KIPI News | January 16, 2023 | Part 2
The Tohono O’odham Nation, Tonto Apache Tribe, San Juan Southern Paiute, Association on American Indian Affairs, and the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers filed an amicus brief in Apache Stronghold v. United States. The brief urges the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to recognize the protections of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to prevent a foreign mining company, Resolution Copper, from destroying a sacred place the Apache call Chí’chil Biłdagoteel, which translates into English as “Oak Flat.” Tribal nations in the Southwest have held Oak Flat as sacred ceremonial ground since time immemorial.
The U.S. Department of the Interior has renamed five places in California, North Dakota, Tennessee and Texas that previously included a racist term for a Native American woman. Thursday’s changes come as part of a yearlong process in which the historically offensive word “squaw” has been removed from the names of geographic sites across the country. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland says in a statement that “words matter,” particularly as the agency works to make these sites accessible and welcoming to people of all backgrounds. She calls the term in question “harmful.”
Those are your headlines at this hour. I’m Colette Keith in the KIPI News center.
