Native American student plans to wear cap adorned with sacred eagle feather despite district's threat to confiscate

Via: 1stwarrior  •  News & Politics  •  37 Comments  •  5 Likes  •  7 years ago

“Valley Vista High School senior LaRissa Waln plans to wear her cap decorated with sacred beads and a federally protected eagle feather, even if it...”

PHOENIX — For LaRissa Waln, Thursday afternoon’s graduation ceremony at State Farm Stadium is a source of much anticipation.  The 17-year-old senior at Valley Vista High School—who is Native American—is fighting for her right to wear Native beads and a sacred eagle feather on her cap. It’s...

Chehalis Tribe Earns Approval to Prosecute Non-Native Domestic Violence Offenders

Via: 1stwarrior  •  News & Politics  •  6 Comments  •  2 Likes  •  7 years ago

“JUSTICE: Tribe Meets Department of Justice Requirements, Rewrote Criminal Code to Qualify for New rights”

For decades, a loophole in federal law has made it difficult for Native Americans to seek justice for many crimes on tribal lands. A 1978 Supreme Court ruling found that tribal courts did not have jurisdiction to prosecute non-natives, meaning that tribes could do little about crimes committed...

Amazon Tribe Wins Lawsuit, Blocks Big Oil’s Bid To Destroy Millions Of Acres Of Rainforest

Via: 1stwarrior  •  News & Politics  •  8 Comments  •  3 Likes  •  7 years ago

In a landmark victory, the Waorani people of Pastaza, an indigenous tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon, successfully protected half a million acres of their ancestral territory in the Amazon rainforest from being mined for oil drilling by Big Oil companies. A three-judge panel of the Pastaza...

Are lawmakers ‘supercitizens’? Constitutional question could delay Rep. Chris Collins case

Via: 1stwarrior  •  News & Politics  •  5 Comments  •  7 years ago

“Collins accused of securities fraud related to his investment in a biotech company”

A question over the legal privileges granted to members of Congress threatens to delay the insider trading case against Rep. Chris Collins. The New York Republican faces trial in February on 11 felony charges stemming from millions of dollars he poured into an Australian biotech company, Innate...

Feds: Immigration top US crime, one-third of all sentencings

Via: 1stwarrior  •  News & Politics  •  2 Comments  •  2 Likes  •  7 years ago

Immigration crime, virtually all involving illegal male, Hispanic immigrants, was the top offense in federal courts last year, according to the United States Sentencing Commission. In its just-released annual report, the commission said that immigration crimes accounted for 34.4% of all...

Cartels ‘kicking our butts’ in New Mexico, as state left without checkpoints

Via: 1stwarrior  •  News & Politics  •  7 Comments  •  2 Likes  •  7 years ago

What happens when our government takes down its interior checkpoints north of the border in New Mexico? Well, the cartels, with the drug and human smuggling, are “kicking our butts,” according to one local official. In an interview with CR, Couy Griffin, the chairman of the Otero County, New...

Reaction to arguments against the 2019 Reauthorization to the Violence Against Women Act

Via: 1stwarrior  •  Op/Ed  •  1 Comments  •  1 Like  •  7 years ago

“Representatives have sent a message loud and clear that when Natives are beaten, raped, or murdered the perpetrators should not be held to account”

On March 13, 2019, House Republicans tried to repeal a crucial provision in the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) which was included in the 2013 reauthorization of the Act and would be further expanded in the current reauthorization bill. This political move was terrifying to Natives throughout...

What remains of Bears Ears

Via: 1stwarrior  •  Anthropology & Archeology  •  38 Comments  •  5 Likes  •  7 years ago

“Utah’s politically contentious southeast corner is a living landscape of culture and civilization”

For the last 13,000 years, humans have inhabited this part of the southwest. They carved arrowheads from stone and hunted giant sloths. They learned to farm corn and created communities on the mesa tops. They scratched and painted images onto rocks and reused and remixed what was left by...

Federal Appeals Court: DACA Recipients Are ‘Illegal Aliens’

Via: 1stwarrior  •  Op/Ed  •  10 Comments  •  3 Likes  •  7 years ago

“‘Open borders legal groups have been using DACA recipients to try to blur the distinctions between citizen and noncitizen…’”

A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals(DACA) recipients are illegal aliens subject to deportation. The Immigration Reform Law Institute filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, Estrada v. Becker, and argued that the Obama administration’s...

Appeals court to hear Native American child welfare case

Via: 1stwarrior  •  News & Politics  •  11 Comments  •  7 years ago

A federal law that gives preference to Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings involving Native American children is facing the most significant legal challenge since it was enacted more than 40 years ago. A federal judge in Texas ruled the Indian Child Welfare Act is...