Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
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.
Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
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.
Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
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.
Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
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.
Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
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.
Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
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.
Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
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.
Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
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.
Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
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.
Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
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.
Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
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.
Issue 013 · August 2, 2026
The Bad River Band and allied environmental groups filed suit this week challenging state and federal approvals of waterway crossing permits for Enbridge's proposed Line 5 reroute through northern Wisconsin. The tribe argues the permits were granted without adequate review of impacts to the wild rice waters and wetlands that define Mashkiiziibii's homeland. This lawsuit runs parallel to the Seventh Circuit trespass ruling and the new injunction request, meaning Bad River is now contesting the pipeline's presence, its reroute path, and the permits that would make construction legal, all at once. WPR's Native American coverage, which has been the most consistent on this beat, broke the story.
Issue 013 · August 2, 2026
The federal appeals court this week upheld the district court's finding that Enbridge's Line 5 is trespassing on the Bad River Reservation and ordered the company to complete a reroute on a timeline the court called "reasonable." ICT's coverage frames the ruling as a clear affirmation of tribal sovereignty, though the word "reasonable" leaves Enbridge room to argue about pace. The ruling does not halt the pipeline immediately, which is why Bad River simultaneously pressed its injunction request in district court. Read this alongside candidate 175 for the full picture of where the litigation stands.
Issue 013 · August 2, 2026
Dozens of Potawatomi leaders from the United States and Canada gathered at Potawatomi Casino Hotel Carter in Forest County this week for the 2026 Bodéwadmi Confederacy meeting, welcoming three new member nations into the confederacy. The gathering is a reminder that the Bodewadmi relationship to place and to one another is alive and expanding, not a relic. Forest County Potawatomi hosted, continuing their role as a hub of pan-Potawatomi organizing. The source here is Native News Online, which we generally avoid, but the underlying development is substantive and no Wisconsin outlet covered it.
Issue 013 · August 2, 2026
With Wisconsin's August primary approaching, NARF issued a clear reminder this week: "Native Vote" shirts are nonpartisan and are generally permitted at polling places, even though some Native voters have been wrongly turned away for wearing them in past elections. The guidance is practical and timely for tribal members in northern Wisconsin counties where poll workers have historically been unfamiliar with Native voting rights. NARF notes that rules vary by state, so tribal election offices should verify local guidance before August 11.
Issue 013 · August 2, 2026
In a ruling NARF called a major victory, the Michigan Supreme Court overturned the key permit authorizing Enbridge's proposed tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac, requiring the company to restart its application. NARF, which has been central to the tribal legal strategy on the Michigan end of the pipeline, covered this first and most clearly. The decision does not kill the tunnel permanently, but it forces Enbridge to re-do the environmental and regulatory process, buying significant time for tribal nations and advocates who have argued the Straits crossing threatens the Great Lakes. Paired with the Seventh Circuit's Wisconsin trespass ruling this week, Enbridge is now fighting on both ends of the pipeline simultaneously.
Issue 013 · August 2, 2026
Before the Michigan Supreme Court issued its ruling (candidate 169), state regulators approved a separate set of Line 5 permits, drawing sharp criticism from tribal nations and environmental advocates who vowed appeals. ICT covered the tribal response, quoting leaders who called the approvals premature given the pending court challenge. The subsequent Supreme Court ruling this week effectively overtook this story, but the sequence matters: state agencies moved to approve while the court was still deliberating, and tribes are now appealing those permits as well. Read this as context for the larger Michigan legal picture.
Issue 013 · August 2, 2026
NARF water attorney Daniel Cordalis wrote with unusual directness in his Headwaters Report field notes this week, calling the past week "a bad week for tribal nations" in federal water and land policy. The column surveys a range of federal actions, from monument reductions to water rights rollbacks, that compound one another in ways individual news stories miss. Cordalis writes from inside the litigation, which gives the column a texture that agency press releases cannot match. Worth reading alongside the Line 5 and Chaco Canyon stories this week for a sense of the cumulative federal policy environment.
Issue 013 · August 2, 2026
A delegation of Diné allotment shareholders and community leaders went to Washington this week to call on the Bureau of Land Management to keep enforcing oil and gas restrictions near Chaco Culture National Historical Park, after the Trump administration proposed lifting the buffer. The Wisconsin Examiner covered the protest; High Country News ran a fuller account (candidate 88) with Pueblo leaders and New Mexico lawmakers adding their voices. The Chaco Canyon fight is not a Wisconsin story, but the pattern, federal rollback of protections at a sacred site over tribal objection, is one Patty tracks as part of the broader federal policy environment.
Issue 013 · August 2, 2026
ICT counted close to 70 Indigenous candidates running for public office in August primaries across nearly a dozen states, a number that reflects a generation of Native political organizing bearing fruit. The list includes candidates for state legislatures, congressional seats, and local offices. Two Potawatomi candidates are facing off in a Michigan congressional primary (candidate 19), which is the most Wisconsin-adjacent of the races. This is the kind of story that belongs in the brief not as a horse-race item but as evidence of the civic vitality Patty documents.
Issue 013 · August 2, 2026
This Native News Online opinion piece opens not with a legal argument but with a grandparent, which is exactly where Patty's editorial instincts say the story should begin. The author works through what "treaty trust responsibility" actually means as a lived obligation rather than a legal phrase, and applies it directly to the Army Corps permit decisions that are shaping pipeline and infrastructure fights across Indian Country right now. The piece is short enough to read over a second cup of coffee but dense enough to reward slow reading. It is the kind of writing that does what Patty's 4 R's ask of journalism: it builds relationship before it makes its argument, it respects the limits of what a non-Native institution can understand, and it asks the reader to sit with the weight of a promise before moving on. The source is Native News Online, which we generally flag, but this is a substantive opinion piece, not a press release or branded content, and no other outlet ran it.
Issue 012 · July 26, 2026
Bad River and environmental partners filed suit challenging state approvals for Enbridge's Line 5 reroute across Wisconsin waterways, escalating the legal fight that has been building since the band's original easement expired. The lawsuit targets the specific crossing permits, not the pipeline as a whole, which means the legal terrain is narrower but potentially faster-moving. This is the next chapter in the story the brief has been tracking since Ashland County's policing reimbursement deal and the federal court injunction request. WPR's native-beat coverage is the right first read here.
Issue 012 · July 26, 2026
A new lawsuit targets Lac du Flambeau for limiting access to a privately held boat launch on tribal land, adding a fresh legal front to the band's ongoing disputes over land access and jurisdiction. The road-closure controversy from 2023 established that allotment-era easements are contested ground; this case suggests the pattern is not resolved. Patty, you flagged the earlier road dispute as material for the Ojibwe chapter, and this belongs in the same section as a continuing arc. WPR's native-beat desk has the story.
Issue 012 · July 26, 2026
On July 15, Michigan's Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy authorized Enbridge to build an oil tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac, a decision tribal nations and environmental advocates immediately vowed to appeal. NARF's response, posted the same day, is the sharpest Native-voice accounting available: the permits do not resolve the underlying question of tribal treaty rights in the Great Lakes, and the legal fight is far from over. This is the Michigan-side development that pairs directly with Bad River's Wisconsin waterway lawsuit (above). Read NARF first, then ICT (candidate 38) for the coalition reaction.
Issue 012 · July 26, 2026
ICT's coverage of the Michigan permit decision adds coalition voices beyond NARF, including tribal leaders and environmental groups who called the approval a betrayal of Great Lakes stewardship. Critics vowed appeals and pointed to the ongoing federal trust responsibility that the permit process failed to honor. Read alongside the NARF statement for the full picture.
Issue 012 · July 26, 2026
NARF water attorney Daniel Cordalis filed field notes from the Headwaters Report cataloguing a week in which tribal water protections took hits on multiple fronts: the Michigan Line 5 permits, Bears Ears reductions, and federal agency actions that eroded tribal consultation norms. Cordalis writes from inside the litigation, not from a press office, and his tone is measured but clear. This is the kind of practitioner voice Patty values over agency summaries. The Seventh Generation lens applies here with particular force.
Issue 012 · July 26, 2026
A presidential proclamation this week reduced Bears Ears National Monument by roughly 90 percent, eliminating nearly three million acres of protected land and dissolving the first-of-its-kind tribal land commission that had been managing the monument in partnership with the Hopi, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute, and Pueblo of Zuni. High Country News reports that the commission's dissolution was not incidental but written into the proclamation itself, ending an experiment in co-management that tribal leaders had called a model. The NARF update (candidate 22) provides the legal response. The Seventh Generation principle is not a slogan here; it is the precise frame the affected nations are using.
Issue 012 · July 26, 2026
NARF's update on Bears Ears documents the legal response from the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute, and Pueblo of Zuni to the monument's dramatic reduction, framing it as part of a pattern of federal action that violates tribal consultation requirements and treaty trust responsibilities. Read alongside the High Country News piece (candidate 179) for the full picture. NARF is the right first source here.
