Indigenous languages make inroads into public schools…Whenever November would roll around, James Gensaw, a Yurok language high school teacher in far northern California, would get a request from a school administrator. They would always ask him to bring students from the Native American Club, which he advises, to demonstrate Yurok dancing on the high school quad at lunch time. Today, the Yurok language is offered as an elective at four high schools in far northern California. The classes meet language instruction requirements for admission to the University of California and the California State University systems.
The U.S. Interior Department’s plan to withdraw hundreds of square miles in New Mexico from oil and gas production for the next 20 years is expected to result in only a few dozen wells not being drilled on federal land surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Land managers on Thursday released an environmental assessment of the plan first outlined by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in 2021 in response to the concerns of Native American tribes in New Mexico and Arizona. Environmentalists say the agency needs to take a broader look at the cumulative effects of development if they want to preserve cultural sites and limit pollution from ongoing development beyond the proposed withdrawal zone.
