape. Zeteo, a new, left-leaning news organization, published an article about how the tweet was a dog whistle for white supremacy. I clicked on the article. It barely mentioned my community. Instead, it analyzed which letters the tweet had capitalized and how those letters corresponded to neo-Nazi slogans.

To expand West, the US Army rounded up Indigenous people by gunpoint and herded us into concentration camps. When Seminoles evaded capture, the army purchased bloodhounds. When the herded Choctaws were starving, the army sent rancid meat. At first, the Choctaws refused to eat it, but the army captain refused to give them other food. Later, he happily reported to his superiors that the people were so hungry they complied. When a Cheyenne and Arapahoe village handed over their guns and lived under a white flag of truce, the army gunned them down. Mothers dug holes into the riverbank to try and hide their children. After killing those women, soldiers cut out their genitals to keep as souvenirs. Like the Nazis did to the people they slaughtered, the Army Colonel in charge compared Indigenous people to lice. When members of Congress confronted that Colonel at a public hearing in downtown Denver, the crowd chanted “exterminate them!” That is how the U.S. expanded. Painting that violence as God‘s will is racist. We don’t need to find Hitler’s initials to understand why.

I am a journalist. I help make the news. For a long time, I thought it was my job to fix all this. To push back against the erasure. I thought the primary victims of invisibility were my community trapped behind the cloak. And then, Trump got reelected. This past year, I keep hearing the word unprecedented. As an Indigenous person, none of it feels unprecedented to me. Slowly, I came to realize there is power in invisibility. It is the power of sight. I can see what others cannot.

How can a President build detention camps on U.S. soil, deploy the military to U.S. cities, threaten to annex foreign land, or bomb boats in the Caribbean without Congressional approval? Because the United States first gave its President this power, so it could take more Native land.

The rise of fascism in the United States is the natural outcome of a country that has never acknowledged its own history. The rise of fascism is that history coming home to roost.

This whole time, I thought what Americans couldn’t see was Indigenous people–our history, our truths, our contemporary lives. But then I realized that without us, they cannot see their own country.

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Every year on Thanksgiving, the President issues an official proclamation. In the last three decades, about a third of those proclamations did not mention Native people at all. “Almost 400 years ago, after surviving their first winter at Plymouth,” Bush proclaimed in 2003. “The pilgrims celebrated a harvest feast to give thanks.”

To create one’s own personal identity, you remember your life. You think back to your first job, your first love, the wrinkles in your grandmother’s smile, the things you have overcome, and all that formed you. In your mind, it is the remembering of these things that makes you, you.

Nations do the same thing—build an identity around a collection of memories. Except we were not alive for the first Thanksgiving or the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And so instead of relying on memory, we rely on story. These stories–that get told over and over again–create a national identity. These stories make us American.

Which stories we tell, of course, are not based on historical accuracy. They are based on how we want to see our country. In research studies, exposure to Thanksgiving narratives that didn’t mention Native Americans increased white people’s pride in their country and feelings of American superiority compared to narratives that included Native genocide. In another study, participants were asked to read about atrocities committed against Native people. They remembered more details when the perpetrators were called European than when they were called American.

Of the Presidential Thanksgiving proclamations that did mention Native Americans, none mentioned violence. “The Pilgrims were grateful they could rely on the generosity of the Wampanoag people,” Barack Obama said in 2016. “Without whom they would not have survived their first year in the new land.”

Massasoit was a Wampanoag leader who negotiated a conditional peace with the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. During this peace, they shared a meal–the details of which we know little. Diplomacy between Native nations, and European settlers was constant and ongoing. Indigenous nations were sophisticated enough to base this diplomacy on strategy–not the childlike notion of friendship. From his interactions with the white world, Massasoit’s son went by two names: Metacom in Wampanoag and Philip in English.

King Philip’s War broke out in 1675. After the pilgrims hung three Wampanoag men, Philip formed a military alliance with other Indigenous nations. Together, they fought to push the colonists back. The colonies came together too and created the largest military force New England had ever seen. King Philip’s War is still the bloodiest conflict of the entire colonial era. 10 percent of the adult men in colonial towns died. In retribution, colonial militias went scorched earth. They burned crops so people would starve. Bounties were placed on Indigenous heads and colonial governments paid cash for severed body parts. Those that survived were rounded up, sold into slavery, and shipped to far flung places like Portugal or Barbados.

When Philip was killed in battle, the pilgrims dismembered his body and brought his head to Plymouth Rock. There, they placed his head on a stake near the entrance to town. It stayed for decades. Generations of pilgrims watched Philip’s head rot to sun-bleached bone.

