Indigenous

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/34050

RAMALLAH — Traffic was at a standstill outside of Nablus in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, as sunset neared and hungry residents were forced to trickle through an Israeli checkpoint to get home and break their fasts.

The Israeli military had sealed the city off from the outside world. Just over a week after the U.S. and Israel launched their joint war on Iran, Israeli settlers have ramped up their violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, and Israeli forces have imposed a near-total closure of municipal centers, shutting gates and restricting crossings without warning or perceptible logic.

“It’s so unpredictable,” said Shadya Saif, 40, a Palestinian mother of three who teaches at a private school in Ramallah. The Intercept rode alongside Saif as she traveled back to Ramallah from Nablus on Saturday, when the Israeli military closed all but one checkpoint out of the city, putting it under an effective blockade and forcing all traffic through a checkpoint called Shavei Shomron.

The unannounced closures left Palestinians scrambling. Many were visiting Ramallah to see family members during Ramadan, and they hoped to reach their destinations in time for iftar, the fast-breaking meal enjoyed at sunset. Others needed to enter the city to receive medical treatment they cannot obtain elsewhere. Saif had risked the journey to see her dying uncle and, knowing the risks of crossing, she’d left her chronically ill daughter in Nablus with him.

“I was worried I would get stuck here,” Saif told The Intercept inside a yellow “service” taxi, the only form of public transportation widely available in the West Bank. Even though nearly all of her family lives in Nablus, she has tried to avoid visiting since October 7, 2023, after which the Israeli military clamped its ubiquitous yellow gates over entry points throughout the West Bank.

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Israeli soldiers stopped each car to inspect Palestinians’ IDs. At their limit, drivers began pulling their cars onto roundabouts and driving the wrong way down the street, but the final say lay with Israeli forces, who allowed only one car at a time to approach the military installation. Some abandoned their cars to walk through checkpoints and reach their families on foot. An elderly Palestinian woman prayed aloud, saying that all she wanted was to make it safely to her family in Ein Yabrud, a village on the outskirts of Ramallah.

“I was worried I would get stuck here.”

As we sat waiting at the checkpoint, Saif’s face was filled with worry. She opened her phone to show pictures of her daughter, dressed in pink and smiling at the camera.

Saif’s daughter has muscular dystrophy and requires specialized treatment and 24-hour supervision. Saif took a big risk visiting Nablus to see her dying uncle in the hospital, she said, because if she were to get stuck there due to a checkpoint closure — which did happen for three days last week — her daughter’s health would be put in jeopardy.

“I left her with my uncle just for the day, but I have to be there to care for her,” Saif said. “I know her medications and how to ensure she doesn’t get sick.”

Saif made it back to Ramallah, but she said it would not have been possible a few days earlier.

A roadblock Israeli settlers installed on the main road between Sebastia, a Palestinian village south of Nablus, and Route 60, which connects the city to the central and southern West Bank, seen on March 7, 2026. Photo: Theia Chatelle

The day after the U.S. and Israel started attacks on Iran, the prevailing sentiment in Ramallah was anxiety. People wondered if there would be road closures and food and fuel shortages like during last year’s Twelve Day War, and whether the Israeli government would impose what Palestinians describe as collective punishment in the West Bank, even though they were not involved in the conflict.

“It has nothing to do with anything Palestinians in the West Bank are doing or not doing,” said Aviv Tatarsky, who leads an Israeli protective presence collective that organizes watches to deter settlers from invading Deir Istiya, a village outside Ramallah. “And still, there’s an Israeli decision, and life comes to a stop.”

“There is no money, no work. We are in debt, and I have four mouths to feed. What am I to do?”

Ramallah, which has long functioned as a relatively insulated bubble from the effects of Israel’s occupation, is also dealing with a struggling economy. Paired with the war, the economic downturn has muted Ramadan celebrations, according to residents who spoke with The Intercept.

“We are suffering,” said Faisal Taha, who drives taxis in Ramallah. “There is no money, no work. We are in debt, and I have four mouths to feed. What am I to do? I have been driving my taxi all day, and I have forty shekels.”

Unemployment in the West Bank is hovering around 40 percent — up from 13 percent two years ago — and GDP has contracted by 13 percent since October 7.

Dror Etkes, founder of Kerem Navot, an Israeli NGO that monitors settlement construction in the West Bank, said he was not surprised by the restrictions imposed by Israel.

“They always use instances of violence to perpetuate more violence,” Etkes said. “This is what we have seen for years, since October 7, and now it is worse than ever.”

As during the Twelve Day War last year — after which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a “historic victory” that would “stand for generations” against the Islamic Republic of Iran — there are already the beginnings of flour and fuel shortages in the West Bank as the Israeli Civil Administration, which runs the military occupation of the territory, imposes import restrictions.

“This is not something new. It happened in June during the Twelve Day War, and it’s kicking off again,” Tatarsky said. “But what’s different this time is that Israel is also blocking roads — not only disconnecting Palestinians from Area C, but also blocking roads between Palestinian villages.”

A week later, on March 7, there was still only one checkpoint out of Ramallah open, forcing all traffic through a bottleneck that passes by the Beit El settlement and through the Jalazone refugee camp. This is the only route for Palestinians living in Ramallah to access Route 60, the main thoroughfare connecting Palestinian communities in the south to those in the north.

“They always use instances of violence to perpetuate more violence.”

Driving up the highway and passing village after village that had been closed off by the Israeli military, Etkes said it was clear the war with Iran was being used as a pretext for “a system that is meant to reduce as much as possible the area where Palestinians can move freely,” part of the settlement movements’ goal to alter the facts on the ground regarding de facto annexation.

Nabih Odeh, 63, who has been driving public transit taxis in the West Bank for more than 30 years, has watched what he describes as the slow annexation of the West Bank unfold. As he drove up Route 60, he pointed to village after village sealed off by the Israeli military.

“There, that’s Aqraba, closed,” Odeh said. “If you want to get in or out, you must walk. That’s Turmus Ayya — very wealthy — still closed.”

Eighty percent of Turmus Ayya’s residents have U.S. citizenship, yet the town was closed off, its yellow gate locked. Service taxis pulled up to drop residents off, leaving them to walk to the town center or be picked up by relatives. Its status as a wealthy American Palestinian village has no bearing on Israel’s decision.

At the same time, Israeli settlers have used the war with Iran as an opportunity to launch further attacks on Palestinian communities, largely in Area C — the roughly 60 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli civil and military control — working in tandem with movement restrictions in Areas A and B, the Palestinian-administered population centers and villages created under the 1995 Oslo Accords.

Messages circulating in settler WhatsApp groups have called for violence against Palestinians to match Israeli airstrikes in Iran. One graphic depicting a roaring lion, to match the Israel Defense Forces’ name for the military operation against Iran, reads: “It is time to launch a preemptive attack in all arenas, until the enemy is expelled from the country and subdued outside it. This time we win, once and for all.”

“I mean, generally, when you’re speaking about Israeli society, it is torn apart in so many ways,” said Orly Noy, editor at Local Call and chair of B’Tselem’s executive board. “But there’s one thing that always unifies,  and I’m speaking about the Jewish section of society, of course, and this is war.”

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Netanyahu is willing to do anything to stay in power, Noy added, and during his time in office, he has worked effectively to paint the Iranian regime as an existential threat to Israel, working in tandem with the U.S. “He has taken advantage of it very well,” Noy said.

During Operation Rising Lion, this rally-around-the-flag effect has not only served Netanyahu’s interests but also those of settlers living in the West Bank.

WAFA, the Palestinian Authority’s news agency, estimates that settler attacks have increased 25 percent since the start of the conflict. Israeli settlers have killed six Palestinians since the start of the war with Iran, including three in one incident in the West Bank community of Khirbet Abu Falah, east of Ramallah.

Israeli settlers shot Fare’ Hamayel and Thaer Hamayel, and a third man, Mohammad Murra, died of suffocation from tear gas deployed by Israeli forces.

As the world’s attention remains on Iran, solidarity activists said that Israeli settlers appear to feel they have additional impunity to conduct attacks.

“They will be treated as heroes by their supporters, by their society,” Etkes said. “And the government will do nothing about it.”

The post With World’s Eyes on Iran, Israel Locks Down the West Bank appeared first on The Intercept.

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Palestinians walk through roads surrounded by rubble and collapsed buildings in Al-Zahra, northwest of Nuseirat Refugee Camp in the central Gaza Strip on Dec. 19, 2025.  Photo: Hassan Jedi/Anadolu via Getty Images

In Gaza, movement is no longer a mundane part of daily life. Israel’s military assault and prolonged siege have dismantled Gaza’s transportation system so thoroughly that journeys that once took minutes by car now require hours of walking through rubble and grotesque debris. What used to be an ordinary act — leaving home, reaching a clinic, visiting kin — has now become a form of physical labor, a calculation of pain, and a risk weighed against necessity.

By late 2025, Gaza’s Ministry of Transport and Communications reported that approximately 70 percent of registered vehicles — more than 50,000 cars, taxis, buses, and trucks — had been destroyed or rendered inviable. Between 68 and 85 percent of the road network suffered damage or total destruction, with some areas such as Khan Younis losing more than 90 percent of their routes. Israeli forces repeatedly bombed, cratered, and bulldozed major roads and intersections, instigating chaos that fragmented the Strip into isolated zones where movement between neighborhoods requires long detours or hours on foot.

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While the world turns its attention to Iran, daily life in Gaza has not returned to pre-genocide conditions. Since the U.S. and Israel began their joint assault on Iran, Lebanon, and the broader region, prices in Gaza have risen sharply as people rushed to buy essential goods and fuel. The sudden surge in demand and limited supply spiked the cost of food, water — and transportation. Border crossings were closed for 48 hours, further exacerbating shortages and contributing to the rapid rise in prices. In recent days, prices have begun to gradually decrease and stabilize, but the overall economic burden remains heavy for most households in Gaza, where many people are still struggling to cover basic needs.

Roads no longer connect neighborhoods, and transportation no longer guarantees access to health care, work, or sustenance. Even streets that remain technically passable are obstructed by rubble, vehicles, or collapsed infrastructure beneath the surface. Water and sewage lines burst under bombardment, flooding streets and turning mobility into an endeavor plagued by biohazards. In many areas, roads have become indistinguishable from ruins.

This collapse did not result solely from airstrikes. Israel’s blockade — which continues to restrict fuel, spare parts, tires, batteries, and heavy machinery — has undermined Gaza’s ability to repair or recover. Vehicles that survived bombardment often remain immobilized due to mechanical failures no workshop can fix. Even basic parts and equipment — filters, belts, brake systems — have become hard to find. Fuel scarcity has driven prices far beyond the reach of most families, while mechanics resort to dangerously improvised substitutes that destroy engines and emit toxic fumes across densely populated areas.

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As formal transportation disappears, residents rely on unsafe alternatives: tuk-tuks with no safety standards, animal-drawn carts, overcrowded cargo trucks not designed for passengers, or walking long distances across shattered streets. Asphalt has collapsed and fractured, mingling with rubble, sewage, twisted metal, and remnants of destroyed buildings, forming uneven, dirt-like paths. Movement through these spaces turns the act of walking into a physically punishing routine. The clatter of collapsing buildings and distant bombardment is constant, and the air feels opaque with dust and smoke.

Municipal authorities cannot clear the wreckage. The fuel shortages and lack of functioning equipment affect them too, preventing large-scale removal of debris. The result is a form of enforced immobility: Entire neighborhoods remain effectively cut off, not by checkpoints but by devastation. Residents plan their days around how far their bodies can carry them.

Residents plan their days around how far their bodies can carry them.

I have experienced this reality repeatedly. Over several weeks, I traveled with my brother, Mohammed, four times to reach a dentist in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp, nearly 10 kilometers from our home. There is no reliable transportation between the two areas. The distance became an ordeal measured not in maps but in muscle fatigue, time lost, and pain that intensified with every uneven step.

On one of those days, rain fell heavily. Broken roads turned to mud layered over shattered asphalt and sharp stones. Water pooled in craters left by bombs. At times, I sprinted across short safe patches, only to be slowed again by mud and debris.

Transportation carried us only part of the distance. We always completed the journey on foot, adjusting our pace to the condition of the road and to the limits of our bodies. Without severe tooth pain, I would not have left my room. The road drained me more than the dental procedure itself. Each step felt like a negotiation between necessity and collapse.

I tried to make the walk bearable by searching for fragments of beauty along the way.

I tried to make the walk bearable by searching for fragments of beauty along the way: a flowering tree growing beside rubble, a rose bush somehow still nourished, a building that had not yet fallen, the faint radiant glow of children playing in a distant schoolyard. I photographed the clouds, took pictures of myself simply to pass time, and paused whenever my body demanded it. These small acts were my survival mechanisms, attempts to assert that Gaza still contained something worth noticing.

This experience is not exceptional. It reflects a broader reality in which access to health care depends not on medical need alone, but on physical endurance. Patients miss appointments or abandon treatment altogether because they cannot reach clinics. Parents carry children for kilometers to medical points. Elderly people and those with disabilities remain trapped in place, dependent on others or forced to forego care indefinitely. The ability to walk through rubble for long distances has become a filter that determines who receives care and who does not.

The ability to walk through rubble for long distances has become a filter that determines who receives care and who does not.

Economic consequences intensify the crisis. Tens of thousands of drivers have lost their livelihoods as taxis, buses, and trucks were destroyed or immobilized. Commercial transport has slowed dramatically, disrupting supply chains and inflating the cost of basic goods. Workers arrive late or not at all. Students walk for hours or drop out entirely. For displaced families, transportation costs have reached apocalyptic levels, with some paying hundreds or thousands of dollars to move belongings short distances. Those without money walk, scavenge what they can, and leave the rest behind.

In the absence of regulation and fuel availability, informal transport operators dictate prices brazenly. Gaza’s local authorities acknowledge the exploitation, but under siege conditions, they have limited options to protect residents. Scarcity governs movement more than public need, reshaping social relations around access, endurance, and pent-up anger. Western‑run aid organizations vow to “maintain a steady and predictable flow of supplies,” yet recent reports note that while some aid has entered Gaza, the overall volume remains insufficient to meet basic needs, fueling frustration and despair.

The pattern of destruction reveals intent. Israeli attacks have repeatedly targeted intersections, bridges, and key road junctions, severing connections between neighborhoods and governorates. These actions obstruct ambulances, humanitarian convoys, and civilian movement, amplifying the effects of injury, hunger, and displacement. Gaza’s government estimates that losses in the transport sector exceed $3 billion, including the destruction of more than three million linear meters of roads. Mobility itself has become a casualty of war, leaving residents lurking between hazards and temporary shelters, pleading for safety.

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Local officials have proposed emergency rehabilitation plans focused on reopening critical routes linking hospitals, shelters, and aid distribution centers. These efforts prioritize survival rather than reconstruction. Without access to fuel, spare parts, and heavy machinery, even minimal recovery remains largely theoretical, constrained by political decisions beyond Gaza’s control.

Transportation in Gaza is not a technical issue or a matter of convenience. It defines the limits of daily life. It determines who can reach a doctor, who can work, who can study, and who must stay behind. As long as movement itself remains under siege, life in Gaza will continue to contract, measured not by distance but by pain, exhaustion, and loss. In the 21st century, Palestinians in Gaza navigate a landscape where walking through ruins has replaced the most basic promise of mobility, ceaselessly testing endurance, resilience, and the abiding human spirit.

The post Israel Destroyed Gaza’s Roads and Transit. Now, We Walk Everywhere. appeared first on The Intercept.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/32983

A first-of-its-kind project by West Moberly First Nations looks deep underground for clean energy solutions

West Moberly First Nations has limited access to fresh foods, due to long supply chains, cold winters and environmental contamination that has made many traditional foods unsafe to eat.

The First Nation believes a greenhouse could boost food security and food sovereignty, and plans to tap a geothermal reservoir — which holds scalding hot water buried deep underground — to heat it.

Their geothermal project could be the first of its kind in the province, which boasts major geothermal opportunities but has no commercial-scale projects in operation.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/33616

This story was originally published by Montana Free Press.

Nora Mabie
Montana Free Press

Inside the University of Montana’s Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, Donovan Taylor stretched his arms across a wooden conference table holding his phone, which was recording, up to two gray speakers. He furrowed his brow and closed his eyes as he listened to a 1968 recording of a Cheyenne love song.

Next to him, Theresa Small, a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council, leaned closer to the speakers and cupped a hand to her right ear, trying to hear the drums and singers through the lo-fi audio.

After months of consultation with the school, a group of about a dozen Northern Cheyenne elders and cultural leaders traveled from the southeastern Montana reservation to the University of Montana in Missoula last week to review and reclaim ownership of dozens of culturally significant items, recordings and documents in the university’s collections. When such belongings are returned to tribal ownership, Indigenous leaders say, community members regain connection to their identity, ancestors and history.

“They don’t sing like that now,” Taylor, a traditional singer himself, told the group after the song ended. “We’re losing our culture.”

UM has digitized dozens of audio recordings of Cheyenne songs and interviews with elders, which were originally recorded on cassettes or wax cylinders by anthropologists or professors. But the digitizations are imperfect. Some of the recordings sound slow and garbled, like the speakers are underwater. Others make the voices of Northern Cheyenne elders sound high-pitched, like chipmunks.

Taylor asked Wallace Bearchum, chair of the Northern Cheyenne Cultural Commission, to play the Cheyenne love song again. He closed his eyes again as drums filled the room.

“I’m going to try to learn it,” he said. “Bring it back.”

Universities, museums and other institutions nationwide house Native American ancestral remains, cultural artifacts and belongings. Sometimes, the items have been donated. Other times, an employee may have purchased or unethically obtained tribal belongings for research purposes. It’s often unknown how the possessions were originally taken from tribes, whether they were stolen from graves or traded.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, enacted in 1990 and commonly known as NAGPRA, establishes processes by which tribes can request the return of belongings and ancestral remains from institutions that house them. But in the more than 30 years since it passed, many institutions remain noncompliant with the law. ProPublica reported in 2023 that about half of the institutionally held remains of 210,000 Native Americans had not been returned.

