Native America Calling

Former Osage Principal Chief Jim Gray is remembered as a leader who laid the foundation for a modern, self-governing tribal structure while also reconnecting the tribe with its cultural roots. Among his many accomplishments as a transformative leader, Jim Gray spearheaded the historic reform of Osage government in 2004. That secured the individual right to vote for each Osage citizen rather than headright ownership and restored the Nation’s sovereign status. During his time as principal chief, the Nation also successfully negotiated a landmark $380 million settlement with the U.S. government — at the time the largest of its kind — addressing decades of tribal trust fund mismanagement. All the while, he remained a determined advocate for cultural and language revitalization. Gray walked on this month. We’ll hear from his family and friends about his legacy.

We’ll also remember Black civil rights leader, Rev. Jesse Jackson, who died this week at the age of 84. Jackson championed various Native causes throughout his career including opposition to nuclear waste dumping on tribal lands and support for the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.

Native Americans have worked hard for decades to counter the stereotypes perpetuated in old movies and television shows about the American West. Now a new generation of Native technology experts worry that artificial intelligence is eroding that work. Scores of AI-generated images and videos are flooding people’s social media For You pages. The creations are within easy reach of anyone typing a prompt into any AI generator that scrapes information from millions of sources. Often posted by anonymous creators, the products of those prompts present vaguely Native visual and audio characteristics with little to no authentic cultural connections. Along the way they generate hundreds of thousands of admirers. We’ll talk about the work to counter the looming onslaught of AI cultural appropriation.

The federal panel that oversees commercial and subsistence fishing in Alaska is putting a hard limit on the number of chum salmon that are caught — and wasted — by commercial pollack trawlers. It is a long awaited — and controversial — decision by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council after years of outcry by tribes to address the factors that go into the disappearing runs of salmon that Alaska Native people have always relied on for survival. Although presented as a compromise, the bycatch limit is seen as a severe blow by commercial fishers, who say such restrictions could be catastrophic to the industry. The decision comes as the state also instituted severe regional restrictions on king salmon fishing because of low numbers. They are among the latest measures to address the big and complex ecological threats to what is historically the most productive salmon fishery in the world.

With help from Congress, the Trump Administration stripped some $1.5 billion in federal funds previously promised to tribes. A lot of that was in the form of contracts for clean energy manufacturing and development — new money doled out three years earlier as part of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. A new analysis by the Brookings Institution identifies three funding and policy changes, including reductions in SNAP and Medicaid, that negatively affect Native Americans. The research firm says the actions continue a pattern of disinvestment and falls short of the federal government’s binding responsibility to Indian Country.