Sure, We Lose People

My sibling Ronnie Chappelle

By Trace L Hentz, Blog Editor

I just had a birthday.  I wasn't expecting a call from Alabama where my brother Ronnie lives.  On my 9-9 birthday, his wife told me that Ronnie had died in his sleep on Sept. 6, how he'd been real sick.  His funeral was happening the next day (Sept. 10, 2026.)  

I was not going to make it all the way down to Alabama to be there, obviously.

Ronnie and I have the same dad, Earl Bland.  Earl was 18 when Ronnie was born and his new baby boy was adopted by a maternal aunt.  Growing up, Ronnie was miserable, his daughter told me. Even raised in your own family, being adopted by a relative can have its own drawbacks, as many of you have told me.

Ten years later, Earl was 28 when I was born.  Earl knew I existed, too, and I explained in my memoir what he told me, how he would have raised me.

The sad truth is my brother Ronnie and I never met.  We talked on the phone.  His daughter found me after my memoir ONE SMALL SACRIFICE was published.  When I met Earl when I was 38, he told me I had a brother, but little else. Ronnie was born in New Orleans, Louisiana.  Earl didn't tell me his name or didn't know.  Earl thought he was a lawyer in New Orleans but wasn't sure.  He was wrong.  A Navy man, Ronnie had a long military career.

I didn't think I'd ever find him.  He found me.

Now he's gone. 

Here's the kicker: Ronnie is the second brother I have lost (in the past few years), and I am not mentioned in their obits.  Ronnie's OBIT: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/ronnie-chappelle-obituary?id=62373423

Who ever does genealogy needs to be aware that this happens to adoptees. In my case, TWICE! 

I need to take a break from blogging here. I may have to tear apart my kitchen again or do some mosaic tiling and hard labor to process this.  I know how to grieve, yes, cry, yes, but this pain is more anger. 

NOVA: Knowledge Keepers

 Check your local listings in the US for NOVA- airs WEDNESDAY, Sept, 23, 2026

Nova: Knowledge Keepers Watch Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 9 p.m. on NEPM TV For millennia, Indigenous communities in North America have practiced a unique form of science. From navigating the featureless Arctic to building energy-efficient homes in the desert, see how cultural traditions have led to remarkable innovations.

Learn More

Spirit Plate

 

Indigenous Food: Spirit Plate and A Feather and a Fork

September 20, 2026  Wenona Singel

If you’re looking for something to watch or cook this weekend, there are two good Indigenous food options.

Vision Maker Media is streaming Spirit Plate free throughout September.  The series follows award-winning chef Pyet DeSpain (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) as she visits Indigenous communities to gather, fish, hunt, and cook with local foods.  The 15-minute episodes include spearing Pacific lamprey with the Yurok Tribe, a bison stew for the Potawatomi Gathering, a feast with Onondaga seed keepers and matriarchs, halibut cooked for Haida elders in a longhouse, a Hawaiian underground-oven pig roast, and Tlingit beach asparagus and salmon.

And if you’re ready to cook, Crystal Wahpepah (Kickapoo Nation) published A Feather and a Fork this year, with 125 intertribal recipes including sweet blue cornbread, strawberry-sumac salad, bison roast with chokeberry rub, and acorn muffins. Tommy Orange wrote the foreword.

Vision Maker Media, Spirit Plate link

A Feather and a Fork: 125 Intertribal Dishes from an Indigenous Food Warrior, Crystal Wahpepah

2 federal Indian boarding school students to be repatriated to tribes in Oklahoma

By Sarah Liese, OPMX

Published September 8, 2026  

Cumberland County Historical Society   / Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center ...The Carlisle Indian Industrial Boarding School cemetery in 1935, after it was relocated in 1927

The remains of 12 Indigenous children are coming home from the most notorious federal Indian Boarding School in the U.S., including two students from Oklahoma. 

Frances Bones and Fannie Gibson are among a dozen Indigenous children expected to return to their communities after passing away at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The school led the way for others in the country, striving to assimilate nearly 7,800 children by isolating them from their communities and cultures.

