Recently in Native News

The Native American vote is pivotal in the 2020 presidential election. We’re sharing our selection of notable Native headlines from the month of October. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to stay up to date with the latest headline news throughout the  year.

How one Native American tribe in S.D. created its own wireless education network via Argus Leader

• “A South Dakota Native American tribe has solved one of the biggest challenges facing tribal schools amid the deadly COVID-19 pandemic by developing a plan to provide computers and cost-effective, high-speed internet connections to all students and teachers. As the pandemic rages on, schools that serve Native communities have been closed and students are being taught remotely, a concept that has forced tribal governments to grapple with the longstanding, expensive problem of providing computers and connecting tribal members to high-speed internet service.”
  

Native Americans face steep election hurdles via The Guardian

• “The pandemic has led to a surge in postal ballots but mail posted on the reservation has to travel as much as 244 miles further than mail posted off-reservation. Tamisha Jensen requested a mail ballot in mid-September. Mail ballots don’t ship in Arizona until 7 October, but she’s worried her first absentee ballot won’t get to her. Jensen, a jeweler who lives in the Navajo Nation, doesn’t have a regular mailing address – she writes “a mile west of Cameron Chapter House” – and the US Postal Service doesn’t deliver to her rural, desert home.”

A Native American community in Baltimore reclaims Its history via Smithsonian Magazine

• “One chilly March afternoon in 2018, Ashley Minner, a community artist, folklorist, professor and enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, gathered the elders together for a luncheon at Vinny’s, an Italian eatery on the outskirts of Baltimore. The group crowded around a family-style table, eager to chat with friends after a long winter. Over a dessert of cannoli and Minner’s homemade banana pudding, she got down to business to show the group what she had found – a 1969 federally commissioned map of the Lumbee Indian community in Baltimore as it stood in its heyday. Her discovery was met with bewildered expressions.

Native Americans in Minnesota Keep COVID-19 at Bay via U.S. News & World Report

• “COVID-19 has taken a disproportionate toll on Native Americans in many communities. Here’s how one band has avoided the worst. After the COVID-19 pandemic made its jarring entrance onto U.S. soil earlier this year, leaders of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa watched closely as the disease inched inward toward their reservation, 100,000 square acres of wooded land and mossy swamps in northeastern Minnesota.”