Indigenous

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.

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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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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/26019

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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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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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/25725

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.

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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.”

The post Dakota woman recounts more than 48 hours in immigration detainment appeared first on ICT.

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This story was originally published by Washington State Standard.

Henry Brannan
Washington State Standard

Federal energy regulators last Thursday greenlit a roughly $2 billion renewable energy megaproject on a Yakama Nation sacred site overlooking the Columbia River in Klickitat County.

The 40-year federal license requires the project to break ground within two years, although it still faces legal challenges, said Erik Steimle, who is leading the project for Rye Development. The new license is the final legal approval needed to move the project into construction, Steimle said.

The site is used for ceremonies as well as treaty-reserved fishing and root gathering, and has been a village location for the Yakama Nation since time immemorial, said Elaine Harvey, who is a conservation scientist and member of the Yakama’s Kamíłpa Band, which is from the area.

But if the Goldendale Energy Storage Project is built,  the hillside would become a giant hydropower generator  producing enough electricity to power 500,000 homes for 12 hours. It would work by dropping 2.3 billion gallons of water sitting in a man-made reservoir atop the bluff about 2,000 feet down a large tunnel drilled into the rock. After flowing through turbines, water would then be pumped back to the top reservoir to repeat the cycle.

The idea is to release water from the top when electricity is needed, then use wind and solar power to pump it back up at times when electricity from the notoriously unpredictable renewables is abundant. In short: It would be a giant battery.

The federal license ruling comes as the Pacific Northwest heads toward an energy crisis, with growing regional electricity consumption — especially from power-hungry data centers — blowing up old demand projections and threatening Washington and Oregon’s climate goals.

Celebrations, condemnations

“This is a landmark moment for the Pacific Northwest,” said Steimle in a press release. “With electricity demand and energy costs on the rise, this license represents a huge step toward a more reliable grid and affordable energy prices for the region.”

The license follows another win against Native nations and environmental groups last year, when the project earned a water-quality certification.

Construction on the nearly 700-acre project will take four to five years, according to Becky Brun, who is a consultant for the project.

Steimle said he expected construction to start in 2027. Underground tunneling machines will hollow out thousands of feet of tunnels to a diameter of 29 feet.

The project would be the first major pumped storage hydropower project in Washington, as well as the first new major U.S. pumped storage project in about 30 years, he said.

The company is currently working on two other pumped storage projects, including one in Oregon that won federal approval in 2019 but is only a little ahead of the Goldendale project, Brun said.

“There’s an urgent need for this type of energy storage,” Steimle told The Columbian, “and the Goldendale project will help Washington meet its clean energy goals with minimal environmental impact.”

The potential project’s harms to Yakama sacred sites were the subject of an award-winning 2024 documentary titled “These Sacred Hills.”

Yakama Tribal Council Chairman Gerald Lewis blasted the permit approval in a press release as “rewarding bad actors who have spent years finding loopholes to target a new wave of industrial development on top of Indigenous sites that have religious and legendary significance.”

“They know it’s wrong,” he added, “if a small Christian shrine sat on this site the decision-makers would understand what ‘sacred’ means.”

A state review of the project found it would have “significant and unavoidable adverse impacts” on the Nations’ historic sites and culturally important plants.

In addition to the Yakama, 17 tribal governments, the National Congress of American Indians and Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians all have come out against the project, according to Columbia Riverkeeper, which is currently fighting the project in state appeals court alongside the Yakama Nation.

History repeating

“The potential consequences, if this project does proceed, would include, No. 1, a total desecration of our sacred site, Pushpum,” Harvey said. “And it’s irreversible.”

Pushpum means “Mother of all roots,” a name bestowed on the area because it functions as a seed bank for almost three dozen different kinds of roots, flowers and shrubs.  Some can only be found there, according to Columbia Riverkeeper.

Because of Pushpum’s current use as a site for gathering, fishing and ceremonies, and because it contains archaeological sites, Harvey said the project put the Yakama Nation between a rock and a hard place: reveal a sacred site, opening it up to looting or keep the information secret but lose it all together.

Harvey’s family has been displaced by hydropower development twice.

First, The Dalles Dam flooded the Willa-wy-tis Band’s village in Maryhill in the 1950s. Then in the late 1960s, the Army Corps of Engineers removed Harvey’s family from lower Rock Creek Canyon as John Day Dam flooded the area, pushing them to Goldendale where Harvey lives today.

“We had to bear the burden of the hydro systems, we had to be removed from our village site along the Columbia River. My grandmothers and grandfathers were pretty much just told to leave, and they were left homeless,” Harvey said. “That’s the type of tragedies that our people have endured for ‘green energy.’ ”

Why there?

The area is part of about 12 million acres ceded to the U.S. in an 1855 treaty that enshrined ongoing fishing, hunting and gathering rights at traditional sites like Pushpum into U.S. law.

Critics have long asked why 40 years of hydropower is worth destroying a sacred site in an area with some of the oldest and most well-documented Native history in North America. Nearby Celilo Falls, for example, was the longest continually inhabited site in North America before it was drowned by The Dalles Dam hydropower project.

Steimle said the company understands the importance of protecting Native cultural sites and has moved some components of the project around the site to address concerns.

“We do not propose projects on lands where we’re not invited to do so,” Steimle said. “This piece of private land that’s been industrialized for quite some time is owned by a landowner who has requested this type of development.”

The bottom half of the site was an aluminum smelter until regional power prices jumped in 2003.

“There are very specific things that are required for this type of site: geology, geography, a sustainable source of water,” Steimle said.

In this case, local and state officials have targeted the site for redevelopment, he said.

Simone Anter, a senior staff attorney at Columbia Riverkeeper, said project opponents still have 30 days from when regulators published the license to challenge it — a process that could lead to more legal battles.

And Harvey has no plans to give up on the prized home of early-season Indian celery, which is an important part of longhouse ceremonies.

“That’s why it attracts people of different longhouses to come and gather,” she said. “We still dig Indian celery there — we’ll be there next month, in February, digging it.”

Henry Brannan, reporting for The Columbian in Vancouver, is with the Washington State Murrow Fellowships, a local news program supported by the state.

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Two Human Rights Watch employees—the group's entire Israel-Palestine team—resigned after senior staffers blocked a report calling Israel's denial of Palestinian refugees' right of return to their homeland a crime against humanity.