Bones was 14 years old when she left her mom and dad in the winter of 1894 to attend Carlisle. Comanche Nation Chairman Forrest Tahdooahnippah said she was the daughter of one of the tribe's chiefs, "Cho-nip (Tsunipu), which means 'bones,' and his wife Cha-yah."

"At that time, in the early days of Carlisle, the children of tribal leaders were the focus of the conscription efforts for boarding schools," Tahdooahnippah said in an emailed statement.

A physician in her area called the young Comanche member healthy a couple of days before she arrived in Pennsylvania to start school. Six months later, she passed away. Her cause of death is not listed in the Carlisle Digital Archive.

"Our community still struggles with the legacy of boarding schools, and I hope that her return home provides healing and closure for her family and for our entire community," Tahdooahnippah said.

Gibson will be returning home to the Absentee Shawnee Tribe.

She arrived at Carlisle on Christmas Eve in 1899 at the age of 17. She studied there for about one year before passing. ICT reports that Gibson died from tuberculosis, the most common cause of death for the students currently being repatriated.

The Chief Executive Officer at the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, Nikki Santos (Cour D'Alene Tribe), said the grief that comes with losing children who were taken from their homes and never came home has rippled across generations.

"We call on institutions entrusted with the care of Native children's remains and cultural belongings to carry out this work with transparency, respect, consultation and accountability," Santos said in a statement. "These children were loved, they mattered, and their lives and stories must never be forgotten."

This is the ninth year the U.S. Army has worked to reunite Indigenous families with their loved ones who passed away at Carlisle. Throughout their years doing this work, there have been disinterment issues due to past operational mistakes — notably, a Wichita boy named Alfred Charko, whose remains couldn't be reinterred because they weren't where the plot maps indicated.

"Navigating the disinterment and return process requires the highest level of professional care and compassion and we are committed to providing the expert assistance needed to return their loved ones to their families and communities," said Director of the Office of Army Cemeteries Renea Yates.

All boarding school students will be honored on Sept. 30 during Orange Shirt Day, an annual day of truth and reconciliation aimed at raising awareness about the Indian boarding school system that impacted Indigenous people across the U.S. and Canada.

The Absentee Shawnee Tribe declined to comment.

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This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.

Tech Sovereignty

 

Worth a Watch: Tech Sovereignty and the AI Era

September 14, 2026  Wenona Singel

Link to video is here.

From NCAI’s YouTube channel:

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve, Tribal Nations face critical decisions about how to protect their natural resources, safeguard Tribal data sovereignty, and ensure emerging technologies align with Tribal values. By exercising governance over AI, Tribal Nations can also harness these tools to preserve and revitalize Indigenous languages, strengthen self-determination, and create high-quality economic and workforce opportunities for Native people.

Whether your Tribal Nation chooses to regulate, leverage, or reject AI, this session provides the clear-eyed roadmap you need to make informed decisions. Hear directly from the foremost Indigenous tech experts on protecting our resources and governing AI on our own terms.

Featured Speakers:

The Risks: Land & Water — Cora Tso, Arizona State University
The Risks: Data & DNA — Dr. Krystal Tsosie & Joe Yracheta, Native BioData Consortium
The Opportunity: Workforce — Danielle Forward, Natives Rising
Innovation: Language — Michael Running Wolf, FLAIR

The webinar was recorded live on July 22, 2026.

POW! is an Adorable Animated Short by Cowlitz Writer/Director Joey Clift

Watch here.

Written and directed by Joey Clift (Cowlitz Indian Tribe) and created by a largely Indigenous team of Native animation professionals and allies, POW! is an 8 minute animated short about a Native kid scrambling to charge his video game console at a powwow.

The film screened at close to 100 festivals and won top animation honors at almost two dozen, including Best Native American Film at the 2026 Tonkawa Film Festival. 

watch Joey Clift’s animated short, POW!

A 28 minute podcast interview with Joey Clift is available here, where he talks about the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, storytelling and animation, and Native comedians.

New York City 25 Years ago

By Trace Hentz, Blog Editor

My birthday is on 9-9.  So 25 years ago we went to New York City to celebrate! I wanted to go to the top of the Empire State Building. (Remember my husband is from Harlem and hates doing tourist stuff.) But we went up and I shot photos of the World Trade Center, of course. (I have so many really special photos in boxes...)

