CANNON BALL, N.D. -- Today is Indigenous Peoples Day. In North Dakota, advocates are honoring their heritage by ramping up efforts to ensure Native Americans overcome voting obstacles in the 2020 election.

The race is on to help those living on reservations know what they have to do to cast their ballot. But with the pandemic ravaging North Dakota right now, that road to provide assistance has become more narrow.

Nicole Donaghy, director of North Dakota Native Vote, said they're still encouraging tribal members to vote absentee.

But COVID is limiting activity on reservations for residents to deliver those ballots, while longstanding issues, such as internet access and postage fees haven't gone away.

She said limited dropboxes pose another problem.

"In Standing Rock, for instance, there's going to be only one dropbox, and that'll be at the courthouse," Donaghy explained. "And so, like if you live in Cannon Ball, you'll have to drive 20 miles to get your ballot to that dropbox."

She noted in a community on the Spirit Lake reservation, the post office has closed, creating another barrier.

Donaghy's group sought clarification from the Secretary of State on whether they could assist with ballot collection. The response didn't provide a clear opinion, so the group is holding off out of caution, so ballots aren't disqualified.

The group has been training volunteers on reservations to do outreach so that tribal members are protected during the pandemic. And Donaghy said they're placing a lot of focus on updating their website with necessary information.

Meanwhile, State Rep. Ruth Buffalo, D-Fargo, worked with North Dakota Native Vote on seeking clarification on the ballot issue.

She agreed the current statute is too vague for groups to explore the idea of collecting them. She said it underscores the need for the state to be more proactive in helping this population prepare for a crisis.

"Anything that we can do to prevent further stress on communities who are already experiencing chronic stress," Buffalo offered.

Buffalo said the issues right before the 2020 vote are very similar to the last-minute court decision in 2018 that allowed enforcement of the state's voter ID law.

Many say the law disenfranchises Native voters. While there was still record turnout among the Native population that year, there are lingering concerns there might be a setback given all the challenges this time.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in an Arizona case concerning ballot collection for tribes.

LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- Today, a virtual summit hosted by the Las Vegas Mayor's Faith Initiative looks at the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the United States.

The National Crime Information Center reported more than 5,700 missing Native American women and children in 2016.

Lynette Grey Bull, director of Not our Native Daughters, a nonprofit based in Wyoming, from the Northern Arapaho tribe and the Hunkpapa Lakota, part of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, will speak at the summit.

She said the wall-to-wall coverage on the search for Gabby Petito stands in stark contrast to cases involving missing Black or Native American victims.

"There is huge discrimination when a person of color who goes missing," Grey Bull observed. "They just don't have the same attention, whether it's from media or whether it's from law enforcement, or whether it's from Search and Rescue."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, homicide is the sixth-leading cause of death for Indigenous women, and rates of violence on reservations can be up to ten times higher than the national average.

Tyesha Wood, project coordinator of "Amber Alert in Indian Country," said her group aims to speed up response times by making sure tribal, state and local law enforcement are on the same page.

"We want the tribal communities to be empowered, to be able to say, 'We know what to do when a child goes missing in our community,'" Wood explained. "They have the resources, they have the contact information, they have the plan in place."

Della Frank, Indian education coordinator for the Clark County School District, noted social and economic factors vary widely for Indigenous people in urban versus rural areas. In addition, Nevada is home to 20 different tribes, and there are hundreds nationwide.

"And you can't just stereotype them and generalize with them, because there's 574 different cultures, languages, governments and judicial systems," pointed out.

In 2019, President Donald Trump created the Presidential Task Force on Missing and Murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives, which is coordinating a federal response, known as "Operation Lady Justice."

SEARCHLIGHT, Nev. - In honor of Indigenous Peoples Day today, many in Nevada's Native community are calling for the establishment of a new national monument at Spirit Mountain, known as Avi Kwa Ame, near Searchlight. Multiple tribes derive their creation story from the Avi Kwa Ame area.

Nora McDowell, a project manager for the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe's Pipa Aha Macav Cultural Center, said the land is her people's most sacred site.

"The river is our namesake," she said. "We are the Aha Macav, 'People of the River.' The mountains we revere as a place of creation. You could analogize it to the Vatican, Arlington Cemetery, the Wailing Wall. This is our church, this is our place. This is our home."

On Friday, President Joe Biden restored the boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, which had been shrunk by former President Donald Trump. Searchlight resident Kim Garrison Means, an organizer for Avi Kwa Ame, said Biden's move has injected new hope into the fight to establish a 380,000-acre monument in southern Nevada.

"This is a promise that our government is making to us," she said, "and that harkens back to promises that our government has made in the past and not kept."

Biden also just became the first U.S. president to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day. Stacey Montooth, executive director of the Nevada Indian Commission, said that is a very big deal.

"It is just huge," she said, "to have the highest elected official recognize that, since the founding of the United States, our federal government has systematically sought to displace and assimilate American Indians."

Paul Selberg, executive director of the Nevada Conservation League, said the Spirit Mountain area also is important habitat for endangered species and contains culturally significant remnants of the old West.

"There are the tortoises, bighorn sheep, historic mining and pioneer-era artifacts that could be preserved and protected in the area as well," he said.


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OMAHA, Neb. -- Tribal colleges and universities in Nebraska and across the nation are teaching the next generation of pre-K and elementary-school educators ways to incorporate native language and culture into their lesson plans, and a new grant secured by the American Indian College Fund will help that work expand.

Emily White Hat, vice president for programs at the Fund, said access to an educational pathway including traditional, indigenous knowledge, greatly improves education outcomes for students.

"It really supports their identity," White Hat explained. "It helps them be confident in who they are. It connects them to relatives in the community. It just provides this broader world view."

Nebraska Indian Community College and Little Priest Tribal College both offer early-childhood education courses, and will be eligible to get a slice of a recent $5.3 million grant from the Bezos Family Foundation over the next four years.

White Hat pointed out the program's goal is to revise curriculum to be more culturally relevant and support degree attainment for teachers. For example, students explore native housing structures in their Science, Technology, Engineering and Math classes, in a course now known as "wigwam-etry."

Educators also engage parents in their child's education, through activities such as family nights on campus, where parents also get a taste of the tribal college experience.

"The hope, too, is that we may bring parents who had not thought about college as an option into a place where they may feel like, 'Oh, I could do this. I could attend college, too,'" White Hat emphasized.

White Hat also sees the program as a way for families and entire communities to heal from the ongoing trauma caused when native children were removed from their homes for forced assimilation into white culture at boarding schools.

"Supporting the development of new teachers in the classrooms of our tribal communities is fundamental to the visibility of native people," White Hat contended. "We still exist, in this country and this world."