Celebrations and events are being held across the country this month to mark National Indigenous History Month and National Indigenous Peoples Day (June 21). Read More

NEWHALEM, Wash.—More than a century ago, Seattle City Light broke ground for a massive hydroelectric project here in a remote gorge of the North Cascades. Three dams soon powered the rise of what would become one of America’s richest and most liberal cities. The Skagit River dams, the first of which was completed in 1926, […]

This investigation was reported in collaboration between Inside Climate News and Columbia Journalism Investigations. BLACK HILLS, S.D.—Trina Lone Hill wasn’t surprised that mining companies had found lithium in South Dakota’s Black Hills. Gold and uranium had drawn drillers to the Lakota Sioux tribe’s hallowed ground in these western highlands years ago. Now, with this new […]

In the U.S., many Native American tribes maintain deep cultural and historical ties to ancestral lands outside of reservation boundaries. A 19th-century mining law still governs much of today’s lithium boom—and it doesn’t require the federal government to consult tribes before mining projects advance on these ancestral lands. While some federal policies attempt to fill […]

As Tony Harris walks through his garden, he stops beside a young sapling, its thin branches stretching upward into the early spring air. In a few years, he says, it will bloom with fragrant white flowers the size of a fist. It is one of hundreds of native plants tied to Cherokee history growing in […]

Each strip of wood in Richard Silliboy’s hands started as a year of an ash tree’s life. Silliboy, 79, is a member of the Mi’kmaq tribe and a master basketmaker. His blue eyes are kind and frequently crinkle into a smile, and his hands are constantly busy as he talks. In his workshop in Littleton, […]

MAIKIUANTS, Ecuador—By the time Olger Kitiar reached the ridge, his shirt was wet with sweat, clinging to his back. Built with the solid frame of a linebacker, he moved through the rainforest with a quick, even rhythm that defied the steep, slick climb. Then he froze. “Stop,” he hissed in Spanish, his hand snapping up. […]

The new policy, set by the California Natural Resources Agency, aims to start healing the harm caused by the state’s actions to bar tribes from their homelands and criminalize their cultural and land management practices. These actions not only harmed Native communities, whose cultures and ways of life are intimately tied to the plants, animals and landscape of their homelands, but also caused…

Spanning seven U.S. states and one Canadian province, the Columbia River Basin was once the largest salmon-producing river system in the world. Yet, with four of the 16 salmon and steelhead trout species now extinct and another seven endangered or threatened, its future remains imperilled. Though a federal judge recently ordered water levels be reduced […]

It was a sweltering January afternoon in the Amazonian town of Puyo when Andrés Tapia realized his daughter’s public school fees were due. Like many Ecuadorians, he reached for his phone to make a mobile transfer. Carrying cash is too risky these days. Ecuador is in the grip of an ongoing security crisis, with transnational […]

In one of his final acts before his death in 2024, Māori King Tūheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero helped galvanize Pacific Indigenous leaders to sign a landmark declaration recognizing whales’ rights. Now that effort could shape national law: New Zealand legislators this month introduced a bill grounded in the declaration, affirming whales’ rights to migrate, maintain […]

The wild swings between recent presidential administrations are especially dizzying on Alaska’s North Slope. The first Trump administration sought to expand oil drilling deeper into sensitive habitats. The Biden administration allowed some drilling paired with broader protections meant to last. Now, a second Trump administration is backing a relentless effort to open access to oil […]

As governments struggle to halt biodiversity loss and protect the world’s oceans using legal systems largely built by and for nation-states, Indigenous leaders are advancing a radically different vision—one that treats whales not as resources to be managed, but as living ancestors with rights of their own. On Thursday, Indigenous leaders from across Polynesia released […]