So I went home to Connecticut and was in an editorial meeting for the Pequot Times and we all ran to the television to watch what happened today, on 9-11 in New York, 25 years ago.

As a journalist I had to go back, so 12 days later I took this photo.

I made a huge photo album of photos I took, before and after. I am not sure what to do with all those memories of this horrific day.

I am 70 now.

ICT NEWS - September 11, 2026

 25 years ago

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ICT NEWS: Lake America?

 

Finally Coming Home

Worth a Read: After more than a century, Fort Peck children are coming home from Carlisle

By Wenona Singel on September 9, 2026

The Fort Peck Journal has provided community-centered coverage of the return of three Fort Peck children who were sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School together in 1890 and died there. Louis H. Montclair’s coverage documents how the Fort Peck community has prepared to bring the children home through family participation, an awareness walk across the reservation, the Orange Flag Project, community prayers, and ceremony. Peter Howe and Richard Morgan Disinterred at Carlisle; Christine Redstone Next by Louis H. Montclair for Fort Peck Journal, Sept. 1, 2026 After More Than a Century, Fort Peck Children Are Coming Home From Carlisle by Louis H. Montclair for Fort Peck Journal, September 1, 2026 From a Phone Screen to Carlisle: How the Orange Flag Project Took on a Life of Its Own by Louis H. Montclair for Fort Peck Journal, September 1, 2026 Fort Peck Tribal Executive Board member Melvin Scott smudges the Carlisle Indian Cemetery on Sept. 1 ahead of the scheduled disinterments of Peter Howe and Richard Morgan. The Fort Peck delegation traveled to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to bring home three Fort Peck children who died after being sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.  Photo from Fort Peck Journal.   LINK: https://turtletalk.blog/2026/09/09/worth-a-read-after-more-than-a-century-fort-peck-children-are-coming-home-from-carlisle/#like-115861

Was genocide committed against the Inuit community in Greenland?

Greenland says findings on genocide allegation not final

Patrick Jackson

 

Inuit Ataqatigiit | Greenlandic Justice Minister Marianne Paviasen said the government could not say whether there had been a genocide through forced contraception

Greenland's justice minister has said the government cannot conclude whether genocide was committed against the Inuit community after experts examined the use of forced contraception in the 1960s and 70s.

"We cannot say, on behalf of the government, whether there was genocide," Marianne Paviasen told reporters. "This is something we can continue to debate."

Two reports on the practice were released on Friday, a year after Denmark apologised for the treatment of Inuit women and girls in its autonomous territory.

Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said a "reconciliation commission" would be set up while Danish PM Mette Frederiksen promised the governments would work together.

Denmark has passed a compensation law to pay 300,000 Danish crowns (£34,404; $46,800) to each woman affected by the policy.

Records from the national archives show that, between 1966 and 1970, 4,500 Greenlandic women and girls, some as young as 13, had an intra-uterine device (IUD) implanted under a birth-control programme administered by Danish doctors.

In recent years, many women came forward to say they had been fitted with an IUD without their knowledge or consent.

Use of the birth control was so widespread that Greenland's population growth severely slowed.

Frederiksen issued an apology last August to Greenlandic women and their families affected by "systematic discrimination".

In 2024, a former prime minister of Greenland, Mute B Egede, described the practice as "genocide".

Under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, one definition of genocide is "imposing measures intended to prevent births" within a "national, ethnical, racial or religious group".

👇

Harrowing Accounts of Attacks on First Nations people, Australia

A three-month-long federal inquiry into racism, hate and violence directed at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people wrapped up in Naarm/Melbourne on August 7.

It received hundreds of written submissions, detailing widespread abuse, harassment and structural discrimination against First Nations people.

READ:   https://www.greenleft.org.au/2026/1461/analysis/racism-against-first-nations-people-cancer-federal-inquiry-told 

Snuneymuxw Elder C’tasi:a shares traditional plant knowledge in new book

 ‘Plant Teachings from my Auntie’ by Snuneymuxw Elder C’tasi:a and ethnobotanist Nancy Turner delves into traditional plants and plant medicine.

