Issue 014
The Weekly Brief
For the week of August 9, 2026
The biggest story in Indian Country this week is also the biggest story for Mashkiiziibii: the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that Enbridge is trespassing on Bad River land and must reroute Line 5, while simultaneously the Michigan Supreme Court struck down the tunnel permit that would have let Enbridge burrow under the Straits of Mackinac. Two courts, two jurisdictions, one week — and the pipeline is losing in both. Elsewhere, the Indian Health Service finally has a Senate-confirmed director after nineteen months of vacancy, the Bodewadmi Confederacy welcomed three new member nations at a gathering in Forest County, and the Stockbridge-Munsee Community brought home repatriated belongings of Sachems John and Austin Quinney in a ceremony tied to Language and Culture Camp. The week also carried quieter notes worth holding: a new community-sourced MMIW map from Buffalo's Fire, and dual-language highway signs going up across Wisconsin with Governor Evers at the Mohican unveiling.
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Spoken by Deepgram Aura. The written brief above is the canonical version.
Across the Twelve Nations
A full week in Wisconsin Indian Country, anchored by two pipeline rulings and a homecoming ceremony that brought Mohican ancestors back to Bowler.
Seventh Circuit Confirms Enbridge Is Trespassing on Bad River Land and Must Remove Line 5
The federal appeals court upheld the district court ruling that Enbridge Energy has been trespassing on the Bad River reservation and ordered the company to complete its reroute on a court-supervised timeline. WPR's coverage, sourced closest to the tribal community, leads here. The ruling is a landmark affirmation of Mashkiiziibii's sovereignty over its own land and waters, and it arrives while the Michigan Supreme Court simultaneously struck the tunnel permit downstream. Two courts, one week, and the pipeline is losing ground on both ends of the Great Lakes.
Michigan Supreme Court Voids Line 5 Tunnel Permit, Forcing Enbridge to Start Over
NARF's summary leads here because it names the tribal parties and frames the legal stakes clearly: the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the permit authorizing an oil tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac was improperly issued, sending Enbridge back to square one on its Michigan application. The ruling is a companion victory to the Seventh Circuit decision out of Bad River this same week. For anyone tracking the full arc of Line 5 litigation across both Wisconsin and Michigan, this is the week the legal walls closed in from both directions.
Stockbridge-Munsee Unveils Dual-Language Highway Signs, Completing a Statewide Initiative
Governor Evers joined the Stockbridge-Munsee Community at North Star Mohican Casino on July 30 to unveil the final set of dual-language highway signs, completing a statewide project that places Mohican and other Wisconsin tribal languages on public roads across the state. The signs are a visible, everyday assertion of presence and continuity. That the Mohican Nation is the last community in the statewide rollout is worth noting: the Stockbridge-Munsee have been here, and the signs now say so in two languages.
Stockbridge-Munsee Welcomes Home Repatriated Belongings of Sachems John and Austin Quinney
On August 5th, the Stockbridge-Munsee Community celebrated the return of twenty-five cultural items belonging to Sachems John and Austin Quinney, repatriated from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and timed to coincide with the 2026 Language and Culture Camp. John Quinney's 1854 Fourth of July address, reprinted in full in the Mohican News this same week (candidate 32), remains one of the most piercing critiques of American democracy ever delivered on American soil. Bringing his belongings home to the community that has kept his memory alive is the kind of act that the Seventh Generation principle was made for.
Bodewadmi Confederacy Adds Three New Members at Forest County Gathering
Dozens of Potawatomi leaders from the United States and Canada gathered at Potawatomi Casino Hotel Carter in Forest County for the 2026 Bodewadmi Gathering, where the Confederacy formally welcomed three new member nations. The gathering is the living expression of the Three Fires relationship: the Bodewadmi, youngest of the brothers, Keepers of the Fire, maintaining the circle. The source here is Native News Online, which despite its general AVOID signal carries the only detailed account of this specific gathering; the Forest County Potawatomi's own Traveling Times confirms the event but without the Confederacy membership detail.