Jewish Currents' Alex Kane reported Tuesday that HRW Israel-Palestine team lead Omar Shakir and assistant researcher Milena Ansari are stepping down over leadership's decision to nix the report, which was scheduled for release on December 4. Shakir wrote in his resignation email that one senior HRW leader informed him that calling Israel's denial of Palestinian right of return would be seen as a call to “demographically extinguish the Jewishness of the Israeli state.”

“I have lost my faith in the integrity of how we do our work and our commitment to principled reporting on the facts and application of the law,” Shakir—who is also member of Jewish Currents' advisory board—wrote in his resignation letter. “As such, I am no longer able to represent or work for Human Rights Watch.”

In an interview published Tuesday by Drop Site News, Shakir—who was deported from Israel in 2019 over his advocacy of Palestinian rights—said: “I’ve given every bit of myself to the work for a decade. I’ve defended the work in very, very difficult circumstances... The refugees I interviewed deserve to know why their stories aren’t being told."

Ansari said that "whatever justification" HRW leadership "had for pausing the report is not based on the law or facts."

The resignations underscored tensions among HRW staffers over how to navigate a potential political minefield while conducting legal analysis and reporting of Israeli policies and practices in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.

As Kane reported:

The resignations have roiled one of the most prominent human rights groups in the world just as HRW’s new executive director, Philippe Bolopion, begins his tenure. In a statement, HRW said that the report “raised complex and consequential issues. In our review process, we concluded that aspects of the research and the factual basis for our legal conclusions needed to be strengthened to meet Human Rights Watch’s high standards.” They said that “the publication of the report was paused pending further analysis and research,” and that the process was “ongoing.”

Kenneth Roth, a longtime former HRW executive director, defended the group's decision to block the report, asserting on social media that Bolopion "was right to suspend a report using a novel and unsupported legal theory to contend that denying the right to return to a locale is a crime against humanity."

However, Shakir countered that HRW "found in 2023 denial of a return to amount to a crime against humanity in Chagos."

"This is based on [International Criminal Court] precedent," he added. "Other reports echoed the analysis. Are you calling on HRW to retract a report for its first time ever, or it just different rules for Palestine?"

Polis Project founder Suchitra Vijayan said on X Tuesday that "the decision by Human Rights Watch’s leadership to pull a report on the right of return for Palestinian refugees, after it had cleared internal review, legal sign-off, and publication preparation, demands public reckoning."

"This was not a draft in dispute and the explanation offered so far evades the central issue of 'institutional independence' in the face of political pressure," added Vijayan, who is also a professor at Columbia and New York universities. "Why was the report stopped, and what does this decision signals for the future of its work and credibility on Palestine?"

Offering "solidarity to Omar and Milena" on social media, Medical Aid for Palestinians director of advocacy and campaigns Rohan Talbot said that "Palestinian rights are yet again exceptionalized, their suffering trivialized, and their pursuit of justice forestalled by people who care more about reputation and expediency than law and justice."

Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW's former Middle East and North Africa director and currently executive director at Democracy for the Arab World Now, told Drop Site News on Tuesday that “We have once again run into Human Rights Watch’s systemic ‘Israel Exception,’ with work critical of Israel subjected to exceptional review and arbitrary processes that no other country work faces."

The modern state of Israel was established in 1948 largely through a more than decadelong campaign of terrorism against both the British occupiers of Palestine and Palestinian Arabs and the ethnic cleansing of the latter. More than 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homeland, sometimes via massacres or the threat thereof, in what Arabs call the Nakba, or catastrophe.

More than 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed or abandoned, and their denizens—some of whom still hold the keys to their stolen homes—have yet to return. Today, they and their descendants number more than 7 million, all of whom have been denied the right of return affirmed in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194.

Many Palestinians and experts around the world argue that the Nakba never ended—a position that has gained attention over the past 28 months, as Israel has faced mounting allegations of genocide for a war that's left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing in the coastal strip and around 2 million people forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.

Bolopion told Kane Tuesday that the controversy over the blocked report is “a genuine and good-faith disagreement among colleagues on complex legal and advocacy questions."

“HRW remains committed to the right of return for all Palestinians, as has been our policy for many years," he added.

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A Palestinian church committee is calling for international assistance to safeguard Christians and their churches against attacks from illegal Israeli settlers.

A Palestinian church committee has warned that assaults by illegal Israeli settlers threaten the long-standing Christian community in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, calling on churches globally to take immediate and visible steps to safeguard Palestinian civilians, including Christians.

In a letter to churches around the world, the Palestinian Presidential Higher Committee for Church Affairs said attacks by Israeli settlers have surged in various neighborhoods of the West Bank.

It noted that the attacks have targeted towns and villages like Birzeit, Taybeh, and Ein Arik in the Ramallah and al-Bireh governorates, as well as al-Makhrour and Ash Ghurab areas in Bethlehem governorate.

According to the committee, the types of attacks include arrests, physical assaults, land confiscations, and the growth of settlement outposts.

It characterized the assaults as part of a deliberate policy designed to change both the demographic and geographic makeup of the region, with the goal of forcibly displacing the local population.

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The reopening of the crossing for the first time in almost two years comes hours after over 30 Palestinians were killed in brutal strikes across Gaza

Southern Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt was reopened on 1 February from both sides for the first time in over a year and a half, under strict restrictions imposed by Tel Aviv.

The exit and entry of Palestinians via the crossing will begin on 2 February, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) announced on Sunday.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24396

Iran says the crimes committed against Palestinians are being carried out with the “support and complicity of the United States and certain European allies.”

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Graham Lee Brewer, Savannah Peters and Stewart HuntingtonAssociated Press + ICT

MINNEAPOLIS — When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flooded Minneapolis, Shane Mantz dug his Choctaw Nation citizenship card out of a box on his dresser and slid it into his wallet.

Some strangers mistake the pest-control company manager for Latino, he said, and he fears getting caught up in ICE raids.

Like Mantz, many Native Americans are carrying tribal documents proving their U.S. citizenship in case they are stopped or questioned by federal immigration agents. This is why dozens of the 575 federally recognized Native nations are making it easier to get tribal IDs. They’re waiving fees, lowering the age of eligibility — ranging from 5 to 18 nationwide — and printing the cards faster.

It’s the first time tribal IDs have been widely used as proof of U.S. citizenship and protection against federal law enforcement, said David Wilkins, an expert on Native politics and governance at the University of Richmond.

“I don’t think there’s anything historically comparable,” Wilkins said. “I find it terribly frustrating and disheartening.”

As Native Americans around the country rush to secure documents proving their right to live in the United States, many see a bitter irony.