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Banding together to fight Indigenous nations without help from distant England forced the colonies to forge a new, unified identity. At the end of the war to celebrate their victory, the Governor of Massachusetts declared a Day of Thanksgiving.

During the colonial era, days of Thanksgiving marked special occasions like a good harvest or the end of a war. More than once, the celebrated occasion was the massacre of Indigenous people. By the mid 1800s an annual fall day of Thanksgiving had become a New England tradition. At the time, a columnist for a women’s magazine wanted it to be a national holiday. To her, the bountiful feast of labor-intensive foods celebrated women’s domesticity and family values. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln latched onto the idea and declared a National Day of Thanksgiving. The holiday has been observed ever since.

After a wave of immigration in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Americans grew increasingly worried that their country was changing. In response, schools started focusing on making new, foreign pupils more American. Lessons tied to national holidays and founding mythologies cropped up–and none was more popular than the story of the first Thanksgiving. Pilgrims became examples for how new immigrants–through hard work and perseverance–could become full citizens of the United States. This is when schools started dressing children up like pilgrims and Indians for the pageantry of a fictionalized meal. By the 1920’s plays like “The Romance of the Pumpkin” or “When Betty Saw The Pilgrims” were performed in schools nationwide. The racist costume made out of a paper bag I saw on that airplane is a very old American tradition–going back more than a century. School plays were not a byproduct of the Thanksgiving myth; they helped create it.

When the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock that colony and the whole of North America already belonged to Indigenous nations. To expand from a few feeble settlements hugging the east coast to a continent spanning from sea to shining sea, Europeans and then the United States needed more land. They took that land not by friendship, but by violence. Every year, we tell the mythical story of the first Thanksgiving so that we can ignore this obvious truth. This collective forgetting is why, I believe, we still cannot understand the true character of our country or see the deepest flaws in our democracy.

It is easy to think what we got wrong about Thanksgiving is the Native part. But we got the American part wrong too. If we could go back in time and ask the pilgrims how they helped build our country, they wouldn’t describe a bountiful feast with their Wampanoag neighbors. They would show us King Philip’s head on a stake.

Let’s connect!

By The Fire We Carry is out in paperback! You can get it anywhere you buy books!

I want to hear from you!

I’m just starting this newsletter and I would love your feedback! As a freelance writer, I was frustrated with my writing living in multiple places and wanted a space to connect with my readers directly. I’d love to hear your thoughts! What topics are you curious about? Where would you like to see this newsletter go?

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It’s Native American Heritage Month! Let’s talk about why we need it, and how you can celebrate! Native American Heritage Month is important because it combats Indigenous erasure. Erasure is one of the main ways anti-Indigenous racism shows up today.

When you scroll through your phone, read the news, or watch TV statistically it is very unlikely you will see a Native person. Of the 2,336 regular characters on TV from 1987 to 2009 only two were Native. A recurring character on Northern Exposure. And a contestant on the reality show Survivor.

On the rare occasion Native people are portrayed in the media, we live in the past. In one study, researchers typed “Native American” and “American Indian” into the Google image search bar. 95% of the results were “antiquated portraits“.

As a result, most Americans don’t know much about contemporary Native nations and our citizens. 82% of adults in the U.S. cannot think of a single, living, famous Native person. 98% cannot name two.

We don’t learn about most people through direct social interactions, but from things like movies and the internet. I have never been to France, but I have an idea in my head that French people like wine and cheese. When a group is negatively represented, that can lead to stereotypes and prejudice, like the idea that women are bad at math. What Native people face is different. The media, pop culture, and school curriculum do not just represent us poorly. They represent us almost never. Our existence is erased from the public eye. Americans don’t think about our absence. They don’t think about us at all.

Without examples of living, breathing Native people, the American public starts to see us as less real and even less human. One study found that non-Native participants who had less exposure to contemporary Natives were more likely to agree that the U.S. should nullify all treaties, eliminate all reservations, and abolish tribes’ right to self-govern.

So when you leave Native people out of your news story, book, social media post, art show, etc. you are reinforcing anti-Indigenous racism. Leaving us out is not benign forgetting. It is active and harmful erasure.

Native American Heritage Month is an opportunity to combat this erasure. This month, challenge yourself to watch a Native film, pick up a book by a Native author, or follow a Native account on social media. Last week, I posted a few of my favorite books by Native authors, and heard from readers, who are loving the newly released To the Moon and Back by Eliana Ramage (a book I can’t wait to read!), and recommended books by Leslie Marmon Silko, Stephen Graham Jones, and Terese Marie Mailhot. Below are some more book and film recommendations to check out this month!

