The upstate New York news reports that the St. Regis Mohawks Tribe pumped $119 million into the state’s economy last year. A new study by the Taylor Policy Group shows the tribe is the third largest employer in Franklin and St. Lawrence Counties and the fifth largest employer in the northern part of the state. [...]

A New Mexico newspaper reports that there are many stories on the Navajo Nation Reservation uranium mines and multiple stories of loved ones dying young from cancer, kidney disease, and other ailments attributed to uranium poisoning. The effects aren’t limited to uranium miners and millers; whole families are usually affected as women washed their husbands’ [...]

A Montana newspaper reports that the chairman of Montana’s Little Shell Tribe says the Bureau of Indian Affairs has declined to formally recognize the tribe. The tribe has been trying to gain federal recognition since 1978. The state of Montana formally recognized the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians nine years ago. Tribal Chairman John [...]

A Tulsa Okla. newspaper reports on testimony by Osage Nation Principal Chief Jim Gray before a key Senate committee last Thursday that tribes are being locked out of renewable energy opportunities by bureaucratic delays, lack of financing, and inadequate access to the national transmission grid. Representing a consortium of tribes, Gray said they are hungry [...]

Two Massachusetts tribes say the 130 proposed wind turbines in Nantucket Sound would disturb their spiritual sun greetings and submerged ancestral burying grounds. The Aquinnah and Mashpee Wampanoag tribes are pushing for the entire sound to be listed as a traditional cultural property on the National Register of Historic Places. A listing would not necessarily [...]

In the first example of anything like this I have ever heard of, a federal district court judge has agreed to let a tribal court handle the criminal prosecution of a Northern Arapaho man for shooting a bald eagle four years ago for his tribe’s Sun Dance. The defendant, Winslow Friday, has acknowledged killing a [...]

Gov. Schwarzenegger signed a new bill into law that the tribal chairman of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians says will greatly help the Chumash and other California tribes preserve native languages, many of which are on the brink of extinction. The new law will allow tribes to develop criteria for language fluency and [...]

A Wenatchee Washington newspaper reports that six sovereign tribal nations and the states of Idaho, Washington, and Montana have joined in telling a federal judge they prefer to work together to save and protect salmon in the Columbia River system instead of fighting each other over legal issues. The joint statement representing the nine entities [...]

Portland Oregon will host approximately 2,000 students and professionals for the American Indian Science and Engineering Society’s (AISES) annual conference. The three-day event consists of workshops, speakers, networking and career development. “The conference definitely includes high school and college students, as well as professionals,” said Pamala Silas (Menomonee/Oneida), AISES CEO. “It’s a real family gathering [...]

Six Indian tribes in Virginia and one in North Carolina would gain federal recognition and become eligible for federal aid under two bills approved Thursday by a Senate committee. The bills have already passed the House. The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and six Virginia tribes would be eligible for up to $800 million in [...]