Issue 020
The Weekly Brief
For the week of September 20, 2026
The dominant story this week is Enbridge's Line 5 reroute, where a massive natural gas liquids spill in Iron County triggered a Wisconsin DNR stop-work order, a coalition of tribal leaders and environmental groups calling on Governor Evers to halt the project entirely, and Michigan tribes filing in federal court to toss the tunnel permits. Meanwhile, Wisconsin's wild rice harvest is looking up, a rare piece of good news for the waters that matter most to Mashkiiziibii and the broader Anishinaabe world. On the national front, a federal audit found the Interior Department's Missing and Murdered Unit drowning in nearly 400 pending referrals with a gutted staff, and the Bureau of Indian Education faces a renewed lawsuit over Trump administration layoffs that tribal nations say violate treaty-mandated education obligations. The week is not without its quieter joys: a second annual Rejuvenating Tribal Community Conference brought five Wisconsin nations together, and the manoomin harvest season arrives with better-than-expected yields.
Listen to this issue
Spoken by Deepgram Aura. The written brief above is the canonical version.
Across the Wisconsin Nations
A full week for northern Wisconsin, from a pipeline spill that has tribal and environmental coalitions demanding action, to a manoomin harvest that offers genuine reason for hope.
Wisconsin DNR Orders Enbridge to Stop Line 5 Work After Natural Gas Liquids Spill in Iron County
After a major spill of natural gas liquids in Iron County late last month, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources told Enbridge to halt all Line 5 reroute construction. The stop-work order is the most direct state regulatory intervention in the project to date, and it lands squarely in the ceded territory that Bad River and its Ojibwe neighbors have fought to protect. The Wisconsin Examiner broke the story; watch for how long the order holds and whether Evers moves further.
Tribal Leaders and Great Lakes Groups Demand Evers Halt Line 5 After Iron County Spill
Following the natural gas liquids spill, a broad coalition of tribal leaders and organizations from across the Great Lakes region called on Governor Tony Evers to shut down the Line 5 reroute project and hold Enbridge accountable. The statement, covered by Native News Online (a source to use with caution given Patty's pattern, but the underlying development is substantive and the tribal voice is front and center here), reflects how quickly the spill galvanized organized opposition. Pair this with the DNR stop-work order above for the full picture.
Wisconsin's Wild Rice Harvest Is Looking Up This Season
Wisconsin Public Radio's Native American beat reports that the *manoomin* harvest is expected to be stronger than recent years, a welcome sign for Ojibwe ricers across the ceded territory who have watched beds struggle under warming waters and erratic weather. This is the kind of story that belongs in the brief not as a counterweight to crisis coverage but on its own terms: the harvest is a living practice, a seasonal ceremony, and a measure of the health of the waters the treaties were meant to protect. No DNR spokesperson needed; the rice speaks.
Five Wisconsin Nations Convene Second Annual Rejuvenating Tribal Community Conference at Oneida
Forest County Potawatomi, Oneida, Lac du Flambeau, Bad River, Menominee, and Red Cliff co-hosted the second annual Rejuvenating Tribal Community Conference on August 19 and 20 at the Oneida Hotel Casino. The gathering is a reminder that intertribal collaboration in Wisconsin is not a relic of the treaty era but an ongoing, organized practice. The Potawatomi Traveling Times covered it; the conference is worth tracking as it grows.
Tribes and Students Sue Trump Administration Over Bureau of Indian Education Layoffs and Restructuring
A renewed federal lawsuit charges that the Trump administration's Bureau of Indian Education layoffs and program restructuring violate treaty-mandated obligations to provide education for tribal nations. The case, covered by ICT, names both tribes and students as plaintiffs, grounding the legal challenge in the specific people whose schooling has been disrupted. Treaty-based education rights are not administrative preferences; they are binding federal commitments, and this lawsuit makes that case directly.
Treaty Rights, Water, and Line 5
Michigan tribes move into federal court on the tunnel permits while the Wisconsin spill keeps the pressure on. The legal landscape around Line 5 is shifting fast.
Michigan Tribes Ask Federal Judge to Toss Line 5 Tunnel Permits
Michigan tribes, represented by the Native American Rights Fund, filed in federal court this week seeking to overturn the wetlands and bottomlands permits the Army Corps of Engineers approved for Enbridge's Line 5 tunnel project in July. The NARF filing is the sharpest legal challenge yet to the tunnel route, and it arrives the same week Wisconsin's DNR issued a stop-work order on the Wisconsin reroute following a spill. The two legal fronts, Michigan and Wisconsin, are now moving simultaneously. Patty, this one belongs in the Bad River section of the Ojibwe chapter.
