Indian Country Blog Posts

Written by American Indian Service Constituencies at ASU

Our offices and programs, which represent and serve many tribal communities in the United States and across the globe, stand in solidarity with Black, African American, Afro Indigenous, and Afro Caribbean peoples. We condemn the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and Dion Johnson, to name but a few. We acknowledge that these murders are a direct response to the larger structural and institutional racism. 

We recognize that the protests and civil discontent are the results of both the moment and the historical arc of racial injustice that has been simmering. This is a time for having hard conversations with...

For one remote Alaska Native village, the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a return to tribal traditions and a deeper appreciation for their homelands. One hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, sits a Gwich’in village with a population nearing 200. While isolation was a reality before the pandemic, survival in the ‘new normal’ has required some adjustments. Supply flights into the village have become less frequent, meaning those within the community have been forced to ask more of its members, young and old, to ensure its population has enough to eat. The community has turned to traditional knowledge and resources for sustenance. Recently, the village council designated several tribal...

[UPDATE]

This post was originally published June 8, 2020. Yesterday, August 4, Christina won her primary election in Kansas! Now running unopposed, she will become the youngest member of the Kansas State Legislature and only the third Native American in its history! Congratulations, Christina!

The American Indian Policy Institute is proud to see that Christina Haswood, a former AIPI staff member, is now running for public office in Kansas. 

Haswood (@HaswoodForKS) is running for the Kansas House of Representatives in District 10, which includes Baldwin City and southeast Lawrence. Haswood, Diné, was born and raised in Lawrence, where she attended Lawrence High School and Haskell Indian Nations University. She later attended Arizona...

Ittifatpoli (Chickasaw: "talking about things that matter")

As we start June of 2020, AIPI and many in our country are still (months later) working remotely and taking great care to not expose ourselves, our families, our communities to COVID-19.  We watched our students graduate from afar and are greatly proud of them, but cannot even give them a hug. We watched the first Americans in nine years go to the International Space Station via an American made rocket and space capsule. Yet when they entered the space station, they awkwardly received hugs from those already aboard, and we realized those astronauts haven’t hugged anyone, any more than the rest of the...