Some books to check out:

• Post Colonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz

• Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford

• Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich

• The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk

• Playing Indian by Phil Deloria

Some films & TV to check out:

• Fancy Dance

• Barking Water

• Sugarcane

• Reservation Dogs

• North of North

• Rez Ball

Also, the PBS kids’ show Molly of Denali is on tour across 5 reservations this month! The show is a great way to teach your children about Indigenous people. Molly of Denali is the only kids TV show to feature an Alaska Native character.

How are you celebrating NAHM?

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What the shut down did to Indian Country

The shutdown is over, but its impact is not. After eight Senate Democrats broke with party lines and made a deal with Senate Republicans, Congress passed a spending bill that will keep most federal offices open through early 2026. The deal ended the 44-day shutdown–the longest in U.S. history. The federal government has a special trust relationship with tribes–in exchange for millions of acres of land, the United States made certain assurances by treaty to provide things like food, healthcare and education. According to the constitution, those treaties are the supreme law of the land. But during the shutdown, many of those programs were impacted. Instead of respecting treaty rights as the law of the land, Congress keeps playing political football with funding for tribal programs.

One of the hidden impacts of the shutdown was schools on reservations. Most school districts rely on local taxes, but schools on federal land, like reservations or military bases, rely on federal funding. One school in Navajo Nation relies on federal funding for half of its budget. During the shutdown, the school had to pause after-school programs, including some that feed students–during a time when families were also facing cuts to SNAP.

While the spending deal did not include Democrats’ main demand (funding for Affordable Care Act subsidies), the package did restore staffing at certain federal programs that had been cut. That restoration included all 81 employees at the Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institution Fund, which funds Native community lenders. In many Native communities, Native CDFIs are the only financial institution, and provide loans for small business owners and potential home buyers. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps low-income families heat and cool their homes, also lapsed during the shutdown.

When SNAP payments did not go out, the situation in Indian Country was dire. 24% of Native Americans receive SNAP (aka food stamps). While the Trump administration protested using emergency money to fund SNAP, tribes did not hesitate. Tribes across the country declared states of emergency to help their citizens. Cherokee Nation gave tribal citizens who receive SNAP a one-time payment to cover food costs, and invested $1.25 million in local food banks. Chief Ben Barnes of the Shawnee Tribe released emergency funds to help nearly 800 families in his tribe. Spirit Lake Tribe also declared a state of emergency, encouraging affected citizens to enroll in the tribe’s food distribution program. The Blackfeet Nation slaughtered buffalo from a herd they manage and gave the meat to affected families, check out this article for a deep-dive on their work. The Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe and the Yurok tribe also released funds to help impacted tribal citizens get food.

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Native News from Alaska

Alaska Native villages hit by Typhoon Halong are beginning the long road of rebuilding. The two hardest hit communities were the Yup’ik villages of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok in Western Alaska. In Kipnuk, 90 percent of buildings were destroyed. To compound the tragedy, residents discovered that the flooding swept up and displaced artifacts that had been buried at a Yup’ik sacred site. Tribal members are now working to recover and preserve these sacred items. The local radio station that reported critical information during the storm, KYUK, is facing large budget shortfalls after Congress defunded public broadcasting earlier this year. The small station lost 70% of its operating budget and is planning to make drastic cuts to staff and programming in January.

In October, the Trump Administration opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for business, but it turns out business isn’t good. The infrastructure to drill for oil in the Arctic is expensive and the private companies interested in the area don’t appear to have the capital. The Gwich’in tribe opposes drilling, saying that the area is sacred and critical to caribou herds.

Also last month, the Trump Administration announced it plans to construct a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in southwestern Alaska. Last week, three tribes filed suit, arguing the road will endanger the birds they rely on to survive.

Native News from Oklahoma

Oklahoma’s Governor is hell-bent on attacking tribal sovereignty. In a showdown over hunting & fishing treaty rights he has appointed a special prosecutor to go after hunters who don’t pay for a state license. According to our treaty rights, tribal citizens don’t need one. Tribal citizens have the right to hunt and fish on their own lands according to tribal law.

In the fight, the state Attorney General took a side. And it’s not the Governor’s. Last month, the state AG interceded in a case to drop the charges, and said he would do so in all similar cases. In a news release, AG Drummond said “This is another senseless attempt to ignore the sovereignty of the tribal nations in Oklahoma, and it cannot be tolerated.”

