A proposal for South Dakota’s public-school standards for American history was influenced by a conservative private college enjoying outsize influence among top Republicans. Michigan-based Hillside College’s “1776 Curriculum” is seen as a rebuttal to the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” which reexamined the United States’ founding with the institution of slavery at the center. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem employed a retired professor from the college to develop the standards.
In November 1922, seven land-owning white men brokered a deal to allocate water from the Colorado River, which winds through the West and ends in Mexico. The divvying up between Colorado River Basin states never took into account Indigenous Peoples or many others, and from the start the calculation of who should get what amount of that water may never have been balanced. During the past two decades, pressure has intensified on the river as the driest 22-year stretch in the past 1200 years has gripped the southwestern U.S. As water levels plummet, calls for reduced use have often been met with increased population growth. One hundred years on, the future of the Colorado River is uncertain.
An Oglala Lakota woman is calling upon leaders at her university in Denver to fulfill a promise they made last spring. Celeste Terry, a 30-year-old student of applied indigenous law and science at Metropolitan State University, said she and other Native students at the university were promised free tuition and fees by the university’s top leader. MSU Denver President Janine Davidson made the announcement on May 6, during the university’s first ever Native graduation ceremony.