“As the first people of this land, there’s no reason why Native Americans should have their citizenship questioned,” said Jaqueline De León, a senior staff attorney with the nonprofit Native American Rights Fund and member of Isleta Pueblo.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to more than four requests for comment over a week.

Native identity in a new age of fear

Since the mid- to late 1800s, the U.S. government has kept detailed genealogical records to estimate Native Americans’ fraction of “Indian blood” and determine their eligibility for health care, housing, education and other services owed under federal legal responsibilities. Those records were also used to aid federal assimilation efforts and chip away at tribal sovereignty, communal lands and identity.

Beginning in the late 1960s, many tribal nations began issuing their own forms of identification. In the last two decades, tribal photo ID cards have become commonplace and can be used to vote in tribal elections, to prove U.S. work eligibility and for domestic air travel.

About 70 percent of Native Americans today live in urban areas, including tens of thousands in the Twin Cities, one of the largest urban Native populations in the country.

There, in early January, a top ICE official announced the “largest immigration operation ever.”

Masked, heavily armed agents traveling in convoys of unmarked SUVs became commonplace in some neighborhoods. By this week, more than 3,400 people had been arrested, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At least 2,000 ICE officers and 1,000 Border Patrol officers were on the ground.

Representatives from at least 10 tribes traveled hundreds of miles to Minneapolis — the birthplace of the American Indian Movement — to accept ID applications from members there. Among them were the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Ojibwe of Wisconsin, the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate of South Dakota and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa of North Dakota.

Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Chairman Jamie Azure speaks about an effort for tribal citizens to get tribal IDs at a pop-up event in Minneapolis on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. (Stewart Huntington/ICT via AP)

Turtle Mountain citizen Faron Houle renewed his tribal ID card and got his young adult son’s and his daughter’s first ones.

“You just get nervous,” Houle said. “I think (ICE agents are) more or less racial profiling people, including me.”

Events in downtown coffee shops, hotel ballrooms, and at the Minneapolis American Indian Center helped urban tribal citizens connect and share resources, said Christine Yellow Bird, who directs the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation’s satellite office in Fargo, North Dakota.

Yellow Bird made four trips to Minneapolis in recent weeks, putting nearly 2,000 miles on her 2017 Chevy Tahoe to help citizens in the Twin Cities who can’t make the long journey to their reservation.

Yellow Bird said she always keeps her tribal ID with her.

“I’m proud of who I am,” she said. “I never thought I would have to carry it for my own safety.”

Some Native Americans say ICE is harassing them

Last year, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said that several tribal citizens reported being stopped and detained by ICE officers in Arizona and New Mexico. He and other tribal leaders have advised citizens to carry tribal IDs with them at all times.

Last November, Elaine Miles, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon and an actress known for her roles in “Northern Exposure” and “The Last of Us,” said she was stopped by ICE officers in Washington state who told her that her tribal ID looked fake.

The Oglala Sioux Tribe this week banned ICE from its reservation in southwestern South Dakota and northwestern Nebraska, one of the largest in the country.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North and South Dakota said a member was detained in Minnesota last weekend. And Peter Yazzie, who is Navajo, said he was arrested and held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Phoenix for several hours last week.

Yazzie, a construction worker from nearby Chinle, Arizona, said he was sitting in his car at a gas station preparing for a day of work when he saw ICE officers arrest some Latino men. The officers soon turned their attention to Yazzie, pushed him to the ground, and searched his vehicle, he said.

He said he told them where to find his driver’s license, birth certificate, and a federal Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood. Yazzie said the car he was in is registered to his mother. Officers said the names didn’t match, he said, and he was arrested, taken to a nearby detention center and held for about four hours.

“It’s an ugly feeling. It makes you feel less human. To know that people see your features and think so little of you,” he said.

DHS did not respond to questions about the arrest.

Mantz, the Choctaw Nation citizen, said he runs pest-control operations in Minneapolis neighborhoods where ICE agents are active and he won’t leave home without his tribal identification documents.

Securing them for his children is now a priority.

“It gives me some peace of mind. But at the same time, why do we have to carry these documents?” Mantz said. “Who are you to ask us to prove who we are?”

Brewer reported from Oklahoma City and Peters from Edgewood, New Mexico.

The post Fearing ICE, Native Americans rush to prove their right to belong in the US appeared first on ICT.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24066

Charlene Belleau, right, is pictured at an Esk’etemc celebration in 2024. Photo by Julie Elizabeth Photography

Former Esk’etemc Kúkwpi7 Charlene Belleau (Eaglestar Woman) has been recognized with an award for her work to support healing and justice for residential “school” survivors and their families.

The Elder was among seven people honoured with a British Columbia Reconciliation Award at the Government House in lək̓ʷəŋən territories on Thursday evening.

The award — presented by the Office of the Lieutenant Governor and BC Achievement Foundation — recognizes individuals, groups and organizations who demonstrate their commitment to reconciliation.

At the presentation ceremony, this year’s recipients were welcomed in behind lək̓ʷəŋən dancers as the Government House was rearranged to resemble a longhouse.

Jerymy Brownridge, executive director of Government House, acknowledged Belleau’s embodiment of “truth, courage, care” as she’s been dedicated to advancing healing and justice for survivors of residential “schools,” families and many communities across the province.

He commended her time as a First Nations liaison with the government where she ensured communities were met with respect, provided resources and allowed for accountability through her work.

Brownridge also recognized the importance of Belleau’s involvement with the groundbreaking documentary Sugarcane and the decades of leadership she has displayed through her time in her community and Indigenous healthcare spaces.

“Tonight we honour a leader whose integrity and lived experience continue to light the path forward on reconciliation,” Brownridge announced.

Belleau has been committed to helping communities through her time as a leader of her community and later as an investigator for the St. Joseph’s Mission — a residential “school” that operated near Williams Lake — which the Elder attended for four years.

“​​A residential school survivor herself, Charlene has been a leading voice in addressing the intergenerational impacts of colonial institutions,” says the award website.

“She has supported communities in collecting and protecting oral histories, accessing historical records, and creating safe spaces where survivors can share their truths with dignity and care.”

She was heavily involved in the Sugarcane documentary, through her work as an investigator and with firsthand experience at the “school,” using her knowledge to continue leading and helping others learn the truth.

In a past interview with IndigiNews, Belleau mentioned how it wasn’t until the documentary that her family became aware of how difficult her work was with the residential “schools,” but she remained committed to helping others and ensuring people continue to grow through their experiences.

“I’ve said before that I want our people to know that because of our resilience, that we’re stronger for what we’ve been through,” she said.