Unfortunately, Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler has sided with the Governor, and keeps pushing cases that erode tribal sovereignty–like this one, which argued that the state has jurisdiction to prosecute non-Muscogee Native people who commit crimes on Muscogee lands. Kunzweiler is up for reelection next year in 2026. Maybe someone will run against him?

Ordinarily, tribal citizens who live and work on their reservation do not have to pay state income taxes, but Oklahoma courts aren’t following the rules. The state is trying to say that reservations in Oklahoma are different. Now, the tribes are asking SCOTUS to weigh in.

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New and old attacks on human rights

Mistaken ICE detainer issued against a Native woman: A Native American woman in Arizona was about to be released from jail when her family was told that she was being turned over to ICE. When her family informed them she was a citizen of the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community, and there was nowhere to deport her to, no one would help. Her family, with the support of tribal leaders, finally got her released. The sheriff now claims it was a clerical error.

Bombing Venezuelan boats has its history in the Indian wars: The Trump administration has killed nearly 80 people by bombing boats in the Caribbean Sea without Congressional approval. Presidents fighting undeclared wars goes all the way back to George Washington and a war with the Miami Confederacy. That undeclared war was used in 2018 by the Trump Administration to justify bombing Syria, and has been used to justify military actions against Korea, Vietnam, Libya, Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo, Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iraq. A new article by Nick Estes dives deeper into the Indian Wars as a legal precedent for other undeclared wars waged by the United States.

COVID masks are being criminalized: After I got long COVID, it took over a year of intensive therapy to be able to do things like drive and read. I’m terrified of getting COVID again and still mask in public. In the backlash to COVID public health mandates and public protests, places are criminalizing mask-wearing. A new directive tells the Federal Protective Service to target people who commit crimes while wearing a mask.

Let’s connect!

I had an amazing time speaking at the Henry Ford Museum for Native American Heritage Month. Thank you Michigan for turning out. And thank you to Heather and the rest of the staff for organizing such a great event!

I also got to visit the college campuses of the University of Georgia, Oklahoma City Community College, University of Central Oklahoma, and Colgate University. My favorite part was meeting students and hearing their thoughts on my work.

By The Fire We Carry is out in paperback! You can get it anywhere you buy books! While I was traveling last month I got to see it at an airport book store right next to Uncle Bernie’s new book!

I want to hear from you!

I’m just starting this newsletter and I would love your feedback! As a freelance writer, I was frustrated with my writing living in multiple places and wanted a space to connect with my readers directly. I’d love to hear your thoughts! What topics are you curious about? Where would you like to see this newsletter go?

Leave a comment

Support Native America!

If you like what you’re reading, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. For as little as $2 a month you can support my writing. Another great way to support this newsletter is to share it!

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The federal government has a unique trust responsibility to Native Americans. In exchange for the land that tribes ceded to the United States, the federal government promised to take care of tribal citizens by providing things like food, healthcare, education, and regular payments. These promises were not aspirational, but legally binding. According to the constitution, treaties are the supreme law of the land. In September, the Coalition for Tribal Sovereignty sent a letter to the Office of Management and Budget reminding them of these responsibilities. Now, the shutdown is disrupting the delivery of some services.

• Food: Native Americans rely on federal funding for food access in 2 ways: commodities (aka food distribution programs) and food stamps (aka SNAP). During the 2018 shut down, many tribal food distribution programs ran out of food. Right now, tribal leaders don’t know if shipments to food distribution sites will continue. The Federal workers who run the program are furloughed. One million Native Americans rely on SNAP or food stamps. That is 24% of Native American households. The SNAP program is anticipated to run out of funding on November 1.

• Tribal self governance: Many tribes rely on federal funding for operation costs, which can include everything from administration to police or child care. Already, the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe in Nevada has furloughed 25 employees and been forced to shutter cultural and educational programs.

• Collaboration with federal government: The unique, government-to-government relationship between tribes and federal agencies means that tribes rely on federal agencies, like the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), to be adequately staffed in order to conduct regular business. The BIA has furloughed 1,154 of its 3,126 employees across 38 states.

• Economic support: In mid-October, the Trump Administration announced its decision to fire all employees in the Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, which operates the Native American CDFI Assistance Program. More than 65 Native CDFIs provide affordable capital in areas where access to traditional banks is limited. Virginia Senator Mike Warner has said that the move by the Trump administration effectively terminates the program.

• Healthcare: Many Native folks depend on Indian Health Services (or IHS) for healthcare. During the 2019 shutdown, some facilities limited their services and others were forced to close their doors, leading to serious consequences including the loss of life. Since then, tribal leaders fought for gap funding so that in the case of a government shutdown, IHS would not close. Most IHS facilities and programs are still running. But the shut down is affecting specific programs including facility construction, Contract Support Costs, the Indian Health Care Improvement Act Fund, and Electronic Health Records.