Mohican Veterans Join Wisconsin Tribal Nations at Highgrounds Memorial Park
Stockbridge-Munsee veterans joined Native American veterans from all eight of Wisconsin's federally recognized tribes at the Highgrounds Veterans Memorial Park in Neillsville on June 25 for a day of recognition. The Highgrounds is one of the few places in the state where Wisconsin's tribal veterans gather together across national lines, and the Mohican News account names the participants specifically. This is the kind of story Patty's Way of the Warrior instinct recognizes: ogichidaa honored not as symbols but as specific people who served.
Treaty Rights, Line 5, and the Waters
Two courts handed down pipeline rulings in the same week. The legal landscape around Line 5 shifted more this week than in any single week since the Bad River easement expired.
Seventh Circuit: Enbridge Is Trespassing on Bad River Reservation and Must Complete Reroute
ICT's account of the Seventh Circuit ruling fills in federal appellate context that WPR's piece (covered in Wisconsin Nations) leaves implicit. The court found Enbridge's continued operation of Line 5 across Bad River land constitutes trespass and ordered a reroute on a timeline the court will supervise. The ruling does not immediately halt the pipeline but removes any remaining legal ambiguity about Enbridge's status on tribal land. This is the ruling Bad River has been building toward since the easement expired.
Michigan Supreme Court Strikes Line 5 Tunnel Permit, Sending Enbridge Back to Square One
The Michigan Supreme Court overturned the permit authorizing Enbridge's proposed tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac, ruling it was improperly granted. The decision is a major victory for the tribal nations that have opposed the tunnel on sovereignty and environmental grounds. Paired with the Seventh Circuit ruling out of Bad River this same week, the legal architecture that Enbridge has relied on to keep Line 5 operating is crumbling on both ends of the Great Lakes simultaneously. Native News Online has the fastest account; NARF's summary (candidate 213) provides the tribal legal framing.
NARF: Wearing a 'Native Vote' Shirt to the Polls Is Lawful, Despite What Some Poll Workers Have Said
With August primaries underway across nearly a dozen states, NARF issued a timely clarification: 'Native Vote' shirts are nonpartisan and generally permitted in polling places, even though some Native voters have been incorrectly told otherwise in past elections. The guidance is practical and the stakes are real. Voting rights are treaty rights by another name, and the Voting Rights Act's 61st anniversary this week (candidate 38) is the right frame for both pieces together.
NARF Marks the Voting Rights Act's 61st Anniversary and Its Continuing Importance to Native Democracy
The Voting Rights Act, signed August 6, 1965, has been one of the most important legal tools for Native voters challenging discriminatory barriers at the ballot box. NARF's anniversary piece reviews the VRA's history and its current vulnerabilities under the current Supreme Court. For Wisconsin's tribal nations, whose members vote in counties where polling places have historically been scarce and access uneven, this is not abstract history.
Indian Country: Federal, Courts, and Sovereignty
A new IHS director confirmed after nineteen months of vacancy, Diné leaders fighting to protect Chaco Canyon, and the Osage Nation's remarkable foster care story.
Senate Confirms Mark Cruz of the Klamath Tribes as IHS Director After Nineteen Months Without One
The U.S. Senate confirmed Mark Cruz, a citizen of the Klamath Tribes of Oregon, as the twelfth Senate-confirmed director of the Indian Health Service, ending a vacancy that stretched nearly nineteen months. ICT's account names Cruz's tribal citizenship and the vote count (51-47). The IHS serves every Wisconsin tribal nation's health programs, and the absence of confirmed leadership has had real downstream effects on funding and policy. Cruz's confirmation is the kind of institutional milestone that matters even when it arrives quietly.
Diné Allotment Holders and Community Leaders Demand Chaco Canyon Mining Protections Stay
A delegation of Diné allotment shareholders and community leaders traveled to Washington to call on the Bureau of Land Management to maintain oil and gas restrictions near Chaco Culture National Historical Park, which the Trump administration has proposed lifting. Chaco Canyon is a sacred site for multiple Pueblo and Diné communities, and the proposed rollback would open adjacent lands to extraction. The Wisconsin Examiner's account, sourced from States Newsroom, is the most detailed available this week.
The Osage Nation Zeroed Out Foster Care Entries for Six Months. Here Is How They Did It.
