During this year's Native American Heritage Month, Tribal leaders and high-level White House Officials constructed discourse with respect to issues important in Indian Country. The 2021 Tribal Nations Summit (the Summit), hosted by the White House, was held on November 15th and 16th. This is the first time the Summit has taken place since 2016.
Resilience
The American Indian Policy Institute will soon announce the inaugural cohort of the Indigenous Leadership Academy! Please join our mailing list to stay up to date here.
The Indigenous Leadership Academy (ILA) is excited to announce the hiring of Dr. Denise Bates, PhD as the ILA Curriculum Writer! You can read more about Dr. Bates here.
Usually, summer is a slow time at the ASU campus. However, these last two summers have been quite the exception一not despite the pandemic, but because of it!
This past weekend (June 5th - 7th) I went to the White Earth Nation in Northern Minnesota to witness the Treaty People Gathering on Treaty rights and Tribal sovereignty. This event brought together more than 1,000 people from across the country to learn about Tribal sovereignty, Treaty rights, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) surrounding the Line 3 Pipeline.
Earlier this year, the AIPI was a partner with the Virginia G. Piper Center For Creative Writing under their prestigious award from the National Institute of the Arts Grant The Big Read. The goal of this program is to expose communities to diverse books and perspectives they may never have otherwise discovered.
February was a busy and chaotic month, but in the best way possible. Whether our team attended legislative sessions and conferences, or participated in town hall meetings and committees, it became obvious that a particular theme permeated the atmosphere: hope, or in the Chickasaw language, anhi.
Afammi Himitta' Ayokpa (Happy New Year). We all hope this will be a better year than 2020. Yet, we cannot overlook the good work that took place in 2020, despite the dire circumstances. At AIPI, it was a very productive year and our staff rose to the occasion and produced high-quality work that served tribes. Watch for our forthcoming Annual Report to learn more about our work in 2020.
The 2020 elections featured the highest number of ballots cast in American history and was a landmark election for Indigenous representation at the Federal and State levels. In 2018, the first Native American women were elected to Congress as Representatives Deb Haaland (D-NM-1), and Sharice Davids (D-KS-3) were elected alongside incumbent Representatives Markwayne Mullin (R-OK-2) and Tom Cole (R-OK-4).
Nannakya ilánchi. Everything is changing. Everything has changed. The election is over, and as we struggle with how we as a nation go forward, not back, our communities need compassion, and they need leadership. And as we continue as a nation to struggle with COVID as new infections surge, this winter promises to be as bad as or worse than the summer. This virus has changed everything about our lives. Whether we like it or not, we are not going back to the world as we knew it. But let me tell you why I am looking forward.