Rewriting history: Holidays for tyrants and medals for murderers

Late last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that U.S. soldiers who participated in the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre would keep their military honors. In his statement, Hegseth said, “we’re making it clear that they deserve those medals” and claimed that efforts under the Biden administration to revoke the medals were “more interested in being politically correct than historically correct.” The review, which opened under President Biden, investigated the military honors bestowed upon U.S. soldiers who killed and wounded more than 300 Lakota men, women, and children in 1890. Survivors of the massacre testified in 1891 that pregnant women and women holding infants were fatally shot as they tried to flee, even after the soldiers had been ordered to cease fire. A contemporaneous account by a U.S. Army General stated “I have never heard of a more brutal, cold-blooded massacre than that at Wounded Knee,” and another U.S. soldier said “he ‘expected a court-martial’ for his actions but found himself instead being praised.” The National Congress of American Indians and tribal leaders have issued statements denouncing the decision and were joined last week by Catholic leaders in South Dakota.

Earlier this month, President Trump issued a proclamation designating the second Monday in October as Columbus Day and called the 15th Century explorer “a true American hero.” Many have stopped celebrating Columbus Day due to his well documented history of human rights abuses, including starting the trans Atlantic slave trade, sex-trafficking Indigenous women and girls (some as young as nine years old) and forcing Taino people to collect gold for Spain by chopping off the hands of people who did not comply. What holiday we celebrate on the second Monday of October matters because culture shapes law and policy. This is true for Columbus Day, because the 15th Century racist edict that allowed him to colonize and murder Indigenous people is still the law in the United States today. You can read more about the legal ramifications of Columbus’s infamous voyage here.

Even as the Trump administration fights to control the dominant narrative, Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebrations occurred across the country. This year marked the first time Montana residents celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day as an official state holiday, following a law passed last spring.

Storms in Alaska devastate Yup’ik villages

A typhoon devastated Alaska Native communities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta this month, displacing more than 2,000 people. Hundreds of families had to be airlifted to safety and most may not be able to return for more than a year. The two hardest hit communities were the Yup’ik villages of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok in Western Alaska. In Kipnuk, 90 percent of buildings were destroyed. Before the storm, the Trump administration cut a $20 million grant that would have helped protect the village from coastal erosion. Last week, Trump approved a disaster declaration.

Here is how you can help:

• Donate money to the Western Alaska Disaster Relief Fund (Alaska Community Foundation) alaskacf.org/westernalaska

• Purchase supplies on the Association of Village Council Presidents Amazon wishlist https://www.avcp.org/typhoon-halong/

• Donate supplies in person. A list of in-person donations being accepted here: https://knom.org/2025/10/14/heres-how-you-can-help-survivors-of-the-western-alaska-storm/

Court cases I’m following

Line 5: After losing in state court, Enbridge, the company behind Line 5, tried to move the case to federal court. The problem with that move is that it was illegal–Enbridge filed the paperwork two years after the deadline. An appeals court rejected the bid, but now the pipeline company is appealing to the Supreme Court. Ten Anishinaabe tribes in Michigan have filed an amicus brief asking the Court to reject Enbridge’s claims. The aging pipeline goes through the Great Lakes at the Mackinac Straits. Tribes warn that an oil spill could contaminate drinking water for over 40 million people and 20% of the fresh water in the world.

Ongoing attacks on reservation in Oklahoma: After a monumental legal victory in 2020, over 40% of the land in Oklahoma was recognized as a reservation. Since then, the state has refused to comply with the ruling in different ways. Local cities are still issuing traffic tickets to tribal citizens and the state is still trying to collect income tax from them. Those disputes were appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.

The high Court declined to hear a case (involving OK Governor Stitt’s brother) about whether or not cities can issue tribal citizens traffic tickets on reservation land. Following the Supreme Court’s declination, the state court decision will stand, which ruled the city of Tulsa can issue tickets to tribal citizens on tribal land. The Supreme Court has decided it will hear a separate case about whether or not tribal citizens who live and work on their reservation will pay state income tax, but Oklahoma says they have to. And while it’s not in the courts (yet), Oklahoma is attacking hunting & fishing treaty rights, saying that tribal citizens who hunt & fish without a permit from the state will be charged with a crime.

