Here is a summary of Native American-related headlines in the U.S. this week:
Winter storm blasts Rosebud Indian Reservation
The Rosebud Indian Reservation in south central South Dakota was crippled this week by a storm system that brought record snow, high winds and dangerously cold temperatures.
Major highways in South Dakota reopened, but local media reported that some commercial trucks remained stuck in snow drifts.
CBS affiliate KELOLAND TV Tuesday reported that Rosebud officials said five people had died and more than 100 families had run out of propane to heat their homes.
“My niece’s family, with babies all six years old and under, have been running high fevers and ran out of supplies,” tribe member Evelyn Red Lodge told VOA from her home in Rapid City, about 300 kilometers away from the reservation. “Their uncles are walking supplies to them in dangerous wind chills far from the main road.”
An estimated 20,000 residents live on Rosebud, which spans just over 5,100 square kilometers in the Great Plains.
Facing a shortage of snow removal equipment, the tribe has had to rely on community members to check on elders, shovel snow and share food and supplies.
“I sat with an unresponsive, critical diabetic patient here at the apartments on the third day of the storm for six hours while emergency personnel fight to get here,” said Conrad Eagle Feather in the town of Mission. “We have people trying to walk for supplies, 10 to 15 miles (16 to 24 kilometers) one way.”
Rosebud tribal president Scott Herman issued a statement on Facebook saying he had called on federal and state authorities to help provide personnel and equipment.
In response to complaints that the state wasn’t doing enough to help, South Dakota’s Department of Public Safety issued a press release outlining services it has provided tribes since last week. These included sending two snow loaders to Rosebud and coordinating with the state transportation agency to deliver propane, firewood, and food.
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Peyote buttons are shown in the yard of a peyote dealer in Rio Grande, Texas October 12, 2007.
Native American Church to Washington: Help save our peyote
Native American Church leaders say that increased land and resource development in Texas has taken a toll on the quality and quantity of the hallucinogenic peyote cactus and have called on Washington lawmakers for help.
Peyote is a succulent that contains psychoactive alkaloids. It only grows in southern Texas and a handful of states in northern Mexico.
As VOA has reported previously, Indigenous people have used it ceremonially and medicinally for centuries.
Peyote was banned in the United States in 1970, but the law was later amended to allow its use in religious ceremonies of the Native American Church.
The sun sets over "the 605," acreage in Thompsonville, Texas, which the Indigenous Peyote Conservation purchased in 2018 for the conservation of peyote, a sacrament of the Native American Church.
Medical researchers cite growing evidence that psychedelics like peyote can help treat depression and other mental disorders. Two California cities have called for it to be legalized, and in November, Colorado decriminalized some psilocybin-containing drugs.
The Native American Church worries that legalizing these drugs will only further threaten peyote harvests. At an October listening session, Church leaders asked the U.S. government to help fund peyote habitat preservation programs and change language in the Farm Bill to give farmers incentives to alter the ways they clear brush for cattle grazing.
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North Dakota tribe works to raise awareness about organ donations
Inspired by a young tribe member who received an artificial heart, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in Belcourt, North Dakota, has added an organ donation box to tribal identification cards.
A 2014 study in the Journal of Community Health said that the rate of organ donations among American Indians and Alaska Natives is lower than other U.S. racial or ethnic population in the country. The groups suffer disproportionately high rates of kidney disease, for which transplants are often the best treatment.
Study authors say the low rates of organ donation are due in part to traditional beliefs and burying practices, as well as mistrust in the health care system.
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Do NOT watch Avatar: The Way of WaterJoin Natives & other Indigenous groups around the world in boycotting this horrible & racist film. Our cultures were appropriated in a harmful manner to satisfy some 🏳 man%27s savior complex.No more Blueface!Lakota people are powerful! pic.twitter.com/NmHVU565u3
— 🌽Asdzáá Tłʼéé honaaʼéí🌽(She/Her)🌽 (@asdza_tlehonaei) December 18, 2022
Native Americans slam Avatar 2 film as racist
Native American groups are calling for a boycott of the recently released “Avatar: The Way of Water,” a science fiction film the Los Angeles Times describes as a “fictional retelling of the history of North and South America in the early Colonial period.”
The sequel to the 2009 hit “Avatar” tells the story of a Na’vi family, the Sullys, who live on a fictional moon, Pandora. Humans have invaded and colonized Pandora because their planet Earth is dying. The family is displaced from its home and flees in exile to the underwater world of another tribe, the Metkayina.
“Europe equals Earth,” the Times quotes director James Cameron from a 2010 interview. “The Native Americans are the Na’vi. It’s not meant to be subtle.”
People think it is pointless to call for a Boycott of Avatar 2. It%27s not and while it%27s true Cameron is going to roll in $$$ and not care one bit, it raises awareness about Cameron%27s racism and bias that formed the foundation of Avatar & the misrepresentation of Indigenous people
— Johnnie Jae aka The Burnt Ball of Fury (@johnniejae) December 20, 2022
In the 2010 interview, Cameron said the Avatar franchise was inspired by the Lakota, whom he called a “dead end society” that should have fought harder against colonization.
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