Native America Calling: Native historians elevate overlooked history in the wake of America250 celebrations

JULY 1, 2026

Fifteen days after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, the new nation signed its first international treaty with the Wolastoqey and Mi’kmaq Nations of present-day Maine. It’s a history that historian and Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians ambassador Osihkiyol Crofton-Macdonald wishes more Americans knew. Brown University assistant professor and Narragansett Nation citizen Dr. Mack Scott III is working to get Black and Indigenous histories better integrated into the K-12 curriculum in northeastern schools. This includes histories like how Narragansett citizens fought in the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, a unit long celebrated as an all-Black unit. We’ll hear from Native historians about reclaiming these narratives along with their tribes’ stories from 1776.

 

 

LINK: https://www.nativeamericacalling.com/wednesday-july-1-2026-native-historians-elevate-overlooked-history-in-the-wake-of-america250-celebrations/

 

Native America Calling: Funding Gone (today's show)

 

Monday, February 16, 2026 — Tribes come to grips with $1.5 billion federal funding retraction

Native America Calling

October 1, 2025

Rewriting the historical context for Native Americans

Culture keepers and historians are closely watching President Donald Trump’s review of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) to eliminate what he calls derisive or partisan narratives. With facilities in Washington, D.C., Maryland and New York City, the NMAI is among eight institutions that are currently under review.  Exhibits include Native American perspectives on historical documents and events that include treaties, Indian Boarding Schools, the Termination Era, the American Indian Movement, and the Indian Child Welfare Act, among many others. Those watching are concerned Trump’s directive could permanently alter how those topics are presented to the public.  NMAI also develops educational curricula that counters incomplete instruction on historical events, like Thanksgiving.  Tune into Native America Calling to hear from those who were instrumental in NMAI’s founding, as well as get perspective on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s announcement that soldiers that took part in the Wounded Knee Massacre would retain their Medals of Honor.

A display about Native Americans in the U.S. armed forces is among the many exhibits created by the National Museum of the American Indian, shown here on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Photo by Indianz.Com (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

 

 

Guests on Native America Calling

Dr. Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee), president of the Morning Star Institute, a founding trustee of the National Museum of the American Indian, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom Rick West Jr. (Cheyenne and Arapaho), CEO emeritus of the Autry Museum of the American West and founding director of the National Museum of the American Indian OJ Semans Sr. (Rosebud Sioux), co-executive director of Four Directions Vote

If confirmed, Kirkland will replace Bryan Newland

 

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

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Navajo Nation council speaker Crystalyne Curley and Billy Kirkland shake hands with guests at the Navajo Nation Washington Office.  Kirkland was honored at the office during a reception in January. (Photo: Antonia Gonzales)

A Navajo Nation citizen has been nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs.

The nomination of William “Billy” Kirkland was sent to the U.S. Senate on Monday, according to the Congressional database.

The Navajo Times reports Kirkland is a political strategist from Georgia who’s worked in the state’s political landscape. He also served in various positions during the first Trump administration.

Kirkland is said to have played a role working with tribes on the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women helping with the Trump administration’s response through Operation Lady Justice.

He was honored during a reception at the Navajo Nation Washington Office in January on the night before President Trump took office.

Navajo Nation council speaker Crystalyne Curley and Billy Kirkland shake hands with a guest at the Navajo Nation Washington Office. Kirkland was honored at the office during a reception in January. (Photo: Antonia Gonzales)

Kirkland gave brief remarks at the reception, in an audio recording provided by Indianz.com.

“Anytime we can get Indian Country more involved in anything we’re doing, whether it’s here in Washington or in the states or policy wise or the inaugural ceremonies taking place tomorrow, the inauguration ball, we definitely want to do so. The White House will continue to have an open-door policy with all the tribal nations.”

If confirmed, Kirkland will replace Bryan Newland (citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community), who resigned at the end of the Biden administration.

Justin Trudeau’s record on Indigenous issues

 

Native America Calling: January 8, 2025

 

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation announcement halts any progress on a $48 billion proposal to reform child welfare systems on reserves. It also stalls a First Nations clean drinking water bill. Trudeau received both praise and criticism from Indigenous leaders following his resignation announcement. We’ll look at how Trudeau delivered on Indigenous issues in Canada.