In 2024, new NAGPRA provisions strengthened tribal authority in repatriation processes, requiring institutions that receive federal funding to get tribal consent before displaying or providing public access to tribes’ cultural belongings. New regulations also require institutions to consult with tribes on all tribal belongings within a five-year deadline.

Complying with NAGPRA is rarely straightforward. Institutions, which may hold thousands of items, must identify which tribe an item belongs to and contact appropriate people within the tribe to facilitate its return. UM in 2023 hired Courtney Little Axe, the school’s first full-time NAGPRA repatriation coordinator and collections manager, and during the 2025 legislative session lawmakers passed a state budget that included a $367,665 appropriation to UM to support repatriation efforts. That money, Little Axe said, was used to establish a student NAGPRA team at UM, with one student repatriation liaison assigned to each tribe in the state.

But most educational and historical institutions in Montana don’t have a full-time role dedicated to repatriation. Montana State University works in conjunction with the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman on repatriation work. A spokesperson for MSU said the university’s sociology and anthropology departments reached out to 14 tribes in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming in 1996, but no claims were made on items in the school’s possession. The Museum of the Rockies, the spokesperson said, has contacted at least 21 tribes since the 1990s and repatriated several items.

As of Jan. 6, 2025, UM reported having made 83% of more than 200 funerary objects in its holdings available for return to tribes, according to ProPublica’s repatriation database. MSU reported having made none of the 49 funerary objects in its possession available for return, according to the same data.

Bearchum said that since the new NAGPRA provisions were enacted, he’s heard from institutions across the country that possess, and want to return, Northern Cheyenne belongings. The problem, he said, is that the tribe doesn’t have appropriate facilities to receive and store them.

“The issues are money and manpower,” he said, adding that building a temperature-controlled repository with fireproof displays and security could cost millions of dollars.

Inside the social sciences building on UM’s campus Wednesday afternoon, Northern Cheyenne Council member Theresa Small held her hand over a beaded pipe bag displayed on a table alongside other items in UM’s collection.

“Hmm,” she said. “This has come a long way to be here.”

Tribal elders and cultural leaders walked around the table, examining the items — a beaded pouch, moccasins, dolls and pipe bags. The designs, colors and materials, they said, tell a story. A bag had been repurposed from a pair of beaded leggings. The soles on a pair of moccasins were made from a parfleche bag.

“They used everything they could to survive,” Little Axe said.

Bearchum pointed to a pair of green, blue and gold beaded moccasins. The symbols — representing a tipi, thunderbirds, and the sun — tell stories of how Northern Cheyenne people hunted and held ceremonies, he said.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, looking at the shoes. “Our people are smart.”

Annie Bement, an elder, pointed to a doll with solid blue leggings.

“I’m not sure that one’s ours,” she said. Others in the group nodded.

Mikaylia Yellowrobe, a UM repatriation liaison for the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, and Northern Cheyenne herself, stuck a coral-colored Post-it note to the table near the doll.

“Needs more research,” she scribbled.

Bement, 78, never expected to see items like this in her lifetime. She grew up speaking the Cheyenne language at home, but speaking Cheyenne at school came at a cost. She attended St. Labre Indian School, a Catholic boarding school on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, in the 1950s and 1960s. It was one of hundreds of schools nationwide that operated with the explicit mission of assimilation.

“We were slapped for speaking (Cheyenne),” Bement said. “We had to put our hands on a table and were hit with a ruler to be punished.”

Assimilation efforts like those implemented in the boarding school era have contributed to the widespread loss of cultural knowledge and language. Three of the 12 Indigenous languages historically spoken in Montana are considered critically endangered, meaning their youngest speakers are elders who speak the language infrequently, according to a 2020 Montana Budget and Policy Center report. Bement is one of just 300 fluent Cheyenne speakers alive today.

“Our values, our stories, our history is contained in the language,” Bearchum said. “It relates to our identity.”

Small said hearing elders speak Cheyenne on old recordings “is a treat.” She hopes they’ll be used to educate young people on the reservation. Connecting with history that was once taken from tribal members, she said, is restorative.

“Without the ability to see where we came from, we’d be wandering,” Small said. “This is who we are. This is our identity.”

Standing before a crowd of Northern Cheyenne community members and university representatives on Wednesday evening, Northern Cheyenne Tribal Historic Preservation Officer Teanna Limpy and Little Axe signed several agreements to establish tribal stewardship and formally transfer ownership of the belongings in UM’s possession to the tribe.

While it has chosen to continue to house the belongings at the university, “The tribe will now have full authority in what we do, how we handle items, how we store them, how we move them between buildings, and if we educate people using specific belongings or not,” Little Axe said at the signing event. “This gives the tribe authority over their own story.”

Limpy told the crowd she hopes the tribe will one day have a museum to house the belongings.

“This is just the first step,” she said, as the crowd cheered.

The post Northern Cheyenne Tribe reclaims cultural belongings from the University of Montana appeared first on ICT.

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Indigenous advocates who have been fighting for their rights to be acknowledged in global regulations for seabed mining are bracing for the outcome of this week’s gathering of the International Seabed Authority in Jamaica, where representatives from three dozen countries are expected to discuss finalizing mining rules by the end of this year.

The International Seabed Authority has spent a decade trying to formulate regulations to govern where, how, and to what extent corporations can extract minerals from the seabed in international waters, with input from governments, industry players, Indigenous peoples, and environmental advocates. Minerals on the seafloor formed over millions of years, and they include substances like cobalt and manganese that are used to make batteries for electric vehicles, defense technologies in submarines, and fighter aircraft. Leticia Carvalho, the secretary-general of the ISA, said last week that she wants to finalize global rules governing seabed mining by the end of this year, a reversal of her previous position that the regulations could take several years to finalize, in part a reaction to President Donald Trump’s aggressive push to mine both U.S. and international waters outside the international regulatory framework.

Advocates from the Pacific have argued that any mining permits should consider not only the potential effects on deep-sea ecology and historic sites like shipwrecks, but also take into account Indigenous peoples and their cultural connections to the ocean. Frank Murphy from French Polynesia said he can’t imagine the regulations will be finalized this year, given how much left there is to discuss and agree upon, including specific environmental protections.

Murphy is proud of the progress made incorporating Indigenous rights into the draft regulations, but cautioned that nothing is guaranteed. “This is not voted on, and we have no vote,” he said of the draft. “So the first time we did this, everything that we added was taken out. This may be the case again.”

Carvalho’s announcement last week elicited both skepticism from the CEO of The Metals Company, one of the companies working with the Trump administration to mine international waters, and criticism from environmental advocates, who argue there should be a pause on mining until more is known about deep-sea ecosystems.

“The adoption of the code will not bring unilateral actors back to the ISA, and the ISA should not be engaging in a futile race with these rogue players,” said Emma Wilson, policy lead at the advocacy group Deep Sea Conservation Coalition that has pushed for a moratorium. “It really needs to rise above and assert its powers as the authority over human activities in the seabed.” She said there are more than 30 outstanding disagreements within the draft mining code, including how Indigenous rights will be incorporated.

Over the past year, Trump has proposed and approved numerous policies to galvanize the commercial mining industry. The administration has streamlined the application process so that instead of exploring the deep-sea floor first, companies can more quickly sell and profit from mining. Two weeks ago, Trump proposed removing several environmental requirements for one of the regulatory agencies overseeing the industry. Trump has pursued mining in both U.S. and international waters despite opposition in American Samoa and the Mariana Islands.

The Trump administration has entered into an agreement with the Cook Islands to mine its national waters, something that gives advocate Imogen Ingram pause. “Pollution of the water column is a major concern for Indigenous peoples,” said Ingram, who is Indigenous to the Cook Islands. “We have learned from scientific articles that the plume generated by deep seabed mining will smother the tiny plankton that feed the smaller forms of marine life, which in turn provide food for larger marine animals, and so on through the food chain, reducing the availability of pelagic fish like tuna upon which we depend so greatly.”

She’s also one of many advocates who worry that speeding up the ISA regulations will sacrifice environmental protections. Environmental groups like Greenpeace are pushing not only for a moratorium on mining but also for more accountability. In the wake of Trump’s aggressive push to mine international waters, the ISA Council voted last summer to investigate whether any companies that currently hold exploration contracts with the ISA to conduct test mining in international waters are violating their ISA contracts through their participation in the U.S. mining permitting process.

Louisa Casson, who has been tracking the ISA proceedings with Greenpeace, said that the vote to investigate the companies was the most united she had ever seen country representatives at the ISA.

“Last year, governments at the ISA were united in their condemnation and their shock and disapproval of this single private company walking out of the multilateral process,” she said, referring to The Metals Company, which was the first company to seek U.S. approval to circumvent the international process.

The ISA report could be released as soon as this week, but Greenpeace issued its own analysis ahead of the ISA gathering contending that two subsidiaries of The Metals Company, Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. and Tonga Offshore Mining Ltd. are violating international law and calling on the ISA to impose repercussions. The Metals Company did not respond to a request for comment.

Specifically, Casson hopes the ISA will rescind the companies’ exploration contracts, which are up for renewal soon. “The decision to do unilateral mining is such a serious breach of international law that I think it’s really important that governments consider what are the strongest actions they can take to act as a deterrent,” she said.

Murphy, noting that Indigenous peoples without U.N. membership have no vote on final regulations, said he remains hopeful their input will survive into the final draft. “It is amazing that we have gotten this far though,” he said. “So fingers crossed that we may succeed.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Indigenous rights, the environment, and international law: What’s at stake at this week’s seabed mining talks on Mar 9, 2026.

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Angela Yu Zhang
Special to ICT

When Emma Albert finally felt safe enough to assess the damage outside her home in Kipnuk, Alaska, the smell of the destruction hit her immediately: sewage, oil, trash, dead pets, and a beached beluga whale. “The smell was so strong, it hurt my nose,” she said.

Emma and her family were living in Kipnuk, Alaska, when Typhoon Halong struck in October. The storm — the worst in a series of Arctic typhoons, according to a media briefing by the Association of Village Council Presidents — tore through the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, a region in western Alaska that is the size of Oregon.

More than 1,600 people were evacuated to places like Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Bethel, making this the largest mass evacuation in Alaskan history. The Alberts were some of those evacuees now living in Anchorage.

Now that most residents have been evacuated and are in the process of resettling, the attention is turning to cleanup of the physical damage left behind.

Kipnuk Council Leader Doreen Carter described her mother’s experience during the storm. “Waking up to the storm the morning after, everything was unrecognizable,” she said. “Everything was destroyed.”

The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta has been home for thousands of years to Kipnuk and more than 50 other rural communities of mostly Alaskan Native residents. Structures in these villages are connected by boardwalks, with no roads in or out of the community.

Their remote location and harsh tundra environment preclude infrastructure like a sewage system, a municipal trash transfer system, or below-ground heating oil tanks as seen in the rest of Alaska. Typhoon Halong damaged most of these communities, ripping houses off foundations and floating them out to sea, sometimes with people still in them.

Homes and boardwalks were dislodged in Kipnuk, Alaska, after Typhoon Halong struck in October 2025. Credit: Courtesy of Alaska Chadux̂ Network

Approximately 90 percent of Kipnuk was devastated by Typhoon Halong, displacing people from not only their homes but their ancestral lands. Rebuilding this hard-hit village will take a long time. The contamination of oil, sewage, trash, debris must be cleaned up before people can safely return.

The unique landscape of rural Alaska is particularly at risk for widespread contamination after flooding.

Lynn Zender, executive director of the Zender Environmental Health and Research Group, calls these rural communities “land islanded.” They are only accessible by plane, and boats in the summer when the water isn’t frozen over. This makes it difficult to have resources for a sewage treatment plant or landfill system.

Instead, most residents carry their waste out to open wastewater lagoons, and their trash out to unfilled holes in the tundra. Many of these makeshift landfills are within a mile of town or a body of drinkable water, according to Zender.

In addition, each house is heated with its own oil tank, and each community may have a larger community tank. In most homes, these tanks can be buried below ground. But the permafrost Kipnuk is built on is too hard to dig into, so the tanks sit at ground level, said Buddy Custard, chief executive officer of the Alaska Chadux Network, an organization that is helping to clean up the oil pollution.

The exposed sewage, landfills, and oil tanks were especially vulnerable to the flooding that severed tanks from homes and strewed the contents of dump sites all over the tundra.

A crew member from Alaska Chadux̂ Network inspecting an oil drum for damage and in preparation for safe storage in Kipnuk, Alaska, on October 2025. Credit: Courtesy of Alaska Chadux̂ Network

The flooding swept through houses, which also washed out things like batteries and household chemicals. All of these contaminants are harmful to human health, causing anything from minor irritation to multi-organ damage.

“Every single resident was a first responder [after the flooding], and everyone was talking about the water they were walking through,” Zender said. “They’re being exposed to all the pathogens from the lagoons that have basically untreated human sewage … walking through floodwaters contaminated with fuel oil, trying to clean up materials that are hazardous.”

This contamination threatens the subsistence lifestyle that has been passed down through many generations.

Whether they are hunting, gathering berries, or collecting rainwater, many villagers in places like Kipnuk rely on the land for sustenance.

Contamination from oil or chemicals can have long-lasting impacts on subsistence resources, said Davin Hollen, coastal community resilience specialist for Alaska Sea Grants. The flooding also carried oil, sewage, and debris all over the tundra, including to the lakes where residents like Emma would have gone to chip ice from for drinking water.

“I wouldn’t want to get ice around that area,” Emma said. “[If we returned], we would have to go far, far away to get drinking water.”

The U.S. Western Alaska and Arctic Sectors of the Coast Guard and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation conducted post-storm assessments to capture the degree of pollution.

They contracted out to groups like the Alaska Chadux Network and Resolve Marine Group for oil clean-up. Shortly after Typhoon Halong, crews were on the ground siphoning oil out of damaged oil tanks and storing it in secondary containers for safe disposal. Approximately 120 tanks were damaged by floodwaters, according to Alaska’s environmental conservation department.

Those responsible for pollution clean-up were in a race against time.

Response technicians from the Alaska Chadux̂ Network prepare to siphon oil out of an up-ended damaged home heating oil storage tank after Typhoon Halong’s destruction in Kipnuk, Alaska, on October 2025. Credit: Courtesy of Alaska Chadux̂ Network

In the winter, ice traps any free-floating oil and debris that could otherwise be cleared. The waterways out of Kipnuk are also frozen over, preventing the barrels of oil from being shipped to safe containment sites. All clean-up has been paused until the spring thaw, after which the damage and long-term effects can be assessed more accurately.

The environmental conservation department and Coast Guard said they were unsure how long cleanup might last.

Many tanks are still pinned under debris, and fuel sheen can be seen in “almost every puddle under ice,” according to the latest updates on the Alaska environmental conservation department’s website in December.

Kipnuk’s water reservoir was contaminated by saltwater, and the equipment that can treat this water won’t arrive until the spring.

For the few people who chose to stay behind and help rebuild, they are relying on drinking water provided by schools in the area or on bottled water that is being sent up, said council leader Carter.

Coastal storms and typhoons have always been part of the climate in Alaska. However, compared to Typhoon Merbok in 2022 which damaged structures in western Alaska, Typhoon Halong has been far more destructive, said Christopher Houvener, Marine Science Technician for the Coast Guard.

This trend of increasing damage from storms and flooding will only worsen due to climate change, according to Sheryl Musgrove, director of the climate justice program at Alaska Institute for Justice.

Homes and boardwalks were dislodged in Kipnuk, Alaska, after Typhoon Halong struck in October 2025. Credit: Courtesy of Alaska Chadux̂ Network

Alaska is particularly hard hit by climate change as the fastest warming state in the United States.

Warming temperatures are preventing the formation of sea ice, a protective barrier against flooding, and melting the permafrost that comprises 85 percent of Alaska’s land mass, including the villages on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.

The thawing permafrost causes the land to sink, making it more vulnerable to flooding and erosion.

“It’s this really vicious cycle,” Musgrove said. “And on the forefront are the tribes in Western Alaska.”

On the ground, crews are also seeing more oil spills due to this cycle.

When the Alaska Chadux Network was founded in 1993, the crew mostly responded to oil spills from small boats or vessels. Recently, that has changed.

“You’re seeing more and more flooding on the river system because of the permafrost melting,” ] Custard said. “What we’re seeing now are more of these [oil] tank spills [from houses] … driven by environmental type incidents.”

Response technicians with the Alaska Chadux̂ Network siphoning oil from damaged tanks into containers for safe storage in Kipnuk, Alaska, on October 2025. Credit: Courtesy of Alaska Chadux̂ Network

A 2022 federal report found that 115 communities are vulnerable to destruction similar to what was seen after Typhoon Halong. Displacement for these communities means more than just losing their home — it means losing the link to their ancestral land that they have lived on for thousands of years, and possibly not being able to return.

The pollution caused by Typhoon Halong is the main concern for Kipnuk residents on returning home, according to Carter.

But even if that is cleaned up in the spring, Carter isn’t certain that people will want to go back in the face of worsening storms.

The council has been holding meetings to discuss resilience measures like laying rocks down as an improvised seawall or building a community fridge on sturdy beams. They recognize that these are stopgap measures instead of infrastructure change such as building more protected areas for treated sewage, trash, or oil.

But the sheer distance of these villages from any existing infrastructure makes the resource cost to build and maintain almost insurmountable, especially for a smaller community with less capital resources, Zender said.

“We have this sort of one-size-fits-all mentality … that national models of how we approach a solution will work regardless of scale,” she said.

Crew members from the Alaska Chadux̂ Network prepare oil containers for winter safe storage as part of the oil clean-up process in Kipnuk, Alaska, on October 2025. Credit: Courtesy of Alaska Chadux̂ Network

But another solution was also proposed during village meetings, Carter said: relocation, to a site 15 miles away from Kipnuk that sits on rock, not permafrost.