By Shalu Mehta  ●  Nanaimo  ● August 27, 2026

Snuneymuxw Elder and Knowledge Keeper C’tasi:a (Geraldine Manson) recently published her third book, with ethnobotanist Nancy Turner, called Plant Teachings from my Auntie. The book shares knowledge passed down from ancestors on local plants and plant medicine. Photo of cover page from New Society Publishers

Editor’s note: As a member of Discourse Community Publishing, The Discourse uses quotation marks around the word “school” because the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found residential “schools” were “an education system in name only for much of its existence.”

---

Snuneymuxw Elder and Knowledge Keeper C’tasi:a (Geraldine Manson) has dedicated much of her life to learning and sharing traditional knowledge with community members.

A residential “school” and Sixties Scoop survivor, C’tasi:a told The Discourse she was mentored by Snuneymuxw Elders who “felt that they wanted to take the wild stallion out of [her] and replace it with culture and a life of traditional values.”

She spent her time shadowing her Elders, travelling with them and sitting by their side in meetings. She wasn’t allowed to take notes and instead learned through repetition about the land, resources and the history of her people.

In 2008 her auntie, the late Ellen White, Kwulasulwut, retired from her role as Elder in Residence at Vancouver Island University and selected C’tasi:a to replace her. It’s there that C’tasi:a shared her knowledge with students and faculty for 17 years.

She retired from her Elder in Residence role in April 2025 but felt she had another calling.

Interview and more:  KEEP READING:  https://thediscourse.ca/nanaimo/snuneymuxw-elder-ctasia-shares-traditional-plant-knowledge-in-new-book 

ICT NEWS: August 28, 2026: Moccasin Games and more

 

THIS SHOW:  Tribes sue government, moccasin games, youth powwow and more

Did you know you can play Moccasin Games? There is a ("How-To" book!

Ojibwe Style Moccasin Game: Makazinataagewin 

 (Trace helped him publish it) (it's on amazon too)

https://bookshop.org/p/books/ojibwe-style-moccasin-game-makazinataagewin/a6198df0ebdbdc24?ean=9780692851906&bkshp-astro=t 

 

I thought it was a joke!

 

New Guidance Coming for State Laws Supporting the Indian Child Welfare Act

 

The nonpartisan Uniform Law Commission — which drafts and promotes the enactment of consistent state laws — proposes an update for ICWA, the federal statute passed in 1978 to protect tribal children and families.

By Nancy Marie Spears

Minnesota ICWA supporters protesting a legal challenge to the federal law in 2023. File photo by Alex Perez for The Imprint.

After years of study, the nonpartisan commission that proposes model state laws has released recommendations for updating and clarifying the Indian Child Welfare Act. 

Since ICWA was enacted in 1978 to better protect tribal families in child welfare cases, compliance has been inconsistent nationwide, and Native American children continue to be overrepresented in the foster care system.

Seventeen states, however, have strengthened ICWA provisions by passing their own laws. 

The commission’s draft Uniform State Indian Child Welfare Act, released July 15, is designed as a template for states that have not passed local ICWA laws, and details best practices. If enacted by state legislatures, the proposed rules would strengthen requirements that social workers make “active efforts” to prevent family separation, such as prioritizing tribal kin for out-of-home placements and providing Indigenous parents more opportunities to reunite with children before their parental rights are terminated. It would also ensure that parental abuse or neglect findings are not solely based on “community or family poverty.”

Though it is nonbinding unless states enact the model law, the uniform state ICWA proposal is more expansive and detailed than the federal law. It offers clearer guidance on cultural competency, including addressing language barriers in child welfare proceedings. It also clarifies that tribal law should carry the same weight as state law.

“Differences in how states interpret and implement ICWA have created a patchwork of requirements that can hinder effective advocacy.”

— Domingo DeGrazia, ICWA attorney for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe

👇

Social Work professor Marlyn Bennett on the intergenerational transmission of our own ‘languages of love’

What Sixties Scoop survivors built — and are teaching forward to their children and grandchildren

 By Don McSwiney, Faculty of Social Work 

Marlyn Bennett | Courtesy Marlyn Bennett

Nobody handed Sixties Scoop survivors a language for loving themselves as Indigenous people.  Separated as children from family, culture, community, land and their own languages, many of them built one anyway.