Issue 012 · July 26, 2026
ICT reports that tribal police departments in Washington state hire officers who were fired from other agencies at a rate four times higher than their share of the overall law enforcement workforce, raising serious questions about tribal public safety and the pipeline of problem officers into Native communities. The story is grounded in data and names the structural dynamic clearly. It connects to MMIW, jurisdictional sovereignty, and the broader question of who is protecting tribal communities.
Issue 012 · July 26, 2026
ICT profiles ten Indigenous candidates running for Washington's state legislature in 2026, with several framing their campaigns explicitly around bringing tribal perspectives to state policy. The piece avoids the usual 'first Native to...' framing and instead lets candidates speak to specific issues: water rights, child welfare, and economic development. This is the kind of political representation story that belongs in the brief's Indian Country section without fanfare.
Issue 012 · July 26, 2026
Writing in Native News Online, a tribal leader who has spent a decade at the Line 5 negotiating table offers the most unvarnished account available of what federal and state tribal consultation actually looks like from the inside: a process designed to appear inclusive while systematically ignoring what tribes say. The piece names specific agencies, specific meetings, and specific moments when tribal input was received and then disregarded. It is not a polemic; it is a practitioner's log. The source is Native News Online, which is on the avoid list, but this piece is an exception worth making: it is an original first-person account from someone who has been in those rooms, and no other outlet has this voice on this story. Read it alongside the NARF field notes and the Michigan permit coverage for the full picture of what 'consultation' has meant in practice for the Line 5 fight. Patty, you have sat in some of these same rooms. This one will resonate.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
On July 15, Michigan's Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy authorized Enbridge to build an oil tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac, a decision that tribal nations and NARF called a betrayal of the consultation process. Bad River and other Great Lakes tribes have argued for years that the tunnel project poses an existential threat to the waters that sustain manoomin and the fisheries protected by treaty. NARF's statement, linked here first, frames the ruling not as a conclusion but as the opening of the next legal front. The fight over whether construction can actually proceed, and on whose terms, is far from over.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
A dugout canoe carved over the course of a month was launched on the Menominee River this week, the first such voyage in recent memory, ICT reported. The effort, rooted in Mamaceqtaw tradition, was led by water protectors who see the canoe as both a cultural reclamation and a living act of sovereignty on a river the Menominee have stewarded from time immemorial. Wayne Valliere's work reviving Ojibwe canoe traditions at Lac du Flambeau gives this story a Wisconsin-wide resonance: across the Anishinaabe and Menominee worlds, the paddle is back in the water. The Wisconsin Watch version (candidate 279) also ran this week; ICT is linked first as the Native source.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
WPR's explainer on the Wisconsin Supreme Court's ruling regarding Menominee land buyback is essential context for anyone tracking tribal land reacquisition in the state. The Menominee's effort to restore their land base has been one of the defining legal and political struggles of the past generation, and a Supreme Court ruling touching that question belongs in the brief and in the chapter Workshop. The full text of the decision and its practical implications for the tribe's land holdings are worth a closer read before the next edition goes to press.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
A new lawsuit targets the Lac du Flambeau Band for restricting access to a private boat launch, WPR reports, adding another legal layer to the band's ongoing disputes over land, water, and access rights in the ceded territory. The road easement fight has already drawn the U.S. Attorney General's backing for the town; this boat launch case suggests the broader pattern of litigation against the band is not abating. Patty, you've been tracking the LdF road dispute closely and noted it should transition into the Ojibwe chapter alongside the fishing rights material: this is the next chapter in that same story.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
A coalition of more than 200 Great Lakes business owners is calling on Michigan regulators to reject Line 5 tunnel permits, galvanized in part by the drilling fluid spill on Bad River lands, the Wisconsin Examiner reports. The business coalition represents a broadening of the anti-tunnel alliance beyond tribal and environmental groups, which matters politically as the permit fight moves into its next phase. The spill on Mashkiiziibii lands was the catalyst: when Enbridge's equipment fouled Bad River, it handed opponents a concrete, documented harm to point to in regulatory proceedings.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
High Country News reports on an inter-tribal funding workaround that allowed salmon restoration work to continue on Klamath lands after federal dollars were blocked by a bureaucratic catch-22: the Klamath Tribe couldn't qualify for restoration funding because salmon had been absent from their territory for over a century, the very problem the funding was meant to fix. The Yurok Nation's decision to step in as a fiscal partner is a model of tribal-to-tribal solidarity that resonates with how Wisconsin's Ojibwe bands have worked through GLIFWC to protect shared fisheries. For a scholar tracking inter-tribal resource governance, this is a story worth filing.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
High Country News reports that the Trump administration's 90 percent reduction of Bears Ears National Monument did more than shrink the protected area: it also ended the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition's formal commission, the first tribal body of its kind to hold co-management authority over a national monument. The commission had been a landmark in the land-back and co-stewardship movement, and its dissolution without tribal consent is a direct breach of the promises made when the monument was established. For Patty's Seventh Generation lens, this is the kind of institutional erasure that takes generations to rebuild.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
The Native American Rights Fund is tracking the ongoing federal rollback at Bears Ears, where the Hopi, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute, and Pueblo of Zuni continue to press their legal case against monument reductions that expose sacred sites to extraction. NARF's update, linked here as the Native legal source, frames the fight as one of advocacy continuity: the tribes have not accepted the administration's framing and are not going away. This story pairs with the High Country News commission piece above for a fuller picture of what is being lost and what is still being contested.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
On June 29, the Supreme Court upheld the right of mail ballots cast on time to be counted after Election Day, a ruling with outsized significance for Native voters in rural and reservation communities where postal service is unreliable and polling places are distant, NARF reports. The decision came alongside NCAI's statement (candidate 63) calling for continued vigilance on Native voting rights. For Wisconsin's Ojibwe bands in the north, where driving to a county seat can mean a round trip of many hours, this is a practical protection, not an abstraction.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
Two Pacific Northwest tribes have joined environmental groups in suing over a Trump administration rule change to the Endangered Species Act that they say will undermine recovery efforts for Chinook salmon in the Puget Sound and Skagit River, ICT reports. The tribes fish these waters under longstanding treaty rights, and the salmon's decline is both an ecological and a sovereignty issue. Wisconsin Ojibwe readers will recognize the pattern: when the federal government weakens species protections, the first communities to lose are those whose treaty rights are tied to the health of specific fish populations.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
Peggy Flanagan, a citizen of the White Earth Nation and Minnesota's lieutenant governor, is running for the U.S. Senate in a race that would make her the first Native woman ever elected to that chamber, and she is drawing serious opposition money, Native News Online reports. The piece traces the dark money networks working against her candidacy and frames the stakes clearly: a Native woman in the Senate would be a structural change in how Indian Country is represented in federal policy, not just a symbolic milestone. For Patty, who has covered Native political representation across four books, this is a race to watch through November.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
NARF's feature on John Echohawk, Pawnee Nation citizen and the Fund's executive director, traces a career that has shaped federal Indian law for more than five decades. Echohawk was among the first Native Americans to graduate from a law school program specifically designed to produce tribal attorneys, and the cases NARF has won under his leadership include some of the most consequential in the history of Indian Country. For a brief that regularly tracks NARF's work on Line 5, ICWA, Bears Ears, and voting rights, it is worth pausing to name the person who has built that institution.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
This guest opinion in Native News Online, from a tribal advocate who spent a decade in Line 5 consultation proceedings, is the most honest account this week of what tribal consultation actually looks like from the inside: not government-to-government dialogue, but a process designed to document the appearance of listening while the outcome is predetermined. The author describes sitting across from nearly every state and federal agency with authority over the project, watching the same promises broken in the same ways, and concludes that consultation as currently practiced is a legal fiction that serves the pipeline, not the tribes. The piece is worth fifteen minutes of your time not because it will surprise you, but because it names the mechanism with unusual precision, and that precision is useful for anyone writing about Line 5 for a general audience. Note that Native News Online is a source you've flagged as one to lean against, but this piece is substantive original testimony, not a press release or boilerplate, and it earns its place here on that basis.
Issue 010 · July 12, 2026
The Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a ruling this week on the Menominee Nation's land buyback effort, a case that sits at the intersection of tribal sovereignty, state jurisdiction, and the long arc of dispossession the Mamaceqtaw have navigated since the nineteenth century. WPR's Native American coverage has the clearest account of what the court decided and what it leaves unresolved. This one belongs on your desk before the next edition of Indian Nations of Wisconsin goes to press.
Issue 010 · July 12, 2026
A coalition of Great Lakes business owners is pressing the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy to reject permits for Enbridge's Line 5 tunnel, citing the drilling fluid spill on Mashkiiziibii lands as the proximate cause of their alarm. The Wisconsin Examiner piece tracks the coalition's growth and the argument that the spill proved what Bad River has said for years: the pipeline is an unacceptable risk to the waters that sustain the region's economy and the manoomin beds that sustain the Ojibwe. The business voice adds a new register to a fight that has long been framed as tribe versus corporation.
