Rebecca Nagle

Advocating for Afro- Indigenous Freedmen in the Twenty-First Century: A Talk with Marilyn Vann on History, Activism, Tribal Sovereignty, and Civil Rights | Harvard University Native American Program Breadcrumbs

Check out this talk with Marilyn Vann at Harvard on March 4: Advocating for Afro- Indigenous Freedmen in the Twenty-First Century.

Federal Prisons Bar Gender-Affirming Care for Trans People ‘People will die,’ an advocate warns, as standard treatments for gender dysphoria are replaced with therapy and antidepressants after Trump’s order.

Federal prisons will no longer allow inmates access to gender affirming care.

Another win for Indigenous representation. Mohawk racecar driver Derek White competed in Daytona last week! www.instagram.com/p/DU_k65NkkL...

‘Dream Big Things’: An Indigenous view of the Olympics - ICT Naomi Lang was the first Native American woman to represent the US in the Winter Olympics

Naomi Lang, who is Karuk, became the first Native American woman to represent the U.S. She competed on the figure skating team at the 2002 Winter Olympics.

You can buy it from this independent press or wherever you get your books! www.meadowlarkbookstore.com/s/stories/pa...

If you read By The Fire We Carry, you learned a little bit about the amazing person Rosemary McCombs Maxey. She just published a novel! Papa’s Pills is a journey into the lives of people living on the Muscogee reservation in the 1990s written by a Muscogee first language speaker.

‘Dark Winds’ returns for Season 4 with missing, murdered and more - ICT Navajo thriller takes detectives to retro LA in search of a missing girl

The new season of Dark Winds is out!! The new season follows the search for a missing Navajo girl and includes some Native all stars including Zahn McClarnon and Kiowa Gordon!

Inside the fight to save Texas’ Native American studies course - ICT The anti-DEI movement put the future of the high school class in question, but it ultimately survived state board review. Its supporters say that offers a lesson for other states.

Native studies hv been swept up in anti-DEI backlash. TX pub schools didn't have a course on Native American studies until 2020. In 2025, anti-DEI activists tried 2 kill it. After 2 days of heated debate, the TX ed. board voted 2 keep it.

How Snoop Dogg got Indigenous beadwork at the Winter Olympics - ICT A Mohawk man from Akwesasne is working as an Olympics volunteer in Italy

Pin trading is a popular pastime for Olympic athletes and attendees. Chip George, Mohawk from Akwesasne and a volunteer at the games tracking shots in hockey games, brought beadwork to the Olympics and made a trade with Snoop Dogg!

‘Is this real?’: 366 days of fresh air for Leonard Peltier - ICT The Chippewa activist and two of the people who helped gain his release talked to ICT recently about what life beyond prison has been like for Peltier.

It’s been one year since Leonard Peltier, the longest serving political prisoner in the U.S., came home after Biden commuted his sentence. Last week, he reflected on his first year of freedom.

Maine Lawmakers again consider returning more sovereignty to Wabanaki Nations - ICT Two bills are slated for public hearings. One is an omnibus proposal to restore full sovereignty, while the other would reinstate the Wabanaki Nations’ access to beneficial federal laws.

Wabanaki sovereignty is on the line in the Maine state legislature! Two bills are moving through the state legislature that could undo the harm of a 1980 land settlement that significantly limited the Tribes’ ability to self-govern.

Third American death linked to ICE crackdown uncovered by Newsweek While the 23-year-old's death was reported in March 2025, it was not made clear that a federal agent fired the fatal shot.

A U.S. citizen was shot & killed by ICE–ovr 1 yr ago. Newsweek and NYT reporting uncovered the fatal shooting of 23-yo Ruben Ray Martinez last yr. He was shot multiple times after not exiting his car. He was on South Padre Island celebrating his b-day.

Tribal IDs for descendants in the age of Trump’s ICE - ICT Legal experts weigh in on how Native nations can support their citizens and descendants in the face of increasingly violent encounters with immigration agents.

Not all Native Americans r eligible 2 enroll in their tribe, but many descendants have strong & recognized ties 2 their communities. As ICE targets Native ppl, Native nations r offering non-enrolled descendants tribal ID cards 2 help keep them safe.

