January 06, 2026
The leader of an organization that has been facing off against a foreign mining company with designs on destroying a sacred Indigenous site is walking more than 60 miles across Arizona to attend a court hearing that will decide the fate of 2,400 acres of federal public lands.
Currents
The National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development proudly announces the 2026 class of Native American 40 Under 40 honorees. Selected through peer nominations, these 40 emerging leaders exemplify leadership, initiative, and dedication, and have made meaningful contributions to their professions and communities. The Native American 40 Under 40 Awards are now in their 17th year of recognizing excellence across Indian Country.
From Our Partners
From January 21 to February 1, The Visitors will be at Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC), making its international debut in New York City. Written by Jane Harrison and directed by Wesley Enoch, this award-winning play is a Moogahlin Performing Arts and Sydney Theatre Company Production, produced by Performing Lines, and presented in partnership with Under the Radar Festival©.
For generations, many Native families have relied on community knowledge, not institutions, to guide their financial lives. That wisdom remains essential.
As First American Capital Corporation’s (FACC) influence expands across Wisconsin, it is through strong community partnerships that connect Native entrepreneurs with business loan options, education and resources for success.
Across the country today, museums are being forced to reckon with the truth. For centuries, most mainstream museums were built from taking — taking objects, taking stories, taking lands. They displayed the Ancestors of Native Nations under the banner of “education,” while silencing the very Peoples those Ancestors came from.
Opinion
Guest Opinion. We enhance ourselves with glasses and contacts and even canes and crutches, and we think nothing of it. But what if we enhance ourselves with technology that makes us not just up to normal performance, but better than normal human performance—or with different capabilities than a human?
Opinion. Even after retiring from the U.S. Senate in 2005, former Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who passed away on Dec. 30, 2025, remained a familiar presence in Indian Country. He was easy to spot in the crowd — at White House Tribal Nations Conferences during the Obama administration, at the National Congress of American Indians State of Indian Nations address in Washington, D.C., and at Indian Gaming Association conventions.
Sovereignty
On December 24, 2025, NARF filed an amicus brief supporting an injunction that has blocked the destructive, broad-based freeze of federal funding that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directed in January 2025. The injunction blocks the January directive, as well as similar policies the Administration may seek to implement. NARF filed the brief on behalf of the National Congress of American Indians, the United South and Eastern Tribes Sovereignty Protection Fund, the National Indian Child Welfare Association, the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center, the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, the California Tribal Chairman’s Association, and the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians.
On Monday, President Donald Trump vetoed bipartisan legislation that would have expanded and clarified the Miccosukee Tribe’s land in Florida’s Everglades. The veto appears to be in retribution of the tribe’s opposition to “Alligator Alcatraz,” an immigration detention center, located near Miccosukee ancestral tribal land.
Education
On Dec. 23, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education said it will begin administrative wage garnishment for borrowers with defaulted federal student loans in early 2026, marking the first resumption of such collections since the pandemic-era pause that began in 2020.
It’s a scene straight from a Dickens novel: a family sits around the table on Christmas Day with an empty chair amongst them and a somber air. Except this isn’t the Victorian classic, it’s real life for far too many Native families and no well-intentioned spirits to save the day. The epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) in the United States that has existed for years continues unabated. And while Native students deal with the same end of semester pressures and holiday stresses as other students, they’re more likely to also be living in a state of fear or mourning for a relative who may never make it home.
Arts & Entertainment
Watermark Art Center is excited to announce two Indigenous group exhibitions opening January 9, 2026.
Watermark Art Center will welcome several artists from the Naytahwaush community in a collaborative exhibition titled Minwaajimowinan — “Good Stories” — on view Jan. 9 through March 28, 2026. The public is invited to an afternoon reception for the artists from 3 to 5 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 14. Live music will be performed by Doyle Turner and Jayme Littlewolf.
Health
Environment
The leader of an organization that has been facing off against a foreign mining company with designs on destroying a sacred Indigenous site is walking more than 60 miles across Arizona to attend a court hearing that will decide the fate of 2,400 acres of federal public lands.
The Rappahannock Tribe of Virginia has raised serious concerns following the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) decision in early December to grant Caroline County a permit authorizing the withdrawal of up to 9 million gallons of water per day from the Rappahannock River. The 15-year permit allows for the extraction of a total of 49.275 billion gallons of public water and authorizes the construction of a new water intake system along one of Virginia’s most culturally and environmentally significant rivers—the ancestral homeland of the Rappahannock Tribe.