Fight for Muscogee Freedmen citizenship: After winning a historic court case upholding their right to tribal citizenship, Muscogee freedmen are still fighting for the ruling to be enforced. After the Muscogee Nation Supreme Court said that freedmen descendants are eligible for tribal citizenship, the tribe stopped processing citizenship requests in protest.

What I’m Reading

This three-part investigation by the Montana Free Press found a chronic housing shortage on tribal lands, driven by “confusing land ownership frameworks, hurdles for conventional financing, and a lack of infrastructure.” The housing shortage creates economic hurdles and barriers to intergenerational culture sharing when tribal citizens can’t move back home. Native people typically have the most dire housing needs in the country.

I’m also excited to watch the Cherokee dub of How To Train Your Dragon and to read Eliana Ramage’s debut novel about a queer, Cherokee girl who wants to be an astronaut!

Let’s connect!

There are a bunch of chances to see me speak in the coming weeks!

• If you are in Athens, GA next week don’t miss yours truly at the Georgia Museum on November 6. I’ll be giving a talk about my book By The Fire We Carry.

• I’ll be speaking at The Henry Ford Theater on November 8 to present “We’re Still Here: Fighting Indigenous Erasure in the Media.” If you’re in the Dearborn area, get tickets!

• There are a couple of opportunities to see me speak next month in Oklahoma. I will be at the Oklahoma City Community College on November 10 and University of Central Oklahoma on November 11.

• And finally, I’ll be in upstate New York at Colgate University on November 13.

• I’m working on a new podcast that will come out in 2026. Keep your ears to the ground for a bigger announcement soon!

• By The Fire We Carry comes out in paperback today! You can pre-order it now!

I want to hear from you!

I’m just starting this newsletter and I would love your feedback! As a freelance writer, I was frustrated with my writing living in multiple places and wanted a space to connect with my readers directly. I’d love to hear your thoughts! What topics are you curious about? Where would you like to see this newsletter go?

Leave a comment

Support Native America!

If you like what you’re reading, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. For as little as $2 a month you can support my writing. Another great way to support this newsletter is to share it!

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Like many parts of American history, the story of Columbus is contested. After years of advocacy and growing awareness of Columbus’s human rights abuses, some states and cities switched to celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day. Now, we are witnessing the backlash to that modicum of change. On social media earlier this year, President Trump vowed to bring back Columbus Day ”from the ashes.” While running for office, Vice Presidential JD Vance called Indigenous Peoples Day a “fake holiday.”

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What holiday we celebrate on the second Monday in October matters because it reflects the beliefs we hold about who we are and where we come from as a country. More often than not those beliefs are reflected in law and policy. That is true for the story of Columbus. The 15th century legal doctrine he used to colonize and slaughter the Indigenous peoples is still the law in the U.S. today.

The “Doctrine of Discovery” first appeared in 1455 as a papal bull giving Portugal permission to invade and colonize West Africa. After Columbus’s infamous voyage, a similar papal bull was extended to Spain in 1493. In these decrees, the Pope divided the world between Christian and non-Christian nations. People who didn’t practice Christianity were deemed “uncivilized“ and not worthy of basic human rights. Fundamentally, the Doctrine of Discovery declared that any land, treasure, and even people belonging to non-Christian nations were free for the taking. Europeans used this international law, grounded in the racist presumption of European superiority, to colonize most of the earth. When Spain proposed to the UN General Assembly that the 500-year anniversary of Columbus’s voyage should be marked by celebration, the entire African delegation walked out.

The Doctrine of Discovery was codified into U.S. law by the Supreme court in 1823. That year, in Johnson v McIntosh, the Court ruled that Indigenous nations did not own their land, but were “occupants” or tenants–making the United States their landlord. After the Revolutionary War, the theory went, the U.S. inherited the land from the British, and the British had owned it by right of “discovery.” This Supreme Court decision has never been overturned or struck down. McIntosh is still taught in law schools as one of the building blocks of U.S. property law and the Doctrine of Discovery is still a foundational part of American law. Without it, the United States’s existence on Indigenous land would be illegal.

The Doctrine of Discovery was cited by a U.S. Appeals Court as recently as 2014 and by the Supreme Court as recently as 2005. That Supreme Court decision, City of Sherrill v. Oneida Nation of Indians, was authored by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. After the Oneida Nation bought back land that had been illegally ceded to the state of New York, the city of Sherrill wanted the tribe to pay property taxes. In City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York the Supreme Court ruled that the disputed land could not be placed back under the tribe’s jurisdiction because it had been taken so long ago and it would cause too much of a disruption to change it now. Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told a distorted history, claiming “it was not until lately that the Oneidas sought to regain ancient sovereignty over land converted from wilderness to become part of cities like Sherrill.” Now, it was too late, she opined, for the tribe to “rekindle the embers of sovereignty that long ago grew cold.”