“[The youth] are our next generation, and we need to think about them,” Carter said. “They don’t want to go through this again, because they know it’s just going to happen again.”

Once a decision is made, it will be hard to fund, especially given the cancellation of a $20 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency that could have been used to strengthen climate resilience.

Regardless, any decision will have to wait until the spring thaw, when the contamination can be re-assessed.

In the meantime, many have faith that these communities will rebuild, including Buddy Custard: “The one thing about Alaskans, we’re a resilient lot.”

Angela Y. Zhang is a pediatrician and journalist based in Seattle, Washington. Follow her on Bluesky at @zhangela.bsky.social and on Twitter at @zh_angela.

The post Post-Typhoon Halong: Contamination threatens subsistence, drinking water, a move back home appeared first on ICT.

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Last Updated on February 28, 2026 Ecuador’s National Assembly has approved sweeping changes to the country’s mining framework, igniting opposition from Indigenous nations and their allies who say the reforms endanger biodiverse ecosystems and weaken Indigenous rights protections.

On Feb. 26, lawmakers passed the Organic Law for the Strengthening of the Strategic Mining and Energy Sectors by a 77–70 vote as part of a fast-tracked package promoted by President Daniel Noboa and his allies. Supporters argue the changes will ‘modernize’ regulation and make Ecuador’s mining sector more competitive.

But Indigenous leaders and civil society groups have condemned the measure as a threat to their lands and ways of life, raising alarms that the law erodes critical safeguards long championed in Ecuador’s constitution — including recognition of the rights of nature.

The national Indigenous federation CONAIE and regional Amazonian nations publicly rejected the legislation, saying it would accelerate mining activity in territories that have historically been protected from large-scale extractive projects.

They argue the law opens the door to expanded mining without meaningful free, prior and informed consent, a right that’s enshrined in Ecuador’s constitution and international agreements like ILO 169, which Ecuador ratified.

According to Amazon Frontlines, “the bill also conflicts with landmark rulings such as the 2022 Sinangoe decision [and] international agreements including the Escazú Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.”

Leaders from the Achuar, Kichwa, Shuar, Sápara and Waorani nations have emphasized that their territories comprise some of the most intact forests on Earth, playing a critical role in biodiversity conservation and climate stability. In a public statement issued ahead of the vote, they called on legislators to reject the law, warning that it would fuel conflict and environmental degradation in the Amazon.

“So-called ‘responsible mining’ does not exist. Where mining enters, so do deforestation, river pollution, violence, and organized crime. The data confirms this: in 2024, 4,926 hectares were registered as open-pit mining sites in 105 Indigenous territories, and at least 23 protected areas have lost approximately 14,660 hectares of forest between 2001 and 2024*. This law will only exacerbate this damage,” they said.

“By dismantling environmental safeguards and transferring oversight responsibilities to extractive-sector institutions, the new law deepens tensions between Ecuador’s economic development model and the protection of human rights, biodiversity, and the global climate,” said Amazon Frontlines.

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Chef Crystal Wahpepah’s story is one of intertwining threads, as is her cuisine. The food she serves at her eponymous Oakland restaurant, Wahpepah’s Kitchen, reflects her mixed-raced Kickapoo, Sac and Fox, and African-American heritage. Dishes like wild rice fritters, three-bean bison chili, and blue corn mush take their influences from the two places she calls home: her San Francisco Bay Area hometown of Oakland, and Shawnee, Oklahoma, where her Indigenous ancestors were relocated in the 1800s and where she spent childhood summers with extended family.

It’s fitting, then, that Wahpepah’s first cookbook, A Feather and a Fork, publishing on March 17, centers on intertribal foods. While the 125 recipes are largely informed by her Kickapoo heritage, there are also clear nods to other Indigenous communities, including the Ohlone people, who stewarded the place now known as Oakland for millennia before European arrival and are increasingly reclaiming their relationship to the land.

Beyond her restaurant, the self-proclaimed Indigenous food warrior is deeply involved with Oakland’s often overlooked yet vibrant Native community as well as food sovereignty efforts in the Bay Area.

Those recipes—titled in both English and Kickapoo—are accompanied by pointers on ingredient sourcing and rich storytelling about Wahpepah’s life, her tribe’s history, and cultural context about the featured foods. A James Beard Foundation Emerging Chef Award finalist, she was the first Indigenous chef to compete on Food Network’s Chopped and was inducted into the Native American Almanac for her professional achievements.

Beyond her restaurant, the self-proclaimed Indigenous food warrior is deeply involved with Oakland’s often overlooked yet vibrant Native community as well as food sovereignty efforts in the Bay Area. Known for her effervescent personality and big auntie energy, Wahpepah collaborates closely with the Culture Conservancy, a Native-led nonprofit aimed at preserving and empowering Indigenous cultures, as well as the Intertribal Friendship House, one of the nation’s oldest urban Indian centers.

Civil Eats recently spoke to Wahpepah about A Feather and a Fork, the concept of food as medicine, and fry bread as a symbol of Native resilience.

What does it mean to you to be an Indigenous food warrior?

My interpretation of an Indigenous food warrior is anyone who is participating in the food sovereignty movement and keeping our ancestral knowledge alive—from farmers and seed keepers to hunters and gatherers to those who serve and eat our foods. I first started using the term back when I was doing catering work. My niece and I would be driving between Oakland and Los Angeles [for catering jobs], and we were like, “We’re Indigenous food warriors.”

It became part of our culinary journey and shaped who we are, and we really embraced it as the years went on. When we go to the farm, when we plant the seeds, when we harvest the foods—that’s all being an Indigenous food warrior. It’s so beautiful to see the important work that Indigenous food warriors are doing all across Indian Country.

Bison roast with chokecherry rub (Misiikwaa Katoowakimina). Chokecherries, Wahpepah says, are a powerful medicine rich in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties. (Photo credit: Clay Williams)

Why is it important to you to get involved in food sovereignty initiatives in the Oakland community?

I wouldn’t be a chef without my community. My community has played a huge role in what I do and what I advocate for. A lot of my food sovereignty work is done in collaboration with the Culture Conservancy.

I met the team maybe 12 years ago when I was cooking a dinner at the Intertribal Friendship House here in Oakland, and the relationship built out from there.

At [the conservancy’s] Sonoma farm, Heron Shadow, we grow all sorts of vegetables, like Hopi black beans, Quapaw red corn, Buffalo Creek squash, chilies, tomatoes, and amaranth. I use some of that produce at the restaurant, but most of it gets distributed to community members.

All of this work is about quite literally providing food access to Native people. It’s also about educating the next generation, because our youth are watching us and want to get involved. Oakland is so rich and multicultural, and we have a huge Native community, especially in the Fruitvale area, where my restaurant is.

If you live here, you already know that, but it’s easy to overlook if you’re not from here. Anyone can get involved in supporting the community by volunteering with the Culture Conservancy, the Intertribal Friendship House, or the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, which is a Native-led nonprofit that helps return Indigenous land to Indigenous people.

I also teach a class at Cal Poly Humboldt’s Food Sovereignty Lab, where I’ve been chef-in-residence since last October. I’m having a lot of fun helping students from all different backgrounds learn about the benefits of Indigenous foods and the importance of sovereignty work. There happen to be a lot of Native students in that class, but it’s made for everyone.

Blue corn mush with mixed berries (Peeskipaateeki Methiikwaki Meekateethichik Miinaki) is a staple on the Wahpepah’s Kitchen menu. It can be served for breakfast or as a dessert. (Photo credit: Clay Williams)

How does the concept of food as medicine factor into your work?

When I was growing up and I was at that period when intergenerational trauma can really take hold, I found myself gravitating toward certain healing foods. For example, I loved picking berries, and that’s still my happiest place to this day.

I believe our ancestors are really calling us to connect with these tribal foods and heal not only for ourselves but for future generations.

A lot of people are feeling lost and disconnected right now, and that’s because they’re not connected with the land. It’s very important to understand whose land you’re on and where your food comes from.

Food as medicine is about approaching things with an open mind and an open heart. It’s about talking to Mother Earth, feeling her, tasting her. For instance, spring is my favorite time of year to pick the miner’s lettuce—we call it Indian lettuce—that grows among the redwoods.

It has a lot of healing properties; it can help if you are feeling fatigued, get headaches, or aren’t sleeping well. Or bay laurel can help lower blood pressure. It’s important that we become fully aware of what these foods have to offer.

The first expansive section of your book focuses on the Three Sisters: corn, beans, and squash. Why was it important to dedicate so much attention to this Native culinary tradition?

The Three Sisters—what we call neowi ototeemetiaki in Kickapoo—are our pillars of strength. Corn, beans, and squash have fed our Native communities for centuries and are what feeds us to this day. I utilize the Three Sisters not just in the restaurant but also at home, at tribal events, everywhere.

Because so many communities across Turtle Island (North America) have grown the Three Sisters for so long, everyone has their own story. But our shared story is that this is the foundation that we built our Indigenous agriculture upon. At the restaurant, my first menu started off with the Three Sisters, so it made sense to start the book that way, too. Then when you dive deeper into these foods’ healing properties, you can really see the enduring strength of the Three Sisters.

Is there a dish that feels most closely connected to home for you?

That’s easy: dried sweet corn. It brings up so many childhood memories of spending time in Oklahoma with my grandmother and aunties. In the summertime, we celebrate the green corn, then the hot heat of August is the best time to preserve the corn. So I get to bring it from my home in Oklahoma to my home here in Oakland, where we use it for family dinners, birthdays, and other special moments. It’s a food that helps me feel connected to the land and to my identity, no matter where I am.

Let’s talk about fry bread. It’s widely considered a quintessential Native American dish, but in reality, it’s a relatively unhealthy survival food. What made you decide to include it in the book?

We didn’t serve fry bread at the restaurant for the first three years, then eventually we added it to pair with our dried corn soup and other stews. Now it’s one of our staples. When it came to including it in the book, it really took me a while to decide, because I feel like fry bread can overshadow what the story is really about, which is all these beautiful foods from this land. At the same time, fry bread is a big part of our story and reflects who we are as resilient Native people, so I realized if I left it out, I wouldn’t be telling a complete story.

“When you dive deeper into these foods’ healing properties, you can really see the enduring strength of the Three Sisters.”

I grew up very, very poor, and fry bread always kept my family fed. For us, it truly was a generational survival food. It’s what my mom, as a single mother of three kids, fed us. It’s what my grandmother fed her six kids. It’s what the aunties have always fed our community. Of course, fry bread should be eaten in moderation, but during my childhood, we had it every day. For me, it’s a reminder to never forget where you come from.

What do you hope readers take away from A Feather and a Fork?

First and foremost, I want readers to know that Native people are still here. Beyond that, I want them to know we have so many beautiful stories that have been handed down from generation to generation. I come from a really strong family of women, and I feel like it’s my duty to continue to pass along that wisdom. So much of it comes through these foods, which I hope readers can embrace in a respectful way. At the end of the day, we’re all human, and we’re all trying to be healthy. When it comes to health and wellness, why not eat the foods from this land?

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post Kickapoo Chef Crystal Wahpepah Showcases Oakland’s Native American Side appeared first on Civil Eats.

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In January 2026, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem published a grim update to its earlier work, titled “Living Hell: The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps”. This report documents the horrific conditions faced by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and detention facilities, revealing structural brutality that must be understood not as isolated injustice but as part of a broader system of violence and exclusion directed against the Palestinian people.

The “Living Hell” report builds on B’Tselem’s previous 2024 publication, “Welcome to Hell”, by incorporating updated figures and testimonies from 21 Palestinians released under ceasefire agreements or in the preceding months. These firsthand accounts, collected in the shadow of threats of re-arrest and intimidation, underline that the treatment of Palestinian detainees is neither random nor incidental, but part of a dehumanizing policy that strips prisoners of dignity, health, and, too often, their lives.

At the heart of the report is a devastating charge: Israeli prisons and detention centers have been systematically transformed into a network of torture camps. According to B’Tselem, these spaces are characterized by sustained physical and psychological abuse, extreme overcrowding, deliberate starvation, denial of medical care, and humiliation of inmates. Within this system, incarcerated men, women, and children experience violence that crosses the boundary into torture as defined by international law.

The evidence is harrowing. Between October 2023 and January 2026, B’Tselem identified 84 Palestinian prisoners and detainees who died in custody (including one minor) amid conditions of chronic neglect and abuse. Israeli authorities have released only four of these bodies to families, retaining the remainder, an act that compounds the suffering of those already bereaved.

The abuses documented are multiple and systematic: prisoners describe prolonged beatings, psychological torment, sexual violence, denial of basic hygiene and food, and a refusal to provide adequate medical treatment. In some cases, allegations include sexual assault with objects and electric shocks, alongside beatings that cause lasting injury. These accounts are corroborated by multiple former detainees and aligned with testimony gathered by international organizations, suggesting patterns that extend far beyond anecdote.

Far from being incidental acts of violence by rogue guards, the report indicates that this treatment is embedded within institutional practices and sanctioned (implicitly or explicitly) by Israel’s political leadership. The far-right Israeli National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the prison system, has at times publicly boasted of harsher treatment of Palestinian prisoners, even as the Israeli Prison Service denies systemic abuse.

This systemic pattern must be understood in the broader political context of Israel’s coordinated assault on Palestinian life since October 7, 2023. The transformation of prisons into instruments of suffering parallels policies of mass detention, demolition of Palestinian homes, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Palestinians are apprehended en masse from homes, refugee camps, and cities across the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip; tens of thousands have been detained under military orders with little oversight, due process, or transparency.

This violence did not begin in October 2023; it has occurred both before and after that date. Palestinian human rights organizations have documented cases of torture,removed, and abuse that Palestinian prisoners have undergone for many decades. For example, the report by Addameer titled “I’ve been there. A study of torture and inhumane treatment at Al-Moscobiyeh interrogation center” has mortifying descriptions and testimonies of systematic use of torture. Most telling in that report is how the Israeli judicial system has given a shield to the perpetrators of these horrors.

What B’Tselem documented in its 2026 report was the increase in the frequency of the abuse. But what B’Tselem left out was that torture andremoved have always been a part of the Israeli carceral prison system. Between June 1967 and the beginning of October 2023, 237 Palestinians were killed in Israeli prisons – an average of four prisoners per year. This figure does not include the thousands of Palestinians that were detained, tortured and some killed between 1948 and 1967, of which little record exists.

The Palestinian relationship with prisons is as old as the British Mandate in Palestine. Songs were sung of Palestinian prisoners who resisted the British Mandate and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, such as the 1930 song “From Acre Prison.” The scale of abuse faced by the Palestinian detainees is illustrated by the story recounted by Sheikh Hassan al-Labadi. Sheikh Hassan was a renowned religious scholar in Mandate Palestine, arrested in 1939 by the British authorities, imprisoned in the infamous Acre prison, and found by members of his family in an Israeli mental institution in 1982. Sheikh Hassan lost all memory due to the extreme conditions that he witnessed, and he died shortly after his release to his family. The stories of Palestinians enduring years of confinement, torture and abuse are far too common in the Israeli prison context. According to estimates cited by the Red Cross, since 1967 there have been over 1.2 million cases of arrests of Palestinians by Israeli authorities, which constitutes about 20% of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Read more: The Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement: the struggle behind bars

Integral to understanding the violence of this system is its use of administrative detention – a practice under which individuals are held indefinitely without charge or trial. According to B’Tselem’s data, thousands of Palestinians (including many held without formal charges) remain incarcerated under this regime. Such detention violates fundamental norms of justice and due process, leaving detainees in limbo, without legal recourse or clarity about the charges against them.

Politicide

But to grasp the full scope of Israeli punitive policies, we must look beyond aggregated statistics to individuals whose detention has become emblematic of the struggle for Palestinian rights. Marwan Barghouti is one such figure, but there are many others.

Barghouti, a veteran Palestinian leader and key figure in Fatah’s political landscape, has been imprisoned in Israeli jails since 2002. Convicted by an Israeli court on multiple counts related to violence during the Second Intifada (with evidence that is contested and fabricated) he is widely known both inside Palestine and internationally as a political prisoner.

Over the decades, Barghouti’s incarceration has been a symbol of resistance and Palestinian political aspiration, including unity across factions. Many see him as a potential unifying leader for the Palestinian national movement. His absence from a major prisoner release agreement (negotiated during ceasefire talks in 2025 involving nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners) was a stark reminder of his political weight and Israel’s refusal to free him.

More troubling than his continued detention are the documented conditions he has endured while inside. Multiple credible sources report that Barghouti has been held in prolonged solitary confinement since the outbreak of the Gaza genocide, subject to beatings, forced humiliation, and other forms of mistreatment by prison officials. These allegations include being forced to the ground and having his shoulder dislocated, being beaten during transfers, and enduring harsh conditions with limited medical care. Human rights advocates in Israel and beyond have argued that these conditions amount to torture and psychological coercion.

Incarceration and assassination function as parallel instruments within the same political strategy: when imprisonment succeeds in neutralizing leadership, it silences resistance slowly; when it fails, targeted killing removes those figures permanently from the political landscape.

Israel systematically arrests and kills political leaders, community leaders, doctors, engineers, physicists (the case of Imad Barghouthi is one example) down to student activists as part of its campaign of politicide, or the deliberate destruction of a people’s political existence. The assassination and arrest of leaders of Palestinian groups that are outside the Palestinian Authority has become routine and has weakened Palestinian political processes. Prison is a key site of punishment for Palestinian political life – it has become a means to control society by the removal of key figures, the instillation of fear, and the fragmentation of communities. In this way, the prison system operates as a part of a broader strategy to undermine Palestinian self-determination and restrict the ability of the Palestinian people to sustain political organization and national continuity.