Colorado River: Tribes seek to be part of solution - ICT Agreement on Colorado River water usage unlikely to be met by Colorado River Basin states by Feb. 14 deadline; tribes want more input in the new operating guidelines.

A total of 30 tribes have rights to the Colorado River, but they weren’t at the table when the U.S. first negotiated the water compact with states in 1922. Now, those states can’t agree on a solution and the federal government is pushing to implement its own plan. ictnews.org/news/colorad...

Colorado River: Tribes seek to be part of solution - ICT Agreement on Colorado River water usage unlikely to be met by Colorado River Basin states by Feb. 14 deadline; tribes want more input in the new operating guidelines.

As states debate the future of the Colorado River, tribes are being left out. 22 tribes have rights to 25% of the basin’s annual water! But those tribes can’t access their water because the federal government doesn’t maintain the infrastructure.

Feds are encouraging tribes to partner with data centers Tribes could lease land or sell power — and it might be a way to diversify some tribal economies

The federal government is encouraging tribes to partner with data centers, offering financial and technical assistance to tribes partnering with data centers.

One year later, Emily Pike’s legacy fuels reform and demands justice PHOENIX — Turquoise light wraps around the painted portrait of a dead girl. It is part of a makeshift memorial that sits off a highway road beneath Mount Triplet in

It's been a year since Emily Pike, a 14-year old from the San Carlos Apache Tribe, was found murdered. Her case remains unsolved.

They and their families endured the hardships of the trail of tears and slavery, allotment and segregation. On the long path of repair, citizenship is only the first step.

We cannot hold the United States accountable for the wrongs of history committed against us, while refusing to take account for our wrong of chattel slavery. The people we enslaved did not choose to become Cherokee–we made that choice for them.

If Indigenous nations are truly sovereign, then we are responsible for our mistakes. Like any other government, we are responsible for the harm we have caused.

After decades of court battles and legal advocacy, Cherokee freedmen descendants won a federal court case in 2017 ordering the Tribe to allow enrollment based on the 1866 treaty. Today, freedmen descendants can enroll in Cherokee Nation and enjoy full citizenship.

Cherokee Nation reconstituted its government in the 70s & under the 1976 constitution, anyone who descended from an original allottee could enroll, but in the 1980’s, the Tribe disenrolled Freedmen descendants, & claimed citizenship was reserved for Cherokees “by blood.”

2 assign land, the gov needed a list of every Cherokee citizen, & got busy making one. Federal officials placed Black Cherokees on a separate “freedmen” roll. In this era, Cherokee sovereignty was greatly diminished and the Tribe wasn't allowed 2 elect its own leaders for 70 yrs.

and their descendants. Formerly enslaved people became Cherokee citizens, and even served on Tribal Council.
In the “allotment” era of the early 1900’s, the federal government came, divided up Cherokee land, and assigned parcels to individual citizens.

Many were forced into refugee camps and one historian estimates a quarter of the population died.
After the Confederacy lost, Cherokee Nation negotiated peace with the United States. Part of that treaty guaranteed citizenship to “freedmen”--the people Cherokees had enslaved...

Enslaved Cherokees are documented running away and even organizing revolts.
During the U.S. Civil War, Cherokees were divided. Some support the Union, some the Confederacy. The Tribe was invaded by both armies and offered little protection from either.

People who were Black were not allowed to be citizens–even if their mom was Cherokee.
Chattel slavery in Cherokee Nation looked a lot like slavery in the U.S. South. Enslaved Cherokees were not allowed to read or write, sing hymns, or even sit at the same table as their enslaver.

By the late 1700s individual Cherokees enslaved people of African descent, but Black Cherokees w/ a clan through adoption or birth still had full citizenship rights. But in the 1820s, that changed. In the 1820s, Cherokees started to define citizenship not by clan, but by race.

where Cherokees were kidnapped and enslaved by the Spanish and British. In the early 1700s, a third of the enslaved population in South Carolina was Indigenous.
Traditionally, Cherokee identity was based on one’s maternal clan; if your mother was Cherokee, you were too.

Cherokee Nation adopted a system of chattel slavery from the U.S. south and codified it into our first written constitution. Cherokees first had contact with the European concept of chattel slavery through the Indigenous slave trade,