Federal judge upholds Bering Sea trawl fisheries decisions amid salmon crisis

The Tanana Chiefs Conference and the Association of Village Council Presidents had sued the federal government



Salmon dry on a rack in Quinhagak, a Yup'ik village in Western Alaska, in July 2023. Salmon is a staple of the traditional Indigenous diet in Alaska and one of the main foods harvested through subsistence practices. 

(Photo by Alice Bailey/University of Alaska Fairbanks via Alaska Beacon)

This article was originally published by the Alaska Beacon.

James Brooks
Alaska Beacon

MAR 17, 2025

Federal fisheries managers did not mishandle trawl fishing rules amid Alaska’s ongoing salmon subsistence crisis, a federal judge in Anchorage has ruled.

In a 45-page order published Tuesday, March 11, Judge Sharon Gleason ruled against the Association of Village Council Presidents and the Tanana Chiefs Conference, which sued the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2023 over its management of Bering Sea trawl fisheries in the years since a marine heat wave.

“This suit arises from the apparent tension between federal defendants’ management of the fishery and the needs of Alaskan communities in times of significant change in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands region,” Gleason wrote.

The warming event harmed salmon and contributed to the ongoing shortage of fish in Alaska’s inland rivers. The two tribal groups argued in court that NMFS should have conducted a new environmental impact statement — the bedrock analysis behind federal fisheries decisions — before setting annual catch limits for the Bering Sea’s lucrative pollock and cod fisheries.

A new environmental impact statement could have resulted in additional restrictions on trawlers that occasionally catch salmon while pursuing pollock and cod, a process known as bycatch.

Salmon are critical for life in the predominantly Alaska Native communities along Alaska’s rural rivers, while trawl industry experts argue that their ships catch relatively few salmon, many of which aren’t destined for Alaska rivers.

“Salmon, in particular, provide a crucial source of food and culture,” Gleason wrote. “As changes to the marine ecosystem in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands region have depleted salmon stocks, salmon bycatch in the groundfish fishery has further diminished stocks and escapement, which is the number of salmon that ‘escape’ fisheries in the ocean and survive to return to freshwater streams to spawn.”

But while Gleason acknowledged the tribal groups’ need for salmon, she found that federal managers’ annual scientific updates, known as “Supplementary Information Reports,” or SIRs, adequately updated the situation and allowed managers to make reasoned decisions on fisheries.

Plaintiffs had to prove that fisheries managers acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” way in order to overturn their actions as a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. Plaintiffs didn’t do that, Gleason concluded.

“By reviewing up-to-date information and considering whether the information indicated a substantial change … NMFS considered whether supplementation was necessary and articulated its conclusion that it was not, as NEPA requires. Its harvest specifications decisions are therefore not arbitrary and capricious on this basis,” she wrote.

Gleason later added, regarding the fishery services’ handling of updated information and the environmental impact statement, “NMFS’s conclusion — that the information is not of a scale or scope to place it outside what was considered in the Harvest Specifications EIS — is inherently a factual determination that NMFS makes based on its expertise.”

Plaintiffs, represented by the environmental law firm Earthjustice, could appeal Gleason’s decision but did not immediately say whether they would.

In a written statement, they said they were disappointed by the decision.

“The lack of salmon in our region has become a humanitarian crisis, the likes of which we have never before experienced. Despite this setback, we will continue to fight with all available tools and use all avenues to end the salmon crisis,” said AVCP CEO Vivian Korthuis.

Tanana Chiefs Conference Chairman Brian Ridley said that even in defeat, the case provided arguments to use in front of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which sets harvest limits.

“We must correct how NMFS manages the natural resources it is responsible for protecting — because if they don’t believe climate change is the cause (of salmon declines), then that leaves only poor management decisions and bycatch as the obvious answers,” he said.

An official for the U.S. Justice Department, which represented NMFS in court, declined comment on the ruling.

The At-Sea Processors Association and United Catcher Boats, two industry groups that sided with the federal government during the lawsuit, issued a statement commending Gleason’s decision.

“This decision underscores the complexities of fisheries management and the critical need for science-driven decision-making,” said Andrea Keikkala, executive director of UCB. “Our fleet operates under strict federal guidelines, including 100% coverage by federal fisheries observers in the pollock fishery, and we remain committed to working with regulators, scientists, and stakeholders to ensure the long-term sustainability of the fishery.”

James Brooks is a longtime Alaska reporter, having previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. He can be contacted at jbrooks@alaskabeacon.com.


Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

Trump Administration Rolls Back Biden Executive Order on Tribal Sovereignty and Self-Governance 

President Joe Biden signs executive order at the White House Tribal Nations Summit 

(Photo/Levi Rickert for Native News Online)

By Levi Rickert 

 

March 15, 2025

The White House on Friday revoked 18 executive actions from the Biden administration, including an order designed to strengthen tribal sovereignty and expand self-determination for the nation’s 574 federally recognized tribes. 

The sweeping revocation included Executive Order 14112 of Dec. 6, 2023 — “Reforming Federal Funding and Support for Tribal Nations to Better Embrace Our Trust Responsibilities and Promote the Next Era of Tribal Self-Determination.” This executive order was signed in a room full of tribal leaders at the 2023 White House Tribal Nations Summit. 

Biden’s executive order directed federal agencies to “promote compacting, contracting, co-management, co-stewardship, and other agreements with Tribal Nations that allow them to partner with the Federal Government to administer Federal programs and services.”

Biden’s order was meant to expand tribal self-determination across the 574 federally recognized tribes by making it easier for Native Americans to access federal funding and have greater autonomy over how to use the federal funds.

“Today, Tribal Nations still face many barriers to fully exercise their inherent sovereignty, especially in federal funding programs. Far too many of the federal funding and support programs that Tribes rely on are difficult to access, have overly burdensome federal reporting requirements, have unnecessary limitations, or impose requirements on Tribes that drain Tribal resources and undermine their ability to make their own decisions about where and how to meet the needs of their communities,” the executive order stated.

Former Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland (Bay Mills Indian Community) weighed in on Trump's revoking of Biden's executive order to Native News Online on Saturday morning:

"This Executive Order was intended to reduce government interference with how Tribes spend their money, and to ensure that federal agencies are actually meeting their legal obligations for Tribes. It made the government more efficient for Indian people. Rolling back this Executive Order increases federal interference with local actions."

Trump’s action Friday was among 18 Biden administration orders rescinded by Trump in his “Additional Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders And Actions.” The rescission follows a previous Jan. 20 executive order in which Trump revoked 78 other presidential orders and memoranda from the Biden administration. 

This is a developing story. 

About The Author

Levi Rickert
Levi "Calm Before the Storm" Rickert (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) is the founder, publisher and editor of Native News Online. Rickert was awarded Best Column 2021 Native Media Award for the print/online category by the Native American Journalists Association. He serves on the advisory board of the Multicultural Media Correspondents Association. He can be reached at levi@nativenewsonline.net.

‘Betrayal of a sacred federal promise’

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, calls President Donald Trump’s order seeking to dismantle the U.S. Education Department a violation of the federal government’s trust and treaty obligations to tribes


President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)


KEVIN ABOUREZK
MAR 20, 2025
ICT

A Democratic U.S. senator and a Native American education advocate said Thursday that President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for dismantling the U.S. Education Department could have disastrous impacts on Native students.

Trump signed the order Thursday, advancing a campaign promise to take apart an agency that’s been a longtime target of conservatives. He has derided the Education Department as wasteful and polluted by liberal ideology. However, completing its dismantling is most likely impossible without an act of Congress, which created the department in 1979. Republicans said they will introduce a bill to achieve that.

The department, however, is not set to close completely. The White House said the department will retain certain critical functions. Trump said his administration will close the department beyond its “core necessities," preserving its responsibilities for Title I funding for low-income schools, Pell grants and money for children with disabilities. The White House said earlier it would also continue to manage federal student loans.

The president blamed the department for America’s lagging academic performance and said states will do a better job.

“It’s doing us no good," he said at a White House ceremony.



(Photo: Office of U.S. Senator Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii)

However, U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawai‘i, vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, said Thursday that Trump’s order effectively violates the government’s federal trust and treaty responsibilities to tribes to provide education.

“The Department of Education plays a critical role in Native education, on everything from special education and Impact Aid to Native language revitalization,” he said in a news release. “Without a functional Department of Education, Native students – more than 90 percent of whom attend public schools – will be at the mercy of state governments that have no legal responsibility to meet their needs.”

The Education Department sends billions of dollars a year to schools and oversees $1.6 trillion in federal student loans.

Currently, much of the agency’s work revolves around managing money — both its extensive student loan portfolio and a range of aid programs for colleges and school districts, such as school meals and support for homeless students. The agency also is key in overseeing civil rights enforcement.

Schatz called the order a “betrayal of a sacred federal promise.”

“We have a duty to fight this reckless plan and protect Native students,” he said.

More than 92 percent of Native students attend public and charter K-12 schools, not Bureau of Indian Education schools, Schatz said.