Dr. Marlyn Bennett, PhD, wants that understood as a gain.  Not what was left over after everything else was taken, but something survivors made and added to their own lives. And now, she says, they are passing it on.

"I wanted to look at it from a strengths perspective," says Bennett, herself a Sixties Scoop survivor, a member of Sandy Bay Ojibway Nation, and a researcher at the University of Calgary who is researching this dark period in Canadian history through this very novel lens. 

Most research and public conversation about the Sixties Scoop begins and ends with what was taken and the harms perpetrated.  Families separated.  Cultures disrupted. Identities fractured.  Those accounts are essential, Bennett says, and they must continue to be told.  But when absence becomes the whole story, survivors appear in it only as people that things were done to.

Instead, Bennett wants to know what sustained survivors of that period — beginning in the 1950s and into the 1980s — when child-welfare authorities removed more than 24,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children from their families and placed them in non-Indigenous foster and adoptive homes.  The extension of provincial child-welfare jurisdiction onto reserves in 1951 saw removals of children climb sharply in the decades that followed, overlapping with residential schools, Indian hospitals and forced displacement from homelands. Children were placed in homes across Canada and, in many cases, in the United States and overseas. 

According to Bennett, her research project, Exploring the Language of Love Across Generations: The Lived Experiences of Sixties Scoop Survivors and Their Families, doesn’t diminish any of that record.  Instead, Bennett asks how, despite everything, did survivors learn to love themselves as Indigenous people?  What did they teach themselves that no one was there to teach them?  And what happens to that knowledge when it reaches the next generation?

KEEP READING:  https://ucalgary.ca/news/what-sixties-scoop-survivors-built-and-are-teaching-forward-their-children-and-grandchildren

That longing that never goes away

 60s Scoop VIDEO:  https://globalnews.ca/video/embed/playlist/3790904,12029257,7744665,12027056/

'It's a good first step': Saskatoon '60s Scoop survivor reacts to federal settlement - Global News

Global Player

Global News at 10 Saskatoon. 'It's a good first step': Saskatoon '60s Scoop survivor reacts to federal settlement.

He cannot go home

 

A tragic story of a 60s Scoop Survivor.

READ: https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/following-almost-40-years-in-prison-daryle-kent-and-his-family-are-asking-why-he-cant-return-to-brokenhead-first-nation/ 

I call this reinventing "Atrocity"

 

One Hundred and Fifty Years of Being Sold Out by Darren Grimes

Watch what finally moves them. For thirty years the water ran foul and no one called an emergency assembly. The children kept getting apprehended and no one filed an injunction...

One hundred and fifty years is enough evidence. Sovereignty was never going to come from the men who throw away the one real chance at renegotiation because the old arrangement keeps them in their chairs, with full pockets.

The cage was built in Ottawa, but the door is held from the inside now, and I am done asking the men in the doorway to move.

Darren Grimes

 

Read on Substack

 EXCERPT:

And Ottawa still decides who is allowed inside. The federal government determines who is a status Indian and who is not, registration, the second-generation cut-off, the decades of sex discrimination that took Bill C-31, then Bill C-3, then Bill S-3 to half-fix and still hasn’t fixed. Think about what that means. The government that built the band council also keeps the list of who counts as one of us. They define the membership and they define the office that membership votes for. We did not draw either line. They did. And then we are told the path to sovereignty runs through the very machinery they designed to deny it. 

 

Atrocity? Lost Children?  Almost Dead Indians?  Indeed!  We've seen this tactic before and we'll keep seeing it... Trace 

NAGPRA UPDATE: Speed Art Museum

 

Building bridges for the next generation

‘He’s just the most welcoming and inclusive person’

By: Zoe Pierce | Aug. 4, 2026

Change has been the motivation behind Clayton Sandy’s work for decades.

A member of Sioux Valley Dakota First Nation, Sandy is an Indigenous knowledge keeper, cultural advisor and community advocate. His work has taken him into newcomer organizations, schools, hospitals and workplaces across Manitoba, where he teaches Indigenous history, mentors youth and helps build relationships between communities.