But this systematic dehumanization has not stopped Palestinians from resisting this system. Palestinian academics and political leaders imprisoned were able to resist by focusing on education and scholarly work. From the late 1960s, when Palestinians used to write political lectures using chicken bones, ash, and small pieces of paper found in cigarette packs, to going on hunger strikes demanding access to paper, pens, books, and education – the Palestinian experience is truly unique, as they have literally turned prisons into schools and universities. Al Quds University ran a program from 2005 offering Palestinian prisoners bachelor’s and master’s degrees through a system of education and testing designed to ensure academic excellence; up to 2023, 800 Palestinian prisoners were able to graduate from the program.

The suffering of Palestinian prisoners must not be viewed in isolation. Imprisonment serves Israel’s broader political objectives: to suppress Palestinian political leadership, to break the spirit of resistance, and to normalize a regime of control that extends from prison cells to communities across the occupied territories. The transformation of Israeli detention facilities into what B’Tselem rightly calls torture camps is a stark symbol of how the machinery of the state can be deployed to dehumanize an entire population.

As we reflect on the “Living Hell” report, we must insist that international institutions, governments, and human rights mechanisms hold accountable those responsible for systemic abuse. Palestinian prisoners (whether high-profile figures like Barghouti or ordinary civilians swept up in waves of detention) deserve humane treatment, transparency, and legal protections. Ending these practices is not only a matter of legal obligation; it is a moral imperative.

“Living Hell” compels us to confront the reality of Israeli prisons not as isolated sites of criminal justice, but as key nodes in a broader system of oppression. To ignore this brutality is to accept the normalization of torture and cruel treatment in the modern world. It is time for the global community to act – firmly, unequivocally, and in solidarity with the Palestinians whose lives are being shaped inside and beyond prison walls.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the author of forty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, and How the International Monetary Fund Suffocates Africa, written with Grieve Chelwa. He is the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the chief correspondent for Globetrotter, and the chief editor of LeftWord Books (New Delhi). He also appeared in the films Shadow World (2016) and Two Meetings (2017).

Ubai al-Aboudi is the Director of the Bisan Centre for Research and Development (Ramallah, Palestine).

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/29814

This article was originally produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

Kaiya Little
The Hechinger Report

Savion Horn watched as “before” and “after” images appeared on a screen at the front of his classroom: black-and-white photos of boys and girls, much younger than him and his classmates, first with faces framed by long hair and traditional clothing, then with their locks cut, wearing high-necked dresses and stiff button-ups.

For Horn, then a high school senior at Grand Prairie High School near Dallas and a descendant of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, it was his first in-depth lesson on the boarding schools where the U.S. government sent hundreds of thousands of Native American children in the 19th and 20th centuries with the goal of assimilating them and eradicating Native culture.

​​“They weren’t allowed to speak their own language. They weren’t allowed to represent themselves with their music or art,” said Horn, who was exposed to the lesson last school year through the American Indian/Native Studies class offered at his high school. “It was very emotional to me, and it would be for anyone who actually wanted to take anything away from the class and learn.”

The American Indian/Native Studies course, or AINS, was piloted in the Grand Prairie school district in 2021 following years of work by Indigenous parents and educators around the state, who drafted course materials from scratch. To build on the success of a Chicano/Mexican American studies class the state approved in 2015, the State Board of Education had in 2018 called for the creation of other ethnic studies classes, including Native studies. Two years later, board members certified the AINS class as an “innovative course,” meaning it covered state-approved topics that fall outside of the required curriculum and other districts could adopt it.

Grand Prairie school district social studies coordinator Lanette Aguero waits to testify at the State Board of Education’s hearing on June 26, 2025, in Texas. Credit: Photo by Kaiya Little/The Hechinger Report

But in 2025, when the class came up for its regular five-year renewal under the process for “innovative courses,” the political landscape in Texas had changed. Starting in 2021, the state had taken steps to limit instruction around issues of race, ethnicity and gender: That year, Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 3, which restricts instruction on “controversial issues” and says educators should approach those topics “objectively and in a manner free from political bias.”

This past June, just a week before the committee met to discuss the course, the state passed SB 12, allowing parents to review and raise objections about K-12 educational materials and prohibiting policies, activities or programs that “reference race, color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation.”

At the federal level, President Donald Trump has issued executive orders calling for the end of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion practices, known as DEI, in public K-12 schools and colleges. And leadership of the Texas education board had changed too, leading to more scrutiny of course content.

Groups including the Ethnic Studies Network of Texas, an organization devoted to the advancement of diverse representation in school curricula, and Native-led nonprofits like the Society of Native Nations lobbied for the course’s survival. Four Native nations from across Texas and Oklahoma also endorsed AINS, sayingthe class offered students the opportunity to understand a more complete, accurate picture of tribal histories than is typically taught in K-12 classrooms.

At the Texas education board’s June hearing, most members were supportive of the class and sympathetic to the frustrations of course organizers with the prolonged renewal process. Some board members, though, expressed concern about the course, arguing that its discussion of the role of Catholic churches in the mistreatment of students at boarding schools might shame Christian students. Another representative questioned the purpose of land acknowledgements recognizing Indigenous people as an area’s original residents, suggesting that some land was traded or given to settlers or was unclaimed and that it wasn’t always clear to whom it belonged.

After two days of debate, the board voted 9-5 in favor of renewing the course. With a compromise to remove a passage in a reading about George Washington that the board objected to, the course will continue to operate as an innovative class for another five years. At a time when DEI is under attack around the country, supporters of the Native studies class view their success as giving hope to others who want to see similar classes created or preserved in other states.

“I cannot underscore enough how important of a win this is,” said Sarah B. Shear, an associate professor of social studies and multicultural education at the University of Washington-Bothell, whose research has found that content on Native Americans in most K-12 social studies curriculum often leaves out information on modern contributions of Indigenous people.

Focus on ‘resilience’

In part because of research like hers, a few other states and districts have taken similar steps to expand Native studies. In 2015, lawmakers in Washington state passed a mandate that every school district teach tribal history, culture and government, becoming the second state to approve a Native Education for All law, after Montana in 1999. In 2025, California expanded history lessons about the Gold Rush and Spanish colonial periods to include more Native perspectives. And in Arizona, students must encounter at least two social studies courses — one in grade school, another in high school — that include the history of Native Americans in their state.

In Texas, educators, parents and tribal members around the state came together over Zoom at the height of the pandemic to develop the course, which covers lessons relating to geography, arts and culture and the contemporary achievements of Indigenous peoples around Texas and the country. The content includes sections about pivotal Supreme Court cases on tribal affairs, boarding schools and Stephen F. Austin’s Indian extermination policies in addition to topics like mascots and Indigenous scholarship in research.

The course’s creators — 22 people from Indigenous and non-Indigenous backgrounds — held trainings on its content and teaching strategies for educators interested in adopting the class. Lanette Aguero, the Grand Prairie district’s social studies coordinator, was among them. She attended an ethnic studies conference at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth in 2019, which led her to want to bring the class to her district.

While the Native American population in the 27,000-student district is quite small — only about 120 identified as Native American in 2023-2024, the most recent year for which data is available — the population of Native Americans in the larger Dallas area is significant. Twelve students in Grand Prairie signed up for the class its first year, 2021, and by 2024 the class had grown to 48 students. In 2024, two other districts, Robstown and Crowley, adopted the course as well.

As one of the first teachers of the American Indian/Native Studies class, Kimberly Rafalski, who is non-Native and a longtime social studies instructor in the Grand Prairie district, said she often felt like she learned alongside her students. Together, they walked through precontact histories and the ongoing stories of Indigenous peoples that are typically left out of traditional textbooks.

Some days were more difficult than others, she said. She recalled leaving school in tears after discussing the history of boarding schools, the image of her own young children in her mind. But throughout the year, Rafalski said, the class grew close through reflection and celebrations of Indigenous perseverance through art.

“There’s a lot of things in this class. They’re hard topics to teach,” Rafalski said. “There’s no sensationalizing any of it.”

But, she added, “We’re not going to do trauma. Every time we learn about something difficult, we do something that shows resilience.”

‘I’m right here’

In 2018, when the state education board called for the adoption of ethnic studies classes, most members supported the idea of expanded instruction, but they had differing views on whether that content should be included in separate courses or integrated into existing ones. Supporters of the ethnic studies classes referenced research suggesting that student performance improved by including representation in their textbooks, while others worried a class specializing in specific ethnic groups could be divisive.

Ultimately, Texas approved a Mexican-American studies course that year, marking the first high school ethnic studies class greenlit in the state and the first K-12 Mexican-American Studies course to be approved by a state board of education. The Native studies class was approved three years later, followed by an Asian-American studies class in 2024.

Students seemed to like the class. Some 97 percent of the 63 students who responded to a Texas Education Agency survey on the course said they felt “more positive about Native American/Indigenous culture than before taking the class.” One student said the course “helped me by not being afraid of who I am as a Native American.”

Walter Dougherty, a 10-year-old from the Conroe Independent School District near Houston who testified in favor of the course, said at the hearing that before AINS, his classes focused more on ancient civilizations than today’s Native Americans.

“People talk about us like we’re gone, but we’re not. I’m right here,” Dougherty said. “My brother and I are Cherokee kids growing up in Texas, and we want people to know our culture and history. … When I learn about my Cherokee family, I feel proud. I feel like I can do anything.”

Tom Dougherty testified at the State Board of Education’s hearing in June 2025 alongside his sons, Henry (left) and Walter. They are members of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Credit: Kaiya Little/The Hechinger Report

“I can’t imagine if my son were to never understand about his ancestors,” said Cheyenne Rendon, Diné and Apache, the senior policy officer for the Society of Native Nations and a lifelong Texan who grew up attending San Antonio schools. AINS, she said, “gives me hope that we’re not going to be erased.”

Related: States were adding lessons about Native American history. Then came the anti-CRT movement

During discussions about reauthorizing the American Indian/Native Studies course, the question of whether it ran afoul of Texas’s latest anti-DEI policies came up repeatedly.

At the hearing, Orlando Lara, cofounder of the Ethnic Studies Network of Texas, defended the course’s legality, noting that the federal Department of Education said in an April 2025 letter that “American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian history is not classified as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or critical race theory (CRT).” Under this direction, Native Americans represent distinct political identities as members of sovereign tribal nations, nonspecific to racial or ethnic classifiers.

But board members continued to press Lara over the technical definitions of race and ethnicity as they questioned how to interpret the latest state legislation.

Because of a lack of guidance from the Texas Education Agency on the “controversial issues” legislation in 2021, Lara said later, “for a long time, a lot of districts didn’t know what would get them in trouble with the law.” To counter this, he said, the Ethnic Studies Network is “trying to get out there that there’s no reason to fear teaching the class.”

There were other objections to the course too. State school board member Julie Pickren, A Republican from Pearland, said materials used in the class depicted “President George Washington as a terrorist” and lessons about boarding schools were “accusing our Christian missions and churches of kidnapping and sending kids to reeducation camps.”

Pickren did not respond to interview requests. Her comments about George Washington appeared to refer to an online resource from academic publisher ABC-Clio, which described his 1779 campaign against Iroquois villages siding with the British in which he instructed the Army “to rush on with the war-whoop and fixed bayonet” because nothing would “disconcert and terrify the Indians more than this.”

Audrey Young, a Republican school board member who represents the Houston area, shared similar concerns. She argued that 2024 curriculum standards requiring “suitable” educational materials to promote patriotism, lawful activity and other values should apply to innovative courses like the AINS class. “Currently, the suitability standards aren’t required” for innovative courses, Young wrote in an email. “But I do believe that if courses are being taught to students, then they should have to follow ALL the laws.”

Pickren and Young were among the five board members who voted against the class, but another nine members voted in favor. Those supporters noted that the AINS course materials had undergone a series of reviews and further deliberation was unnecessary.

“It is Texas history,” Gustavo Reveles, a Democrat who represents El Paso and other predominantly Hispanic border communities and who voted for the course, said in an interview. “A child can see themselves represented, can see themselves as members of this very amazing state and country, not just because of George Washington, not just because of Abraham Lincoln, but because of his people that look like him and talk like him.”

While supporters of the class celebrated the board’s approval, it’s only one step. They are now trying to get the course standards approved as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, which would leave it less vulnerable during review and renewal conversations. As it stands, the class faces another board vote in 2030 at the end of its current five-year innovative course period. Course organizers are also trying to encourage more districts and educators to adopt the class.

After graduating from the Grand Prairie school district last spring, Horn joined his family on the road as he took his place in the family business as traveling circus organizers.

He said the class became a way for him to connect with his culture and family as a descendant of the Potawatomi Nation. Now, he said, he hopes to get involved with his local Native communities and participate in the Texas powwow trail, a Native-run cultural celebration that takes place in several Texas cities each year.

“I appreciate being a part of a community, especially this one,” Horn said. “I know where I’m from, and it means a lot to me.”

Kaiya Little is a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma who has written about a variety of topics highlighting the environment and Indigenous identities in Texas.

Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at preston@hechingerreport.org.

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Te Aniwaniwa Paterson. (Photo supplied)

Behind the marae gates, there’s a deeply uncomfortable conversation going on, writes rangatahi Te Aniwaniwa Paterson, who’s part of a group working to end sexual violence within Māori communities.

At Waitangi, sovereignty is often spoken about. But what does sovereignty mean if we can’t openly speak about harm within our own communities?

I’m the rangatahi representative on Ngā Kaitiaki Mauri, the Māori caucus of a national network to end sexual violence. In this role, I serve alongside kaumātua Russell Smith and Joy Te Wiata. When I ran into them at Waitangi this year, it was a chance to catch up on our kaupapa.

Matua Russell Smith told me that the first time he stood at Waitangi to speak about sexual violence, in the early 2000s, he was unsure whether his kōrero would belong in a space dominated by discussions of whenua.

It was Rangimārie Naida Glavish who steadied his nerves. “She turned to me and said: ‘They’re talking about theremoved of our land, and you’re talking about theremoved of our people. Your kaupapa absolutely belongs here at Waitangi.'”

The conversation reminded him that while the Crown has obligations under Te Tiriti, which might dominate the kōrero at Waitangi, Māori also have responsibilities to each other.

“We have He Whakaputanga and Te Wakaminenga, which guide the kōrero that happens inside the marae gates of our hapū,” he explains.

And within the marae gates, one conversation comes up time and time again: What should we do about sexual abusers, including paedophiles and intimate partner abusers, who want to speak on the paepae tapu?

Joy Te Wiata and Russell Smith with Dame Rangimārie Naida Galvish (centre) at Waitangi this year. (Photo supplied)

Joy Te Wiata says this can be a deeply uncomfortable conversation. But a good way to approach it is to think about “sexual violence” through the kupu Maōri “mahi tūkino”. That wording, she says, makes the abuser’s breach of mana and tapu quite visible.

“Cultural platforms like the paepae are not places to support people who have perpetrated harm. If our marae really want to be places of safety, then they need to uphold tikanga by ensuring that mana and tapu are upheld,” says Joy.

“We’ve got to be careful we aren’t colonised in our own sacred spaces. If we’re saying that it’s okay to allow these things without going through our processes, without hohourongo, that’s not tikanga Maori.”

Russell puts it like this — when people come forward saying their kaumātua abused them, he says: “Kaumātua do not sexually abuse. If someone has done that, we need to remove that status from them. They are not practising kaumātua tikanga.”

This does not mean those who cause harm are cast out entirely or disowned.

Through their clinical and kaupapa Māori work, Russell and Joy have worked alongside many whānau as they navigate the long and difficult process of healing. They have seen that restoration is possible.

While restoration means someone may remain part of their whānau and community, it doesn’t always involve a return to positions of cultural authority. In some cases, the paepae may no longer be an appropriate place for them, Joy says.

And that applies too, she says, to numerous positions across the marae, not just the paepae: “Are we remembering, there’s as much mana in picking pipi, washing dishes, and digging the hāngi pit?”

The pair’s kaupapa Māori approach to healing differs from clinical models that focus on the individual. Instead, their work considers the wider environment in which the harm occurred — the whānau, hapū, and the spaces and systems around that person. It then addresses the conditions that allowed the harm to occur, with supervision, boundaries, and restrictions on alcohol use.

“Our tūpuna left us tikanga for a reason, for safety,” says Joy. “We’re not calling our people to something different — we’re calling them back to their own tikanga.”

“Whakamua whakamuri,” adds Russell. “The way back is forward.”

But kaupapa Māori services like this remain under-resourced.

Late last year, the government moved to redirect $1.7 million from sexual violence support services. Some contracts were extended for six months, but that came with clear warnings not to expect more.

Joy says such funding cuts affect kaupapa Māori services more deeply, because their available resources must support entire whānau.

“We’re whānau-centred, which means that each dollar must expand to cover the whānau approach,” she says. “If we discontinue services, there is a breakdown in trust with whānau, and it takes years to build trust in the first instance. So, it’s not just the end of programmes, it’s a discontinuation of that trust and reliability.”

For Russell, the ability of Māori to sustain our own healing systems is an issue of tino rangatiratanga. “The problem we have today is we don’t have full autonomy over our own resources, and that includes our own mātauranga,” he says.

He describes this as part of a longer pattern: “The Tohunga Suppression Act is still active by the way they prevent our people from accessing us, through not giving us the resources that belong to us, and that’s the biggest Tiriti issue.”

For both, Te Tiriti affirms not only a partnership but also the Crown’s responsibility to ensure Māori can exercise their own pathways to healing. Without that support, Joys says, the obligation remains unmet.

They’ve seen some tauiwi services decline to work with whānau whose needs are complex, leaving kaupapa Māori providers to carry the responsibility. But there are very few kaupapa Māori services across Aotearoa that feel equipped to work directly with people who’ve experienced sexual harm.

“We’re in dire straits, and that has a knock-on effect for our people who are wanting and needing support,” says Russell.

Still, there’s work happening at a national level to strengthen Māori capability.

Ngā Kaitiaki Mauri of Te Ohaaki a Hine is developing tools and resources to support other Māori social services to build confidence and competence in dealing with sexual violence. Rather than centralising a single national model, the focus is on strengthening local Māori providers who already have relationships with their communities.