Abolishing the Education Department would slash funding for Native students in public, charter and BIE schools, which rely on resources like Individuals with Disabilities Education Act special education services, Impact Aid, English Language Learner supports, and Every Student Succeeds Act Title VI Indian education programs.

“It would also mean less dedicated funding for teachers, sports, building repairs, school meal programs, transportation, and after-school tutoring/activities – leaving Native students with fewer educational opportunities,” Schatz said.

Already, the Trump administration has been gutting the agency. Its workforce is being slashed in half, and there have been deep cuts to the Office for Civil Rights.

Advocates for public schools said eliminating the department would leave children behind in an American education system that is fundamentally unequal.

“This is a dark day for the millions of American children who depend on federal funding for a quality education, including those in poor and rural communities with parents who voted for Trump,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said.

Democrats said the order will be fought in the courts and in Congress, and they urged Republicans to join them in opposition. The department was “founded in part to guarantee the enforcement of students’ civil rights,” said Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. “Champions of public school segregation objected, and campaigned for a return to ‘states’ rights.’”


Cheryl Crazy Bull, American Indian College Fund president and Sicangu Lakota, said the current 40 percent drop in Native students enrolling in college is a “crisis.”

 (Photo Courtesy American Indian College Fund)

Cheryl Crazy Bull, president and chief executive officer of the American Indian College Fund, said Native American students should not be considered as members of a racial group, such as Black or Hispanic students, but rather as members of politically distinct sovereign nations with rights secured by treaties.



“We gave up land and resources in order for the United States to be founded and grow as a country,” she said. “We’re having to deal with that lack of knowledge on the part of many people."

Native American students should be exempt from blanket attacks on programs and funding that serve minority and other vulnerable students, she said.

“We want to be allies with all of our other allies who are being attacked,” she said during a virtual panel discussion Thursday on efforts to protect minority students against federal policies. “At the same time we have a different status that we have to advocate for.”

She said further gutting or eliminating the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights would hurt Native American students, who rely on the office to ensure they are treated fairly. Native American students are suspended and expelled from schools at disproportionately high rates, studies have shown, including a recent study from WestEd.

Crazy Bull also expressed concern about the Trump administration cutting funding to the department’s Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on the nation’s academic progress.

“The loss of data is going to have a great impact on our ability to evaluate how our institutions are dealing with students and how investment should be made,” she said.

And she said she worries the nation’s 35 tribal colleges and universities also could see further funding cuts as a result of Trump’s executive order. She said federal education funds account for roughly 74 percent of funds for those institutions, and some of those schools get 90 percent of their funding from federal sources.

“Many of the institutions are at risk of having their programs decimated by the loss of funding,” she said.

Trump’s recent decision to lay off hundreds of thousands of federal probationary employees especially impacted the country’s only two federally operated tribal higher education institutions, the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque and Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, both of which lost nearly one-fourth of their employees as a result of the federal layoffs.

ProPublica published a report last year that showed tribal colleges and universities are perpetually underfunded by Congress despite federal legislation, as well as treaties, that have promised them adequate education funding. Those institutions receive a quarter-billion dollars less per year than they should, when accounting for inflation, and receive almost nothing to build and maintain their campuses, the nonprofit investigative news organization found. Those funding gaps have led to broken water pipes, leaking roofs and failing ventilation systems.

Further exacerbating the problem is the fact that state funds and private donations make up a miniscule portion of tribal college and university funding, meaning the loss of federal funding likely would be disastrous for those institutions, ProPublica found.

“You freeze our funding and ask us to wait six months to see how it shakes out, and we close,” Ahniwake Rose, president of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which lobbies for tribal colleges in Washington, D.C., told ProPublica. “That’s incredibly concerning.”

Schatz said eliminating the Education Department, which administers federal loans and Pell grants, could impact Native students’ ability to access college financial aid. And he echoed Crazy Bull’s concerns about the impact of Trump’s order on tribal colleges and universities.

“Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), which depend on federal dollars for nearly three-quarters of their funding, could face catastrophic cuts if states decide not to maintain critical funding – pushing many to the brink of collapse and jeopardizing educational opportunities for future generations,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.




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BY KEVIN ABOUREZK  is a longtime, award-winning Sicangu Lakota journalist whose work has appeared in numerous publications. He can be reached at kevin@ictnews.org

In Canada, Indigenous advocates argue that mining companies violate the rights of nature

Tribunal judges found the industry guilty of “ongoing ecocide.”


Dea / V. Giannella / Getty Images via Grist

Taylar Dawn Stagner & Joseph Winters
Grist

MAR 14, 2025

In Western legal systems, arguments against pollution or the destruction of the environment tend to focus exclusively on people: It’s wrong to contaminate a river, for example, because certain humans depend on the river for drinking water.

