Native America Calling

The post Roe vs. Wade landscape changes some reproductive health choices, but informed planning about starting and building families remains the best chance for health outcomes for everyone concerned. The federal government recently distributed $350 million to states to help address health disparities for mothers and babies who are most at risk. Today on Native America Calling, we get updates from Captain Stacey Dawson, Senior Women’s Health Nurse Consultant for IHS Division of Nursing Services; Sarah Adams (citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), co-founder of Matriarch; Charon Asetoyer (Comanche), executive director and CEO of the Native American Community board, parent organization to the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center; and Nicole Martin (Navajo, Laguna, Chiricahua Apache, Zuni), co-founder and sex educator with Indigenous Women Rising.

Increasing demand for electric vehicles and other electric storage devices makes lithium an important and valuable commodity. The metal is used in batteries. Today on Native America Calling, we learn about plans to expand the only lithium mine in the United States to meet the demand and why it’s considered an environmental and cultural affront to tribes in Nevada with Reno-Sparks Indian Colony Chairman Arlan Melendez; Ft. McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone tribal member Arlo Crutcher; and Gary McKinney (Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of Duck Valley), spokesperson for the People of Red Mountain and American Indian Movement Northern Nevada chapter member.

The research on the overrepresentation of Native Americans behind bars is long and vast. But a new report shows numbers that exceed what we’ve seen in the past: Native people are incarcerated at a rate 38% higher than the national average and are held in proportions higher than any other ethnic group in at least 19 states. Today on Native America Calling, we’ll look at how, according to the report, tribes and tribal courts are part of the problem and could be part of the solution with Nikcole Whipple (Round Valley Indian Tribe member), Justice Fellow at the Education Trust; Amber Miller, reentry staff attorney for the Yurok Tribal Court; and attorney Nikki Borchardt Campbell (Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah and Ute Indian Tribe), executive director of the National American Indian Court Judges Association.

You already interact with artificial intelligence when you ask Siri for directions or create an algorithmic path by thumbing through TikTok videos. But AI is fast becoming a place for individual—and corporate—creativity and technology. That brings up a lot of questions about copyright protections for Native creatives and worries about appropriation. Today on Native America Calling, we look at how it all works with Michael Running Wolf (Lakota and Cheyenne), a Ph.D student studying computer science and a language advocate using AI; Amelia Winger-Bearskin (Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma), artist, technologist, and the Banks endowed chair and associate professor of artificial intelligence and the arts at the Digital Worlds Institute at the University of Florida; Dr. Jason Edward Lewis (Hawaiian, Samoan), university research chair in Computational Media and the Indigenous Future Imaginary at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada; and Suzanne Kite (Oglala Lakota), artist and organizer of the group Indigenous AI.