A lifelong advocate

Belleau accepts her award on Jan. 29. Screengrab via livestream

Belleau is described on the award website as a “lifelong advocate for truth, justice, and healing.”

She was appointed as a First Nations liaison in 2021 by then-Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Murray Rankin. In this role, she is described as having provided “critical guidance to the Province of British Columbia in its response to findings at former Indian Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals.”

Serving as a liaison, Belleau maintained communication between Indigenous communities and the government to “ensure that communities receive the resources, respect, and support needed to pursue truth, healing, and accountability.”

Belleau also held previous roles as chair of the First Nations Health Council which represents the five health regions in the province and as Provincial Indian Residential School Coordinator.

Through her roles, Belleau has created safe spaces for other survivors to come forward and share their own experiences at residential “schools” where she helped collect the oral stories and create records of firsthand accounts.

The supportive environment Belleau provides extends to her roles in health and wellness and community leadership as well.

Fellow recipients of the award were: Kevin Borserio (Luu G̱aahlandaay), Deanna Duncan (H̀búkvs λamalayu), Aboriginal Housing Management Association, Honouring Our Elders Legacy Project Coordinating Team and the syiyaya Reconciliation Movement and Dwight Ballantyne who was the recipient of the first Phyllis Webstad Emerging Leader award.

To commemorate their efforts, the recipients received a print of a canoe paddle designed by artist Stephanie Anderson who is a member of the Likhsilyu “Small Frog” clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. They were also gifted an intricately designed orange scarf by Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw artist Carey Newman (Hayalthkin’geme).

Nominations for the 2026 Reconciliation Awards are open until Feb. 15, 2026.

The post ‘Truth, courage, care’: Esk’etemc leader honoured with ‘B.C.’ reconciliation award appeared first on Indiginews.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24297

Ilana Newman
The Daily Yonder

Brandon Small’s pickup squeezes down a narrow dirt road lined with trees and bushes as we drive down the hillside towards the buffalo. We’re on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeastern Montana, a landscape full of yellow grasses and hillsides lined with small pine trees. Small runs the buffalo restoration program here on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation.

Here on the reservation, where food and energy sovereignty are inextricably linked, a new solar installation is helping the tribe become more self-sufficient.

Brandon Small drives across the Northern Cheyenne buffalo pasture near Lame Deer, Montana to fix some water troughs for the animals. He points out where buffalo look like tiny specks on the horizon. Photo by Ilana Newman/Daily Yonder.

The buffalo pasture we’re traversing is huge—15,244 acres, to be exact—and Small said they’re working on expanding even further. Small drove us out here from nearby Lame Deer, Montana, to check on the water infrastructure and give us a tour of the buffalo habitat and the brand new solar installation that will allow them to grow their buffalo operation.

The buffalo enclosure has no transmission lines crossing it, meaning there’s no way to get electricity out to the land unless the electricity is completely off the grid.

Last year, in partnership with Indigenized Energy, a native led nonprofit focused on energy sovereignty, the Northern Cheyenne buffalo program received a solar array that will allow Small to expand the herd and processing capacity of the facility. The 36kW solar array and 57.6kW battery was funded by the Honnold Foundation and Empowered By Light and constructed by Freedom Forever and Jinko Solar in collaboration with Indigenized Energy.

This 36 kW solar and 57.6 kW battery system was installed in 2025 by Freedom Forever in collaboration with Indigenized Energy with donations from Jinko Solar. It was funded by the Honnold Foundation. Photo by Ilana Newman/Daily Yonder.

Cody Two Bears, the founder of Indigenized Energy, sees energy sovereignty as inextricable from food sovereignty. “ We need energy sovereignty to flourish because that’s what’s gonna support all the other initiatives that are so important to tribal people moving forward,” Two Bears said in a Daily Yonder interview.

Tribal nations are supposed to be sovereign nations, self governing and independent from the United States government. But many factors, like broken treaties and stolen traditional homelands, have forced tribal communities into continued reliance on federal subsidies, impeding full sovereignty. But sovereignty is still the goal for every tribal nation. And asserting independence around how they manage their food, health, and energy are some main ways indigenous communities are reclaiming sovereignty.

The Importance of Buffalo

Buffalo are the keystone species of the northern plains, an animal who shape the prairie ecosystem, but they’ve been nearly extinct for a century. Now, tribes and researchers are proving that buffalo are the key to healthier ecosystems and food sovereignty for northern plains tribes like the Northern Cheyenne.

“Having bison on the landscape, especially at really large scales, is likely to increase sort of diversity of vegetation, conditions, and habitat and likely to increase biodiversity,” said Andy Boyce-Pero, a Great Plains researcher for the Smithsonian Institute.

Brandon Small wades through a buffalo water trough that he just performed maintenance on while he takes us on a tour of the Northern Cheyenne buffalo habitat. Photos by Ilana Newman/Daily Yonder.

Before Small started running the buffalo restoration program, he worked at the Rosebud Mine, a coal mine in Colstrip, Montana. The buffalo program has existed since the tribe was given a herd of buffalo in the 1970s, but those buffalo were left relatively unmanaged until Small got involved and created a new management plan.

When Covid-19 hit, Small started to think about how he could help. He saw the currently unmanaged buffalo—who were in the habit of breaking through their fences onto the highway—as a resource the tribe was neglecting, and an important piece of their journey towards self-sufficiency.

He started spending time out with the buffalo, fixing fences and supplying food, while he petitioned tribal council with a management plan for a buffalo program. “I spent a lot of time out there on my own, out of my own pocket,” said Small as we drove on a ridge overlooking the buffalo enclosure.

Brandon Small wades through a buffalo water trough that he just performed maintenance on while he takes us on a tour of the Northern Cheyenne buffalo habitat. Photos by Ilana Newman/Daily Yonder.

It’s obvious how much Small cares about the animals that we eventually find, munching on grass on either side—and in the middle of—the dirt road we are slowly driving along.

Small’s five year goal was to form a “tribal buffalo program that was self-sufficient, where I didn’t need any money from the tribe or federal government,” he said.

He said they’re currently on track with that goal, but it’s not cheap to take care of a herd of more than 300 buffalo. “This year we’re spending 32,000 [dollars] on hay alone,” said Small.

The solar array also brings the buffalo program closer to self-sufficiency. It currently powers a small bunkhouse with a mini split that, during our September visit, provided welcome relief from the hot sun, Starlink internet, and a freezer that holds processed bison meat. It also powers electric fences and gates to keep out intruders. Small said that they have had issues with poaching in the past.