Issue 010 · July 12, 2026
ICT reports that water protectors prepared to paddle a traditional canoe across their traditional homelands on the Menominee River, described as a first in centuries. The act is both ceremony and assertion: the river belongs to the people who have always known it, whatever the maps say. This is the kind of story that lives in the register of generational joy and Indigenous agency, not crisis, and it deserves more than a brief mention.
Issue 010 · July 12, 2026
NARF's summary of the June 29 Supreme Court decision in Watson is the right place to read this one. The Court upheld the right of ballots cast on time to be counted after Election Day, a ruling with outsized significance for Native voters who face postal delays and sparse in-person voting infrastructure on and near reservations. NARF notes that Native voters are disproportionately harmed by the structural barriers this ruling addresses. The NCAI statement (candidate 40) covers the same ground but the NARF piece is sharper.
Issue 010 · July 12, 2026
ICT reports that a South Dakota petition to allow tribal IDs and photocopies of identification cards as proof of citizenship was rejected on a technicality, a setback for Native voters in a state where tribal enrollment cards are the primary identification many people carry. The League of Women Voters had proposed the clarification. The decision lands in the same week the Supreme Court upheld mail voting rights for Native voters, a jarring juxtaposition of progress and obstruction.
Issue 010 · July 12, 2026
Native News Online tracks the dark-money opposition mobilizing against Peggy Flanagan, White Earth Nation citizen and Minnesota Lieutenant Governor, in her U.S. Senate race. Flanagan would be the first Native woman elected to the Senate, and the piece argues that the opposition is not incidental to that fact. The editorial note from the newsletter author is blunt: this is historic, and the forces arrayed against her know it. Worth watching as the midterms approach.
Issue 010 · July 12, 2026
Native News Online's D.C. briefs for July 12 flag a proposed federal grant rule that is drawing concern from tribal governments, with a comment deadline looming. The brief also notes HUD's expansion of the Section 184 Indian Home Loan Program and other federal actions affecting Indian Country this week. The grant rule item is the one to watch: changes to federal grant administration can quietly reshape what tribal governments can do without a single headline.
Issue 010 · July 12, 2026
NARF profiles John Echohawk, Pawnee Nation citizen and Executive Director of the Native American Rights Fund, as a trailblazer for tribal sovereignty. Echohawk has been at the center of nearly every major federal Indian law fight for five decades, and the NARF piece situates his work in the current moment when that body of law is under sustained pressure. Not a breaking news item, but a useful orienting piece for a week when federal policy is moving fast.
Issue 009 · July 5, 2026
A coalition of more than 200 business owners across the Great Lakes region is calling on Michigan environmental regulators to reject permits for Enbridge's Line 5 tunnel, citing a recent drilling fluid spill on the Bad River as evidence that the project poses unacceptable risk. The businesses are urging other owners to add their names before Michigan's public comment window closes. The spill, on Mashkiiziibii's ceded territory, has sharpened the argument that the tunnel's construction phase is itself a threat to the waters and fisheries the Bad River Band has protected for generations. This one belongs alongside the earlier federal court filings in the Bad River section of the Ojibwe chapter.
Issue 009 · July 5, 2026
Residents of Ashland gathered this week to protest Enbridge's draw on municipal Lake Superior water for Line 5 reroute construction, a detail that puts the pipeline's footprint squarely in the laps of the city's taxpayers and water users. The demonstration follows a pattern of broadening opposition beyond tribal and environmental circles to include neighbors who depend on the same waters the Bad River Band has fought to protect. Patty, this is the kind of story that shows the Seventh Generation argument landing in ordinary civic life, not just in courtrooms.
Issue 009 · July 5, 2026
A federal judge has continued the bar on Lac du Flambeau's enforcement of fishing restrictions on roughly twenty lakes, keeping in place an earlier ruling that the Band cannot limit access under the terms at issue. The case sits at the intersection of the road easement dispute and treaty-era fishing rights, and it is moving slowly enough that the full legal picture will not be clear for some time. WPR's coverage remains the most reliable running account of this dispute.
Issue 009 · July 5, 2026
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has issued a ruling on the Menominee land buyback question, a case with direct implications for how the Mamaceqtaw nation can rebuild its land base within the boundaries of its original homeland. WPR's explainer lays out the legal stakes clearly. The ruling is the kind of landmark the Menominee chapter of Indian Nations of Wisconsin will need to address in the third edition.
Issue 009 · July 5, 2026
The Native American Rights Fund has published a clear-eyed summary of the risks the proposed Line 5 tunnel poses to tribal nations and Indigenous communities, timed to Michigan's open public comment period on the permits. NARF's framing centers treaty-protected fisheries, water quality, and the rights of nations whose ceded territory the pipeline crosses. Patty, if Bad River or any of the Wisconsin Ojibwe bands are submitting formal comments, this is the legal scaffolding they are working from.
Issue 009 · July 5, 2026
ICT reports that water protectors are preparing to paddle a traditional canoe across the Menominee River, a journey that would be the first of its kind in centuries and a direct assertion of the Mamaceqtaw people's relationship to their river homeland. The paddle is framed as both ceremony and advocacy, timed to ongoing fights over the river's health. This is the kind of story that lives at the intersection of treaty rights, cultural continuity, and the Seventh Generation principle.
Issue 009 · July 5, 2026
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 29 that ballots cast on time must be counted even if they arrive after Election Day, a decision with outsized significance for Native voters on reservations where postal service is slow and in-person voting infrastructure is thin. NARF, which filed an amicus brief in the case, explains the ruling's impact clearly and without boilerplate. This is a real win, and it came from the same court that has spent years narrowing tribal authority in other contexts.
Issue 009 · July 5, 2026
The National Congress of American Indians issued a statement following the Supreme Court's June 29 mail ballot decision, urging states to implement the ruling in ways that protect Native voters who are disproportionately affected by postal delays and limited access to election infrastructure. NCAI's statement is worth reading alongside the NARF brief for the full picture of how Indian Country is responding to this ruling.
Issue 009 · July 5, 2026
The NDN Collective published a direct and unsparing reflection on America's 250th anniversary, framing the celebration not as a shared milestone but as a marker of ongoing dispossession and resistance. The piece is representative of a broader current in Indian Country this week, where the America 250 moment has generated serious Indigenous commentary that refuses the triumphalist frame. Worth reading alongside the more measured sovereignty essays from Native News Online.
Issue 009 · July 5, 2026
High Country News reports on a remarkable act of inter-tribal solidarity: after the Klamath Tribes were blocked from federal salmon restoration funding because salmon had been absent from their lands for more than a century (a Catch-22 written into the grant criteria), the Yurok Tribe stepped in with their own resources to bridge the gap. The story is a case study in how tribal nations navigate a federal funding architecture that was not designed with their actual histories in mind, and in how Indigenous communities find paths around bureaucratic walls that would stop anyone else cold. For a scholar of treaty rights and tribal sovereignty, the structural irony here is worth sitting with: the very absence of the resource the tribe is trying to restore disqualified them from the money to restore it. The Yurok's intervention is an act of mino-bimaadiziwin in practice.
Issue 008 · June 28, 2026
A group of Ashland residents rallied Wednesday against Enbridge's use of municipal Lake Superior water for hydrostatic testing of the Line 5 reroute through Bad River ceded territory. The protest adds a local-community dimension to what has largely been framed as a tribal-versus-pipeline fight, and raises a pointed question: who authorized the city to supply water for a project the Bad River Band is actively challenging in federal court? The Wisconsin Examiner's coverage is the most detailed available this week, though WPR's ongoing beat reporting on the reroute remains the essential running record.
Issue 008 · June 28, 2026
A federal judge has continued the injunction blocking Lac du Flambeau from enforcing its fishing restrictions on the lakes that cross allotment-era roads at the center of the ongoing easement dispute. The ruling keeps the band's access-control strategy on hold while the broader road-dispute litigation works through the courts, and it sits in direct tension with the tribe's sovereign interest in managing its own lands. WPR's coverage, the Native source of record on this beat, is the right place to start.
Issue 008 · June 28, 2026
Michigan is accepting public comment on the proposed Line 5 oil tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac, and NARF's updated resource page makes clear what tribal nations and Indigenous communities have long argued: the tunnel project poses direct risks to treaty-protected waters, fisheries, and natural resources. This is the Michigan flank of the same pipeline fight that runs through Mashkiiziibii, and the comment window is a rare moment when organized tribal voice can enter the formal record. NARF is the right source here, and Patty, you may want to flag this for Bad River's legal team if they haven't already.
Issue 008 · June 28, 2026
The National Indian Law Library has released a curated water-resources guide through NARF's Headwaters Report, covering federal Indian water law, tribal water rights adjudications, and the intersection of treaty rights with water infrastructure disputes. For anyone updating a chapter on Wisconsin Ojibwe treaty rights or preparing for a keynote on sovereignty, this is a practical reference tool, not just a press notice. The guide is particularly useful alongside the ongoing Line 5 and manoomin litigation.
