Update

Cleaning up obsolete laws, bringing land into trust, Utah Public Lands Initiative, federal tribal recognition, and Columbia River fishing rights.

The eighth Tribal Nations Conference hosted by President Obama will convene on September 26.

The Department of the Interior has “withdrawn” National Forest lands around Medicine Wheel, a Native American sacred site in the Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, joined by the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota peoples and an impressive number of friends and supporters, has launched a strong non-violent protest against the building of an oil pipeline across their ancestral lands. The project, known as the Dakota Access Pipeline, would cross under the Missouri River just upstream from the northern boundary of the tribe’s reservation lands.

The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hosted a “roundtable” in mid-February noting the fifth anniversary of the passage of the Tribal Law and Order Act (TLOA).

In February, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs held a three-hour hearing and listening session on health care provided in Indian Country by the Indian Health Service (IHS). Members of the committee from both sides of the aisle spoke of the disturbing reports they’ve had from their own Native American constituents.

The president introduced his budget proposal in early February. Budget proposals – whether instantly rejected or worked all the way through congressional processes – get conversations started about what’s important to this country, and where and how Congress should invest taxpayer dollars.

History texts and recent news stories tell all too often of collapses in working mines, and the tragedies they bring for miners’ families and communities. But abandoned mines can also be dangerous, and their potential for harm can be both silent and catastrophic. The Gold King Mine disaster demonstrates the dangers that can lurk quietly for decades, and then erupt.

Congress is once again stuck in the budget process. In the absence of a budget, appropriations committees can proceed with their work, allocating spending authority based on estimates or previous years’ totals, after May 15. Programs that affect tribes, Alaska villages, Indian communities, families and individuals are spread across 10 of the 12 appropriations bills.

On April 6, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs held a hearing on four education bills. Two would authorize programs in BIE schools; two would change the structure of the bureaucracy or the funding stream that supports federally owned schools in Indian country.