The solar array allows for electricity and internet access on the remote landscape of the buffalo habitat which helps with processing the animals and allows for operations to grow over time. Photo by Ilana Newman/Daily Yonder.

In December 2025, the Northern Cheyenne buffalo solar array was named one of Solar Builder Magazine’s projects of the year, highlighting the remote location of the project and how it builds capacity and sustainability for the tribe’s buffalo program.

Eventually, Small wants to have a small processing facility onsite. The solar array was built to be expandable to grow with the program.

The buffalo are both a source of food and economic development for the tribe. In November 2025, Small and the buffalo program handed out 5,414 pounds of buffalo meat. But they also sell the animals to other buffalo ranchers. The first year, Small said they sold 103 animals for around $126,000 to a rancher in South Dakota.

The processed buffalo meat sits in a freezer that would be impossible without the solar array. Small and the buffalo restoration program donate the processed meat to the tribe in regular giveaways. Photo by Ilana Newman/Daily Yonder.

There is a fine line between running a successful business and providing for the community, said Small. “We wanted to do it in such a way that we could still get meat processed and donated out to the communities, but still have enough money to keep our operation going and keep growing and expanding.”

This solar array, as well as the buffalo program overall, helps the Northern Cheyenne tribe become more sovereign and self-sufficient in every way. “Energy policy is really health policy because of what energy extraction has continuously done to our water, our air, our land, and our animals,” said Two Bears.

The post The Northern Cheyenne Tribe reclaims sovereignty through solar energy and buffalo restoration appeared first on ICT.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24252

The latest strikes occurred far beyond the yellow line, targeting tent camps and residential buildings

A series of Israeli airstrikes killed at least 37 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on 31 January, with local reports indicating that most of the victims were children and women in attacks that occurred well beyond the so-called yellow line.

Among those killed were seven members of one family who were sheltering in a tent for displaced people in the Asdaa area northwest of Khan Yunis, while other strikes hit residential apartments in Gaza City and a displacement camp in Al-Mawasi, Khan Yunis.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23723

Amelia Schafer
ICT

RAPID CITY, South Dakota – A three-day trial over whether or not NDN Collective founder and chief executive officer Nicholas Tilsen had committed aggravated assault against a law enforcement officer in 2022 resulted in a mistrial.

The 12-person jury was unable to come to a unanimous decision on Tilsen’s three charges after deliberating for nearly six hours Wednesday afternoon. At 8:20 p.m. Mountain Time, a spokesperson from the Pennington County States Attorney’s office reported a hung jury resulting in a mistrial.

The State of South Dakota will have to decide whether to dismiss the charges against Tilsen or retry the case.

The state will be discussing matters over the next few days and come to a decision, the spokesperson said.

“I’m grateful for everyone who stood with me through the latest iteration of this lengthy legal battle – the support of my family, lawyers, spiritual leaders, medicine people, and community means everything to me,” Tilsen stated in a news release. “The fight is not over.”

Tilsen was charged with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer and obstruction of law enforcement stemming from a 2022 incident in downtown Rapid City. The jury also had the option of finding Tilsen guilty of simple assault, rather than aggravated, if they felt his vehicle did not constitute a deadly weapon.

Tilsen took the stand Wednesday morning to recount his side of the story in a trial that has drawn dozens of elders and community members to the courthouse from across South Dakota and neighboring states.

Tilsen said that on June 11, 2022, he was driving back to NDN Collective headquarters where he was staying overnight following his son’s birthday party on the west side of Rapid City. At the time, Tilsen was living over an hour away on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

While driving down St. Joseph’s Street in downtown Rapid City, Tilsen testified that he saw a police officer speaking with a Native American man whom Tilsen said appeared to be homeless. The officer, Nicholas Glass, was conversing with the man at the intersection of St. Joseph’s and Seventh Street on the west side of the Rushmore Pawn building.

Tilsen, who said he intended to monitor Glass’s interaction with the man, circled the block until he drove northbound on Seventh Street, approaching a vacant parking space where the two men were speaking. Glass was standing inside or near the furthest left parking spot on the row and the Native man was standing on the curb, leaning on a parking meter, Tilsen told jurors.

Supporters of Nick Tilsen gather at NDN Collective Headquarters in Rapid City on Jan. 26 for a prayer circle following the first day of his criminal assault trial. Credit: Courtesy of NDN Collective

Tilsen, who said he was unable to see where the officer was standing as his view was blocked by several parked vehicles, began to turn right into the parking spot. Not fully in the spot, Tilsen applied his vehicle’s brakes.

Glass, who had his back turned toward the street facing the pawn shop and the Native man, said he did not know Tilsen was behind him until he heard his engine rev, Glass testified Tuesday.

The Native man can be heard in Glass’s body camera video saying “Look out, you’re gonna get hit by a truck.”

Glass turned to face Tilsen for a second before turning back toward the man.

“I’m not moving,” Glass said in the recording played for the courtroom several times throughout the trial.

Tilsen said he took Glass’s lack of reaction as an indication that it was okay for him to continue to pull into the parking spot.

The video showed that after Glass turned away from Tilsen, Tilsen’s vehicle can be seen abruptly jolting forward slightly to the right of Glass, stopping within one to two feet of his body. While surveillance and body-cam footage showed Tilsen’s vehicle tires pointed right, away from the officer, the state argued that as the charge wasn’t attempted assault but rather the intention of instilling fear, and that it didn’t matter which direction he was moving.

Tilsen testified on Wednesday that he was “surprised” by how his truck, a 2016 Dodge Ram Rebel, abruptly jolted forward.

“It had a little more juice than I expected,” he said.

The lurching/accelerating aspect of the incident was indicated by the state as being the grounds for Tilsen’s assault charge.

Afterwards, Glass radioed for backup and said that he had Tilsen at the scene. Within seconds, several officers arrived on scene, all of whom testified throughout the trial as to what they had seen.

“I thought I was going to die,” Glass testified Tuesday.

The officers testified that Tilsen was let go from the scene that night so as not to cause a scene as a small crowd had begun to gather. Tilsen had refused to exit his truck when law enforcement requested him to, saying he was afraid for his life.

“I felt alarmed,” Tilsen said. “I was surrounded by three officers who were all armed. I was definitely in fear of what could happen. We hear a lot of things in our community [about police violence].”

The state said that the jury could find his refusal to exit his vehicle as grounds for the obstruction charge.

