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- By Native News Online Staff
Fall 2025 officially arrives today at 2:19 Eastern Time. With kids back to school, ceremonies and powwows taking place across Indian Country, we live busy lives. You may have missed some important news from Indian Country.
Here are three stories you may have missed this weekend:
Leonard Peltier Mouns the Loss of Longtime Ally Robert Redford
Robert Redford, the legendary actor, Oscar-winning director, and producer, passed away peacefully in his sleep at his home in Utah on Tuesday, September 19, 2025. He was 89.
Redford’s contributions to Indian Country were significant and enduring. He served as executive producer of Incident at Oglala (1992), a powerful documentary about the controversial conviction of Leonard Peltier (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe), a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), in the 1975 deaths of two FBI agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Redford also narrated the film, using his voice and platform to bring national attention to the case.
Peltier explained that he first came to know Redford through connections in Hollywood, including Marlon Brando, and that they met before his incarceration.
Native News Weekly (September 21, 2025): D.C. Briefs
Legislation introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) would abolish the Ironwood Forest and Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon national monuments in an affront to Indigenous communities, local governments and Arizona voters.
Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon National Monument has support from 80 percent of Arizona voters in protecting nearly 1 million acres of the Grand Canyon region and watershed, which has cultural connections to at least 12 Tribes and Nations.
Ironwood Forest National Monument is a 129,000-acre monument approximately 25 miles northwest of Tucson and renowned for its rich biodiversity supporting more than 600 species, some of which are federally listed as threatened or endangered.
Native News Online's most read article last week:
Family Fishing Trip in Alabama Leads to Discovery of 32-Million-Year-Old Sea Turtle Fossil
Researchers, in collaboration with the Poarch Creek Indians, have named it Ueloca colemanorum, honoring its Muscogee Creek heritage and the Coleman family who first found it.
The family had turned fishing trips into fossil hunts, a hobby passed down. On a spring day in 2021, they spotted a massive, dome shaped form embedded in limestone along a riverbank. Unsure of its significance, they kept the fossil secret for months.
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