Issue 008 · June 28, 2026
The Tohono O'odham Nation has filed a federal lawsuit challenging what it calls an illegal border wall construction on its lands, a fight that directly implicates tribal sovereignty, treaty rights, and the nation's ability to protect sacred sites and family connections that cross the international boundary. ICT's Southwest Bureau has the report. The case is a clean example of the federal government treating tribal land as a resource to be used rather than a sovereign territory to be respected, and it will be worth tracking as it moves through the courts.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
A federal court has continued its order blocking the Lac du Flambeau Band from enforcing fishing restrictions on nearly twenty lakes in ceded territory, extending a legal standoff that began when the band closed access over allotment-era road easements. The ruling keeps the treaty-rights and road-dispute threads tightly braided: the same land-access grievance that produced the road closures is now shaping how the band can exercise its own regulatory authority over the fishery. WPR's coverage is the source to follow here, and the note Patty flagged on the earlier ruling still applies: this belongs in the LdF section of the Ojibwe chapter, in direct conversation with the road dispute story.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
The Native American Rights Fund has posted a direct call to action: Michigan is currently accepting public comment on Enbridge's proposed Line 5 oil tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac, and tribal nations and Indigenous communities have long documented the risks the project poses to the waters, fisheries, and natural resources of the Great Lakes. NARF's framing is clear that this is a treaty-rights issue, not merely an environmental one. For Mashkiiziibii, which has fought the Wisconsin segment of Line 5 through the courts, the Michigan permitting process is the next front. Patty, the comment window will not stay open long.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed a jurisdictional challenge to the White Earth Nation's permitting process, in a case that tested whether a tribe or the state holds regulatory authority over water use on non-Indian fee land within reservation boundaries. NARF's case review frames this as part of a growing conflict with direct implications for Wisconsin Ojibwe bands, whose ceded-territory water rights face similar pressure from non-Indian landowners. The ruling is a quiet but significant win for tribal water sovereignty, and the legal reasoning will matter to anyone tracking manoomin protection cases.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
The Department of Defense has reduced its list of recognized religion codes for military chaplains from more than 200 to just 31, folding Native American religion into a generic 'other' category. ICT broke this story, and the implications are direct: Native service members seeking ceremonial support, smudging, or traditional spiritual care from a chaplain now have no recognized category to anchor that request. For Patty, whose documentary 'Way of the Warrior' traced the spiritual dimensions of Native military service, this is not a bureaucratic footnote. It is a policy that touches the ogichidaa tradition she has spent a career honoring.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs has scheduled a nomination hearing for Mark Cruz, a citizen of the Klamath Tribes, to lead the Indian Health Service. IHS has operated without a confirmed director through much of the past decade, and the hearing comes as tribal health programs face budget uncertainty under the current administration. Cruz's Klamath citizenship is notable: the Klamath Tribes have their own history of termination and restoration that shapes how any member of that nation understands federal trust responsibility from the inside.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
The United States is running critically short of benzathine penicillin G, the sole FDA-approved treatment for congenital syphilis, and ICT reports that Indigenous babies have had the highest rates of the disease in recent years, disproportionate to their share of the population. The shortage compounds an already severe health disparity, and it arrives as IHS budget uncertainty makes tribal health infrastructure more fragile. This is the kind of story where the crisis frame is unavoidable, but the underlying cause is federal supply-chain failure, not community failure.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
Oregon Governor Tina Kotek has approved the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation's request to retrocede civil jurisdiction of tribal matters back to the tribe, the first such action in Oregon's history. The move reverses a piece of the termination-era Public Law 280, which transferred civil and criminal jurisdiction over tribal lands to states without tribal consent. Retrocession has been a slow, state-by-state process across the country, and Oregon's action is a meaningful marker of that arc, relevant to any Wisconsin reader tracking how PL 280 states handle sovereignty restoration.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
Native News Online's feature on the proposed Indigenous School of Medicine (ISOM) is the most substantive long-form piece in this week's candidate pool. The school's founders want to train physicians whose education integrates ceremony, culture, and Indigenous healing practices alongside Western clinical training, a model that would address the IHS physician shortage while producing doctors who understand the communities they serve from the inside. The piece names specific architects of the proposal and engages the real tension between accreditation requirements and Indigenous pedagogical values. It is not a press release dressed as a feature: it sits with the difficulty. Given the IHS director hearing scheduled for this week and the congenital syphilis shortage story, the timing is right to think hard about what Indigenous health sovereignty actually requires at the institutional level.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
Governor Evers signed Assembly Bill 98 into law as 2025 Wisconsin Act 222, guaranteeing that Native students who are tribal members, descendants, or eligible for membership may wear traditional regalia at graduation ceremonies across the state. The Oneida Nation's Kalihwisaks covered the milestone with the kind of community-level specificity that mainstream outlets missed. This is the sort of policy win that took years of advocacy by tribal education directors and families who were told, year after year, that a mortarboard was the only acceptable headgear. It belongs in the record alongside Act 31 as a marker of how Wisconsin's relationship with its Native nations continues to evolve.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
Funded through a Wisconsin Partnership Program grant with UW School of Medicine and Public Health, the Oneida Nation's Mending the Disconnect with Food initiative is working to restore food sovereignty for Oneida families across a five-year community grant cycle. The project connects traditional food knowledge with contemporary health outcomes in ways that reflect the Oneida understanding that mino-bimaadiziwin, a good life, is inseparable from what you eat and how it was grown. Kalihwisaks framed this as a community-driven effort, not a public health intervention imposed from outside.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
The Eighth Circuit dismissed a challenge to the White Earth Nation's authority to regulate water use on non-Indian fee land within reservation boundaries, a ruling that NARF's case review frames as part of a growing conflict between tribal regulatory power and non-Indian landowners. The decision matters well beyond Minnesota: the same jurisdictional question sits underneath Wisconsin Ojibwe water governance disputes, including the ongoing tensions over manoomin protection and sulfide mining near rice waters. NARF's analysis is the right place to read this one.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
A Michigan House committee took testimony on legislation that would create a separate hunting and fishing regulatory authority for the Upper Peninsula, a proposal that tribal nations and treaty-rights advocates are watching closely. The Great Lakes Ojibwe bands have treaty-protected rights that cross the Wisconsin-Michigan border, and any restructuring of state fish and wildlife authority in the UP carries potential consequences for GLIFWC's co-management framework. ICT covered the committee hearing; no vote was taken.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
The Native American Rights Fund's reflection on the Katie John Day Supreme Court victory, which secured Alaska Native subsistence fishing rights on federal public lands, is worth reading alongside the White Earth water jurisdiction ruling as a pair. Both cases turn on the same fundamental question: when federal Indian law says tribes have priority, does that hold when states push back? The Alaska answer, after decades of litigation, is yes. The Wisconsin manoomin and treaty-fishing cases are still working toward that same clarity.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
The Department of Defense reduced its list of recognized religion codes used by military chaplains from more than 200 to just 31, eliminating Native American religion as a named category and folding it into a generic 'other' designation. ICT broke this story, and it deserves to be read by anyone who has watched a Native veteran try to access ceremony in a VA facility or on a military installation. For Patty, whose grandfather Edward DeNomie served in the 32nd Red Arrow Division and whose documentary Way of the Warrior traced the ogichidaa tradition across generations, this is not an abstraction. It is a policy decision that tells Native service members their spiritual practices are not worth naming.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
ICT's report on tribal leaders calling for sovereignty as federal support wavers is a useful document of the current moment: the federal government has legal obligations to tribal nations that do not disappear when a new administration decides to cut agency budgets. The piece is careful to distinguish between political discretion and treaty-based legal duty, which is the distinction that matters. Worth keeping as a reference point as the 2027 budget cycle approaches.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
A court decision clearing the way for a foreign mining company to take land sacred to Apache and other Southwest tribes has drawn a pointed analysis from Native News Online: the U.S. remains out of step with international Indigenous rights standards, including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, when it comes to protecting sacred sites. The Oak Flat case is not a Wisconsin story, but the legal gap it exposes is directly relevant to every Wisconsin nation that has fought to protect ceremonial and culturally significant lands from extractive industry. The source is Native News Online, which Patty has found inconsistent, but this particular piece cites specific legal comparisons worth tracking.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
ICT's analysis of the Supreme Court's voting rights ruling finds that Native Americans have lost what one advocate called a 'silent partner' in legislative redistricting fights. South Dakota will not redraw its districts until 2031, but the structural damage is already visible: tribes that relied on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to challenge diluted districts now face a harder road. The ruling's effects will ripple into Wisconsin, where off-reservation Native voters in northern counties have long been underrepresented in state legislative maps.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, secured the Democratic nomination for governor of New Mexico on Tuesday, becoming the first Native woman to win a major-party gubernatorial primary in the state. Native Sun News covered the win with the weight it deserves. Haaland's trajectory from the first Native woman confirmed as a cabinet secretary to a gubernatorial candidate represents a shift in what Native political leadership looks like at the highest levels, and it is a story that will matter to every Wisconsin nation watching how sovereignty translates into electoral power.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
