Indigenous Peoples Archives - Attention to the Unseen

What happens when a language goes extinct?

From elsewhere — Tue, 12 May 2026 23:45:19 +0000

Sophia Smith Galer writes: We are lucky to know anything at all about the Ubykh language. In the 1800s, tens of thousands of people spoke it on the Black Sea coast. When Russia conquered the region, the Ubykhs resisted until they were forced into exile in the Ottoman empire. Transported thousands of miles by a traumatised community now scattered across Turkey, Ubykh survived until 1992 when its last fluent speaker died. It was one of at least 244 languages that...

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Lessons from the fairness of African fractal societies

From elsewhere — Fri, 08 May 2026 00:07:01 +0000

Likam Kyanzaire writes: Ron Eglash was not looking for a revolution when he stumbled across one. The American ethnomathematician, who tracks mathematics embedded in culture, was studying African settlement patterns in the 1980s when he noticed something strange in aerial photographs and village layouts. The settlements weren’t laid out randomly. They had a pattern – and not just any pattern. The same shape seemed to repeat at every scale: a cluster of homes that echoed the arrangement of a larger...

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ICE against indigenous peoples: The new erasure of Native Americans through immigration

From elsewhere — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 01:37:45 +0000

IC Magazine reports: Leticia Jacobo was scheduled to be released from Polk County Jail in Des Moines, Iowa, after being booked in for a traffic violation. Instead, the 24-year-old Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community citizen was scheduled for deportation. Last week, ICE raided Little Earth, a Native community of South Minneapolis, Minnesota, detaining at least 5 Native American men. ICE agents even tried to forcibly detain Rachel Dionne-Thunder, who is Plains Cree and the co-founder of Indigenous Protectors Movement, out...

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Decolonise political thought. Africa’s alternatives to liberalism

From elsewhere — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 01:36:07 +0000

Gabriel Asuquo writes: When African nations such as Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and Cameroon claimed independence in the mid-20th century, they inherited more than borders and fragile institutions; they also inherited a political philosophy. Liberalism, born of Europe’s Enlightenment, was presented as the universal grammar of progress. It came clothed in the language of democracy, development and human rights, promising that multiparty elections, private property, free markets and individual rights would secure for Africa a swift entry into modernity. Yet, decades...

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How tribal radio stations are preparing for a future without the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

From elsewhere — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 00:19:48 +0000

Nieman Lab reports: In the most remote parts of Alaska, staying in touch can involve a bit more effort than sending a text. Cell service is spotty, highways are nonexistent, and the postal service remains a vital lifeline, delivering supplies and mail by plane. But for anyone who wants to broadcast a different kind of message — a reminder to pick up milk, for example, or birthday wishes — there’s always the Muktuk Telegram. Named for a traditional food of...

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On controlling fire, new lessons from a deep indigenous past

From elsewhere — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 00:08:25 +0000

Yale Environment 360 reports: Climate change is extending the season during which hot and dry weather encourages fire across North America. At the same time, a long post-settlement history of stamping out wildfires has changed much of the continent’s landscape: Forests are thicker, which allows fires to spread up into the canopy, and more uniform, with fewer bare patches that might otherwise slow a fire’s progress. As a result, wildfires now tend to grow hotter and bigger: Some say we...

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Trump wants to cut tribal college funding by nearly 90%, putting them at risk of closing

From elsewhere — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 01:14:47 +0000

By Matt Krupnick for ProPublica This story was originally published by ProPublica The Trump administration has proposed cutting funding for tribal colleges and universities by nearly 90%, a move that would likely shut down most or all of the institutions created to serve students disadvantaged by the nation’s historic mistreatment of Indigenous communities. The proposal is included in the budget request from the Department of the Interior to Congress, which was released publicly on Monday. The document mentions only the...

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Greenpeace must pay at least $660m over Dakota pipeline protests, says jury

From elsewhere — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 23:47:21 +0000

The Guardian reports: A jury in North Dakota has decided that the environmental group Greenpeace must pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the pipeline company Energy Transfer and is liable for defamation and other claims over protests in the state nearly a decade ago. Energy Transfer Partners, a Dallas-based oil and gas company worth almost $70bn, had sued Greenpeace, alleging defamation and orchestrating criminal behavior by protesters at the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016 and 2017, claiming the organization...

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What Amazonian lives tell us about heart health and longevity

From elsewhere — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 02:36:52 +0000

Ben Daitz writes: The Horus Group, named after the Egyptian god of healing, is an international team of cardiologists, archaeologists and radiologists who have studied more than 200 mummies in Egypt, Peru, the Aleutian Islands and Italy with computer tomography (CT) scans and genetic analyses. They wanted to see if atherosclerosis, one of the leading causes of death in the world, is a disease of modernity, our high stress, cholesterol-laden lifestyle, or if it had been there all along. Are...

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Reports of Navajo people being detained in immigration sweeps sparks concern from tribal leaders

From elsewhere — Sat, 25 Jan 2025 02:14:35 +0000

Arizona Mirror reports: As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement intensifies its efforts to apprehend and deport undocumented immigrants throughout the country, concern is rising among Indigenous communities residing in urban areas about reports of Indigenous people being detained in the Valley. Since President Donald Trump issued his executive order for an increase in ICE raids, Navajo tribal leaders have received alarming reports that their tribal members are being detained, heightening uncertainties over the implications these actions have for their communities...

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