Search results for

On Friday, Montezuma Land Conservancy will screen a documentary film on Native American food sovereignty and the harvest season at KSJD’s Sunflower Theatre in Cortez, followed by a panel discussion. The film – called "Gather" – will also be shown in Towaoc, on the Ute Mountain Ute reservation. Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk is a former Ute Mountain Ute tribal council member and the cross-cultural programs manager for MLC. She’s helping organize the screening, and will speak on the panel afterwards. She says the traditional harvest season for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe begins in springtime, in connection with the spring Bear Dance celebration. Tribal members will sometimes first harvest juniper trees to build the lodge for the Bear Dance, and later in the season, different berries, cedar trees and sage.

A community group in White Mesa, Utah, on the Ute Mountain Ute reservation, is holding its annual spiritual walk and rally on Saturday to protest the nearby uranium mill. The White Mesa uranium mill, operated by the mining company Energy Fuels Resources, is the only one of its kind still operating in the United States. The mill is part of a legacy of uranium mining in Four Corners tribal communities, many of which are still dealing with the impacts of widespread environmental contamination as the result of mining activity. Scott Clow is the environmental programs director for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. He says he has concerns that the state of Utah’s regulation of groundwater usage by the uranium mill has been too lax, and has led to the degradation and contamination of the Burro Canyon aquifer underneath White Mesa.

Elections are underway for three open seats on the Mancos RE-6 school board. Craig Benally is a resident of Mancos and a candidate vying for one of the open positions on the board. Benally, who is Navajo, grew up in southwest Colorado and previously served on the Mancos Board of Trustees for four years. If elected, he says he would focus on being a representative for Native American students in the district. Earlier this month, he spoke at a candidate forum in Mancos hosted by the school board. This week, the city of Cortez will host open house events to hear from the public as it works to update its land use code. City officials say they are trying to improve affordable housing options for those looking to move or build homes in Cortez.

A new store that sells potable water has opened up in Shiprock, New Mexico, on the Navajo Nation. About a third of the roughly 170,000 people who live on the Navajo Nation do not have access to clean, reliable drinking water, according to the tribe’s Department of Water Resources. Many Navajo citizens regularly have to drive for miles to haul water back to their communities. Elijah Bitah is a co-founder of Tó Water Company, which celebrated its grand opening in Shiprock on Saturday. Bitah says that he and his family were inspired to start Tó, a Navajo word that means water, after visiting a similar drinking water business in Gallup. They also saw a need for residents of Shiprock to have access to clean water after the Gold King Mine Spill in 2015, which caused wastewater containing heavy metals like arsenic and lead to flow into the Animas and San Juan rivers.

Former President of the Navajo Nation Jonathan Nez has announced he’s running for Congress in Arizona’s 2nd District. The seat is currently held by freshman Republican Eli Crane, who joined with a group of far-right defectors to oust former-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy earlier this month. The 2nd Congressional District is also home to 14 of Arizona’s 22 federally recognized tribes. Nez, a Democrat, would be the first Native American representative from Arizona in Congress. Nez says it will likely be a tough race – the district has 30,000 more Republican voters registered than Democrats. He says he plans on focusing on issues that matter to everyday Arizonans, like inflation and lowering the cost of childcare. And Colorado voters will decide next month if the state should be allowed to keep more of the money it gets from tobacco and nicotine.

On Saturday morning, Mesa Verde National Park hosted viewing events for the public during the annular solar eclipse. Hundreds of visitors poured into the park in the early morning hours to secure a spot to see this extraterrestrial event. NASA scientists and park rangers were nearby to answer questions. Tim Livengood is an assistant research scientist at NASA. He says there’s an important reason the crowd is here at Mesa Verde to watch the eclipse, as opposed to a different location in the Four Corners. And this week, county clerk and recorders will begin mailing ballots to all registered voters in Colorado in preparation for the November 7 election.

Last Friday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency held an informational meeting in northeastern Arizona on the first area on the Navajo Nation to be added to the Superfund National Priorities List. The EPA has proposed adding the Lukachukai Mountain Mining District to the national list, which is made up of sites in the United States that are highly contaminated and require long-term remediation. And Colorado is one step closer to ensuring all kids can access healthy food at school regardless of their ability to pay after Governor Jared Polis signed Senate Bill 221 into law last month.

On the Navajo Nation and surrounding areas, health professionals from National Jewish Health are working with local hospitals and clinics to test retired coal miners for black lung disease. Cecile Rose, a pulmonologist and environmental medicine physician at National Jewish Health, says that black lung, otherwise known as coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, is present among retired miners living in towns like Page, Arizona, and Montrose, Colorado. And three bills expanding and protecting access to reproductive healthcare got final approval from the state Senate Wednesday. One would shield out-of-state patients seeking abortions or gender-affirming care in Colorado.

A breakdown of the work yet to do for the 2023 Farm Bill, and some potential stumbling blocks that may be in store for the U.S. agricultural economy.

A new report by a nonprofit that researches Native American boarding schools in the United States has found an additional 115 schools to add to its list, including dozens located in Four Corners tribal communities. The findings by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, or NABS, have identified more boarding schools used for the cultural erasure of Native American children, like those located on the Navajo Nation. Many of these schools weren’t fully supported at the federal level but were instead operated by religious institutions like the Catholic and Mormon churches. The NABS report builds off of a list initially compiled by a federal agency in 2022. Carl Slater is a Navajo Nation council delegate who represents five chapter houses in the Chinle Agency.