Sitting down for an interview with the Free Press, Sandy arrived with a busy calendar in hand, a reflection of the many projects and initiatives that continue to fill his days as he works to create change for future generations.

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Clayton Sandy spent four decades working in Manitoba’s public service and has spent his retirement working to connect Indigenous and newcomer communities.

“I have two boys and I have five grandchildren. The racism I put up with was really bad,” Sandy said. “And I don’t want my grandchildren to put up with that garbage.”

Sandy’s own family history is connected to many of the issues he now teaches others about.

His parents and older siblings are residential school survivors and Sandy is also a survivor of the ’60s Scoop.

KEEP READING:  https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2026/08/04/building-bridges-for-the-next-generation 

 

ICT NEWS - August 21, 2026 | MMIWG Montana

 

Indigenous peoples as rightful caretakers of the Earth

 

LINK: https://www.oneearth.org/california-redwood-forests-returned-to-indigenous-care/

 

 I visited these trees more than once when I lived in Oregon.

 The awesome Sequoias are being healed:

California redwoods gateway is returned to Indigenous tribe

Now, as the land heals from the scars of a long-running lumber mill, it has been returned to its original stewards, who will operate it as a public gateway to Redwood National and State Parks about 50 miles south of the Oregon border.

Save the Redwoods League in June conveyed the 125-acre property to the Yurok Tribe following a yearslong project to restore the degraded industrial site to a diverse riparian habitat.  It opens to the public Saturday as ‘O Rew Redwoods Gateway, which features interpretive exhibits and trails leading to old-growth redwood groves.

The announcement comes as California’s most populous Indigenous nation works to reclaim its homelands, a mission inscribed in its constitution.  The Yurok Tribe has so far regained 60,000 acres — about 12% — of its 500,000-acre ancestral territory, which stretches along the North Coast and the Klamath River, according to a spokesperson.  The majority was returned in a series of transactions that culminated last year in what is thought to be the largest “land back” deal in state history.

The gateway’s ‘O Rew name doesn’t have a direct translation in English, said Rosie Clayburn, director of the Yurok Tribe’s Cultural Resources Department.  The land is known as a place where trails come together, she said.  It sits at the confluence of Prairie Creek and Redwood Creek, important fish-bearing streams where Yurok people once caught steelhead and salmon.

But the Yurok lost 90% of their land, including ‘O Rew, during the Gold Rush.  Although many families stayed — Clayburn calls it an “attempted colonization” — they endured massacres, boarding schools and other atrocities as invaders sought to extract abundant stores of salmon and old-growth coast redwoods.

Some of those trees were milled at ‘O Rew when it operated as the Orick Mill for more than 50 years, starting in 1954.

READ MORE:  https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/california-redwoods-gateway-is-returned-to-indigenous-tribe/ 

 

Wab Kinew weighs in on Trump Tariffs

 

Kinew is Canada's first provincial premier of First Nations descent, and Manitoba's first Indigenous premier since Métis Premier John Norquay in 1887.

 

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew (Ojibways of Onigaming First Nation) said Canada has leverage in the talks even as his province weighs restoring U.S. alcohol sales at Prime Minister Mark Carney’s urging to help secure a deal that would avert threatened 50% U.S. tariffs.

“Everybody knows the American president by now, he’s erratic, he’s irresponsible, and he’s not to be trusted. And this is the person that we were supposed to make a deal with, and we’re going to make additional concessions for it. That’s why I say you can’t make a good deal with a bad person, because who’s to say it’s not going to be undone?” Kinew said. 

 

READ MORE:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/kinew-carney-trump-alcohol-9.7314138 

WHY he stopped using AI

 ▶ Watch a ramble video version of this post.

. I’m done using AI

I stopped using the AI chat because it became very clear it wasn't helpful or healthy, and it was in fact dangerous. But I kept using AI for coding at work, using it to take on more and more of the heavy-lifting to the point where I was just a code reviewer and a quality assurance tester for the features the coding harness would spit out. Getting a lot of tasks done, it can feel exhilarating. That is, until I realized, well, I'm basically just a hamster on a wheel, checking boxes, getting tickets done with no real purpose. Sure, I catch an issue here or there. But it's impossible to review the quantity of code the AI writes, and we've got a different AI to review it anyway! So what did this do? Well, it made me lazy. It made me stop caring. It made me a worse programmer. It made me depressed.

