December 08, 2025
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Native News Online will host a special 90-minute year-end livestream on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, as part of its annual fundraising campaign to support its newsroom.
Currents
Native Vote. Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo), candidate for governor of New Mexico, toured Central New Mexico Community College’s Ted Chavez Trades and Technologies Center on Thursday to receive a briefing on the school’s workforce training programs.
From Our Partners
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
Opinion. For generations, Native Americans have faced extraordinary health disparities: We die younger, suffer higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, liver disease, and suicide, and are more likely to lack insurance than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States.
Guest Opinion. The first official execution in Connecticut was that of a Native American in 1639. The man, Nepaupuck of the Quinnipiac Tribe, was executed for the murder of a colonist during the Pequot War.
Sovereignty
For the first time in more than two centuries, Lancaster County officials will formally recognize the Conestoga-Susquehannock Tribe during a ceremony Sunday, Dec. 14, marking the 262nd anniversary of the Paxton Boys massacre.
California’s first governor, Peter Hardeman Burnett, swore that the racist campaign he championed would not end “until the Indian race becomes extinct.” His two years in office brought malnutrition, homicide and forced migration, decimating California’s Native populations by nearly 90% between 1848 and 1900.
Education
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.
Submissions for the sixth annual Tribal College Blanket Design Contest, hosted by American Indian College Fund and Pendleton Woolen Mills, are open from now until January 15, 2026 .
Arts & Entertainment
Vision Maker Media (VMM), a leading source of media by and about Native Americans since 1976, has named filmmakers Ivan and Ivy MacDonald, members of the Blackfeet Nation, as recipients of the 2025 Frank Blythe Award for Media Excellence. The award, named for VMM’s late founder, recognizes individuals or organizations that advance Indigenous media opportunities by engaging and empowering Native American and Alaska Native creators. The MacDonalds will receive $2,000 for professional development.
The Muscogee (Mvskoke) Nation on Saturday will celebrate the grand opening of the Mvskoke Waters Gallery, the first tribally owned art gallery in the Tulsa metropolitan area, with its inaugural exhibition, Mvskokvlke: Road of Strength .
Health
Environment
President Donald Trump has signed a resolution backed by members of Alaska’s Congressional delegation to revoke restrictions on drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve on the North Slope.
Nearly 900 acres of land have been returned to the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation in California. The land borders Yosemite National Park -- one of the most visited National Parks—— and the Sierra National Forest.