Native Americans

Inside a 90-square-mile stretch of rural reservation between the eastern Jemez Mountains and the banks of the Rio Grande River sits the Santa Clara Pueblo Community Library, an anchor for the northern New Mexico tribe it serves.

Internet service across the Santa Clara Pueblo reservation is sparse, the tribe’s governor, James Naranjo, told NBC News, and resources to expand access to technology and literacy programs for its 1,700 members are already stretched thin.

A candidate who failed to win a Democratic National Committee leadership role is challenging her defeat — the first threat to DNC Vice Chair David Hogg since he vowed to keep backing some primary challenges to incumbents.

The DNC’s credentials committee will meet virtually on May 12 to consider the challenge from Kalyn Free, a Native American attorney and party activist who lost a vice chair spot to Hogg at the party’s Feb. 1 meeting.

President Trump has thrown his support behind a Long Island school district’s fight to keep its mascot after New York’s State Education Board banned the use of Native American-inspired names and logos.

“I agree with the people in Massapequa, Long Island, who are fighting furiously to keep the Massapequa Chiefs logo on their Teams and School,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Monday. “Forcing them to change the name, after all of these years, is ridiculous and, in actuality, an affront to our great Indian population...

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a show on Facebook of his meeting with American Indian and Alaska Native leaders last month, declaring himself “very inspired” and committed to improving the Indian Health Service, which he says has “always been treated as the redheaded stepchild” by his agency.

Now Native leaders have some questions for him.

Though tribes are exempt from taxes as sovereign nations, individuals within the tribe–as U.S. citizens–pay income taxes to the federal government. AllSides highlights content from Gigafact, a network of newsrooms that respond to online claims. View the full fact brief on Oklahoma Watch.

President Joe Biden has sparked outrage after commuting the sentence of Leonard Peltier in a last-minute move before leaving office Monday.

Peltier, 80, has spent nearly 50 years in prison after being convicted of the murder of two FBI agents on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975. He also escaped from federal prison in 1979 while serving his sentence for the two murders and had five years tacked onto his sentence.

Peltier, a prominent Native American activist before his arrest, has always proclaimed his innocence in the crime.

On Sept. 7, 1895, a group of 11 children and young adults from the Winnebago, Omaha and Cheyenne tribes arrived in the town of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. They had been sent on their 1,200-mile journey by Capt. W.H. Beck, an Indian agent who oversaw the Winnebago and Omaha tribes at a time when the federal government was breaking up reservation lands.

John Grant, at 12 years old, was the youngest of the group; 26-year-old John Clay was the oldest. Three were orphans.

A century ago, Congress granted citizenship to Native Americans, providing them the right to vote. But a new report from House Administration Committee Democrats argues that the nation has failed to keep that promise of voting rights because casting a ballot is simply too difficult in many indigenous communities.