Over time, they hope to help Māori services expand their own capacity, so whānau don’t have to seek help in systems that are not designed for them.

“Our tūpuna gave us these tools. They are breathed quite deeply into us,” says Russell. “We are basically giving back to our people what belongs rightfully to them.”

Joy and Russell at Te Tii marae, Waitangi. (Photo supplied)

Te Aniwaniwa Paterson (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Rangitihi, Ngā Paerangi, Ngāti Kahungunu) is a journalist and digital producer for Te Ao Māori News based in Tāmaki Makaurau. She represents rangatahi on Ngā Kaitiaki Mauri, the Māori caucus of TOAH-NNEST (the National Network Ending Sexual Violence Together), which operates as a Tiriti o Waitangi-based partnership. She serves alongside Russell Smith and Joy Te Wiata.

E-Tangata, 2026

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Israeli soldiers stormed Suhair Barghouti’s home in the town of Kobar, north of Ramallah in the central West Bank, on Jan. 1. They were looking for her son, Muhammad, 26, who had been released just months earlier after two years of administrative detention without charge. Muhammad wasn’t home at the time; he was visiting his wife’s family in Jericho. Upon learning he wasn’t around…

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The Yaaku Indigenous People of Mukogodo Forest, a 30,000-hectare national forest reserve, are facing a major crisis. In late January 2026, a wave of coordinated armed attacks, livestock theft, killings, and forced displacement tore through Yaaku settlements in and around Mukogodo Forest.

A pattern of violence

Between January 21 and 29, 2026, the Yaaku community experienced repeated and escalating attacks by armed groups operating with organization, mobility, and heavy weaponry. On January 21, attackers raided the National Police Reserve camp at Wakumbé, reportedly stealing over 1,200 livestock, a clear indication of how heavily armed they are.

On January 27, a widely reported raid resulted in the murder of two Yaaku community members and the theft of approximately 1,500 livestock. The violence intensified the following day when attackers returned, killing eight people and stealing dozens more animals. On January 29, further livestock theft from four families triggered a retaliatory recovery attempt by Yaaku community members, after which one young Yaaku man was killed by the armed attackers.

These events, condemned by the East Africa Indigenous Women Led Assembly (EAIWA), reveal a sustained campaign of terror rather than just sporadic criminal activity. But official narratives and media reporting have consistently reduced the perpetrators to “bandits”, which is obscuring the reality of what appears to be organized, well-resourced paramilitary formations operating with impunity.

State failure and the criminalization community

Despite credible warnings and escalating attacks, Kenyan security forces failed to provide meaningful protection to the Yaaku community. The state did not act decisively when threats were known, yet moved swiftly after the violence to issue eviction ultimatums against people already traumatized by murder, displacement, and dispossession.

On February 3, 2026, the Ministry of Interior and National Administration issued a 48-hour ultimatum ordering all people “living in the forest” to vacate. On the same day, as per the East Africa Indigenous Women Led Assembly (EAIWA) statement, inflammatory public remarks by political elites framed Mukogodo as a criminal zone, effectively casting Indigenous residents as threats rather than rights-holders.

This response represents a dangerous inversion of state responsibility. Instead of protecting an endangered community, the state has chosen to discipline, displace, and delegitimize it. Such actions echo a familiar historical pattern in Kenya, where Indigenous and pastoralist communities are routinely framed as obstacles to security, conservation, or development, only to be forcibly removed in favor of more powerful political and economic interests.

Displacement and land

The violence in Mukogodo cannot be separated from long-standing land disputes. Mukogodo Forest, ancestral Yaaku land, is a site of competing claims involving conservation, private interests, and elite accumulation. In this context, armed attacks, forced displacement, and eviction threats take on a more sinister character.

As the EAIWA warned, the organization, scale, and targeting of the violence, combined with state threats of eviction, raise serious concerns that the attacks may be strategic and displacement driven. Under international law, such patterns may amount to ethnic cleansing, particularly where violence is used to forcibly remove a distinct community from its ancestral lands.

The Yaaku have historically protected Mukogodo Forest through Indigenous ecological knowledge and sustainable land use. Their removal would not only violate their rights but also undermine long-term environmental stewardship, exposing the hypocrisy of conservation policies that erase the very communities that have preserved these ecosystems for generations.

Solidarity from the social justice movement

In response to the unfolding crisis, the Social Justice Centers Nairobi Chapter issued a solidarity statement on February 9, 2026, fully endorsing the EAIWA’s concerns and demands. The movement condemned the state’s failure to act on early warnings, rejected narratives that criminalize Indigenous communities, and warned against the normalization of violence as a tool of land dispossession.

The statement situates Mukogodo within a broader national crisis of policing, land governance, and elite impunity, where insecurity is selectively addressed and often instrumentalized against the poor. As the movement affirmed, there can be no security without justice, and no justice without land rights.

Speaking to Peoples Dispatch, Gerald Kamau from the Social Justice Movement said:

“We can no longer afford to fight separately. The urban movement against IMF-backed bills is the same fight as the Indigenous struggle for land. The fight for public spaces is the same fight against forest evictions. The demand for clean rivers and an end to pollution is inseparable from the demand for Indigenous sovereignty over ancestral lands.

When they steal land in the countryside, they steal our food sovereignty. When they poison rivers in the city, they poison the water that flows to rural communities. When they slash healthcare budgets, they kill our elders, the memory keepers of our resistance. When they grab public spaces, they erase our ability to gather, to organize, to rise.”

Demands for justice and protection

Civil society and EAIWA voices have articulated clear and reasonable demands, including:

• An immediate shift from eviction and militarization to community protection
• An independent inquiry into the size, financing, and political protection of armed groups operating in Mukogodo
• The safe return of all forcibly displaced Yaaku families
• Independent human rights monitoring of any security operations in the region
• Full recognition of Yaaku ancestral lands under the Community Land Act (2016)

These are constitutional obligations. The Yaaku Indigenous People have survived centuries of marginalization, erasure, and dispossession. What is at stake in Mukogodo is their future.

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The Bureau of Land Management opened nominations last week for the first-ever oil and gas lease auction in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, setting the stage for development that three Gwich’in governments are now suing to stop.

Raeann Garnett, 29, is Gwich’in and the tribal chief of the Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government, representing about 200 people above the Arctic Circle in northeastern Alaska, accessible only by plane. In January, the Native American Rights Fund, or NARF, filed a lawsuit against the Department of Interior on behalf of Garnett’s government, the Arctic Village Council, and Venetie Village Council. “I’m the main protector of our land that we own and I do it for all our tribal members,” she said.

The lawsuit challenges the DOI’s plan to lease land in the refuge’s coastal plain, an area the Gwich’in call Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit, “the sacred place where life begins,” where Porcupine caribou herds forage and calve. The Gwich’in, who call themselves “the caribou people,” have relied on the herd for food and cultural survival since before colonization. Most Gwich’in communities live alongside the animals’ same migratory route used for thousands of years.

Garnett has watched the fight over ANWR intensify throughout her adult life. Oil and gas interests have eyed the refuge for more than 50 years, but recent moves mark the closest the industry has come to actual development on the coastal plain.

A 2017 federal tax bill passed during Donald Trump’s first presidential term authorized an oil and gas leasing program in ANWR, however, 7 leases out of 22 were sold to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority. The Biden administration canceled the leases in 2023.

Last summer, Congress passed the so-calld “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which mandated lease sales in the refuge’s 1.56-million-acre coastal plain. The Trump administration announced it would reinstate the leasing program just months after taking office in 2025. Last week, the Bureau of Land Management opened a public comment period, running through March, to determine which parcels will be included in the first auction this winter.

Two lawsuits were filed in January of this year, reviving legal challenges from 2020 after Trump’s leasing programs were paused in 2021. One was brought by the Gwich’in Steering Committee alongside environmental groups. The other was brought by NARF representing the three Gwich’in governments.

The NARF suit argues the DOI violated Gwich’in legal rights. While Alaska Native tribes have not signed treaties with the U.S. government, many federal laws function in the same way treaty rights do. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, for instance, upholds Gwich’in subsistence rights, protects cultural resources, and requires federal agencies to protect cultural and archeological sites as well as millions of acres of federal land in Alaska — including ANWR. The law also commits the U.S. to fulfill international treaty obligations with respect to fish and wildlife and their habitats.

The lawsuit argues that the DOI failed to meet these obligations. “​One of the most egregious errors is defendants’ determination that the impacts of allowing large-scale oil and gas development across the entire coastal plain would have no significant impact on Neets’ąįį Gwich’in communities of Venetie and Arctic Village,” the lawsuit reads.

The case claims development across roughly 100 miles of coastal plain would disrupt caribou migration, foraging, and calving, making the refuge uninhabitable for the herd. A 2024 study found that caribou are more sensitive to traffic and human activity than previously believed, challenging earlier claims that development would not significantly harm their habitat.

For Gwich’in communities, caribou are essential to survival. The herd provides a primary source of food, along with moose, birds, and fish. Garnett said high fuel costs and expensive groceries make subsistence necessary for village residents.

NARF is arguing that the Trump administration has failed to conduct adequate environmental review and has not consulted with tribes since last October about the planned auction.

“We condemn these actions, and encourage officials in the Trump administration — and our representatives in the Alaska delegation — to acknowledge and accept what we as Gwich’in know, and what the majority of the American people agree on,” said Kristen Moreland, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, in a statement. “The Arctic Refuge is no place for drilling. It deserves to be protected and preserved for the wildlife that depend on it, and for all our futures.”

For Garnett, threats to the refuge are compounded by climate change already transforming the Arctic. This winter has been the warmest she can remember. “With climate change, as well as the threats of oil drilling, the weather has been changing a lot these past couple of decades,” she said.

Late last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its yearly Arctic Report Card, confirming the region continues to warm faster than the global average. In 2024, the report linked Arctic warming to fossil fuel use.

“I feel worried for the next generations, after us, after me,” said Garnett. “I want them to have what we have now.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Gwich’in fight to protect caribou from Alaska oil development on Feb 11, 2026.

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It was sunny and warm for the end of November on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation in northern Montana. Joseph Eagleman was standing on a grassy hill looking at a 20-panel solar array in the backyard of a Chippewa Cree elder.

It was built under the Solar for All program, a Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act-funded project that distributed $7 billion to build residential solar across the country. Here on Rocky Boy’s, around 200 homes would have received solar funded by the federal dollars.

This home was the first to get panels in Queensville, a small community of modest homes in one of the reservation’s valleys. The home is brown, two stories, and fully electric, which is one of the requirements to qualify for Solar for All funding. Eagleman met me there to give me a tour of the panels that all but eliminated the resident’s $200–300 monthly electricity bills, according to Eagleman.

Eagleman is the CEO of the Chippewa Cree Energy Corporation, an organization that manages energy development for the tribe. Here in the northern Plains, a coalition of 14 tribes received a $135 million grant. The money would have provided around $7.6 million for each reservation to build residential solar, and Eagleman would have managed the Solar for All funds for the Chippewa Cree.

Then came President Donald Trump. His administration cut Solar for All in August of 2025.

Joseph Eagleman, standing beneath the solar array, looks out onto the Rocky Boy’s Reservation.
Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder

“It’s terrible. We were getting ready to take off,” Eagleman said.

Residents had seen this solar array, which was built in the fall of 2024, and were excited about the possibility of free solar. Eagleman had a list of 40 households that were applying for the first round of the project. But only this home got a completed solar array before the program was stopped.

“It was a gut punch,” he said.

The reservation is about an hour and a half from the closest city, Great Falls, Montana, and has a population of 3,300. Driving down to meet Eagleman, I passed a cafe/casino/bar/gas station, a school, a skate park, and many residences, but little else. “There’s not a lot of opportunities, except for leaving the reservation,” said Eagleman.

Electricity costs are high on the reservation, as they are across rural America. Building and maintaining infrastructure without density drives up costs in these areas. Applicants showed Eagleman their bills to demonstrate why they wanted solar so badly, and some were up to $900 a month. Around 35 percent of the reservation’s residents live below the poverty line, more than double the rate for the United States. Solar installations like these cost thousands of dollars — money that most residents don’t have.

Eagleman had hired Zane Patacsil, a local resident who had experience installing solar, a month before the cuts. Patacsil joined us in the sunny backyard, overlooking the hills and valleys that make up the Rocky Boy’s Reservation.

Around 200 solar arrays would have been installed on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation in northern Montana with funding from Solar for All. This was the first, and ultimately the only one, installed in fall 2024. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder

He said Solar for All would have brought some economic development to Rocky Boy’s and the other reservations that received the grant: an office and people to manage it, as well as training and hiring solar installers to do the labor.

“There were even members who were talking about starting their own solar businesses so they could be installing,” added Patacsil. “It was very disheartening to hear that news, because we lost all of that with it.”

A question of sovereignty

When protests raged against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016, Cody Two Bears was on the tribal council for the Standing Rock Sioux. He saw another layer to the dispute: energy extraction on tribal land that not only hurt residents, but also brought no relief for high energy bills.

Two Bears wanted to bring energy sovereignty to his community and other tribal nations. He started the nonprofit Indigenized Energy in 2017. “I do this because of energy and energy sovereignty as well, but it creates a sense of hope for our tribal nations,” he said.

Sovereignty and self-governance are what tribes allegedly gained in exchange for giving up traditional homelands when treaties were signed over the past centuries. Tribal sovereignty is not only about protecting culture and traditions; it’s also about self-sufficiency. It’s also legally protected by the U.S. Constitution. But that’s easier said than done without the resources to support true independence, which have been systemically removed by the U.S. government.

Native Americans are more food insecure and rely on Medicaid at higher rates than their white counterparts, depending on the U.S. government for subsidies while desiring the sovereignty that was promised. Energy independence is a way to regain a degree of that sovereignty, and Two Bears has made that his goal with Indigenized Energy.

Donica Brady outside Busby, Montana on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder

“My ultimate goal is to work myself out of a job. I want to build so much capacity into these tribes where they don’t need Indigenized Energy anymore,” said Two Bears.

But the funding picture changed dramatically when Trump’s administration slashed solar spending.

Indigenized Energy had already been building residential solar on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation for a few years, and it ramped up to prepare for more work through Solar for All. But when the program was cut, Indigenized Energy laid off around half its staff, including Donica Brady, the coordinator for the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeastern Montana.

I first met Brady in September 2025, about a month after the layoff, and the pain of losing a job she loved was evident. Brady had spent the past couple of years building trust in a community where promises have been made and broken over and over again. Solar for All became yet another one.

Part of programs like Solar for All is job development within the solar industry. Brady was part of a training program through Red Cloud Renewable, funded by previous grants for solar on reservations. Solar for All would also have funded training and trade development on these reservations.

When I caught up with Brady again at her house in Busby, she was working two jobs, and the only time she had for me was at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, after her daughter’s choir recital. I found her in the garage with a kitchen knife in hand, skinning a deer her wife had shot a few days previously. She asked if I wanted to help and handed me a knife.

Donica Brady carves out meat from a deer in her garage in Busby, Montana. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder

We chatted as we worked on the deer skin, cutting fat and sinew away from the dark red meat. She’d returned to her previous job as a bus driver and was hired by Freedom Forever, a solar installation company based in California. She’s still working in renewable energy, and Freedom Forever does work on reservations at times, but Brady’s job is no longer on the ground working with her community like she craves.

“I want my people to be able to be self-sufficient, not have to rely on funding or things like that that can be taken away,” Brady said. I heard this over and over: People don’t want to have to depend on the federal government for “handouts.”

As Brady cut out the tender backstraps and set them aside to give to her auntie, she talked about solar’s deeper meaning. “People call it progress, but I see it as going back to what we were taught, but in a new way,” she said. It’s more than just energy; it’s harnessing the sun, an important reflection of Northern Cheyenne culture.

The deer we were cutting up felt like a symbol summarizing everything we talked about. It was one way Brady could become self-sufficient and support those she loves. If only the power of the sun could be harnessed as easily as a deer skinned in a garage.

Residents are hurt most

Some time later, just outside of Lame Deer, Montana, the tribal headquarters of Northern Cheyenne, I got lost looking for Thomasine Woodenlegs’ house. My phone had no service, so all I had was Woodenlegs’ instructions: Look for a bright-green house at the end of the road. Many U-turns later, Woodenlegs welcomed me into her kitchen, where photos of loved ones covered the walls and two cats, one orange and one black, lounged on the couch.

Woodenlegs works for her tribe, and she has lived in this house for 50 years. She plans to pass it down to her family. But she knows she will be saddling them with a financial burden, too.

“How am I going to survive after I retire? And how is whoever inherits my house?” Woodenlegs asked. “I’ll need to warn them that the electricity runs like $400 or $500, and they’d have to have a really secure income to live here. Otherwise, they’d be without lights.”

Power lines cross the short grass prairie on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder

Woodenlegs saw solar panels from previous grant programs like the White River Community Solar Project, funded by the Department of Energy, going up around the reservation in 2020 and 2021. Back then, Solar for All’s big allocation for Indigenous communities brought more hope. She put in her own applications, feeling jealous of friends and acquaintances who received them, wondering when it would be her turn. She’s still waiting.

Tina Cady, another Northern Cheyenne resident, lives just outside of Busby and has applied for solar panels multiple times. She worked for the Indian Health Service for 25 years until she went on disability. Now she lives on a fixed income of about $1,000 a month, and her husband picks up as many hours as he can as an adjunct professor at the tribal college. She showed me her October electric bill, which was $225.13.

Brady handled her application and told Cady what she’d learned in the field so far: Cady was a prime applicant for solar panels and she should be at the top of the list. “I’m an elder, and I’m disabled,” Cady said. Plus, she owns her own land. But Cady never heard anything more about it.

I asked whether she felt betrayed by the funding cuts, after so many previous letdowns to tribal communities. Cady said no, because it wasn’t her money to be betrayed. But she was disappointed and disenchanted. “I have seen them do this before. You get so you don’t trust anybody anymore.”