GUESTS

Russ Diabo (Kahnawake Mohawk), policy analyst

Matthew Wildcat (Cree), assistant professor of Native Studies and director of Indigenous Governance and Partnership at the University of Alberta

LINK:  https://www.nativeamericacalling.com/wednesday-january-8-2025-justin-trudeaus-record-on-indigenous-issues/

 

They will be missed: LOST in 2024

 

READ: https://ictnews.org/news/those-weve-lost-in-2024

DOI report on boarding schools: “Acknowledge, Apologize, Repudiate” + NEW policy to prevent family separation due to poverty

 

LISTEN HERE: https://www.nativeamericacalling.com/thursday-august-1-2024-thursday-august-1-2024-doi-report-on-boarding-schools-acknowledge-apologize-repudiate/

For the first time, the United States is owning up to its role in the deplorable treatment of Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children at Indian Boarding Schools over more than a century. The report from the U.S. Department of Interior documents the deaths of nearly 1,000 children at boarding schools—many in collaboration with Catholic and other Christian institutions. The report includes distressing testimony collected at public meetings around the country from boarding school survivors and their relatives, detailing the personal costs of the government’s attempts to eradicate Native cultures and languages. It recommends the federal government not only formally apologize, but also establish a path and funding to account for the wrongs and the continuing harm resulting from it.

GUESTS

Bryan Newland (Bay Mills Indian Community), Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs in the U.S. Department of the Interior

Ben Barnes (Shawnee Tribe), chief of the Shawnee Tribe and National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition board member

Gwen Carr (Cayuga), executive director of the Carlisle Indian School Project

Levi Rickert (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation), publisher and editor of Native News Online

NATIVE AMERICA CALLING: August 1, 2024 – DOI report on boarding schools: “Acknowledge, Apologize, Repudiate”

 

Related Stories

Cronkite News: Bill brings accountability for Indian boarding school era (July 29, 2024)

VIDEOS: Lawmakers call for passage of Indian boarding school bill (July 25, 2024)

AUDIO: S.1723, the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act (July 24, 2024)

‘Bring our kids home’: Winnebago Tribe in court over children buried at Indian boarding school (July 16, 2024)

Tom Cole: Bringing the dark history of Indian boarding schools to light (July 11, 2024)

Indian boarding school bill sees renewed momentum on Capitol Hill (June 20, 2024)

Press Release: Senate Committee on Indian Affairs prepares Indian boarding school bill for passage (June 20, 2024)

AUDIO: H.R.7227, Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act (June 19, 2024)

Cronkite News: Projects document Indian boarding school experience (January 18, 2024)

Winnebago Tribe sues for return of children buried at Indian boarding school (January 17, 2024)

VIDEO: Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland addresses National Congress of American Indians (November 20, 2023)

DVIDS: Tribes reclaim children lost at Carlisle Indian boarding school (October 11, 2023)

‘It’s really meaningful to me’: Omaha Nation students visit site of former boarding school (April 19, 2023)

 

NEW:

Biden-⁠Harris Administration Actions to Keep Children and Families Safely Together and Supported 

The White House hosts a convening on transforming child welfare and announces new policy to prevent family separation due to poverty

 https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/07/30/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-actions-to-keep-children-and-families-safely-together-and-supported/

 Children should not be separated from their families due to financial hardship alone. Several states, like Kentucky, Indiana, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Kansas have already clarified that poverty alone should not cause child removal.

Details: 

• Allowing child welfare agencies to draw on federal funds to finance background check operations to facilitate quicker licensing for kin and others who provide foster care.
• Rolling out a new website spotlights states and Tribes that have adopted new kinship licensing rules, as well as data on their kinship placement rates.
• Publishing a resource guide on federal programs that provide supports to grandparents and kin in their caregiving roles. 
• Conducting a series of listening sessions to identify federal flexibilities needed for states and Tribes to adopt kinship licensing rules and kinship first approaches.
• Respecting Tribal sovereignty. The Administration expanded the scope of Public Law 102-477 plans, which now deliver over $300 million in flexible funding to 298 Indian Tribes to strengthen the economic stability and mobility of families in Indian Country – including by braiding child welfare funding with workforce funding to help preserve families. And just over a year ago, the President celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision in Haaland v. Brackeen, which upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act as a necessary safeguard to ensure that whenever possible, children should be kept with their extended families or community.
  