Indian Country: Federal Policy, Courts, and Sovereignty
A federal audit exposes the staffing crisis gutting the Missing and Murdered Unit, Red Lake Nation pushes back on a federal child welfare takeover, and the Tribal Supreme Court Project marks twenty-five years of work at the high court.
Gutted Staffing Leaves Federal Missing and Murdered Unit With Nearly 400 Cases Pending
An audit by the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General found that the Missing and Murdered Unit had 83 open cases and nearly 400 pending referrals as of November 2024, with staffing so depleted that investigations are stalling. ICT broke the story, and the numbers are staggering: nearly 400 families waiting for federal attention that may never come. This is the structural failure behind the advocacy, and it matters for every Wisconsin nation that has stood up an MMIW task force in recent years.
Red Lake Nation Pushes Back After Federal Government Takes Over Tribal Child Welfare Services
The Red Lake Tribal Council is assuring its citizens that it is working to protect children, families, and employees following the federal government's takeover of some child welfare and child protection services at the tribe's Ombimindwaa Gidinawemaaganinaan program. The move raises immediate questions about ICWA compliance and tribal sovereignty over child welfare, areas where Red Lake has historically been a strong voice. Native News Online covered it; the underlying development is substantive regardless of source.
NARF's Tribal Supreme Court Project Marks Twenty-Five Years of Protecting Native Nations at the High Court
The Native American Rights Fund is marking a quarter-century of the Tribal Supreme Court Project, which coordinates legal strategy for Indian Country at the U.S. Supreme Court. The anniversary comes at a moment when the Court's composition and the current administration's posture make this infrastructure more consequential than ever. For Patty's readers, this is the institutional backbone behind cases like Brackeen and the ongoing ICWA fights. Worth bookmarking as a reference point.
NARF Reminds Class of 2027: You Have the Right to Wear an Eagle Feather at Graduation
The Native American Rights Fund is circulating guidance for graduating high school students and families on the legal right to wear eagle feathers at commencement ceremonies, urging them to start preparing now. This follows the Wisconsin law protecting tribal regalia at graduation that Patty saved for the Oneida chapter last spring. The NARF piece is the national complement to that Wisconsin story, and it is the kind of practical, student-centered information that belongs in the brief.
Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes Bring Three Carlisle Children Home More Than a Century Later
The Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes laid three children to rest this week, more than a hundred years after those children left home for the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and never returned. ICT covered the repatriation with the weight it deserves: joy and tears together, a community making itself whole. The boarding school truth and healing arc is one Patty tracks closely, and this repatriation is a landmark moment in it.
Tohono O'odham Nation Uses Courts and Congress to Fight Border Wall on Sacred Sovereign Land
The Tohono O'odham Nation is pursuing a two-track strategy, federal litigation and lobbying congressional Democrats, to stop border wall construction near Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona, where the wall cuts through land the nation holds as sacred and sovereign. High Country News covered it with appropriate depth. The story is a sharp illustration of how federal infrastructure projects continue to override Indigenous territorial rights in the name of national security, a pattern with direct resonance for pipeline fights closer to home.
People Worth Knowing
Leonard Peltier at 82: Life After Prison, His Art, and a Message to Native Youth
Native News Online founder Levi Rickert sat down with Leonard Peltier on September 14, the day after Peltier turned 82, for a wide-ranging conversation about life after more than 49 years of incarceration, his health, his artwork, and what he wants Native youth to know. Peltier's release remains one of the most significant developments in recent Indian Country history, and hearing him speak in his own voice, about art and about the future, is a different register than the advocacy coverage that surrounded his case for decades. The source is one to watch, but the interview itself is primary.
Long Read: The Quileute Tribe's Move to Higher Ground, Funded by Twilight Fans
Twilight Fans Are Funding the Quileute Tribe's Move to Higher Ground, and the Tribe Never Saw a Cent from the Films
ICT reports that fans of the Twilight franchise, whose werewolf characters were drawn from Quileute oral tradition without the tribe's meaningful consent or compensation, are now organizing online fundraising to help the Quileute Nation relocate its school and community buildings out of a tsunami inundation zone. The story holds several threads at once: the long history of cultural appropriation without reciprocity, the climate reality of a coastal tribe facing rising seas and tsunami risk, and the unexpected generosity of a fandom that decided to do something about the debt. The Quileute themselves are clear-eyed about the irony. For a brief built around the Seventh Generation principle, a story about a tribe literally moving its future to higher ground, funded by strangers who felt the weight of an old wrong, is exactly the kind of long read that earns fifteen minutes on a Sunday morning.