Bill Anoatubby, who first took office as Chickasaw Nation Governor in 1987, announced his retirement this week after nearly four decades leading one of the most economically successful tribal nations in the country. ICT and Native Sun News both covered the announcement; the NCAI statement is the institutional voice, but the Native Sun News piece carries the community weight. Anoatubby's tenure spans the entire modern era of tribal self-determination, from the Indian Self-Determination Act's early implementation through the gaming compact era and beyond. His retirement marks the end of a chapter that shaped what tribal governance looks like across Indian Country.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
A five-year community grant funded through the Wisconsin Partnership Program at UW School of Medicine and Public Health is working to restore food sovereignty for Oneida families, under the name Mending the Disconnect with Food. The project is doing the slow, generational work of reconnecting people to traditional foods and growing systems that were disrupted by removal and assimilation policies. This is exactly the kind of story that doesn't make the wire services but belongs in the Oneida chapter of the next edition.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
The Army Corps of Engineers has approved the long-disputed segment of the Dakota Access Pipeline that runs beneath Lake Oahe, bringing a formal end to the regulatory saga that began with the 2016 Standing Rock protests, though further litigation remains likely. ICT covered this with the context it deserves: the announcement lands as communities prepare for the tenth anniversary of the #NoDAPL encampment, and tribal leaders are clear that the legal fight is not over. For Patty, the Dakota Access decision is a useful frame for the Bad River/Line 5 fight: federal regulatory approval has never meant the end of a pipeline dispute.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
The Native American Rights Fund is marking the anniversary of the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Alaska, which secured subsistence fishing rights for Alaska Native communities on navigable waters. NARF's reflection on Katie John Day is worth reading alongside the Wisconsin treaty rights beat: the legal architecture that protects Ojibwe spearfishing and manoomin harvesting in the Great Lakes region was built from the same body of federal Indian law that Katie John's decades-long fight helped shape. The ruling is a reminder that treaty and subsistence rights cases move slowly and that the victories, when they come, belong to the communities that refused to quit.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
The U.S. Supreme Court vacated the Eighth Circuit's decision in Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians et al. v. Howe, a North Dakota voting rights case in which the lower court had stripped private individuals of the right to sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. NARF, which litigated the case, called the ruling a significant correction. The case matters beyond North Dakota: the Eighth Circuit's original ruling had threatened to gut private enforcement of voting rights across the region, and the Supreme Court's remand keeps that door open. Native voting rights and treaty rights are not separate issues.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
ICT's reporting this week captures tribal leaders from across Indian Country calling for the federal government to honor its trust responsibility as agency budgets shrink and staffing at BIA and IHS erodes. The trust responsibility is a legal obligation, not a discretionary program, and tribal leaders are making that point loudly at Senate hearings and in public statements. The story is worth reading alongside the IHS budget hearing coverage (candidate 276): together they sketch a federal government that is structurally retreating from obligations it cannot legally abandon.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
At a Senate Indian Affairs Committee budget hearing, tribal health leaders pressed agency officials on Indian Health Service funding cuts, with clean water access and hospital construction emerging as the most urgent concerns. The FY 2027 budget requests $9.1 billion in discretionary IHS funding, but advocates say that number falls far short of what the trust responsibility requires. For Wisconsin readers: IHS underfunding affects every one of the twelve nations, and the gap between what the federal government is legally obligated to provide and what it actually appropriates has been a defining feature of tribal health for generations.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
The Supreme Court's decision in Louisiana v. Callais, striking down a minority opportunity district, has Native voting rights advocates in South Dakota and elsewhere worried about what happens when redistricting cycles come around again. ICT's coverage notes that South Dakota won't redraw its districts until 2031, but the legal landscape is already shifting under Native communities' feet. The ruling compounds the Turtle Mountain voting rights case and the Wyoming redistricting fight (candidate 36) into a pattern: Native political representation is under coordinated pressure from multiple directions at once.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
The business councils of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes have formally condemned Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon for calling on lawmakers to reexamine electoral boundaries on the Wind River Indian Reservation following the Supreme Court's voting rights ruling. The tribes' statement used the phrase 'direct attack on Native voting,' and Wyoming lawmakers appear unmoved by Gordon's push, at least for now. The episode is a clean illustration of how the Louisiana v. Callais ruling is already being weaponized against Native political power.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior and one of the first two Native women elected to Congress, clinched the Democratic nomination for governor of New Mexico on Tuesday night. Native Sun News covered the victory with the weight it deserves: if Haaland wins in November, she would be the first Native American governor of New Mexico and one of the very few in U.S. history. The Native Organizers Alliance Action Fund called it another historic milestone; what it actually is, is a woman who has been doing this work for decades reaching the next threshold.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
President Trump signed the Tribal Trust Land Homeownership Act, a new federal law aimed at reducing mortgage processing delays on tribal trust land, and tribal housing leaders are calling it one of the most significant policy shifts for Native homeownership in years. The delays have long been a structural barrier: trust land's legal status means conventional mortgage processes don't apply cleanly, leaving families in limbo. Whether the implementation matches the promise is the next question, but the underlying problem is real and the law addresses it directly.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
The Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe marked the return of approximately 3,400 acres known as the Cloquet Forestry Center through Minnesota's state bonding bill, a transfer that tribal leaders called historic. Native News Online covered the signing ceremony, which brought together tribal and state officials for what amounts to one of the larger land returns to a Lake Superior Ojibwe band in recent memory. The Cloquet land sits within the Band's ceded territory and has ecological significance for manoomin and other traditional resources. For Patty, this story sits at the intersection of several beats she tracks closely: land back, Lake Superior Ojibwe treaty territory, and the slow, grinding work of restoring what removal took. It is also a useful counterpoint to the pipeline and mining fights: sometimes the land comes back. The piece is worth reading in full alongside the NARF voting rights and IHS funding stories this week, as a reminder that sovereignty is exercised in many registers at once.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
A federal judge this week ordered work stopped on sections of Enbridge's proposed Line 5 reroute in northern Wisconsin, a significant if partial legal victory for the Bad River Band. The ruling keeps the Band's federal lawsuit — which argues the reroute would cross ceded territory without tribal consent — alive and consequential while the broader case proceeds. WPR's coverage, the preferred source here, frames the legal landscape clearly without flattening the sovereignty stakes. This is the same dispute the brief tracked when Bad River asked the court to halt construction outright; the judge's partial halt is the first concrete relief the Band has won.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The State of Wisconsin filed suit against the Lac du Flambeau Band on April 30, 2026, after the Band issued fishing restrictions on nineteen reservation lakes citing documented declines in walleye and muskellunge populations. The Band's position is straightforward: tribal resource managers are doing exactly what conservation science demands, and the state's lawsuit challenges that authority. Mazinaigan, GLIFWC's publication, is the right source here — it carries the tribal conservation framing that mainstream outlets routinely miss. Patty, this sits directly alongside the earlier federal ruling blocking LdF from restricting off-reservation fishing; the two cases together define a complicated moment for the Band's resource sovereignty.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The six Wisconsin Ojibwe bands expect to file a joint 9th-round biennial stipulation in LCO v. Voigt, consolidating and updating six previous filings dating to 2001. Key changes include a tribal fee waiver for state park access in the ceded territory and expanded harvest opportunities. This is the kind of incremental, durable treaty-rights work that rarely makes mainstream news but shapes daily life in the ceded territory for generations. Mazinaigan carries the full picture.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
Preliminary studies and field data from fourteen Wisconsin lakes show that the aquatic herbicide ProcellaCOR causes elevated mortality in manoomin at submerged and floating-leaf stages — the most vulnerable points in the rice's life cycle. Tribes including the Menominee Nation and GLIFWC member bands are pushing back against continued use of the chemical in ceded territory waters. Mazinaigan carries the data; this is the kind of story that will not appear in mainstream Wisconsin media until the damage is done.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The Voigt Intertribal Task Force chair and GLIFWC member tribes are formally pushing back against ProcellaCOR applications in regional waterways, citing potential harm to wild rice, fish, and other subsistence resources. This is the advocacy side of the same story as the field data above — the two pieces together show both the scientific concern and the political response. Mazinaigan again.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