In early 2023, twenty-seven Osage children were in tribal foster care. By a six-month stretch in 2024, not a single child entered the system. ICT's account of how the Osage Nation accomplished this is the kind of story Patty's counter-frame demands: a Native nation exercising sovereignty over child welfare in a way that produces measurable, generational results. The piece names specific program staff and the community-based interventions that made it possible. This is ICWA in action, not in litigation.
Nearly Seventy Indigenous Candidates Running in August Primaries Across a Dozen States
ICT's tracker of Indigenous candidates in August primaries covers close to a dozen states, with two Potawatomi candidates facing off in Michigan's 4th Congressional District (candidate 28) among the most closely watched races. The breadth of Native political participation in 2026 is a story in itself. Wisconsin's own primary on August 11 does not appear to feature Indigenous candidates in major races, but the national pattern is worth tracking for anyone writing about Native political power.
Buffalo's Fire Launches Community-Sourced MMIW Map to Track Missing Relatives
Buffalo's Fire, the Native-led journalism outlet now in its tenth year, launched a community-driven database and map for tracking missing relatives this week, inviting families to contribute information directly. The tool is designed to fill the gap left by incomplete federal and state databases. Buffalo's Fire is also hiring two reporters and running a matching donation campaign as it marks its anniversary. The MMIW map is the kind of community-built infrastructure that outlasts any single news cycle.
People
A Stockbridge-Munsee student artist wins a congressional competition, and the Mohican News carries remembrances of community members who walked on this spring and summer.
Stockbridge-Munsee Student Ayasha Bowman Wins Congressional Art Competition with a Painting of the Apostle Islands
Ayasha M. Bowman, a senior at Wausau East High School and enrolled member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, took first place in Wisconsin's Seventh District Congressional Art Competition with a piece titled 'Apostle Islands.' The Apostle Islands sit in the heart of Ojibwe treaty territory, and a Mohican student choosing that landscape as her subject is its own quiet statement. Bowman's win is the kind of story that belongs in the brief not as an exception but as an ordinary fact: a young Wisconsin Native woman making art that matters, on her own terms.
Deb Haaland on What Tribal Sovereignty Means for New Mexico's Future
High Country News ran a Q&A with Deb Haaland, the Laguna Pueblo leader and former Interior Secretary who is now the frontrunner in the New Mexico governor's race, about how her understanding of tribal sovereignty shapes her vision for the state. Haaland is the first Native woman to have led the Interior Department, and her potential governorship would be another first. The interview is substantive on policy, not just biography, and her framing of sovereignty as a governing principle rather than a legal carve-out is worth reading.
Mayme 'Pat' Melva Davids, Second-Eldest Stockbridge-Munsee Tribal Member, Walks On at 95
Mayme 'Pat' Melva Davids, age 95, of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community passed to the spirit world on May 12, 2026, as the second-eldest enrolled member of the tribe. Born in 1930, she lived on the reservation for most of her life and was remembered by family and community as a devoted presence across generations. The Mohican News notes she was the second-eldest tribal member, a marker of how much living history walked with her. The Davids name carries weight in Stockbridge-Munsee history; Dorothy 'Dot' Davids, the educator Patty has written about, is part of the same extended family network that has shaped the community's intellectual and cultural life.
Harold Robert 'Whitey' Bowman, Mohican Navy Veteran, Walks On at 72
Harold Robert 'Whitey' Bowman, age 72, of Shawano, an enrolled member of the Mohican Nation, passed away peacefully on July 23, 2026, surrounded by family. He served eleven years in the United States Navy during the Vietnam era, reaching the rank of Petty Officer. The Mohican News account places him among the community's veterans, the ogichidaa whose service the Stockbridge-Munsee have honored this summer at Highgrounds and in their Banners of Honor project. He is remembered by his family.
Long Read
Deb Haaland's Vision for New Mexico Is Rooted in Tribal Sovereignty. High Country News Asks Her About It.
High Country News sat down with Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, former Secretary of the Interior, and now the leading candidate for New Mexico governor, for a substantive Q&A about how Indigenous governance principles translate into state-level policy. Haaland talks about water, land, sovereignty, and what it means to govern a state that is, in her framing, already shaped by Indigenous presence and law. This is not a profile piece; it is a policy conversation, and Haaland's answers are specific. For anyone thinking about what Native political leadership looks like at the executive level, this is the week's most rewarding fifteen minutes.