Native Americans

Roessel, a former director of the federal Bureau of Indian Education and president of the first tribal college to be established in the U.S., has died. He was 63.

Nationwide, nearly 17,000 homes on tribal lands still need electricity hook-ups. A majority are spread across the Navajo Nation, where climate change is making it harder for families to keep cool. A mutual aid program, however, has helped to change lives.

Peyote, a cactus that contains mescaline, a hallucinogen, grows naturally in South Texas and northern Mexico. It is sacred to many Indigenous people, playing a central role in their ceremonies, spiritual practice and medicine.

Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch announced that an investigation has cleared the Navajo president of sexual harassment allegations by the vice president. Even as results of the investigation were announced Monday, Branch was removed from office by tribal lawmakers.

Since 1906, all but three presidents have used the Antiquities Act to protect unique landscapes and cultural resources. Biden has signed off on six monuments and either restored or enlarged boundaries for a handful of others during his term.

Biden's Interior Department released four proposals for managing the river in an apparent attempt to nudge the states toward agreement.

Despite bipartisan support, Utah’s initial version of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act failed to pass in 2023. Now, it’s returning for the 2025 legislative session.

In the leadup to November, Democrats and Republicans have flocked to the furthest reaches of 22 Native American reservations in Arizona in a bid for votes. Native Americans, who make up about 5% of the state’s population, voted in big numbers for the Democratic Party in 2020.

Navajo family farms once lined the San Juan River in southeast Utah, but many have fallen idle. A water rights settlement with Utah has given some Navajo residents hope those farms can return.

Native Americans have grown food in the desert for ages, but many tribal agricultural traditions have disappeared. Now, people in southeast Utah are working to bring Navajo traditions back — one fruit tree and garden bed at a time.

For decades, the government-run boarding school system forcibly separated Indian children from their parents. The president called it a “blot on American history” in his first visit to Indian Country.

Biden is preparing to issue an historic apology during his first diplomatic visit to a tribal nation as president on Friday. The Indian boarding school system devastated the lives of generations of Indigenous children and their ancestors.