But what if the river had an inherent right to be protected from pollution, regardless of its utility to humans? This is the idea that drives the “rights of nature” movement, a global campaign to recognize the intrinsic value of nonhuman nature — not just rivers, but also trees, mountains, animals, ecosystems — by granting it legal rights. Many Indigenous worldviews already recognize these rights. The question for many in the movement, however, is how to bring the rights of nature into the courtroom.

Enter the International Rights of Nature Tribunal, a recurring gathering of Indigenous and environmental advocates who present arguments regarding alleged violations of the rights of nature and Indigenous peoples. Given international law’s broad failure to recognize the rights of nature, the events provide a model showing what this type of jurisprudence could look like.

At the sixth tribunal in Toronto late last month, a panel of nine judges heard cases against Canadian mining companies, ultimately ruling that they had violated “collective rights, Indigenous rights, and rights of nature.”

“Today’s testimonies have emphasized the age-old stories of greed, colonization, … and the ongoing ecocide caused by the extractive industries,” said Casey Camp-Horinek, an elder of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma and one of the tribunal’s judges. She and the other judges called for the ratification of a United Nations treaty on business and human rights, a report from U.N. experts on critical minerals and Indigenous peoples’ rights, and further consideration of mining’s impacts at the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

Those recommendations and the verdict against the mining companies are set to be presented later this year at COP30 in Brazil — the United Nations’ annual climate change conference — where the tribunal judges hope their findings will pressure countries to develop legal protections for nature and Indigenous peoples.

Mining was selected as the theme of this tribunal because of the damage that resource extraction can cause to people and ecosystems, even though the sector is necessary for addressing climate change. Minerals like lithium and copper are needed in large quantities for electric vehicle batteries, solar panels, and other renewable technologies to replace fossil fuels. A previous session of the tribunal, held in New York City last September, focused on oil and gas infrastructure.

Canadian companies were singled out because of their prominence in the global mining sector. According to a recent report by the nonprofit MiningWatch Canada, the country is home to more than 1,300 mining and exploration companies, 730 of which operate overseas. About half the world’s public mining companies are listed on Canadian stock exchanges.

The tribunal was also meant to contrast with this week’s annual conference of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, which featured climate change and Indigenous issues in a way that speakers described as opportunistic — by now a familiar criticism.



Casey Camp-Horinek, International Rights of Nature tribunal judge and Ponca Nation of Oklahoma elder, said Canadian mining companies are violating the rights of both nature and Indigenous peoples in South America and Serbia. Courtesy of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature

James Yap, the tribunal’s prosecutor and acting director of an international human rights program at the University of Toronto, called out one particular event titled “Caliente Caliente Ooh Aah: Latin American Mining Is Heating Up!,” which invited attendees to “dance to the Latin beat through the various regulatory issues affecting the region.”

Neither the law firm that organized the Latin American mining event nor the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada responded to Grist’s requests for comment.

Jérémie Gilbert, a professor of social and ecological justice at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, applauded the tribunal for building an evidence base of the alleged human rights and nature’s rights violations by transnational mining companies. His research has highlighted how most international law treats nature as a resource to be owned or exploited instead of having value in its own right.

Legal protections that include Indigenous knowledge and the rights of nature have already been implemented in several countries — most famously in Ecuador, which in its rewritten 2008 constitution acknowledged the rights of Mother Earth, or Pacha Mama, to the “maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions, and evolutionary processes.”

“What’s required for the rights of nature is a pen and then enforceability,” said Dov Korff-Korn, the legal director of Sacred Defense Fund, an Indigenous environmental group based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Korff-Korn said that giving rights to nonhuman entities like water, animals, and plants is already baked into how many tribes see the world, so using tribal laws and respecting sovereignty is a way forward.

“We’ve got some unique rights and laws that have unique expressions,” said Frank Bibeau, an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe and a tribal attorney with the nonprofit Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights who has worked on cases that give rights to nonhuman relatives under Chippewa treaties.

A copper mine in Puerto Coloso, Chile.

Sebastian Rojas Rojo / AFP via Getty Images via Grist

One example came during the fight against the controversial Line 3 pipeline proposed by the oil and gas company Enbridge in Minnesota. Bibeau listed manoomin, Ojibwe for wild rice, as a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources, arguing that the rice had rights to clean water and habitat that would be jeopardized by the pipeline and the oil spill risks it would bring.

Bibeau said the lawsuit is an example of how many tribes see the rights inherent in nature. But since most settler courts don’t, he argues that Indigenous treaties are a useful way to help protect nonhuman relatives.