The fight continues

Four different lawsuits have been filed in federal courts against the Trump administration for ending Solar for All. It was terminated after the One Big Beautiful Bill Actrescinded “the unobligated funds for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund,” which had provided the funding for Solar for All.

The lawsuits claim that Solar for All was already a year into operation, so the funds were obligated, and that taking away already obligated funds is illegal.

All the lawsuits are still active. One from Climate United will move into oral arguments in February. Another from a coalition of 22 states is seeking an injunction to keep the Solar for All funds available.

Eagleman hopes to find additional funding to build residential solar arrays like this one for many more Chippewa Cree elders. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder

But even without results from the lawsuits, solar installers like Cody Two Bears and Joseph Eagleman plan to continue to fight for solar development on northern Plains reservations.

Eagleman said he’s going to keep looking for funding to help bring affordable electricity to the Chippewa Cree on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation. He’s been looking at other public funding through the Department of Energy, as well as private philanthropic options.

Two Bears said he is moving forward with his company’s list of families awaiting solar. Indigenized Energy is ready to break ground on a project on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin, which was next in line when the funding was cut. He said they found private funding for that project, as well as another solar array for the Rosebud Sioux.

“So even though the money is not there, we’re still finding alternative resources and funding to make these possible and make ’em feasible,” said Two Bears. “It’s just going to take longer.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Native families were promised free solar. Trump took it away. on Feb 15, 2026.

From Grist via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/27247

Janine Jackson interviewed Nation guest editor Rayan El Amine about voices from Gaza for the February 6, 2026, episode of CounterSpin*. This is a lightly edited transcript.*

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260206El-Amine.mp3

The Nation (2/3/26)

Janine Jackson: Donald Trump declared that the “War in Gaza is over” on October 13 of last year. Trump says weird and untrue things every day, but corporate news media seemed to take this one as fact. As FAIR’s Julie Hollar found, coverage of Gaza in US news sites has plummeted since that time.

The Nation magazine dedicates its current issue entirely to the crisis the corporate news say isn’t happening, or is being controlled, featuring reflections on a number of facets: personal stories, history, literature, maps…. It’s called “A Day for Gaza,” but it represents, of course, more than that.

The issue was put together by our guest. Rayan El Amine is a writer and editor from Beirut, as well as a translator for Drop Site News and an editor at the Cleveland Review of Books. He joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Rayan El Amine.

Rayan El Amine: Hey, Janine. Good to be here.

JJ: Well, the first piece in the issue is by Mohammed Mhawish, and it talks about ceasefire, and I think that’s a good place to start. It’s a key way to talk about the divide between what’s really happening in Gaza and Palestine, and the story that US media are telling people. The New York Times, February 3, referred to a “shaky ceasefire,” but still. Are we wrong in our understanding of what “ceasefire” means, and that that is not what’s happening right now?

The Nation (2/3/26)

REA: It’s a good question, beginning with the kind of framing that the Trump administration has put forward, and that many mainstream media outlets, like the New York Times, have adopted. And they’re not wrong necessarily, in the sense that the ceasefire is functioning exactly as the Trump administration is intending. And that’s why Mohammed Mhawish’s piece, I think, is so important in leading the project. Rather than speak for him, I’ll just read a short sentence from the piece that I think encapsulates the argument well. He writes in the second paragraph:

The distance between that official narrative and the facts on the ground reveals how the language of ceasefire has been repurposed. It no longer describes a pause in violence, but rather a mechanism for managing it, sanitizing ongoing military force under the guise of restraint.

And this is a model that we’ve seen Israel adopt, primarily in South Lebanon, and is now being taken up in full force in Gaza.

Rayan El Amine: “The only way that such a—I would call it what it is—colonial project could go unnoticed is under this project of ceasefire.”

Essentially what we’re seeing, I would call it a sort of occupation via ceasefire. The introduction of this foreign “Board of Peace,” which I think in the coming months will begin what is effectively a bidding war to turn Gaza into Trump’s Riviera-ic imagination. And in many ways, that’s the impetus for this project. The only way that such a—I would call it what it is—colonial project could go unnoticed is under this project of ceasefire.

In part, Israel’s violence, because it was broadcast to the world, and because of the courage of many of the journalists, it was difficult for them to move forward with these diplomatic and bureaucratic colonial proceedings, that actually, I would say, preceded the genocide by many years—thinking about the Abraham Accords, and Oslo Acords in the ’90s long before that, this slow fracturing and destabilizing of the Palestinian Territories into separate entities. And it’s the responsibility of us working in media to not just challenge that, but to uplift the voices on the ground, to give them a sort of self-determination.

Writers Against the War in Gaza

And I’m glad you began with the Times, and quite critical of what the Times has done. And I would say what they’re doing is, at this point, misreporting. And in that case, I often turn to an organization like Writers Against the War in Gaza, which has grown exponentially over the last few years, and is engaged in a boycott, demonstrating tangibly the material relationships that people in the New York Times editorial board have with the Israeli government, the falsification of objectivity that continues to persist.

And I say that to say it’s not an accident that the language is being muddied. And what I hope we achieved a little bit, at least with our editors’ note with the framing of the project, is a kind of clarity, what we’re witnessing is a genocide sustained, and is an attempt to, I think, continue to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their land.

JJ: I also lifted up that very sentence from Mohammed Mhawish, about the redefining of ceasefire as no longer describing a pause in violence, but rather a mechanism for managing it. And that’s my fear, as a media observer, and it’s what you’re talking about, is that news media will simply define us away from seeing and responding to what’s happening. Because, after all, we are not international lawyers or diplomats. And so if someone says, “Oh no, it’s different. It’s not the horror show you saw last year. Now it’s a different situation, and there’s a new term for it,” the narrative turns us away from the reality.

And as Mhawish says, this is now going to represent the definition of success. The current state in Gaza, which involves killing, which involves genocide, which involves hunger, is going to be called a success. Sometimes media critics are joked about for caring so much about narrative, or about words. But in this case, and cases like this, it’s going to very much determine what people think is happening, and how they think they should feel about it.

Justice Everywhere (3/10/25)

REA: A hundred percent. And this question of narrative you bring up is really important. The editors who worked on this project were cognizant of the driving narratives of the moment. And by that, I’m referring principally to the ongoing horrors in Minneapolis, this invasion or I would call it an abduction in Venezuela, what’s currently happening in Iran…. I would argue the Trump administration is working on all of these in conjunction. And it’s a term that they call “flooding the zone.” I’m sure you’re familiar with it, but it’s this idea of  inundating us, as media and culture workers—and more importantly, as viewers and readers—with so much horror that our capacity to be desensitized increases with every ensuing attack, every ensuing violation. Because the Trump administration is so…. They’re not willing to wait for the judicial proceedings that already exist in place, there is no legal order that can slow down this project.

It’s up to us, those of us at institutions that are great, like FAIR, and I believe are great, like The Nation, to slow down this pace. And so it’s not an accident that this was released in the midst of the ongoing violence in Minneapolis, because, in part, the intervention we want to make is a willingness to say, no injustice will pass by our publication without being heavily interrogated, without being closely noticed, and without it beginning from the ground.

An editors’ note released the day before on February 2 had specifically to do with the people of Minneapolis rising up against the ongoing ICE and state repression. And that’s the kind of thing that makes me really proud that those two editors’ notes coexist side by side at the moment.

JJ: And I was thinking that very same thing. And you hear pundits talk about competition for attention: “Well, people can’t care about Gaza when we’ve got Minneapolis”—or the Epstein files, or whatever.

And I don’t really hear regular folks say that so much. We’re emotionally exhausted and sad and angry. But I don’t hear people saying, “Oh, I can’t care about Gaza, because now there’s Minnesota.” I actually hear people seeing, oh yeah, commonality, seeing the connection among these things, which is the opposite of what I think Trump is trying to achieve, but seeing, actually, more ground for solidarity across borders, and across “issues.”

The Nation (3/23/15)

REA: This sort of solidarity extends in the inverse. It comes from Gaza. I remember, it’s funny, when Mamdani was elected, a number of journalists, —some of whom are featured in this issue—texted me, congratulating me on his election, which was a strange kind of invert of attention. And so, yeah, the network of solidarity among people who are oppressed has been rigid for a long time, and I think will continue to be.

JJ: I want to talk about the push behind the issue itself. You’ve talked about it, but The Nation has been reporting on Palestine for many years now. So why this issue, right now in particular? Has it been in the works for a while, or what’s the impetus in February 2026?

REA: It’s a good question. And I think, in part, it begins with the history of the publication. Edward Said was a longtime contributor. Mohammed El-Kurd was the publication’s first Palestine correspondent, and Jack Mirkinson, who worked on this issue, has been leading the magazine’s coverage for a long time. In truth, it would be nice to formulate a particular thematic answer, but like a lot of things, ultimately, it was pragmatic, the reason that we chose this date. I mean, this project was many, many months in the making.

And in part what I want to highlight is that the particular pieces chosen were chosen for a reason, as were the writers. And so, thank you again for the opportunity to speak about it, because one of the challenges that I would make to other publications is to understand that, actually, the construction of this project, for us on the editorial side—and maybe I’m speaking only for myself when I say this—was relatively easy.

The Nation (2/3/26)

And by that, I mean the ability to connect with journalists on the ground is not difficult. They are excited to work, they’re extremely diligent. They submit their articles on time. They’re very welcome to being edited, and this in what is, in effect, a war zone, even after the ceasefire. And so we were very careful with the kind of editing we were doing.

And because the situation is really dynamic, often we were in search for a piece that can encapsulate what’s happening. And the piece that ultimately we settled on doing was Rasha Abou Jalal’s piece on “How to Survive in a House Without Walls,” which for me is, I would say, one of the standouts. And if one was going to read this issue sequentially, after Mohammed Mhawish’s framing, I would turn to this one, because it presents the ceasefire situation as it is.

And one might notice, in reading a lot of these, there’s an intense temporal shift. Some of the essays really focus on events that happened in August. And, truthfully, that’s actually because they were commissioned then. But the authors were diligent and patient and welcome to this long and arduous editing procedure.

The Nation (2/3/26)

And the translation work needed to be delicate, I think. Many of these writers submitted in Arabic, but many of them also submitted in English. Alaa Alqaisi has a piece on reading Edward Said during the genocide. She is, in my mind, one of the most brilliant English-writing authors that is being published right now.

And so, I don’t know, it would be easy to sit here and brag and say, “We uncovered all of these special writers,” but they’ve been there. They’ve been working for three years now.

And I go back and forth on why big media institutions, with a lot of money, refuse to look to them. And I think the answer is, frankly, in some parts, a little bit racist, a little bit of the value put on foreign journalists and the guise of objectification. But I think anyone could do this project, any publication.

JJ: Right. When we do introductory speeches, I often talk about how the fact that media is a business interferes and conflicts with journalism as a public service. And one of the things that seems like a small little thing is, “Well, we’re not going to hire translators anymore. We’re going to send correspondents to Tehran, to Gaza, but we’re not going to pay for translators.”

And so then, well, what does that do? That’s a cost-cutting decision that, of course, affects who you speak to, who gets heard, whose voices are included. Translation is a real straightforward way to represent the conflict if you’re just a cost-cutting corporation, as opposed to if you are really a journalistic institution.

One of the things—and it’s just building on what you just said—a factor of this [Nation] issue is, we see Palestinians as actors and not as subjects, because even in mainstream news that is sympathetic or whatever, or critical of the Trump administration, so often Gazans, Palestinians in general, are discussed as really pawns—pawns of Hamas, pawns of Israel—but not people. And so just that fact of having these writers speak with their own, if you will, voices shifts that. And I think that’s crucial.

The Nation (2/6/26)

REA: That’s such a terrific point. It makes me really happy that it comes out in the project. In part, I think the other thing we wanted to do is—what you’re describing is, I would call this a sort of objectification of these Palestinians, right? They can only exist if they are in the hands of some other party or administration that we actually see as holding legitimate power.

But another consequence of that is the Palestinian has been a very idyllic subject, as a subject only worthy of sympathy as perfect, as absence of contradiction, as absent of even frustration. And for two years, because there’s this constant pleading with the world to move, we see them only in this sympathetic light, as if they are patiently waiting for us to save them, and they are doing the best that they can, giving us almost a divine quality.

And that’s what Ola al Asi’s piece, I think, does tremendously. She says, “Look, I knew all of you were going to betray us.” And she’s speaking to the Western leadership, to the Western audience. She said, “I knew when I was going to stay in the North and continue my work,” without what she calls purported protection of a press pass and a helmet, “I knew the world would still do nothing about it. ” And that is, I think, a much more interesting question, actually.

If Gazans—and they should—have come to this conclusion, actually, that the world is unmoved, or not moved enough, by their position, why do they sustain the work? And one of the things in a media landscape in the West is, if we just look at the Washington Post layoffs today, that it’s increasingly easy to be cynical. One thing that I’m always awestruck by—and even now I’m sort of applying an idyllic quality to them, but I do really believe this—is that they really believe in the dutiful quality of journalism. I mean, they believe that journalism has specific ethics, that they are required to follow them, despite them being in a war zone.

A story I tell often, prior to this issue, I commissioned a writer, Abubaker Abed, while he was still in Gaza to write a story for me about being thrust into war correspondence. And he sent me a message, because he was late in submitting his piece, saying, “Hey, I’m so sorry. I am actively being flooded, and I don’t have time to write this piece.”

And I responded, saying, “Of course, take all the time you need, but also, do you want us to pay you now ahead of schedule, so you can use the money to find somewhere to stay at least for a little while?”

And he said, “Absolutely not. I refuse to get paid until the piece is out, just like you would any other reporter working for you. ” And I’m always, as someone who’s quite cynical, sometimes, of journalism’s dutiful quality, it’s really remarkable. This is a special crop of reporters and story tellers and writers.

JJ: Finally, I found the piece by Ola al Asi very moving, just talking about being a reporter in Gaza: “We have covered events no human can bear.” That piece, along with the rest of the pieces, it really brought home for me, brings home were it needed, how precious journalism is, how much reporting is about witnessing, and sitting with, and expressing complexity, and how little it’s about cocktail parties and getting access to rich people. It really does bring home how precious and how sacred real journalism is in the world today.

And there are many takeaways from this issue, but that is certainly one of them. It’s not necessarily making—I mean, it is making heroes, of course, of Palestinians, and anyone reporting from war zones at tremendous risk to themselves, to get out stories that we would not hear otherwise. I also obviously get cynical, but journalism really is a public service, and this brings that home.

FAIR.org (1/28/26)

REA: I think that’s really incredibly put. And I agree. I think that is, if not the primary takeaway, the secondary one, with the primary being the thing we’ve discussed the entire time, is that: Listen to them. They continue to be actively attacked and killed and threatened. Just today, 38 Palestinians were martyred in the last 24 hours. It’s a tremendous loss of life.

And in great part, I want to thank FAIR for quantitatively contextualizing that loss, because it’s something we all feel, but then, there’s an element of dissonance, maybe, and you’re saying, “Well, maybe I’m not looking hard enough.” But no, I would say for anyone reading this, my answer is: Let this be a start of your continued commitment to reading and listening to Palestinian voices. Do not let it be encapsulated in this single issue, because there are hundreds of writers like them, and I hope we can publish them all eventually.

JJ: We’ll end it there for now. We’ve been speaking with Rayan El Amine, guest editor of The Nation magazine’s current issue,”A Day for Gaza.” Rayan El Amine, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

REA: Oh, it was an honor, Janine. Thank you for having me.

From FAIR via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/26803

US-made bombs dropped by Israel on Gaza have evaporated the bodies of at least 2,842 Palestinians, leaving no trace of the victims besides small amounts of blood, flesh and bone, an Al Jazeera investigation has found.

Experts and witnesses told the outlet the phenomenon was caused by internationally prohibited thermal and thermobaric weapons, supplied by the US, that burn at 3,500C.

Gaza’s civil defence said it tallied the number of deaths from these bombs via a forensic process. “We enter a targeted home and cross-reference the known number of occupants with the bodies recovered,” spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said.

“If a family tells us there were five people inside, and we only recover three intact bodies, we treat the remaining two as ‘evaporated’ only after an exhaustive search yields nothing but biological traces – blood spray on walls or small fragments like scalps,” he added.

Al Jazeera identified several US-made bombs used in Gaza since October 2023 that are linked to the evaporation of victims’ bodies.

They include the MK-84 Hammer, a 900kg unguided munition that generates heat up to 3,500C; and the BLU-109 bunker buster, which was used in a September 2024 attack that evaporated 22 people, the outlet reported.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed over 72,000 people and wounded over 170,000. A January 2025 study in the Lancet medical journal found that the death toll in Gaza had been underestimated by 41%.

Israel has killed 586 Gazans since a so-called ceasefire took effect in October last year.

The US sends over $3.8bn (£2.8bn) worth of weapons and military assistance to Israel each year.

From Novara Media via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/26116

Charles Fox
Special to ICT

PHILADELPHIA — Jeremy Johnson delivered a short but gracious speech to the hundreds of people gathered at the Penn Museum’s Harrison Auditorium, but he felt a void, a need to collectively honor and bless the reason they were there.

The honor song that followed —  in an Indigenous language rarely heard in Philadelphia — called out in the Lenape language to the spirit that had once enveloped the mid-Atlantic homelands and the past generations that preceded him.

It was an impromptu decision, a song that flowed from his heart and matched the emotions of the day, a reclamation of the land, filled with pride and defiance. But it also signaled there was something different about the museum exhibit they were about to unveil.

For not only were Native Americans part of the opening celebration at the Penn Museum, but Johnson and seven other Native consulting curators contributed beyond the auditorium walls to shape an exhibit depicting Native people in the present day.

“I had a sense of humility because the reason I was standing there was because of the resilience and strength of my grandmas and grandpas, and to be even able to sing that song was because of what they had done,” Johnson, the cultural education director for the Delaware Tribe of Indians, also known as Lenape,  told ICT later.