In the first footnote of her decision, Ginsburg cited the Doctrine of Discovery stating “…the lands occupied by Indians when the colonists arrived became vested in the sovereign – first the discovering European nation and later the original States and the United States.”

Since McIntosh–and even since Sherrill–tribes have fought for and won important legal victories at the Supreme Court and Congress. But Native nations do not have a constitutional amendment or Supreme Court decision that ended our legal subordination. If the United States wants to take more of our land–like terminate a reservation or take land out of trust–it still has the power to do so.

Today, on October 13th, many people across the United States will celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day. What started as a grassroots movement has spread across the country. This year, 17 states, Washington, D.C., and 221 cities will officially recognize Indigenous Peoples Day or something similar. From New York City, to Oklahoma to LA, Indigenous people will gather to mark the day with musical performances, Indian football, and dancing.

Only 13 states still observe the second Monday in October as a paid public holiday exclusively called Columbus Day. The rejection of Columbus Day comes in part from his well-documented human rights abuses. By enslaving Indigenous Taino people and shipping them to Europe, Columbus was responsible for the first transportation of enslaved people across the Atlantic. He and his men sex-trafficked Indigenous women and girls, some as young as nine years old. To force Taino people to collect gold for Spain, Columbus’s army would chop off their hands if they did not comply. Like a tyrant, Columbus cut out the tongues of people who dared criticize him.

During the 2020 racial reckoning after the police murder of George Floyd many statues of Christopher Columbus came down, but the holiday survived. Now that the backlash to that reckoning is in full swing, the holiday is unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon. Columbus Day is still a federal holiday. Indigenous Peoples Day is not.

The culture war currently being fought over what history should be taught and what is not about the past. It has everything to do with our present. The fight over truth is so bitter because power flows from the dominant narrative: the power to shape both public sentiment and public policy. The same country that still celebrates Columbus Day also holds hundreds of tribes in legal subordination. And the United States’ right to Indigenous land still relies on a 15th-century edict unabashedly awash in white supremacy.

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While we witness an intensifying crackdown on free speech in the United States, journalists are still being targeted abroad and at home for covering violence in Gaza. At least 278 journalists have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7, 2023, AlJazeera reports. Today, Gaza is the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist. The United States has been complicit in this extreme attack on the press and free speech, continuing to fund and send weapons to its ally.

In the past 23 months, more than 64,000 Palestinians have died. Many experts agree that estimate is a gross undercount. Since March, 15 of every 16 people killed by Israel were civilians. This month, an independent UN Commission concluded that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.

The U.S. and Israel are trading tactics, and we should all be paying attention. The spyware that Israel uses to monitor Palestinians has been shared with ICE. The spyware has already been used against activists and journalists in Europe.

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Meanwhile, Trump’s plan for Gaza, which was leaked by the Washington Post, comes straight from the US playbook for Native Americans. The leaked plan calls for the US to take over the Gaza Strip and to hold it in trust for development. Gaza’s residents would be encouraged to leave “voluntarily.” Those who own land would be compensated with a “digital token” in exchange for access to develop their land. This bizarre proposal actually follows the reservation system in the United States. Most reservations are not owned outright by Indigenous nations themselves, but rather are held “in trust” by the federal government. Before the Trail of Tears, when Andrew Jackson called for the ethnic cleansing of Indigenous people from the southeast, he told Congress “this emigration should be voluntary.” In multiple removal treaties, tribal citizens were offered money in exchange for their land if they agreed to leave, and people who wanted to stay were given small parcels of land. Neither the promise of land nor money was actualized due to widespread violence and corruption.

Repeating history

Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security (the Secretary of which is banned from most reservations in her home state) posted a bizarre video showing a montage of American landscapes from rugged mountains to rolling prairies. The video came with the caption “this is our own. Our native land.” The land that is now America is, of course, the homelands of hundreds of Indigenous nations. The racist idea that this continent rightfully belonged to Europeans (and then Americans) has been part of our country since the founding. It is an idea we have never truly confronted. The video comes after the Department of Homeland Security posted a painting celebrating manifest destiny last July.

This month, Trump also renamed the Department of Defense the “Department of War.” Originally, the Secretary of War managed all tribal relations and, in 1822, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was created under the War Department.