Governor Evers signed a $125 million package to address PFAS contamination in Wisconsin water supplies, with private well owners and tribes explicitly among those eligible for grant funding. Mazinaigan notes that some of the highest PFAS levels in the state have been documented near tribal lands. This is a water-sovereignty story as much as an environmental one — tribes have been raising PFAS concerns in their water monitoring work for years.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The Trump administration's unprecedented reorganization of the USDA Forest Service is generating serious concern at GLIFWC, whose member tribes hold off-reservation treaty rights across millions of acres of National Forest land in the ceded territory. Proposed changes could reduce research capacity and interagency coordination that tribes depend on to monitor and defend those rights. Mazinaigan frames this as a structural threat, not a bureaucratic shuffle.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
GLIFWC and Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University signed an MOU to launch the Nanda-gikenjigeng Program, a new Bachelor of Science in Treaty Natural Resources that integrates Ojibwe worldview with Western scientific methodologies. The program is designed to train the next generation of tribal natural resource managers — the people who will be monitoring those rice beds and fish populations for decades to come. This is mino-bimaadiziwin in institutional form.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
Iron County, with support from GLIFWC and the Bad River and Lac du Flambeau Bands, purchased 1,051 acres of undeveloped shoreline, uplands, and islands on the Gile Flowage from Xcel Energy for permanent conservation and public access. The acquisition protects waters within the ceded territory and keeps the land from development. Mazinaigan carries the story with the tribal conservation framing it deserves.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The U.S. Supreme Court vacated the Eighth Circuit's previous ruling in Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe, a North Dakota voting rights case that had stripped private individuals of the ability to bring Voting Rights Act claims. NARF celebrated the decision as restoring a key enforcement mechanism for Native voters in states where tribal members face systematic disenfranchisement. The ruling lands the same week that Wyoming's governor is facing tribal condemnation for attacking Native voting districts on Wind River.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
Ann McCammon Soltis retired from GLIFWC in early 2026 after nearly 33 years as director of intergovernmental affairs, a career that included central roles in the Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band litigation and decades of legal and policy victories for the six Wisconsin Ojibwe bands. Mazinaigan's tribute names her specific contributions — the kind of institutional memory that rarely gets acknowledged in mainstream coverage. Her retirement is a genuine transition moment for the organization that has been the operational backbone of Ojibwe treaty rights since the Voigt Decision aftermath.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The Trump administration is proposing to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which has protected approximately 60 million acres of National Forest land — including significant portions of the Ojibwe ceded territory in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan — from road construction, timber harvesting, and mineral leasing. GLIFWC's Mazinaigan lays out the tribal opposition with the specificity that the issue demands: these are not abstract wilderness acres but the forests where Ojibwe families hunt, gather, and exercise treaty rights that predate the National Forest system itself. The rollback would open ceded territory forests to the same extractive pressures that the Roadless Rule has held at bay for a quarter century, and GLIFWC's formal opposition letter frames it explicitly as a treaty-rights issue. For the third edition of Indian Nations of Wisconsin, this is the kind of federal policy shift that belongs in the environmental and treaty-rights sections of every Ojibwe band chapter — the Seventh Generation lens applies directly here.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
A federal judge has ordered a partial stop to construction on Enbridge's Line 5 reroute through the Bad River watershed, the latest turn in a legal fight that Mashkiiziibii has been waging to protect its manoomin beds and treaty-protected waters. The ruling does not halt all work, and the legal landscape remains unsettled, but it is the kind of concrete, court-ordered pause the Band has been pressing for. We tracked Bad River's original motion to stop reroute construction in an earlier issue; this is the follow-on. Watch WPR for updates as the injunction scope becomes clearer.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
The State of Wisconsin filed suit against the Lac du Flambeau Band on April 30 after the tribe imposed fishing restrictions on 19 reservation lakes, citing documented declines in walleye and muskellunge populations. The tribe's position is straightforward: the fish are struggling and the Band has both the sovereign right and the ecological obligation to act. Mazinaigan, which broke this story in the Ceded Territory press, notes that the state's lawsuit arrives even as tribal fisheries data drives the conservation concern. This is the inverse of the usual posture, and it sits directly alongside the road-dispute litigation that has already strained LdF-state relations.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
The six Wisconsin Ojibwe bands expect to file a joint 9th-round biennial stipulation with the State of Wisconsin in the long-running Voigt case, modernizing and consolidating six previous filings dating to 2001. Key updates include a fee waiver for tribal members at state parks within the Ceded Territory and expanded harvest opportunities. This is the kind of incremental, durable treaty-rights work that rarely makes headlines but steadily expands what Voigt means in practice for Anishinaabe people living on and off reservation.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
GLIFWC and Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University have signed an MOU to create the Nanda-gikenjigeng Program, a new Bachelor of Science in Treaty Natural Resources that integrates Ojibwe worldview with Western scientific methodologies. The program is designed explicitly to train the next generation of tribal natural resource managers, people who will carry both the legal weight of treaty rights and the knowledge systems of the Anishinaabe into the field. This is the kind of institution-building that Patty's Seventh Generation lens was made for: a degree program that did not exist before, rooted in a specific place and a specific set of obligations.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
Governor Evers signed a $125 million package to address PFAS contamination in Wisconsin's water supplies, with tribes explicitly named among those eligible for grant funding to address private well contamination. Mazinaigan notes that some of the highest PFAS levels in the state have been found near tribal communities. The intersection of water quality, treaty-protected resources, and tribal sovereignty makes this more than a general environmental story.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
Iron County, with support from GLIFWC, the Bad River Band, and the Lac du Flambeau Band, purchased 1,051 acres of undeveloped shoreline, uplands, and islands on the Gile Flowage from Xcel Energy for permanent conservation and public access. The acquisition protects habitat within the Ceded Territory and keeps the land out of private development. This is the kind of quiet, durable land protection work that rarely generates a press release but matters enormously to the communities whose treaty rights depend on intact landscapes.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
Tribes including the Menominee Nation and GLIFWC member bands are escalating their opposition to ProcellaCOR, an aquatic herbicide being used in Ceded Territory lakes, citing preliminary studies showing elevated mortality in manoomin at submerged and floating leaf stages. Voigt Intertribal Task Force Chair is quoted directly in Mazinaigan's coverage, which also notes field data from 14 Wisconsin lakes suggesting harm to wild rice beds. The Seventh Generation question here is not abstract: manoomin is both a treaty-protected resource and a living relative, and the data is pointing in a troubling direction.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
The Trump administration's proposed reorganization of the USDA Forest Service has GLIFWC and its member tribes worried about impacts on treaty rights enforcement and research capacity in the Ojibwe Ceded Territory. Proposed changes include consolidating or eliminating regional offices that have historically coordinated with tribal governments on harvest management and habitat monitoring. Mazinaigan reports that GLIFWC is treating this as a serious institutional threat, not a bureaucratic reshuffling.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
St. Croix Band spearfishers launched onto three lakes on April 10, registering the first 390 walleyes of the 2026 season, near the historical average. Mazinaigan notes that long-term GLIFWC data shows open-water spearfishing has remained within sustainable bounds, a quiet counter-narrative to the crisis framing that has historically surrounded Ojibwe off-reservation harvest. High water from snowmelt and rain slowed the eastern Ceded Territory season, while western Upper Michigan saw a productive stretch between rain events.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
The current federal administration is proposing to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which has protected roughly 60 million acres of National Forest land from road construction, timber harvesting, and mineral leasing. GLIFWC and its member tribes have formally opposed the rollback, arguing that roadless areas within the Ceded Territory are integral to the wild rice, fisheries, and gathering resources that treaty rights guarantee. The connection to sulfide mining risk in northern Wisconsin is direct.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
The U.S. Supreme Court vacated the Eighth Circuit's decision in Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians et al. v. Howe, a North Dakota voting rights case in which the lower court had stripped private individuals of the ability to sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. NARF, which is tracking the case, called the remand a corrective step after an erroneous ruling that would have gutted tribal voting rights enforcement. The case now returns to the Eighth Circuit for reconsideration, and its outcome will matter for Native voters in states where reservation boundaries and district lines have long been contested.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
The Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes on the Wind River Indian Reservation formally rejected Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon's call to examine electoral boundaries on the reservation in the wake of the Supreme Court's recent voting rights ruling. Tribal governments called it a direct attack on Native voting power. The pattern is worth watching: the Supreme Court's weakening of the Voting Rights Act is being used almost immediately to pressure tribal electoral geography.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
The Army Corps of Engineers has approved the long-disputed segment of the Dakota Access pipeline that was at the center of the 2016-2017 Standing Rock protests, bringing a decade-long regulatory and legal saga to at least a provisional close. ICT notes that further litigation is likely, and tribal opponents have not conceded the fight. The approval arrives as the broader pattern of pipeline approvals over tribal objections continues to accelerate under the current administration.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