Under South Dakota law, attempting to put an officer in fear of bodily injury can be charged as assault. The aggravated assault charge hinged on whether or not the jury felt Tilsen’s vehicle constituted a deadly weapon. If the jury found that his vehicle did not constitute a deadly weapon, but found that Tilsen had intentionally put the officer in fear of bodily injury regardless, he could be found guilty of simple assault.

Both Tilsen and Glass’s character, truthfulness and overall recollection of the incident were called into question during cross-examination.

During Glass’s testimony, defense attorneys questioned why he stopped the Native man in the first place. Glass had previously testified under oath during a June 2025 evidentiary hearing that the man was jaywalking and “darting in and out of traffic” on Seventh Street, during which he was nearly hit by a vehicle.

The defense, however, pointed out that a surveillance video from the Rushmore Pawn shop showed the man crossing the street within the crosswalk when it was safe to do so. Defense pointed to the incident as giving credit to Tilsen’s claim that he feared the man  was being harassed by law enforcement.

Defense also questioned why Glass was seen telling the responding officers that he had to “jump out of the way” of Tilsen’s vehicle, when surveillance footage does not indicate he moved at all prior to walking in front of Tilsen’s vehicle to document the license plate.

Lakota grandmothers and aunties gather outside of the courtroom prior to the first day of Nick Tilsen’s criminal assault trial in Rapid City on Jan. 26. Tilsen was charged with aggravated assault against a law enforcement officer stemming from an incident in 2022. Credit: Courtesy of NDN Collective

During Tilsen’s cross-examination, the state questioned his feelings regarding law enforcement and why he told responding officers at the scene that he witnessed Glass harassing the Native man when he had not.

Olivia Siglin, prosecutor and senior deputy states attorney for the Pennington County State’s Attorney’s Office, questioned Tilsen on his fundraising efforts relating to his legal battle with the state and recent appearance on NDN Collective’s “LANDBACK For the People” podcast in which he told a different account of the incident than the one he had provided in his testimony.

The podcast, which was played for the jury, depicts Tilsen stating in the podcast that he had a conversation with Glass and had directly witnessed him harassing the man. Siglin then questioned Tilsen on why he told a different story in his testimony, to which Tilsen responded that he and Glass had exchanged words and perhaps he misspoke when he said he directly witnessed harassment.

Tilsen also said the podcast was recorded two weeks ago before he was able to review surveillance footage.

During closing arguments Wednesday afternoon, Siglin accused Tilsen of painting a false narrative about the incident in order to garner sympathy and donations from the community and “save face.” Siglin showed the jury NDN Collective’s legal fund website, referencing the first two sentences of Tilsen’s legal fund call to action.

The website claims that Tilsen had witnessed the Native man being harassed and assaulted by Rapid City Police Department, prompting Tilsen to pull over and watch. Tilsen said that he himself did not write the statement.

“He knew the truth wouldn’t earn him sympathies or donations, so he rewrote it,” Siglin said during closing arguments. “What were his motivations in making that statement?”

John Murphy, one of Tilsen’s attorneys, said during closing statements that a majority of the state’s argument hinged on Glass’s feelings during the incident rather than the actual facts. Murphy said this lack of facts prompted the addition of the state’s simple assault charge on Jan. 7.

“This case is about facts, not feelings,” he said. “That’s the cold hard truth, that’s the reality.”

Murphy argued that the state had not provided sufficient evidence of Tilsen’s actual intent or that he had purposely threatened or instilled fear in Glass.

“As you saw repeatedly from the videos… Officer Glass did not move an inch to avoid being hit,” he said. “Why not? Because my client had turned the steering wheel steeply to the right.”

As the incident occurred nearly four years ago, both said their memories of the night’s events were not perfect. Both also commented that the footage presented in court was not a full depiction of the events, particularly the pawn shop footage.

The pawn shop video, taken at a downward angle, was difficult for numerous witnesses to decipher when asked to do so by attorneys.

One witness, Michael Dvoryak, a bystander who witnessed the incident, couldn’t point himself out in the footage until he saw someone moving toward Tilsen’s truck and yelling, at which point Dvoryak said, “Well, that must be me.”

Dvoryak testified he had just exited a bar downtown and was walking home when he witnessed the incident, prompting him to run over to Tilsen’s truck and “intervene.”

The Native man at the center of the dispute was not present for the trial. The Pennington County State’s Attorney’s Office did subpoena him but were unable to locate him, a spokesperson told ICT.

After the interaction, Glass testified that the man was taken to a detox facility. A video of the man being taken into the facility by Glass was entered as evidence but ultimately barred from being presented to the jury.

The post NDN Collective founder’s trial ends with hung jury, judge declares mistrial appeared first on ICT.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23713

Israeli army violence against Palestinians continues unabated, as official data shows over 99 percent of the military’s crimes go unindicted

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced from the West Bank city of Tulkarem alone over the past year, authorities in the occupied territory said, as army and settler violence continue unabated.

Tulkarem Deputy Governor Faisal Salameh confirmed that the ongoing “aggression” for over a year has forced around 25,000 Palestinians to become displaced from the Tulkarem and Nour Shams refugee camps. They were compelled to leave their homes due to raids, the destruction of infrastructure, and the near-total closure of both camps.

Salameh explained that the first wave of displacement forced thousands of families to seek shelter in schools, mosques, hospitals, and charity offices, before stretching into a prolonged crisis.

The Israeli military has been occupying multiple West Bank refugee camps since January 2025, when it launched a massive operation in the territory beginning in the city of Jenin.

Since then, it has been carrying out a systematic campaign of destruction and displacement.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23777

Journalists Rafaela Cortez and Ricardo Esteves Ribeiro embedded with Palestinians during the 2025 West Bank olive harvest. They witnessed terrible violence and oppression, including the killing of a 13-year-old boy, but also inspiring resistance.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23072

Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposal to revise the Clean Water Act, specifically a section of the law that regulates water quality and limits states’ and tribes’ authority over federal projects, as well as how tribes can gain the authority to conduct those reviews. Experts say the move would dissolve one of the few tools tribes have to enforce treaty rights and hamper their ability to protect tribal citizens.

“What the Trump administration is proposing to modify here is a really important tool for states and tribes, because it gets at their ability to put conditions on or, in extreme cases, block projects that are either proposed by the federal government or under the jurisdiction of the federal government,” said Miles Johnson, legal director at Columbia Riverkeeper, an organization that works on issues affecting the Columbia River.