 

READ MORE: https://brettcodes.com/im-done-using-ai/ 

Data Centers in Indian Country

 August 20, 2026 Wenona Singel

As some Tribes reject hyperscale data centers in Indian Country, others are embracing it. Others are imposing moratoria on data centers to allow for further studies and policy development. Below is a snapshot of what Tribes are doing. It illustrates the diversity of Tribes in the US, and it shows Tribes acting as governments, regulators, landowners, utility operators, infrastructure owners, investors, economic development actors, and political communities as they decide what technological development should look like on their lands.

• Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma: Released a Data Center Task Force report on August 5, 2026 and is now banning hyperscale data centers on tribally owned and trust lands.

• Seminole Nation of Oklahoma: On March 7, 2026, the Tribal Council unanimously voted for a moratorium on generative-AI and hyperscale data center development within its jurisdiction. The resolution also bars “any inquiries, discussions and/or developments concerning any entity seeking to develop a data center of any size within the Seminole Nation during the moratorium period.”

• Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians: Supports a moratorium. The Tribe adopted a resolution on May 19, 2026 supporting the state of Michigan establishing a temporary moratorium on large-scale data centers and cryptocurrency mining until a Tribal consultation process is established, including comprehensive environmental and cultural impact assessments on any legislation involving large-scale data centers and cryptocurrency mining.

• Muscogee (Creek) Nation: Rejected. In November 2025, the National Council rejected a measure that would have developed a data center at Looped Square Ranch, where land is being used for Tribal food sovereignty.

• Hoopa Valley Tribe: Supports, under Tribal ownership. Hoopa opened a new data center on July 17, 2026, but it’s not a hyperscale data center. It’s a tribally-owned facility serving as the operational hub of Hoopa’s fiber-to-home broadband network and Acorn Connected, its Tribal internet service provider.

• Forest County Potawatomi Community: Yes, and has been doing it for years. Its enterprise Data Holdings operates a commercial data center in Milwaukee on trust land and is 100% Tribally owned. It opened in 2013 as a $33 million wholesale data center and now provides colocation/private cloud services and hosts the Milwaukee Internet Exchange.

• Navajo Nation: Yes. Navajo Tribal Utility Authority operates a data center in Shiprock on the Navajo Nation offering colocation, virtualization and high-speed optical backhaul to off-reservation points-of-presence in Albuquerque and Phoenix. NTUA is a Navajo Nation enterprise, and the facility serves both Navajo and outside government and business customers.

• Colusa Indian Community: Actively pursuing AI infrastructure. The Community’s Colusa Indian Energy announced a partnership in March 2026 with Strata Expanse to develop an AI and energy infrastructure campus on the land of the Cachil Dehe Band of Wintun Indians of the Colusa Indian Community in Northern California. Plans include expanding on-site energy generation capacity to more than 100 MW over the next 18 months.
  

• Osage Nation: Debating a data center approved in February 2026 by the City of Sand Springs on the Osage reservation. The proposed data center would be operated by Google, and construction is planned to begin in 2027. The developers are seeking support from the Osage Minerals Council, which controls the nation’s 1.47 million acre oil and gas subsurface.

Additional Resources

Tribal Nations and Data Centers: Emerging Issues and Resources, USET

AI Data Centers and Tribes: Emerging Federal and Policy State Trends and Tribal Governance Options, Tana Fitzpatrick, Director, Native Nations Center for Tribal Policy Research

Honor the Earth Data Center Tracker (interactive crowd-sourced map)

Indigenous Peoples Push Back as Data Centers Expand Across North America, John Ahni Schertow in Intercontinental Cry Magazine

The Cloud is Drying our Rivers: Water Usage of AI Data Centers, Charlotte Jennings, EthicalGeo

Honor the Earth DataCenterTracker; Earthstar Geographics; U.S. Census Bureau

 

THE FIGHTERS:

https://datacentermadness.com/