“It was meant to honor what was going on there [at the museum] and the people there,” he said, “but it was really a recognition of those who came before me, who have set this path up and allowed us to keep continuing these ways.”

He was joined by other Native speakers, including three other consulting curators and contributing artists, as well as Tewa Dancers from the North, in November to initiate a weekend of activities for the opening of the Penn Museum’s new exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure.”

Given that Native Americans and museums have always had an uneasy relationship, it was unusual not only for the celebratory atmosphere but also for the Native participation.

The Tewa Dancers from the North from the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo (formerly San Juan Pueblo) in northern New Mexico performed at an opening day of a new exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure,” on Nov. 22, 2025, at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT

But this exhibit is different. The new gallery is planned to be up for the next 10 years and follows the success of the museum’s previous exhibition, “Native American Voices: The People Here and Now.”

The museum and its curators hope the gallery will broaden the historical narrative that is presented in Philadelphia during the semiquincentennial celebration of the United States, and serve as a model for other museums struggling to incorporate Native voices in their corridors.

“We hope that some folks will come up here to the Penn Museum to check out the exhibit, maybe it will help put some context into what they’re celebrating as far as the 250th goes,” said Dr. Joseph Aguilar, a tribal historic preservation office board member for the San Ildefonso Pueblo and one of the consulting curators.

“Maybe it will give them some perspective like, ‘Hey, there’s this other history that also needs to be celebrated and acknowledged.’”

Ushering in the future

Native Americans rarely have gotten a say in what manner they were depicted in museums, especially in a state they were forced to leave in the 18th century. Museums often portray Indigenous people as primitive, defeated curiosities of the past rather than as a present-day populace with a rich cultural tradition.

The past actions of museums have been clouded by the unauthorized expropriation and display of sacred objects and human remains.

Barry King, Powhatan Renape Nation, visits the new exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience Resisting Erasure,” at the Penn Museum on opening day on Nov. 22, 2025 in Philadelphia. King, who once worked as an educator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, was particularly interested in seeing the Delaware (Lenape) portions of the exhibit. The background images are of tribal homelands. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT

The Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania has tried to distance itself from the past practices of museums with the new exhibit, which opened Nov. 22, 2025. It coincides with the upcoming 250th birthday of the United States in July as all Philadelphia museums and cultural institutions are gearing up for the expected influx of visitors for this year’s celebration.

The museum, a Philadelphia archaeology and anthropology institution founded in 1887, has been ahead of other museums with its recent practices. While other museums have pulled exhibits and closed galleries to comply with a change in regulations under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, known as NAGPRA, the Penn Museum has taken a different approach.

For the current exhibit, the museum tapped the eight Native consulting curators from different tribes to create a gallery that emphasizes the Native people and cultures that have thrived across the United States despite a historic agenda to erase their culture and language.

In addition to Johnson and Aguilar, the other consulting curators are RaeLyn Butler, secretary of culture and humanities, Muscogee (Creek) Nation; Beau Carroll, lead archaeologist, Tribal Historic Preservation Office, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians; Christopher Lewis, cultural specialist, Zuni Pueblo; Mary Weahkee, archaeologist, Santa Clara Pueblo; Dr. Nadia Sethi Alutiiq, art historian and museum consultant, Homer, Alaska; Darlene See, cultural heritage director, Huna Indian Association, Tribal House Management Kaach.adi Clan Tlingit.

The curators were able to shape the exhibit by helping determine its focus, what display items were appropriate, and ensure that Native people were depicted in the present day.

The exhibit hopes to “tell the past while ushering in the future,” Jill DiSanto, the museum’s public relations director, told ICT..

It marked a first for Johnson.

“Most of the work with museums in the past has been extractive of our cultural knowledge, or at worst, simply exploitative of our knowledge and our items,” Johnson said. “This is the first we collaborated on … to really get our story out there. Not just the historical presence, the pre-contact that is usually focused on in exhibits, but to really use the items here to tell the story of the people and to show that we are a living, thriving community still to this day.”

RaeLynn Butler, another of the Indigenous consulting curators and secretary of culture and humanities for Muscogee (Creek) Nation, agrees.

RaeLynn Butler, secretary of culture and humanities for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, stands by the exhibit she helped curate for the Penn Museum, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure,” which opened Nov. 22, 2025. She was one of eight Indigenous consulting curators who helped shape the exhibit. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT

“There’s been too much emphasis on objects and not enough on the culture and people,” Butler told ICT. “The difference here is to bring the ancient up to modern times. We want people to know there are 574 tribes in the United States…and that we are still here today. I think that’s always the message. and I think that this exhibit is a perfect example of including tribal nations in the telling of the history of these items and personal belongings.”

She noted in an earlier press conference, “We’re living, grieving, strong cultures, and that’s what is so exciting about these exhibits, to see people’s faces and to hear their voices and the language. That helps people when they walk away to understand these are living communities of people and that’s an important message.”

NAGPRA changes

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was passed by Congress in 1990 to establish protocols for the return of human remains and other objects to their specific tribes.

In January 2024, the federal regulations were strengthened with new rules requiring museums and government agencies to obtain permission from Native American tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations before displaying sacred and funerary objects.

ICT REPORTS: NAGPRA crackdown sends museums reeling

“Among the updates we are implementing are critical steps to strengthen the authority and role of Indigenous communities in the repatriation process,” then-Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, said at the time. “Finalizing these changes is an important part of laying the groundwork for the healing of our people.”

The changes left some museums scrambling to comply. The Field Museum in Chicago and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University were forced to remove objects or cover displays, while the American Museum of Natural History in New York City closed its Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains Halls.

The Penn Museum had anticipated the new NAGPRA regulations, however, and had been acting accordingly before planning the new exhibit, officials said.

“I think many of those displays were really old and outdated, so they may have included items such as funerary objects or sensitive items that today tribes would not agree or want to have on display,” said Dr. Lucy Fowler Williams, the Penn Museum’s co-curator of the Native North American Gallery and associate curator-in-charge. “We were already tuned into what is sensitive for tribes and what would be appropriate to show… It’s not to say we’ve got it all perfect or anything, but we’ve just been working in this mode for a long time.”

An empty case at the entrance to a new exhibit at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia represents artifacts and other items that have been repatriated back to tribes or deemed inappropriate to display. . The museum brought in eight Native consulting curators to help develop the latest exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure,” which opened Nov. 22, 2025. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT

The Native co-curators worked with the Penn Museum to decide which items were appropriate for display and which were not for public viewing. An empty case at the start of the gallery symbolically represents those items in the museum’s collection that were deemed to have been obtained inappropriately or were considered inappropriate for display. Many of those items have been repatriated back to their tribes.

“The inclusion of an empty display case is a deliberate intervention — not an act of censorship,” Aguilar said in a museum press release.

“It serves as a thoughtful prompt for visitors to reflect on the fraught relationship between museums and Indigenous communities,” he said. “In its absence, the object becomes an act of Indigenous sovereignty.”

Lucy Fowler Williams, left, associate curator and senior keeper of American collections at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, stands with Megan Kassabaum, Penn Anthropology professor and co-curator, at a new exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure,” which opened Nov. 22, 2025. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT

Williams said the collaboration built positive relationships between the museum and tribes.

“I think that what is so important about the NAGPRA law is, they [ tribes] do have a great and a vested interest in the materials that we house,” Williams said. “And they have the right now to reclaim some of those items through repatriation. But this also sets up building positive relationships and moving forward together, to work together to find common ground and work together on projects that we both know are important to help regain those histories that the museum is interested in, and the communities are even more interested in.

“It’s taken us a long time to figure out that you can do it better together.”

‘More than fluff’

The gallery, which features approximately 260 historic and contemporary items, is arranged to represent the four corners of the country: the Delaware (Lenape) in the Northeast, the Eastern Band of Cherokee and Muscogee (Creek) in the Southeast, the Pueblo in the Southwest, and the Tlingit and Alutiiq people of Alaska in the Northwest.

Quay Hosey, Delaware (Lenape), stands beside a tàkhwèmpës (blouse), hémpsi tëpèthun (wrap-around skirt) and kaduna (leggings) she created specifically for a new exhibit at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. She incorporates the traditional elements of her ancestors with the styles inspired by neighboring tribes after they were forcibly moved west.The exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure,” opened Nov. 22, 2025, with the help of eight Native consulting curators and contributing artists. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT

The exhibit includes a floral beadwork collar from the Lenape; a Tlingit Naaxein (Chilkay blanket) ceremonial robe; a contemporary glass sculpture, “Emerging from Raven,” by Tlingit artist Preston Singletary; a San Juan Pueblo robe created by Ramoncita Sandoval in 2001; Cherokee stickball equipment and rag dolls, and a pot ring and ring basket woven from yucca grass by Native consulting curator Christopher Lewis, a cultural specialist with the Zuni Pueblo. Lewis studied ancient baskets, textiles, wood, and feather work in the Penn Museum and other museums to create modern items using ancient techniques.

The words of Delaware artist Holly Wilson that accompany her sculpture, “I’m More than Fluff,” summarize the objective of the exhibit.

Delaware (Lenape) artist Holly Wilson’s sculpture, “I’m More than Fluff,” is among the items on display at a new exhibit at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. The exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure,” opened Nov. 22, 2025. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT

“I am more than the view that my people are frozen in time, lost to a romanticized ideal of who Native Americans were, we are more, and we are still here,” according to an informational sign posted at the exhibit. “I am not this fluff: I am here: I am loud and larger than life.”

Focusing on the stories of the people first, Wilson told ICT, “tells a different story and looks at things in a different way.”

“So much of the time it’s the history of the objects and there’s nothing connecting them to the people,” she said. “So, it’s been very emotional and powerful.”

In addition to historic items and works commissioned by contemporary artists, the gallery also features interactive stations focusing on language, stories and artistic techniques, with displays about traditions, cultural items, and the hardships caused by European contact.

Oklahoma road trip

In July, four members of the Penn Museum staff, including Williams and Penn Anthropology professor Dr. Megan Kassabaum, co-curator of the exhibit, traveled to Oklahoma to spend three days with members of the Delaware Tribe.

They brought with them four items: a floral Lenape beaded collar, a woman’s traditional red blouse, a dance staff, and an ancestral stone atlatl weight, which is a decorative stone used as a counterweight on a spear.

This floral beadwork collar from the Lenape, circa 1850-1900, is among more than 250 cultural items on display in a new exhibit at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia from eight tribes across the country. The exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure,” opened Nov. 22, 2025. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT

“We made two presentations to the tribal community members, during which time they were all invited to look closely, study, and handle the items made by their ancestors,” Williams said. “From my perspective, it was incredibly moving and important for them to see these items and to see us making the effort to go there to meet them. We hope to do more of this kind of work to try to create opportunities that strengthen the communities and the next generation, and to continue to build meaningful relationships with tribes when possible.”

Johnson, the Delaware Tribe’s cultural education director, said the items connected the past and present.

“People got to experience it and touch it and examine it, so it really went against a lot of the curatorial practices,” Johnson said. “In the two hours that we were able to spend with this beaded collar, we learned more in that time than anyone else has learned with it being behind glass for the last 100 years.”

Johnson continued, “These items have a life, and they aren’t meant to just be stuck in time. They’re really meant to be cared for and utilized within our culture and traditions and community. And we’re trying to change the way people view these things. Sometimes, it actually goes in direct opposition to museum conservation principles and in the ways that they should be cared for. Oftentimes, things need to be handled in order to take care of them, to preserve them.”

“They’re not artifacts. They’re living items that have a life and have eons of knowledge contained within them.”

Moving forward together

There is a hope that the manner in which the Penn Museum gallery was created will be a guiding model in the future for other institutions.

“Places like the Penn Museum, they’re moving forward together in a good way.. there’s a healing that has to go on in the relationships and we’re starting that process and hopefully continue that process,” said Johnson.

“It’s a good feeling to try and heal from the harms that have been done to our Native communities by the whole museum culture and the way they operate,” he said. “ It felt good to be able to contribute in a positive way in which we were able to express ourselves in the ways that we wanted, and also to be able to consult and collaborate on the items that were used and which shouldn’t be used…There’s a sense we’re getting our voice, but there’s still a lot of work to do.”

Williams said Native involvement has been key to the success.

“I have always worked in this mode [of collaboration] and I think it’s so much better,” Williams said. “It only makes sense to me. They [Native people] speak from the place, and from the history and the knowledge and from the heart with such an authenticity that they can bring to the items and to the histories.”

Streets of Philadelphia

Unlike the other Indigenous consulting curators, a trip to Philadelphia for Johnson involved returning to Lenapehokink, the Lenape homeland, which includes eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the lower Hudson Valley of New York and New York Bay, and eastern Delaware, and the conflicting emotions that it provoked.

There was the gratification of shaping and influencing an exhibit, but it was tempered by the negative history of the past and feeling isolated in what was the traditional homeland and the subsequent diaspora of his people.

William Penn’s friendship, for example, with Chief Tamanend (also spelled Tammany) and the Lenape people is often romanticized in words and in the paintings of Benjamin West and Edward Hicks, both depicting the 1683 Treaty between them in the Lenape village of Shackamaxon.

Penn’s so-called Holy Experiment soon unraveled for Indigenous people, however. After Penn’s death, his sons and other officials devised a land-grab scheme known as the Walking Purchase in 1737 to dispossess the Lenape of their homelands in eastern Pennsylvania.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Lenape were removed to Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Texas, and eventually Oklahoma. Fifteen treaties were signed with the United States and fifteen were broken. Despite living in their homelands for 16,000 years, Pennsylvania remains the only state in Lenapehokink that never recognized its Indigenous peoples. Even the Lenape name was replaced by the commonly used European name of Delaware.

“It is complicated because the Lenape people were the first Indigenous nation to sign a treaty with the United States in 1778, (the Treaty of Fort Pitt which promised them the potential of becoming a 14th state), and it’s the first treaty broken six months later,” said Johnson. “And so, we fought on the side of the early United States, and we later fought against the United States because of these broken promises.”

Jeremy Johnson, the cultural education director of the Delaware Tribe of Indians (also known as Lenape), stands amid the displays at a new exhibit at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia.The exhibit, “Native North America Gallery: Rooted in Resilience, Resisting Erasure” opened on Nov. 22, 2025. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT

Walking the streets of Philadelphia, a city with a limited Native population, is awkward for Johnson. The congested infrastructure and the degraded natural environment of the urban landscape obstruct any connection with the Lenape homeland from centuries ago.

Despite their development, only waterways, such as the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, offer some feeling of tranquility.  After centuries of dispossession and a relocation to an area without large rivers in Oklahoma, there is the opportunity for these “water people” to reconnect to the tributaries of their homeland.

Otherwise, there is little Lenape representation. Only a small statue of Penn commemorates the 1683 treaty site in Penn Treaty Park along the Delaware River.  A few blocks south, sandwiched between a bus stop turnaround and an entrance ramp to Interstate 95, a 20-foot statue of Chief Tamanend hovers as the highway traffic speeds by below. A proposal to relocate it for the semiquincentennial to a new area that was deemed a more positive location was opposed by tribal leaders, including Johnson, who saw it as another form of forced removal. The move was shelved.

The statue plaque states Tamanend was considered “the patron saint of America by colonists prior to American independence,” but the celebration of Tammany Day on May 1 disappeared with colonial times.

Despite the efforts of the Penn Museum gallery to usher the Native culture into the present, their absence in the city once again relegates them into a civilization of the past.

“I love going and visiting Philadelphia… but it’s really hard to find a true connection,” said Johnson, who feels the attachments are the strongest in the natural state and solitude along northern sections of the Delaware River far from Philadelphia.

“There’s not a whole lot of representation of Lenape that’s in our homelands that highlights our voices, our ideas, how we think, and what we do, and what we feel is present to share with people,” he said.

The absence, however, has made the Penn Museum exhibit and the method with which it was created even more meaningful for him.

“To be able to exhibit in this way in Pennsylvania and our homelands that had not been historically kind to us in many ways is empowering,” Johnson said. “To have that opportunity to reclaim some of the spaces in our homeland and to have our tribal citizens involved in that process, to give them voice in a place where we were forcibly removed from, I’m incredibly proud of that. We were not only able to empower our tribal citizens to tell their own stories, but also to reconnect with the lands of their grandmas and grandpas.”

“I think [the museum gallery] really built more pride in being able to say, ‘I’m Lenape,’ and to be able to acknowledge, yes, my ancestors went through massive hardships and challenges, but to be able to say, “I’m Lenape and still have these ways’ …

“It makes me eager to say, ‘Hey, we survived this, we’re still around, we’re actually thriving now,’ and that should be something that we’re proud of.”

The post ‘Exhibiting Resilience’: Tribal consultation brings modern vision to new museum gallery appeared first on ICT.

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Birzeit University is no longer what it once was. The transformation has been gradual and, therefore, easily rationalized, but the result has been the hollowing out of a university that once led the Palestinian struggle.

It was an ordinary Tuesday morning when Israeli forces arrived at Birzeit’s campus. The semester was drawing to its close. Students were still inhabiting the familiar, minor dramas of university life: the arithmetic of grades, the quiet panic induced by syllabi reread too late, the low-level guilt attached to courses in which effort had not quite matched ambition. These anxieties, rehearsed and recognizable, belonged to a calendar that assumed continuity. The morning, like most mornings, appeared to agree with that assumption — until it didn’t.

The soldiers entered with confidence. They were under direct orders to disrupt and induce some shock into the body of a university with a long history of tit-for-tat with Israeli military authorities.

Birzeit had its golden age at the moment of its inception, or shortly thereafter. It lasted for a decade or two, depending on who is doing the remembering. It was an era defined less by institutional stability than by the university’s repeated closures by the Israeli military; classes reappeared in borrowed houses, in improvised rooms, in spaces whose chief qualification was that they could be made to disappear. Teaching became an exercise in logistics as much as in pedagogy, knowledge passed on under conditions that assumed interruption as the norm rather than the exception.