Developers seeking to build dams, mines, data centers, or pipelines must navigate a permitting process to do so. One requirement in the process is obtaining certification from a tribe or state confirming that the project meets federal water quality standards. Currently, tribes and states conduct holistic reviews of projects, known as “activity as a whole”, evaluating all potential impacts on water quality, including spill risks, threats to cultural resources, and impacts on wildlife. This approach was established under the Biden administration in 2023.

However, the newly proposed rule would limit reviews to “discharge only,” where both states and tribes are able to review projects solely based on how much pollution they would release, narrowing the scope of oversight.

The proposed rule also changes how tribes can gain regulatory authority to assess water quality under the Treatment in a Similar Manner as a State program, or TAS. Under that program, tribes are able to act as regulators, one of the few tools available to them, and directly set conditions to limit factors that would pollute waters near tribal lands. To date, only 84 tribal nations have received TAS status, allowing them to review federal projects. Currently, Section 401 of the Clean Water Act allows tribes that can demonstrate the capacity and resources the ability to review water quality standards, expanding regulatory powers beyond tribes with larger resources. The proposed change would shrink those powers, allowing only TAS tribes to perform evaluations through a separate, more rigorous authorization program.

“Treaty rights are one of the strongest mechanisms to enforce against the federal government, against the state, against third-party actors, and in litigation,” said Heather Tanana, a law professor at the University of Colorado. “It takes years, it takes money, it’s complicated to do, and so you want these other mechanisms.”

A reversion to pre-2023 rules, Tanana said, would put higher demands on tribes to show larger-scale capacity, often in the form of dedicated water departments.

“There’s such a wide variance in tribes of what resources are available to them. Do they have other sources of revenue, right? How many staff do they have? Do they have their own environmental departments? Is it one person, or is it 10?” said Tanana.

During the Biden administration, tribes advocated for a baseline rule allowing all tribes some input in federal projects while seeking TAS status, but industry pushback during the comment period and a Trump win during the general election in 2024 led to its withdrawal from the EPA in December.

Patrick Hunter, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, noted that of 7,500 projects submitted during the Biden administration, fewer than 1 percent were denied. Most were approved with conditions such as mitigation measures and sediment traps to prevent water pollution during construction. Tanana said tribal review outcomes were similar.

The EPA’s 2025 report on tribal consultations highlighted widespread opposition to changes. “The clear feedback from the tribes was, ‘Don’t change it,'” said Tanana. “‘You’re going to make it harder for us to exercise our sovereignty to protect our waters and protect our community.’”

A 30-day public comment period on the proposed rule is currently underway. The rule is expected to face litigation after finalization.

“Tribes have an obligation to care for the rivers and waterways that have sustained their communities since before the existence of the United States and are weighing every option to protect their way of life,” said Gussie Lord, head of tribal partnerships at Earthjustice.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The EPA wants to eliminate one of the few ways that tribes can protect their water on Jan 27, 2026.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23628

Lyric Aquino
Underscore Native News + Report for America

Indigenous stories are more than myths — they’re lessons informed by traditional knowledge and historical accounts according to research from Roger Amerman and Ellen Morris Bishop, in the newest exhibit at the Oregon Museum of Technology and Industry.

“Heads and Hearts: Seeing the Landscape Through Nez Perce Eyes” invites visitors to view history in the Pacific Northwest through a Nimiipuu, or Nez Perce, lense. Running through Feb. 16, the exhibit uses stories from Nimiipuu to explore ancient geological events, like the eruption of Mount Mazama (leading to the creation of Crater Lake), as well as ice age floods, earthquakes, and landslides.

“You have these stories that are oftentimes sort of morally and ethically important, but they’re also geologically important,” Morris Bishop, a consulting geologist for the exhibit, said.

Ethnogeologist Roger Amerman, Choctaw Nation citizen (left), and geologist Ellen Morris Bishop (right) stand in front of panels from the exhibit they consulted on “Heads & Hearts: Seeing the Landscape through Nez Perce Eyes.” Amerman said he hopes presenting research with Morris Bishop will inspire other to conduct ethnogeology research across the world.
(Photo by Lyric Aquino, Underscore Native News + Report for America)

For nearly two years Amerman, a Choctaw Nation citizen and ethnogeologist, and Morris Bishop, gathered legends from the Nimiipuu storytellers and used them to further understand geological events they’ve studied in Western science.

Traditional geology consists of the study of minerals and rocks and the structure of the Earth’s surface to understand its history and composition. According to Amerman, both geologists practiced ethnogeology, or the Indigenous understanding of landscape for geologic history processes and materials, during their researching process. Meaning, they used historical insights from various tribes, particularly the Nez Perce, to understand the ancient history of geological events.

Including the voices of tribal leaders and storytellers was important to Amerman and Morris Bishop. With permission, they spent time filming traditional stories from the Nez Perce for the exhibit and sharing their research with the tribe.

Nez Perce knowledge holders were taken on a trip up through Snake River and Hell’s Canyon while they shared their stories. According to Morris Bishop, for many of them it was their first time in the heart of their homeland.

“It was important to us to basically tell the story of how these people who lived here for probably 20,000 years understood their landscape, and had witnessed and understood a lot of geologic events, like earthquakes, Ice Age, floods and many landslides, and how those were captured in their stories,” she said.

A petroglyph in the “Heads & Hearts: Seeing the Landscape through Nez Perce Eyes” exhibit. The petroglyph depicts a good productive location to hunt bighorn sheep. (Photo by Lyric Aquino, Underscore Native News + Report for America)

In one of the stories an elder provided anecdotal evidence of historic floods coming through Hell’s Canyon around 16,000 to 14,000 years ago and what the tribe did to seek refuge during the disaster. The legend states the Nez Perce climbed to the top of Steptoe Butte and shared the area with wildlife including cougars, bears, otters and raccoons who were seeking shelter from the flood.

But for Morris-Bishop and Amerman, these details gave them important insight into how far and high floodwaters extended. While these stories, which they call “mythical truths,” incorporate both truthful and fictional elements, Morris Bishop said the stories needed characters to make them memorable to withstand time.

“You need to be able to tell people about these floods, but you need characters in a story,” she said. “So it’s better if you have the mythical old man who climbs to the top of a rock in order to fish when there’s a big flood.”

Petroglyphs sit in front of panels filled with details about the eruption of Mount Mazama, an ancient earthquake and ice age flooding from Ethnogeologist Roger Amerman, Choctaw Nation citizen, and geologist Ellen Bishop in the “Heads & Hearts: Seeing the Landscape through Nez Perce Eyes.” (Photo by Lyric Aquino, Underscore Native News + Report for America)

One legend that stuck with Amerman was about the creation of Crater Lake.