Tribal radio and Native students face cuts

After Congress rescinded already allocated money for the Center for Public Broadcasting this summer, tribal radio stations are feeling the pain. During the funding debate, some Republican lawmakers negotiated a handshake deal to save the stations. But the deal was never put into law and relied on the good faith of the Trump administration. Now, tribal radio stations are still waiting on the promised funding.

This month, Trump announced that $350 million in funding already allocated by Congress to help minority students attend college was being redirected to Tribal Colleges and Universities and HBCUs. The move might sound good for tribal colleges, but Native students at schools that aren’t TCUs will feel the cuts. The Department of Education terminated funds for Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian-serving student support programs. Those programs are operated by places like the University of Alaska where 20 percent of students are Indigenous. In Oklahoma, 13 non-TCU colleges serve high populations of Native students and, as a result of the cuts, may have to cut essential services. Trump’s move is classic divide and conquer.

Separately, in Hawaii, the conservative activist behind the Harvard admissions and Abigail Fisher cases is now going after schools set up to educate Native Hawaiian students. Edward Blum is trying to argue that schools catering to Native Hawaiians is racial discrimination.

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Other stories I’m following

While redistricting fights play out across the country, one Native Congresswoman could lose her seat. In 2018, Sharice Davids (Ho-Chunk) was one of the first Native women ever elected to Congress and the first openly lesbian person to represent the state. In Kansas, she has become a target for Republican redistricting efforts.

This summer, Muscogee Freedpeople won a landmark ruling in the tribe’s Supreme Court. After decades of disenfranchisement, the tribal court ruled that Muscogee freedmen were eligible to enroll. In response to the decision, Muscogee Nation has announced that it will stop issuing citizenship cards for everyone. It reminds me of the response by white communities at the end of segregation–rather than integrating public pools, many communities just got rid of them.

Remembering our elders

I met Beverly Little Thunder a long time ago at one of the east coast Two Spirit gatherings. In the years that I’ve known her, I’ve sat in ceremony with Beverly, fallen for her mouse joke, listened to her stories of coming out at a time when it wasn’t safe, learned how she created the term Two Spirit with other elders, and witnessed the countless ways she built our community. When I went to the Oceti Sakowin camp at Standing Rock for the first time, I met Beverly at the airport and we drove down together. We were going to support the Two Spirit camp. But when we got there, it was dark and we couldn’t find it. We ended up sleeping in the car. In the morning, we realized we slept right next to the camp! During one of the protests that week, we walked a long ways down a North Dakota dirt road. There was a mom carrying a baby. Though up there in her years at that point, Beverly helped carry the baby for that mom. You can donate to her family’s GoFundMe for medical and funeral expenses here.

We’ve lost so many elders in the past few years. It feels especially hard at this time. When we need their wisdom of how to survive in a hostile world.

Support for our Trans community:

As public attacks on the Trans community intensify, here are some ways you can support Trans folks right now:

• Words have power. If you’re a journalist or writer, use this guide and style book published by the Trans Journalists Association when you’re talking about Trans people.

• Donate to the Trevor Project or Trans Lifeline.

• Find and support a Two Spirit Society near you.

• Read and share this mental health peer support manual for Indigiqueer, Two-Spirit, LGBTQ+, and Gender Non-Conforming Indigenous youth, and donate to the Native Youth Sexual Health Network

Let’s connect!

• By The Fire We Carry comes out in paperback next month! You can pre-order it now! You can also enter a contest at Goodreads to win a free copy.

• By the Fire We Carry made Barnes & Noble’s list of best paperbacks of October!

• I just finished an amazing writing residency at Good Hart Artist Residency! I’m working on a new podcast that will come out in 2026. Keep your ears to the ground for a bigger announcement soon!

• I had an amazing time at the Harbor Springs Festival of the Book! A definite career highlight was watching Eileen Myles buy my book! The queer baby inside me that idolized them was dying, but I managed to keep my cool. It was also so amazing to share the stage and be in conversation with Michelle Adams, Priyanka Mattoo, Kyle Edwards, Rebecca Kunz and Jordan Shananaquet.

• Vaccines don’t prevent long COVID, but they reduce your chances of getting it, and of giving COVID to someone you love. This is a reminder to get vaccinated. If you’re not sure how to get it, this guide is helpful.

I want to hear from you!

I’m just starting this newsletter and I would love your feedback! As a freelance writer, I was frustrated with my writing living in multiple places and wanted a space to connect with my readers directly. I’d love to hear your thoughts! What topics are you curious about? Where would you like to see this newsletter go?

Leave a comment

Support Native America!

If you like what you’re reading, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. For as little as $2 a month you can support my writing. Another great way to support this newsletter is to share it!