Ann McCammon Soltis retired from GLIFWC in March 2026 after nearly 33 years as director of intergovernmental affairs, a career that included central roles in landmark legal and policy victories for the Wisconsin Ojibwe bands. Mazinaigan's retirement profile traces her work on the Minnesota water quality standards case, the Voigt stipulation process, and years of federal budget advocacy in Washington. She is the kind of person whose name does not appear in mainstream coverage but whose institutional knowledge and legal skill shaped the treaty-rights landscape that the Ojibwe chapter describes. Her retirement is a genuine transition moment for GLIFWC.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
A Bayfield County federal judge issued a partial stop on Enbridge's Line 5 reroute construction, a significant if incomplete win for Bad River and allied opponents of the pipeline. The ruling does not halt all work, leaving the Band's broader motion still before the court. WPR's coverage explains which segments are paused and what legal thresholds remain. This is the story to watch as the summer construction season opens.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
The Bad River Band filed a motion asking the court to extend the partial halt into a full construction stop, arguing that any reroute work through the ceded territory threatens treaty-protected resources and the Band's sovereign interests. The motion follows the partial injunction and signals that Mashkiiziibii is not settling for half measures. This is the piece to pair with the partial-halt ruling above.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
WPR's explainer maps the procedural steps between the current partial halt and a full construction stop, walking through the injunction standards, the appeals risk, and the timeline pressures Enbridge is using to its advantage. It is the clearest single-source guide to where the litigation stands and what Bad River needs to prove next. Worth keeping close as the court calendar moves.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
The Ashland County Board approved an agreement under which the county will be compensated for law enforcement costs incurred while policing protests of Enbridge's Line 5 reroute. The arrangement raises the pointed question of who, ultimately, is paying to police opposition to a private pipeline project on contested ceded territory. WPR's reporting is the right source here.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
The Department of Justice filed a brief siding with the Town of Lac du Flambeau's demand that the tribe reimburse it for costs stemming from the 2023 road-closure dispute, a significant federal intervention against the Band's position. The move follows the 2023 easement standoff that drew national attention and complicates the tribe's ongoing legal posture. WPR, which has tracked this dispute from the beginning, has the story.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
A federal judge ruled against the Lac du Flambeau Band's attempt to restrict non-tribal fishing on nineteen reservation lakes, finding the tribe had not met the legal standard for such restrictions. The Band had cited declining walleye and muskellunge populations as the basis for the closures. The ruling lands in the same week as the DOJ roads brief, compounding pressure on the Band from multiple federal directions.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
Mazinaigan, GLIFWC's newspaper, reports that Wisconsin filed suit against the Lac du Flambeau Band on April 30 after the tribe issued fishing restrictions on nineteen reservation lakes, citing walleye and muskellunge declines. The tribe's conservation concerns are real: GLIFWC data shows long-term population stress in some northern lakes. This is the Native-source account of the same dispute the federal court ruling addressed.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
Mazinaigan reports that the Menominee Nation and GLIFWC member bands are escalating their opposition to ProcellaCOR, an aquatic herbicide used in Ceded Territory lakes, citing preliminary data showing elevated mortality in manoomin at submerged and floating-leaf stages. The Voigt Intertribal Task Force is involved, and field data from fourteen Wisconsin lakes is raising red flags. This is a manoomin-protection story that sits squarely in Patty's treaty-rights and wild-rice beats.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
Governor Evers signed legislation directing $125 million to address PFAS contamination in Wisconsin's water supplies, with tribal communities explicitly included among those eligible for grant funding. Mazinaigan notes that some of the highest PFAS levels in the state have been documented near tribal lands. The funding is meaningful but the contamination problem it addresses is not going away.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
The six Wisconsin Ojibwe bands expect to file the ninth round of biennial stipulations with the State of Wisconsin in the Voigt case, modernizing and consolidating six previous filings since 2001. Key updates include a tribal fee waiver for state park access and expanded harvest opportunities across the Ceded Territory. Mazinaigan has the details, and this is the kind of incremental-but-consequential legal housekeeping that the Ojibwe chapter needs to track.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
GLIFWC and Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University signed an MOU to launch the Nanda-gikenjigeng Program, a new Bachelor of Science in Treaty Natural Resources that weaves Ojibwe worldview and language into Western scientific methodology. The program is designed to train the next generation of tribal natural resource managers who can work fluently in both knowledge systems. Mazinaigan has the story, and it belongs in the same conversation as Patty's Ice Worlds work on integrating TEK and Western science.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
WPR's interview with a northern Wisconsin tribal leader makes the case that the priorities of the Ojibwe bands and their neighbors are distinct from the rest of the state, organized around treaty rights, manoomin, and the particular ecology of the Northwoods rather than the policy concerns that dominate Madison and Milwaukee. The framing, 'north of Highway 29 is its own country,' is a useful shorthand for what Patty's Ojibwe chapter has always argued. Lead with the tribal voice here.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
Mazinaigan reports that the St. Croix Band launched the Ziigwan 2026 spearfishing opener on April 10, registering the first 390 walleyes of the season, while high water from snowmelt slowed some eastern Ceded Territory operations. Long-term GLIFWC data shows that open-water spearfishing remains well within sustainable harvest levels. The season is a living expression of treaty rights that the Voigt Decision made possible.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
The Trump administration's proposed reorganization of the U.S. Forest Service is generating serious concern at GLIFWC, whose member tribes depend on Forest Service infrastructure for research, treaty-resource monitoring, and intergovernmental coordination across the Ceded Territory. Proposed changes could eliminate or consolidate regional offices that have been key partners in Voigt-era treaty implementation. Mazinaigan has the story.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
ICT reports that the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the primary international body where tribal nations can raise concerns before the world community, is facing questions about its effectiveness and continuity as the UN grapples with a broader budget crisis. The timing is particularly fraught given the current U.S. administration's posture toward multilateral institutions. For Wisconsin nations whose sovereignty arguments have always had an international dimension, this matters.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
NARF's analysis of the April 29 Callais ruling explains that the Supreme Court has effectively dismantled the primary tool tribal nations and other minority communities have used to challenge racially discriminatory district maps. The decision lands as North Dakota tribes are already in litigation over redistricting that dilutes Native voting power. NARF's framing is the right entry point: this is a sovereignty and self-determination story, not just a civil rights one.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
Ann McCammon Soltis retired from GLIFWC after nearly 33 years as the agency's director of intergovernmental affairs, a career that spanned the Minnesota v. Mille Lacs litigation, the Voigt biennial stipulations, and dozens of other legal and policy battles that defined what the 1837 and 1842 treaties mean in practice. Mazinaigan's tribute names her role in specific cases and credits her with building the interagency relationships that made GLIFWC effective as more than a monitoring body. She is the kind of person Patty's journalism ethic calls us to name specifically.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
Mazinaigan's feature on the 2026 maple sugarbush season in the Ceded Territory is the kind of story Patty's journalism ethics were built to honor: specific people, a specific place, a specific practice, and the quiet transmission of knowledge across generations. The season was marked by cooler temperatures and ideal sap-flow conditions, with a fourth-grade class from Hayward visiting Pat Eaten's sugarbush to learn the work firsthand. The iskigamizigan, the sugar camp, is not a relic; it is a living institution that connects Ojibwe families to the land, to each other, and to the seasonal rhythms that mino-bimaadiziwin requires. This is the kind of piece that belongs in the brief not because there is a crisis but because there is joy, and because the joy is the story. It is also a window into the TEK-and-climate conversation Patty has been tracking since Ice Worlds: what happens to the sugarbush as winters shorten and sap-flow windows shift? The 2026 season was good. The question is how many more like it remain.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
The Bad River Band filed a motion in federal court this week seeking to halt construction on Enbridge's proposed Line 5 reroute through Ashland and Iron counties, arguing the project should not proceed while the tribe's underlying easement lawsuit remains unresolved. WPR's Native American coverage has the story, though the tribal filing itself is the document worth tracking down. This is the central legal front in a fight that has defined Bad River's public life for years, and the motion signals the band is not prepared to let construction create facts on the ground while the courts deliberate.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
Ashland County approved an agreement this week that would provide county reimbursement for law enforcement costs associated with policing protests of the Enbridge Line 5 reroute project. WPR reported the development without specifying who funds the reimbursement, which is the question worth pressing. The arrangement has a familiar and troubling shape: public safety resources aligned with a private pipeline company's construction timeline, in the homeland of the very tribe whose treaty rights are at the center of the dispute.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
The U.S. Attorney General filed a brief this week endorsing the position that the Lac du Flambeau Band should repay the town of Lac du Flambeau for costs incurred during the 2023 road access dispute, when the tribe closed roads crossing allotment-era easements. WPR has the story. The federal government's alignment with the town rather than the tribe in this brief is worth noting carefully: it continues a pattern in which the current administration reads allotment-era property arrangements in ways that constrain rather than support tribal sovereignty.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
A federal judge ruled this week that the Lac du Flambeau Band cannot restrict non-tribal fishing on approximately twenty lakes within its territory, a decision that touches directly on the ongoing tension between tribal resource management authority and off-reservation public access claims. WPR reported the ruling. The legal reasoning matters here: whether the court grounded its decision in treaty rights, state law, or something else will shape how far the ruling reaches and whether it invites further challenges to tribal fisheries management across the ceded territories.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
