A full 16-judge panel at the Fifth Circuit heard arguments Wednesday in a case that challenges a 1978 law that gives preference to Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings involving children who are identified as belonging to a Native American tribe.
Read moreStanding Raven aka Doug Tobin claims State Farm Insurance refused to cover the theft of his fishing boat and trailer because of racial discrimination against him, as a member of the Squaxin Indian tribe, in Pierce County Court, Wash.
Read moreThe 30th Hawaii Legislature convened Wednesday with urgent calls by lawmakers to stem the exodus of Native Hawaiians from the islands and to protect the 214,000 of them – nearly half of their population – who live in poverty.
Read moreA federal judge declined on Friday to order the government to allow the Chinook Indian Nation to reapply for federal recognition, but he did toss out the Department of Interior’s decision to ban such second tries and told the department to re-evaluate the rule.
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A federal judge ruled Thursday in favor of an Indian tribe based in northern Wisconsin, for now settling the tribe’s beef with a county over whose zoning ordinances have ultimate authority over reservation lands.
Read moreA Native American claims a teacher at Cibola High School in Albuquerque called her a “bloody Indian” in front of her 11th-grade English class, “moments after she cut off the braids of another female Native American student against her will in front of the same class,” in Bernalillo County Court.
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CNN has settled a lawsuit with a Kentucky teen who claimed media organizations falsely labeled him as a racist following a well-publicized encounter with a Native American last year at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
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Bronze-cast carvings depicting the heroes of Chinook Indian mythology will soon greet visitors entering Seattle’s Burke Museum, their exploits having been passed through oral history for millennia. But the federal government claims the tellers of those stories – people who ran the major trade hub where the mouth of the Columbia River spills into the Pacific Ocean and who received Lewis & Clark at the end of their journey – do not qualify for federal recognition as a legitimate Indian nation.
Read moreA Native American woman claims that British Columbia Ministry of Children and Family Development officials not only placed her in extremely abusive homes as a child, but that one of her supervisors stole money from a joint bank account he opened with her, in B.C. Supreme Court.
Read moreTaking up a challenge by a Seminole Indian convicted of rape in Oklahoma, the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether the state wrongly assumed criminal jurisdiction over Indian country.
Read moreThe Navajo Nation sued Interior Secretary David Bernhardt in federal court, claiming he cut funding for the nation’s Judicial Branch from $17 million each calendar year from 2014 to 2018 to less than $1.5 million this year.
Read moreU.S. Attorney General William Barr announced a Department of Justice program Friday that will help investigate cases of missing and murdered indigenous people in America.
Read moreThe Ninth Circuit upheld the enforcement of a judgment of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribal Court of Appeals, which ruled that FMC Corporation – a chemical manufacturer – must pay an annual use permit fee for storing “radioactive, carcinogenic, and poisonous” waste within the Fort Hall Reservation.
Read moreWhen a ceremonial Native American shield was returned last week to New Mexico, tribal leaders were there to greet the sacred piece that held a place in their cycle of ceremonies until it vanished from their centuries-old, mesa-top village in the 1970s.
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For decades, the only American Indians with a treaty right to hunt whales have been awaiting government permission to hunt again as their people historically did. The next step is a weeklong administrative hearing that began Thursday in Seattle.
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Decades of efforts, including billions of dollars spent, to prevent the extinction of 13 species of Columbia River salmon and steelhead were stymied by the resurgence of gregarious mammals who themselves returned from the brink. Now, a new plan backed by Native American tribes and three states would attempt to protect the fish by killing more sea lions.
Read moreNew York’s highest court ruled Tuesday that it lacks jurisdiction to resolve the Cayuga Nation’s long-running internal tribal leadership dispute.
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