On August 15th -17th, the MKW or Mni Ki Wakan (Water is Sacred) Summit, themed, “Indigenous Water Justice, Global Collaboration, & Dismantling Water Colonialism,” will be held in Rapid City. The MKW Summit will bring together Indigenous Peoples, youth, and Indigenous-led environmental water organizations. The MKW Summit is a pillar of the Indigenous Water Decade that was first announced in 2016 at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Since then, the MKW team has engaged in local/transnational partnerships, and initiatives, providing Indigenous water interventions at the United Nations Forum and the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Navajo Nation launched a new initiative to help its citizens caught up in a Medicaid scheme involving behavioral health centers that targeted Native Americans. Tribal officials joined with Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes to announce Operation Rainbow Bridge, a command center focused on helping Navajo Nation citizens return to their families or to be placed in a behavioral health center that is in good standing. The move follows an announcement last week of an investigation into allegations of widespread fraud in the state’s Medicaid program by operators of residential treatment centers — often referred to as sober-living facilities. Hundreds of millions of dollars are believed to have been fraudulently taken from the state’s Medicaid program when so-called “bad actors” targeted droves of Native American people, enrolling them in the state’s American Indian Health Plan, leaving them untreated and giving them drugs and alcohol.
Those are your headlines at this hour. I’m Colette Keith in the KIPI News center.