WPR's explainer this week lays out the procedural terrain for Bad River's emergency motion to stop Enbridge construction, walking through the Bayfield County court proceedings and the federal case running in parallel. It is a useful primer, though it would be stronger with more direct tribal voice. The core tension the piece surfaces is real: construction is advancing on the ground while the legal question of whether the reroute can proceed at all remains genuinely open.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
WPR's conversation with a northern Wisconsin tribal leader this week surfaced the persistent frustration that state and federal policy is made by people who rarely travel north of Highway 29, let alone understand what treaty-protected resources mean to communities whose livelihoods and spiritual lives depend on them. The framing is one Patty, you will recognize from your own fieldwork: the geography of neglect is not accidental. The piece is worth reading alongside the Line 5 and fishing-restriction stories as a reminder of the political context in which those legal fights unfold.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
High Country News reports that a 234-mile gas pipeline across Navajo Nation land is moving toward construction after a hearing that community members say they were not adequately notified about. The story echoes Line 5 in its structure: a pipeline company, a federal permitting process, and a tribal community whose consultation rights appear to have been honored in form but not in substance. For the Ice Worlds frame, the Navajo Nation's water and land relationships are as central to its future as manoomin is to the Anishinaabe.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
The Native American Rights Fund released its 25-year retrospective on the Tribal Supreme Court Project this week, documenting a quarter century of coordinated advocacy before the nation's highest court on behalf of tribal sovereignty. The report is a useful reference document, and its timing alongside the new ICWA challenge is pointed: the Project exists precisely because the Supreme Court is not a neutral forum, and tribal nations need sustained, coordinated legal strategy to navigate it. Worth downloading for your files.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
Native News Online reports that the controversial immigration detention facility built in the Florida Everglades, which critics dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz,' may be shut down following sustained resistance from the Miccosukee Tribe and allied environmental and Native advocates who argued the facility threatened both the ecosystem and tribal sacred sites. The story is a useful reminder that tribal resistance to federal land use decisions takes many forms and that the Miccosukee have been among the most consistent defenders of Everglades ecology for generations.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
The Native American Rights Fund published a clear-eyed explainer on tribal sovereignty and birthright citizenship, addressing the question of whether current legal debates about the Fourteenth Amendment affect the citizenship status of tribal members. The piece is careful to distinguish tribal citizenship from U.S. citizenship and to ground the analysis in the pre-constitutional existence of tribal nations. It is a useful resource for anyone navigating these questions in a policy or classroom context.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
Native News Online reports that Western states are entering summer with critically low water reserves, with consequences that fall disproportionately on tribal communities whose water rights are often junior in practice even when senior in law. The story does not center tribal voices as strongly as it should, but the underlying conditions it describes are directly relevant to the Ice Worlds frame: water scarcity, disrupted seasonal cycles, and the gap between treaty-protected rights and on-the-ground reality.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
Native Sun News Today flags that South Dakota Congressman Dusty Johnson's federal bills to expand Missouri River water use for the state do not address the question of who actually holds water rights in that river system, a question that implicates multiple Oceti Sakowin nations whose treaty territories the Missouri runs through. The piece is a good example of the kind of story that only a Native publication is likely to frame this way: the mainstream coverage of the same bills would almost certainly not lead with tribal water rights.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
ICT's account of the Pe' Sla victory is the single best long read of the week, not because it is the longest piece but because it synthesizes the full arc of the fight: the U.S. Forest Service permit issued over tribal objections, the NDN Collective lawsuit alleging NEPA and Religious Freedom Restoration Act violations, the direct-action occupation of the site, the federal temporary restraining order, and finally the withdrawal of the permit by Pete Lien and Sons. ICT names the specific combination of legal, ceremonial, and physical presence that produced the outcome, and it does so with the kind of sourcing that privileges tribal voices over agency statements. Read this alongside the NDN Collective primary release (candidate 7) and the Native Sun News coverage (candidate 132) for the full picture. The story matters beyond its immediate facts: it is a working model of how Indigenous communities can use multiple pressure points simultaneously, and it arrives in a week when Bad River is doing exactly that on Line 5.
Background
· 2024
· Wisconsin Examiner
On April 17, 2024, twenty-five years after his death at 51, Walt Bresette was inducted to the Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame. A Red Cliff Ojibwe activist, author, and storyteller, Bresette led the 1996 Bad River train blockade against sulfuric acid shipments to the Crandon mine site, co-founded the Midwest Treaty Network, and drove the campaign that produced Wisconsin's Prove It First mining moratorium law. He was a central treaty rights organizer through the spearfishing years.
Background
· 2023
· tribal-college-journal
On December 22, 2023, the Menominee Indian Tribe marked 50 years since President Richard Nixon signed the Menominee Restoration Act, reversing the 1961 termination that had stripped federal recognition, dissolved the reservation into Menominee County, and pushed the people into poverty. The restoration was won by DRUMS, the Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Stockholders, founded by Jim White and Ada Deer. The College of Menominee Nation marked the date with a year of programming.
Background
· 2023
· oneida-nation
Tehassi Hill has served as chairman of the Oneida Nation since August 2017 and is now in his third three-year term. He represents the nation on the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council board, sits on Wisconsin's Natural Resources Damage Trustee Council, and is the nation's designee to the EPA's Regional Tribal Operating Committee. His leadership has centered on land buy-back, health care, and natural resources protection.
Background
· 2023
· midwest-environmental-justice-network
On June 23, 2023, U.S. District Judge William Conley ordered Enbridge to cease operating Line 5 on the Bad River reservation by June 2026 and to pay the Band $5.1 million for nine years of trespass, with continuing quarterly payments. The court found the pipeline a 'public nuisance' carrying an imminent threat of rupture that could contaminate the Band's drinking water and the manoomin sloughs. It was the first U.S. court order to shut down a major operating oil pipeline on tribal land.
Background
· 2023
· WPR Native American coverage
On January 25, 2023, the six Wisconsin Ojibwe bands marked 40 years since the Voigt Decision, the 1983 federal appeals court ruling that reaffirmed treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather on ceded territory under the 1837 and 1842 treaties. Voigt is the legal foundation under every subsequent treaty case in Wisconsin, from the spear fishing battles of the 1980s to the wolf hunt lawsuits to the Line 5 trespass ruling. Northwoods tribal leaders reflected on the violence the original ruling provoked at the boat landings and on what has been built since.
Background
· 2021
· wuwm
On August 14, 1971, Milwaukee AIM activists Herb Powless (Oneida) and Jerome Starr (Ojibwe) occupied the abandoned McKinley Coast Guard Station on Milwaukee's lakefront, citing the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie's provision that abandoned federal property reverts to original inhabitants. The takeover led to the city and BIA handing over the building for use as the original Indian Community School. WUWM, Shepherd Express, and TMJ4 all marked the 50th anniversary in August 2021. The story is the founding myth of urban Indian Milwaukee and a reminder that 'land back' has Wisconsin precedent.
Background
· 2021
· earthjustice
The Menominee Nation's seven-year legal and political fight against the Back Forty open-pit mine along the Menominee River produced a decisive 2021 ruling. Aquila Resources withdrew its Michigan wetlands permits after the tribe's challenge and a court ruled the project would have a probable negative effect on Menominee sacred sites. In December 2021, Aquila was absorbed by Gold Resource Corp; Chairman Ronald Corn Sr. responded that the merger did not change the tribe's opposition.
Background
· 2021
· WPR Native American coverage
Joe Rose, known by his Ojibwe name Moka'ang Giizis (Rising Sun), walked on February 23, 2021, at age 85 from complications of COVID-19. A Bad River tribal elder and Northland College emeritus professor, Rose was a part of virtually every significant environmental and treaty-rights struggle the North Country faced for half a century. He died during the brutal February wolf hunt he had spent decades resisting as a lifelong wolf advocate. Patty called him a second dad.
Background
· 2016
· in-these-times
In 2015 the Ho-Chunk Nation's General Council adopted a resolution to amend the tribal constitution to recognize the rights of nature, becoming the first U.S. tribal nation to take that step. By 2020 a working group was integrating the resolution into the constitution, laws, regulations, and tribal processes. The General Council is the fourth branch of Ho-Chunk government, the body in which all enrolled members vote directly.
Background
· 2015
· ICT (Indian Country Today)
On March 24, 2015, Gogebic Taconite president Bill Williams pulled the company's preapplication for the 4.5-mile open-pit iron mine that would have produced eight million tons of taconite annually over the Bad River watershed. Six Wisconsin Ojibwe bands, led by Bad River, had organized the EPA review and grassroots resistance that surfaced the wetlands the company claimed did not exist. Williams cited 'unexpected extensive wetlands' and EPA permit uncertainty.
Background
· 2013
· oil-and-water-dont-mix
In June 2013 the Bad River Tribal Council voted against renewing the 20-year easements that had allowed Enbridge's Line 5 to cross 12 allotment parcels on the reservation. The decision came three years after Enbridge's Line 6B ruptured into Michigan's Kalamazoo River, dumping more than 843,000 gallons of crude. That no vote became the foundation of every Line 5 ruling that followed.
Background
· 2003
· itep
In a closing chapter of the long Crandon Mine fight, the Forest County Potawatomi Community partnered with the Sokaogon Chippewa Community to purchase the proposed mine site from Nicolet Minerals, ending decades of threat to the wild rice waters between Mole Lake and the Wolf River headwaters. The tribes hold the land in trust. Walter Bresette's organizing coalition, the Midwest Treaty Network, had built much of the resistance that made the buyout possible.