A South Dakota tribe banned Gov. Kristi Noem (R) from its reservation after she delivered remarks on the U.S.-Mexico border last week, with the tribe’s leader suggesting the governor is using the border to help former President Trump’s bid for the White House.

“Due to the safety of the Oyate, effective immediately, you are hereby Banished from the homelands of the Oglala Sioux Tribe!” Frank Star Comes Out, president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, wrote in a statement addressed to Noem. “Oyate” means people or nation, according to The Associated Press.

Native American communities in the Southwest are divided over new federal protections for land some tribes consider sacred.

This summer, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced new protections for an extraordinary archaeological site in New Mexico. The department put a 10-mile buffer zone around Chaco Culture National Historical Park, forbidding drilling for oil and natural gas. Many Native Americans consider Chaco Canyon sacred, but Native communities are divided on the new rule, as Alice Fordham with member station KUNM reports.

Members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians will vote Thursday on whether their Tribal Council should legalize the recreational use of marijuana on their reservation in western North Carolina.

Although the state still criminalizes the possession of even small amounts of marijuana, the sovereign tribal nation has the authority to regulate cannabis on the Qualla Boundary, the tribe’s 57,000-acre reservation. 

Minnesota state and tribal leaders met with members of the Environment Protection Agency In Shakopee on Wednesday to discuss how they aim to use $4 million in pollution reduction grants.

In part due to the Inflation Reduction Act -- as well as aggressive investment from the Biden-Harris Administration -- the EPA is now offering federal Climate Pollution Reduction Grants to states. The purpose of these grants is to generate stable funding for states to implement plans that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful air pollutants. 

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday proposed baseline water quality standards for tribal waters, which the agency said would protect more than 500,000 people who live on reservations. 

According to the agency, most tribes with reservations don’t currently have water quality standards, and the proposal would put these waters in line with others that are regulated by the federal government. 

This Spring, a high level delegation met inside the Arizona Governor's office to announce a huge water conservation deal.

The crowd was a who's who of the western water world, including top Biden administration officials, the head of Arizona's powerful water department, the state's Governor Katie Hobbs, and its senior Senator Kyrsten Sinema.

But the man at the center of the announcement was someone who probably wouldn't have even been invited to this type of event not too long ago: Governor Stephen Roe Lewis of the Gila River Indian Community.

Native American tribes could expand their gambling operations in the U.S., including pursuing lucrative online betting, under new rule changes proposed by the federal government.

The proposals from the Bureau of Indian Affairs include easing rules for tribes to acquire additional land, which could ultimately be approved for casino development. New rules would also ensure that tribes can negotiate online-betting deals with states. 

Environmental nonprofit Keep America Beautiful has transferred the rights of its famous “Crying Indian” anti-littering public service announcement to the National Congress of American Indians.

The ad, first aired on Earth Day in 1971, featured actor Iron Eyes Cody in a buckskin outfit, wearing a feather in his hair, paddling a canoe in trash-strewn water. At the end of the ad, after someone has just littered on the roadway he is walking on, Cody sheds a single tear.

Indigenous Peoples Day is observed in Pennsylvania and as a federal holiday on Monday, October 10, 2022. It has been a long road for Tribes and Indigenous activists, and their allies, to change Euro-American culture’s elevation of someone  who never even stepped foot in North America. It signals legitimate progress that President Biden, state legislatures and governors, and local lawmakers acknowledge and reprimand Columbus’s role in seeding a massive literal and cultural genocide upon his newly discovered “New World’s” Indigenous populations.

Historically, tribal communities have had higher rates of unemployment and poverty than other communities. The federal government administers multiple programs that can support economic development in these communities.

We identified 22 programs at 7 agencies that provide economic development assistance—e.g., grants or loans—to tribal governments and businesses. But these programs might be hard to identify or access, leaving tribal entities to miss out on valuable support.