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Settler activists wish to expel and even exterminate Palestinians in order to 'settle all over Gaza'

Hundreds of Israeli settlers held a protest and briefly entered Gaza on 7 February as part of a broader effort to establish Jewish settlements on the ruins of Palestinian cities in the devastated enclave.

“Gaza belongs solely to the people of Israel! The time has come to settle in Gaza!” the Nachala settlement movement stated in a post on social media documenting the protest.

Knesset member Ariel Kallner, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, gave a speech at the demonstration.

“The nation of Israel’s rebirth will come when an Israeli flag flies over Gaza — when Jewish communities thrive in Gaza. That will be the absolute victory over absolute evil,” Kallner claimed.

“We will not surrender to Trump’s dictates: No to an international Gaza, yes to a Jewish Gaza,” one of the slogans read.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/25701

Charles Fox
Special to ICT

As the 2026 Winter Olympics open in Italy, the nephew of American hockey pioneer Taffy Abel will ask President Donald Trump to give Abel the Presidential Medal of Freedom — and the official recognition he has long been denied.

The request is the latest in a decades-long effort from nephew George Jones for honoring the Ojibwe athlete, who is widely recognized as the first Indigenous American in the Winter Olympics and the first to break the color barrier in the National Hockey League.

“I think it would be a great thing for Native Americans … not just for our family, but for Native Americans,” Jones told ICT. “It starts to tell some of the untold history of Native Americans.”

More than 100 years ago, Abel was a member of the silver-medal-winning U.S. hockey team in the very first Winter Olympics in 1924, played outdoors in Chamonix, France. He was also the flag-bearer for the United States and recited the Olympic oath for the team.

A Soul on Ice: The quest for recognition after 100 years for hockey great Taffy Abel

While Abel is believed to be the first Native American to participate in the Winter Olympics — and the only Indigenous American to carry the flag in Olympic history — he kept his Ojibwe heritage secret at the time.

Due to his light skin color, Abel racially passed as White during the Olympics and throughout his 333-game career in the National Hockey League, though he is widely believed to have been the first player of color to take the ice.

Abel’s parents began the practice of concealing their race to avoid having their two children taken from them and sent to Indian boarding schools in the early 1900s. His family was multi-racial, with Taffy’s father, John Abel, a White man, originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and his mother, Charlotte Gurnoe Abel, from the Chippewa (Ojibwe) Sault Tribe.

It is likely Able would not have been put on the Olympic team or given the opportunity to play in the NHL if he had disclosed his Ojibwe heritage.

Because of his racial passing, however, the NHL has not recognized his pioneering achievements, despite being on two Stanley-Cup winning teams. While he was sometimes referred to as “Superman with skates” due to his physical play and size, not revealing his heritage by racially passing would be his kryptonite in later getting recognition.

Jones sees his uncle as the “Unseen Warrior” who used a White disguise “because of the deep societal prejudices against Indians in the early 1900s.”

The NHL has not responded to repeated requests from ICT for comment.

New life to an old resolution

The first day of 2026 was almost the last for Jones. He suffered a coronary event, and it is estimated he was dead for approximately 8 minutes before CPR by his wife and defibrillation by paramedics brought the 76-year-old man in Winter Haven, Florida back to life.

The under-14 Soo Lakers hockey team practices on Sept. 29, 2025, at the Taffy Abel Arena on the campus of Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. The arena, named for the Ojibwe hockey great, is the only NCAA hockey arena that has more seats (4,000) than the university has students. The Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians donated $3 million to the renovation. Credit: Charles Fox/Special to ICT

The near-death event, which Jones described as “transforming,” gave Jones yet another chance to win recognition for his uncle. While campaigning for a Congressional Medal of Honor or induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame requires convincing a large number of individuals to vote in Abel’s favor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is strictly the decision of the U.S. president.

In the end, it will require one man to convince one man of another man’s achievement.

“So, he’s [President Trump] got an America First policy. Well, why the hell not honor some of the first Americans here, too? That’s my point. They deserve it,” Jones told ICT.  “Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. So, it’s not a foregone conclusion either way, but that’s not going to extinguish my advocacy to be on the right side of history.”

As of January 2025, 673 individuals have been awarded the medal but only six Native Americans — Wilma Mankiller, Suzan Shown Harjo, Eloise Cobell, Billy Frank Jr., Jim Thorpe, and Annie Dodge Wauneka.

The very low percentage of Native honorees, Jones feels, could work in his favor.

‘Errors of omission and silence’

This year also marks the 100th anniversary of the historic moment on Nov. 16, 1926, when Abel stepped onto the ice for the New York Rangers, becoming the first Indigenous American player in the National Hockey League. It was also the opening game in the inaugural season of the New York Rangers.

Clarence “Taffy” Abel, Ojibwe, was the first Indigenous athlete to play in the National Hockey League. He joined the Chicago Blackhawks in 1929 and played until 1934. This photo is from the 1929-1930 hockey season, when he began playing with the team. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Jones Family Collection

But there are numerous factors that work against Jones’ campaign.  Getting recognition for his uncle has often put him at odds with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. Trump has a long-standing relationship with Bettman and has praised the hockey commissioner for the “incredible” job he has done. In 2025, Trump appointed Bettman to his President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition.

Jones has never hesitated to speak poorly about Bettman in strong, condemning language and has accused the league of bypassing his uncle through “errors of omission and silence.”

Bettman and other league executives credit Willie O’Ree, the first Black (African-Canadian) player in the NHL, with breaking the league’s color barrier in 1958, proclaiming him the “Jackie Robinson of hockey.” It has been an ongoing point of contention between Jones and the NHL.

To strengthen his cause, Jones hopes to gain the support of the governors of Michigan, New York, Illinois, and Minnesota — the states where Abel played. He is also hoping for grassroots support.

While not reacting specifically to Jones’ campaign, the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians Chairman Austin Lowes responded in an email to ICT.

“Taffy Abel is a hero in our community for being both an Olympian and the first American Indian to also play in the NHL,” Lowes said. “Our Tribe contributed several millions to support the renovations to the Lake Superior State University ice arena in the mid 1990s. In turn, the university named the university ice area the Taffy Abel Arena.  We are very proud of Taffy and support recognition of his accomplishments.”

Jones said he will remain focused on his goal.

“I’m talking about my uncle’s legacy,” he said. “I think his legacy was forgotten.”

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Last Updated on February 6, 2026 Anti-Indigenous rhetoric and policy actions have started trending in Canada, Australia, the United States and New Zealand, reflecting what can only be described as a coordinated rollback of hard-won gains and an emboldened backlash against Indigenous self-determination. What was once debated at the margins has moved into mainstream politics. Governments and opposition movements alike are questioning the legitimacy of Indigenous governance, narrowing interpretations of historic agreements, and rolling back institutions designed to address long-documented inequalities.

At the same time, online harassment, public hostility and, in some cases, violence directed at Indigenous peoples have intensified, creating a climate of normalization around racism that had previously been more openly condemned.

From challenges to Te Tiriti o Waitangi in New Zealand to efforts to dismantle tribal sovereignty protections in the United States, these developments are not isolated. Instead, they reflect a shared political playbook that minimizes colonial history and treats Indigenous rights as an obstacle to national unity rather than a foundation of justice.

Source

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Three weeks after the Trump administration had announced the launch of phase two of the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire deal, Israel’s violence against the Palestinian people in Gaza continues.

At least 24 Palestinians, including seven children, were killed in multiple assaults waged by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in different parts of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, February 4.

The massacre is not the first since the second phase of the truce agreement came into force, as it came a few days after the IOF had launched a series of airstrikes across the besieged enclave, killing over 30 people on Saturday, January 31.

Meanwhile, the United Nations revealed in a report on Wednesday that over 18,000 patients, including 4000 children and 4000 cancer patients, are still waiting for Israel to permit their departure from Gaza for medical treatment abroad.

Israel has insisted on blocking urgent medical cases from evacuating Gaza, despite the limited reopening of the Rafah border crossing on Sunday, February 1.

For its part, Hamas’s newly-formed special security force Rade’, said in a statement via its Telegram channel on Sunday, February 1, that its fighters carried out two separate ambush attacks in Gaza city, and the southern city of Khan Younis, leaving a number of Israeli-backed militia members dead or injured.

Rade’ added that its personnel confiscated the military equipment that some of the ambushed Israeli-recruited collaborators left behind before they ran away.

Read more: Trump threatens to “kill” Hamas over the execution of Israeli-backed gang members in Gaza

Recent developments indicate that the enthusiasm which US President Donald Trump demonstrated about the ability of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) to run the daily affairs of the war-torn enclave in the near future, is a mere figment.

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Amelia Schafer
ICT

More than 162 years after the Mdewakanton Dakota people were forcibly detained and held at Fort Snelling in Minnesota, a Mdewakanton woman found herself detained in the same place her ancestors had been.

On the drive into Fort Snelling, Sophie Watso, 30, said she closed her eyes and prayed. She sang a song in Dakota, a prayer song, asking her ancestors for guidance.

Upwards of 3,000 Dakota and Ho-Chunk people were imprisoned at Fort Snelling, a concentration camp, during the winter of 1862 following the Dakota Indian Wars. Approximately 300 Native people died there.

Aside from being the site of a former concentration camp, the area is also a site of creation for the Dakota people. B’dote, where the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers meet, is one of the Dakota peoples’ creation sites. Today, B’dote is visible from the bluffs at the historic Fort Snelling complex.

As historic immigration raids pay out across the Twin Cities, several Native people have reported being detained at Fort Snelling. The Bishop Henry Whipple Building in Fort Snelling is being used as an ICE detainment and processing facility by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The encounter

Watso was detained on Wednesday, Jan. 14, in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, a suburb immediately north of the city of Minneapolis. Watso wasn’t released from ICE custody until Jan. 16, more than 48 hours after her initial encounter with ICE.

The Mdewakanton Dakota woman said she was monitoring ICE activity from her vehicle when agents and another group who she initially believed were local law enforcement approached her in her truck.

The video shows agents with the words “Police ICE” on their vests, which makes Watso believe they were all immigration enforcement personnel. Some agents or officers in the area have had the words “Police” or “ICE” labeled on them.

“It was a very confusing situation,” she said. “Because of the way that they [ICE agents] do not identify themselves, right?”

Dakota citizen arrested by federal officers during Minneapolis protests Saturday

One agent told Watso she was in violation of U.S. Code 18 section 111, which is a federal charge pertaining to imposing, obstructing or assaulting a federal law enforcement agent while on duty. ICE agents are allowed to detain U.S. citizens believed to be in violation of the code.

ICE agents have used this same charge against at least two other Native American people, William LaFromboise, a Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota man arrested while protesting ICE on Jan. 26, and Jose “Beto” Ramirez, a Red Lake Nation descendant detained on Jan. 7. Ramirez was charged nearly two weeks after his detainment.

Watso said one of the men told her she was impeding or obstructing an ongoing federal immigration investigation, but another told her if she didn’t stop what she was doing she would then be in violation of the code.

“A lot of people were talking at the same time,” she said. “At that point, I was already pulled over. So I had already stopped everything I was doing.”

Agents asked for her identification, Watso said she did not feel comfortable stepping out of her vehicle or handing over her ID.

Some tribes have reported incidents where individuals posing as ICE questioned members and asked for their identification.

Roughly three hours south of Minneapolis, the Meskwaki Nation in Tama, Iowa, reported at least one tribal member was questioned by men in nearby Toledo, Iowa, pretending to be immigration agents. The tribe said upon investigation, the individuals were confirmed to not be ICE personnel.

A photo taken after Sophie Watso’s detainment shows her pickup truck’s windows smashed in by immigration agents on January 14, 2026, in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. Credit: Courtesy Isavela Lopez

“I didn’t know who these people were,” Watso said. “They’re just some masked men that approached my window. So I didn’t feel comfortable giving them my identification.”

Moments later, Watso said the agents used a window breaker to smash in her truck’s driver’s side and passenger side windows.

Watso’s dog, a small pomeranian named Modean, was sitting on the passenger seat. She grabbed Modean to try and shield him from the shattered glass. Around her, prairie sage from her dashboard fell around the drug.

Watso, who is 5 feet, 2 inches tall, said it wasn’t difficult for the agents to pull her out of her truck from the broken window and place her on the ground. She held tight to her dog, who she feared was injured from the broken glass.

“There was nothing I could hold on to,” she said. “I was just holding on to my dog, and they put me on the ground on top of the glass that they just broke. And that’s when they were just trying to rip my dog from my arms.”

Watso said agents grabbed Modean from her arms and took him away from her before laying her face down on the ground, on top of the broken glass, a few agents leaned their full weight on her back and placing her in handcuffs. She could barely breathe, she said.

Fortunately, some of her friends were in the area and able to record the interaction, she said.

“I was yelling to them,” she said. “I told them, ‘Tell them where my dog is,’ and they were also malicious about that.

Watso said her friends were able to locate her dog at a nearby pound while officers drove her to the Whipple building in Fort Snelling for processing. Her friends then took her dog to stay with Watso’s mother.

Sophie Watso and her dog Modean pose in front of a mural she painted. Watso, Mdewakanton Dakota, was detained by immigration agents outside Minneapolis on January 14, 2026, and held for 48 hours. Credit: Courtesy of Sophie Watso

In detainment

At this point, knowing she was on her way to Fort Snelling, Watso began to sing.

“So it was important to me to sing a song, one of the only songs that I know by heart,” she said. “It’s a prayer song, and it’s asking for help.”

She felt like she was captured, she said, and began reflecting on what her Mdewakanton ancestors had experienced a century ago.

“The words in this song are asking for help, telling the creator that I want to live,” she said. “Not only am I praying for my safety, but I was also praying and wanting to greet my ancestors, in our language, with a song, because I know that my ancestors are there.”

Agents began to make fun of her singing, she said, asking if she was on drugs. But she didn’t care.

“I don’t do drugs and I don’t drink alcohol, but I expected that from them,” she said. “I understood that these people are colonized and they have the intention of degrading you.”

So she made sure to look them in the eyes as she sang.

“I wasn’t going to show them that I’m a spectacle,” she said.

Once inside of the Whipple building, Watso said she waited for several hours in a warehouse-like facility, her arms and legs shackled. She felt scared but oddly enough comforted at the same time, knowing her ancestors were there, she said.

“I knew that I wasn’t alone,” she said. “I knew that my people have suffered here, but I also knew that people have lived here.”

She said she took comfort in that fact.

Former Native American concentration camp lies beneath current immigration detention center

While detained, Watso said she was not offered an opportunity to speak with a lawyer. Watso said she at one point verbally requested to speak with a lawyer, but was not given the opportunity. Since she was not able to speak with a lawyer, Watso was further transferred out of the Whipple building to an ICE partner facility, the Sherbourne County Jail.

Sherbourne was a much better experience than being kept at the Whipple building, she said.

“The people at Sherburne County, these are just sheriffs, people who work there, and they’re actually nice to you,” she said. “They actually treat you like a human. They ask you if you want water and they give it to you. They talk to you normally like you’re a person.”

‘I’m traumatized’

In Sherbourne on Thursday, Jan. 15, Watso said was finally given an opportunity to make phone calls. Watso was then able to contact a lawyer and has since been working with the Native American Rights Fund, a non-profit organization dedicated to the legal protection of Indigenous people, tribes and tribal organizations.

Because no charges were filed against her, Watso was let go from Sherbourne after a 48-hour hold on Friday, Jan. 16.

Following her release from Sherbourne, Watso said was taken back to the Whipple building in Fort Snelling by two Homeland Security department agents. Watso was given paperwork and her possessions back at Fort Snelling and informed she could now go home, but it wasn’t the end, she said.

While leaving, Watso said she wasn’t given clear instruction by the agents on how to exit the building. While making her way through the parking lot, jogging to speed up her journey due to the below freezing temperatures, Watso was tackled by several ICE agents who assumed she was attempting to break out of the facility.

Watso said at least four agents dressed in full gear tackled her, leaving her with back pain and further traumatizing her. She was placed back in handcuffs and again taken into the Whipple building where another agent verified she had been released from custody, at which point she was freed again, this time with a ride home.

“It’s all on surveillance video,” she said. “Here I am free, running, and then I’m tackled, brutalized, cuffed back up and brought back inside. Every time I go outside now, my head is on a swivel, like, left, right, left, right, turn behind you. ‘Is there anyone behind me?’ I’m traumatized.”

A young Dakota woman incarcerated at the Fort Snelling concentration camp is photographed in 1862. Survivors of the camp were sent via steamboat to the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota and the Santee Reservation in Nebraska. (Courtesy Minnesota Historical Society)

Watso said as of Jan. 26 she had not yet been able to go to the hospital to have her injuries evaluated. She has, however, been able to visit with a therapist and is staying with friends for safety, she said.

The experience has left her completely terrified, she said. Since she’s staying with friends, on one occasion she accidentally locked herself out of the apartment and began to panic.

“I was here alone, and I was outside, and I didn’t have anything, any identification on me, so I was immediately terrified,” she said.

Fortunately, a couple welcomed her into their home until her brother was able to come pick her up.

“That was a crazy feeling,” she said. “For people like me, who look like me, you don’t even want to leave your house because you’re scared ICE is going to take you.”

Watso said she wants to share her story to raise awareness to what’s really happening in Minneapolis, a place she moved to two years ago to be closer to her ancestral homelands.

“[I moved back] to reconnect to the land and my people and to live on this land,” she said. “So many people don’t get to live on their ancestral homelands in America, so I felt like it was important to do that.”

After hearing about charges pressed against Jose Ramirez, a Red Lake nation descendant who was detained by ICE the week prior, Watso was scared of the potential for the same thing to happen to her.

“I feel like it’s important to speak out about what happened to me,” she said.

Being surrounded by friends and family is helping her heal, she said. Leaning on prayer and medicine has helped to center her.

“I haven’t been to sweat yet but I’m planning on it,” she said. “I know that there’s definitely a lot to process, but at the same time I don’t want to. I don’t want to think about it.”

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