 

EDITOR NOTE: It blows my mind the system that created poverty (and forced adoptions in Indian Country) is aiming to fix that - what, after 100+ years? Really? THEY CREATED POVERTY! We already had KINSHIP care for kids on the rez... it's called family and relatives!

So Biden-Harris really really need the NATIVE VOTE in 2024, apparently...

The billions of dollars spent to run all these gov't agencies and departments to remove Native kids could have ended poverty a long time ago.

That is why some call this POVERTY PORN...   TRACE

Committed to Investigating Abuses at 523 BOARDING SCHOOLS (USA)

 

Thursday, February 8, 2024

This week, U.S. Reps. Sharice Davids (Ho-Chunk/D-KS) and Tom Cole (Chickasaw/R-OK) reintroduced legislation to investigate, document, and report on the histories of Indian boarding schools and their long-term impacts on tribal communities.

The bill has been endorsed by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS).

NABS CEO Deborah Parker talked about the legislation at the 2023 White House Tribal Nations Summit.

“It’s much needed to help us tell the story, help us understand what happened to our Native American children in U.S. boarding schools. And we deserve, America deserves, not only Native Americans, but students, but people, any human being who is living today deserves to understand the truth about what happened in the United States.”

Parker says they’re seeking records and information from both the federal government and churches that ran the schools.

“We know parents are still looking for children to this day, their relatives who never came home. Most of the parents are no longer with us, but there are elders who have brothers and sisters, siblings, cousins who never made it home from the boarding school. So, they are missing. We’re trying to help families locate their loved ones…we still know our communities have, we have broken systems within our communities because we don’t know where our loved ones are.”

The legislation would establish a formal commission to investigate federal Indian boarding school policies, develop recommendations for federal entities to help with healing efforts, and provide a forum for victims to speak.

Reps. Davids and Cole, co-chairs of the Congressional Native American Caucus, say they’re committed to investigating the abuses at the institutions, which are connected to an estimated 500 student deaths.  (I have seen bigger numbers: 10,000 + who died in the schools)

The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act of 2024 has also been endorsed by the National Congress of American Indians.

 

Where are they?  Where are all the adoptees? Genocide is hard to document, right? Trace

Caught Red-Handed #Looters #Murder #NAGPRA (updated!)

By Trace Hentz, blog editor

In the new book ALMOST Dead Indians, the expectation of dead Indians is pretty evident: after first contact: 1,000+ massacres, slavery, plagues they spread via blankets, rotten food commodities, poisons that killed entire tribal communities, numerous scalp bounties, then the Lake Mohonk rich men like General Pratt suggesting all kids attend residential boarding schools (Carlisle Indian Industrial School) - these ideas were the best way to assimilate and KILL THE INDIAN and SAVE THE MAN... it's all there... we have proof.

But looting graves and theft was yet another way to kill the Indian, to hide what they did: plus they'd make money, get a college degree from somewhere, while they leveled and robbed thousands of mounds (and tribal massacre sites) that held our dead and our sacred items.  See a pattern here?

It was expected we would all die... sooner than later... one way or the other.

Looting is proof.  Our bones in museum collections is more proof. These museums and the looters got caught red-handed.  Now they will pay for this atrocity.  We are exposing them.

Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Chair Schatz Demands Institutions to Return Native Remains and Items to Tribes  

For centuries, Native people had everything stolen from them – their lands, their water, their languages, and even their children. It wasn’t that long ago that it was the official policy of the United States government to terminate the existence of tribes and forcibly assimilate their citizens. And a big part of that unrelenting, inhumane policy was that the remains of Native ancestors and culturally significant items were also taken from them. Not with permission, but by force. Not discovered, but stolen. On battlefields and in cemeteries, under the cover of darkness or the guise of academic research.