Over 7,700 years ago Mount Mazama erupted and coated the Pacific Northwest in white-hued ash. Indigenous coastal tribes in the area witnessed the eruption and surrounding tribes who didn’t, felt the long-lasting effects.

During their research, Ammerman said a storyteller described the tribe being completely inundated with volcanic ash for days or perhaps months which affected the plants and their day to day lives. The ash from the volcanic winter was then collected and used as decoration in the hair of Nez Perce leaders to signify status and power.

Morris Bishop said details from the Klamath tribe’s recounting of the eruption of Mount Mazama provided details that well-known geologist Charlie Bacon had no evidence of. In the Klamath tribe’s story, there was an earthquake before the eruption. But in original research of Crater Lake there was no evidence of an earthquake before eruption. However, once a LIDAR machine, which uses lasers to create highly accurate 3D maps and models of surfaces, was used, a fault scarp North of Crater Lake was found dating back to around the time of the eruption indicating that an earthquake did take place.

White volcanic ash from the 6,000 year-old eruption of Mt. Mazama in Western Oregon. (Photo by Lyric Aquino, Underscore Native News + Report for America) Credit: Brooke Morgan, curator of anthropology at the Illinois State Museum, sits at her desk at the museum in Springfield, Illinois on Aug. 18, 2023. Illinois officials and Native Americans whose ancestors called the state home hope a new state law will speed the recovery and reburial of their ancestors’ remains that were unearthed over the past two centuries. (Photo by Melissa Winder, AP)

As ethnogeology continues to make its way through the science community, Morris Bishop hopes to take the exhibit to other museums including the Museum of the American Indian.

Amerman said these mythical truths are “geology with a soul” and restore humanity to ancient Indigenous peoples. He encourages current geologists and upcoming ones to look at Indigenous knowledge as science and use ethnogeology to further research.

“It just gives our Native people our humanity. We’re the only ones who were here for over 17,000 years,” he said. “We have something to share and it can help you too.”

“Heads and Hearts: Seeing the Landscape through Nez Perce Eyes” will be open at OMSI through February 16 during regular operating hours, and is included with usual museum admission.

The post “Geology with a soul:” New OMSI exhibit highlights Indigenous storytelling and geology appeared first on ICT.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23466

Since President Donald Trump declared that “the war in Gaza is over” on October 3, 2025, US news outlets’ interest in the occupied territory has plummeted. In a FAIR search of US-related news sites using Media Cloud, a news media database, coverage of Gaza post-ceasefire agreement averaged just 1.5% of the news hole—significantly less than the level of coverage before the agreement.

From July 2 through October 1, 2025, mentions of Gaza appeared in 2.3% of news stories in Media Cloud’s US–National dataset, which indexes 248 online outlets. Starting October 2, the day before the ceasefire agreement, coverage in the next three weeks jumped to an average of 4.5%. For the following three months (October 23–January 22), that average dropped to 1.5%. That’s less than two-thirds the level of coverage it received prior to the agreement.

It’s also the lowest three-month average at any point since the current crisis began on October 7, 2023.

Weekly online news articles mentioning “Gaza,” January 2024–January 2026

Source: Media Cloud.org

As FAIR (10/21/25, 12/18/25) has pointed out—along with many others—Israel did not cease firing after signing the ceasefire agreement. It has killed more than 480 Palestinians since then, including more than 100 children. (Israel claims three of its soldiers have been killed since the agreement—Washington Post, 1/8/26.)

And despite the agreement—and multiple binding orders from the International Court of Justice—Israel has kept in place the near-total blockade of Gaza that perpetuates the genocide (Amnesty International, 12/17/25; UNRWA, 1/21/26).

Israel has treated the line it committed to withdraw to in the agreement—the so-called Yellow Line—as a license to kill Palestinians who cross it, thereby ethnically cleansing more than half of Gaza (Al Jazeera, 1/26/26). Israel has begun treating the line as a new permanent border (Drop Site, 1/23/26).

Gaza is at least as newsworthy as it was before the ceasefire deal was signed. The general US media decision to back off covering an ongoing genocide, apparently because Donald Trump declared the conflict over, is both cowardly and complicit.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23112

An analysis of Gaza's civil registry by Al Jazeera detailed Monday how thousands of US-backed Israeli military's attacks on the exclave become stories not only of individual casualties but of "lineage, heritage, and identity disappearing in an instant"—with 2,700 families entirely wiped out since October 2023.

In 6,000 families, Hani Mahmoud reported from Gaza City, just "a single sole survivor" has been left behind.

Mahmoud reported on an attack that killed a recent high school graduate, whose family had lived in Khan Younis for generations, as well as his father, sister, and 22 members of his extended family.

"Sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins—so many branches gone," said Mahmoud.

Ismail Al-Thwabta of the Gaza Government Media Office told Al Jazeera that the erasure of more than 2,700 families accounts for more than 8,000 deaths. More than 71,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel began attacking the exclave in 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack, and hundreds have been killed since this past October when a "ceasefire" agreement was reached.

"Forty thousand families were targeted, which means more than four deaths in each family," Al-Thwabta told Al Jazeera.

Lebanese commentator Sarah Abdallah said the death toll of entire families exemplifies "the intent of genocide."

"This is not war," said Abdallah. "This is annihilation."

— (@)

Irish Palestinian rights advocate Daniel Lambert of the Bohemiam Football Club emphasized that thousands of families have been wiped out or left with just one surviving member with the enablement of the European Union, UK, and US.

Al Jazeera's report came days after Trump administration officials unveiled a "master plan" for a "New Gaza"—one including luxury apartments, data centers, and a "New Rafah" built over the rubble of the southern city that was razed by the Israel Defense Forces last year, forcing the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

Palestinian political analyst Nour Odeh also explained on Al Jazeera Monday how the thousands of babies born in Gaza since October 2023 have not been added to the Population Registry, which is controlled by Israel.

.@nour_odeh explains that if Israel opens the Rafah crossing to allow Palestinians to leave, the risk is they won't be allowed to return. Nour also points out that babies born in Gaza since 2023 haven't been registered so Israel doesn't recognise them & this has consequences too. pic.twitter.com/WPaWuiW8fF
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) January 26, 2026

"That leaves their legal status unresolved," repoted Drop Site News. "Without registration, it is unclear how these children would leave Gaza, under what documents, or whether Israel would allow them to return if they do."

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