Think about that. The U.S. government literally stole people’s bones. Soldiers and agents overturned graves and took whatever they could find. And these weren’t isolated incidents – they happened all across the country. In my home state of Hawai‘i, the remains of Native Hawaiians – or iwi kūpuna as they’re called – were routinely pillaged without any regard for the sanctity of the burials or Native Hawaiian culture. 

And all of it was brought to some of the most venerable institutions – at home and abroad -- to be studied like biological specimens…displayed in museum exhibits as if they’re paintings on loan…or squirreled away in a professor’s office closet, never to be seen again.

The theft of hundreds of thousands of remains and items over generations was unconscionable in and of itself. But the legacy of that cruelty continues to this day because these museums and universities continue to hold onto these sacred items in violation of everything that is right and moral – and importantly, in violation of federal law.

read more: https://nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/senate-committee-on-indian-affairs-chair-schatz-demands-institutions-to-return-native-remains-and-items-to-tribes

 Free BOOK PDF: email: tracelara@pm.me

*

TODAY on NATIVE AMERICA CALLING

Why are museums taking down Native exhibitions?

New language in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) is prompting museums to pull some Native items from public display. The rule went into effect in January that requires museums to consult with tribes more comprehensively when it comes to Native artifacts. That’s because, even though they may not be the human remains or sacred items that NAGPRA historically referenced, many items held by museums, universities, and other institutions could have been looted from Native sites or otherwise taken under suspicious circumstances.

 

LINK: https://www.nativeamericacalling.com

 

👇

Opinion

Return the Stolen Artifact, But Keep the Museum Label

Some museums have chosen to explain the removals they had made for reasons including not wanting to display racial stereotypes, reconsidering “whose perspectives receive prominence in our collections,” and discovering that an object was created by someone pretending to represent a cultural tradition. I have also seen signs in the Denver Museum of Nature and Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) explaining that an empty slot in a case was once filled with an artifact restored to a Native American community. 

 

+

During District Attorney Bragg’s tenure, the ATU has recovered more than 800 antiquities stolen from 24 countries and valued at more than $155 million. Since its creation, the ATU has recovered nearly 4,500 antiquities stolen from 29 countries and valued at more than $375 million.

Under District Attorney Bragg, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit (ATU) has repatriated more than 950 antiquities stolen from 19 countries and valued at more than $165 million. Since its creation, the ATU has returned more than 2,450 antiquities to 24 countries and valued at more than $230 million.

https://manhattanda.org/d-a-bragg-returns-two-7th-century-antiquities-to-china/  

 

Native America Calling: Stó:lō Nation in British Columbia says it has found nearly 160 child deaths at four facilities

 

September 26, 2023

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A First Nation in British Columbia says it has found nearly 160 child deaths at four facilities in the province.

As Dan Karpenchuk reports, most of the deaths occurred at a hospital.

The probe by the Stó:lō Nation in British Columbia focused on unmarked graves and missing children, going back to the 1860’s.

But representatives of the First Nation and its research and resource management center say the work is only beginning.

So far, obstacles have been the lack of access to information from Ottawa as well as religious institutions that were linked to residential schools.

The research, using ground penetrating radar, archives, and field work, was into three residential schools, cemeteries, and a First Nation hospital.

Most of the children died of diseases such as tuberculosis. Some from accidents.

Amber Kostuchenko is a researcher and the project manager.

“One child died because they were jumped on by another student. Another child was reported to have hit their head against the bed under unknown circumstances. And another was reported to have broken their spine while jumping rope.”

St. Mary’s Indian Residential School

The institutions included the St. Mary’s Indian Residential School, the Coqualeetza Industrial Institute, and the Coqualeetza Hospital – all three in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley.  And the fourth was the All Hallows School in Yale, BC.

Kostuchencko says her team is still gathering information and has only accessed about half of the 70,000 documents they need.

One of the lead researchers also says interviews with survivors suggested many atrocities committed against children, including sexual assaults, starvation, and secret burials.

Some survivors allege that the St Mary’s school was a place of punishment and starvation – and later when it moved to a second location, a place of pedophilia.