Other ways to develop legal protections could involve tribal courts. This year in Aotearoa, also known as New Zealand, the mountain Taranaki Maunga was recognized as a legal person because the Maori see it as an ancestor. The country also recognizes the rights of the Te Irewera Forest and the Whanganui River, so there is a developing global precedent for this sort of legal framework.

Protections like these could protect ecosystems in the examined cases of the tribunal, including in Brazil where a firm called Belo Sun has proposed the development of the country’s largest open-pit gold mine, and in regions affected by copper, silver, and other metals mining throughout Ecuador. One of the cases heard by tribunal judges related to a gold mine proposed in eastern Serbia by the Canadian company Dundee Precious Metals, and another centered on uranium mining within Canada.

In a presentation about heavy metals mining in Penco, Chile, Valerie Sepúlveda — president of a Chilean environmental nonprofit called Parque para Penco — criticized the Toronto-based Aclara Resources for opaque operations and a failure to engage with residents near its mines. “We must reevaluate what mining is really necessary and which is not,” she told the audience. One of the judges, in describing the 2015 release of millions of liters of cyanide solution from a gold mine in San Juan, Argentina, said mining companies are “sacrificing these towns so that Americans can have their Teslas.”

Another judge — Tzeporah Berman, international program director at the nonprofit Stand.earth — told attendees she was “horrified and embarrassed” by the practices of Canadian mining companies. “Canada must pursue human and environmental due diligence,” she added while delivering her verdict. “I hope that our recommendations will be used in future policy design and legal challenges.”

BY GRIST

ICT News

Inside America’s mental health agency: Mass firings and work stoppages sap morale, impede mission

‘People are going to die’ if cuts continue, mental health workers warn; Choctaw citizen among those SAMHSA employees who were fired


U.S. Department of Health and Human Services building in Washington, D.C

. (Jourdan Bennett-Begaye, ICT)

MAR 20, 2025
Art Levine and Rob Waters
MindSite News

As Elon Musk and his young engineers at the Department of Government Efficiency have purged thousands of federal employees, they’ve insisted they are only terminating low-performing and probationary workers and that their actions won’t impede the ability of government agencies to do their work, but rather make them more efficient.

But at the agency tasked with leading the fight to ease the country’s mental health and addiction crises, many of the 100 or so workers who’ve been fired – as well as the roughly 800 who, as of today, remain employed – have observed something different. They see a massive downsizing process characterized by almost complete indifference to the impact on the people involved or the ability of the agency to fulfill its mission. They also contend that the charges of poor performance are simply a pretext.

“The motive is more like ‘How can we get more people out?’ said one employee at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), who remains in their position and asked to remain anonymous. “It doesn’t matter what level of job you have, it doesn’t matter the importance of the work you do.”

A small agency with an $8.1 billion budget, SAMHSA has managed to grow in recent years as federal policymakers looked for ways to help states and cities ease the human suffering of addiction and homelessness playing out on the streets. It sends out the vast majority of its funding in grant programs to state, country and nonprofit agencies to operate mental health and substance abuse services. It also administers the grants that support the running of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline launched almost three years ago.

More chaos at SAMHSA is coming

Roughly 100 SAMHSA employees were fired during the “Valentine’s Day massacre” weekend starting Feb. 14, and only a week later, some 30,000 probationary employees across the federal government were jobless. Among them were four regional directors of SAMHSA, all of them highly experienced behavioral health providers and administrators. And more chaos at SAMHSA is coming.

This week, SAMHSA’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, announced it was reducing the number of regional offices from 10 to four. And Friday March 14 is the deadline for 80,000 HHS employees to apply for a voluntary separation program that would pay them up to $25,000 to quit.

Yesterday, all federal agencies were supposed to submit plans for a second wave of mass layoffs to the Office of Personnel Management – a proposed “reduction in force” that could permanently eliminate about 700,000 jobs – or a third of the federal workforce. This includes plans to fire 83,000 people at the Department of Veterans Affairs. That assault on the nation’s largest health care system is sparking controversy in Congress, among veterans groups and unions – and local outrage.

March 13 was also the day when US District Judge William Alsup ordered the reinstatement of all probationary employees fired at six federal agencies – the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior and Treasury – and said he may extend the order to other agencies, potentially including HHS. The judge’s order is certain to be appealed, continuing the chaos and uncertainty across the federal workforce.

Like other fired probationary workers, Nate Billy, the former director of SAMHSA’s Region 10, was notified of his termination via a form letter sent by Jeffrey Anoka, acting chief human capital officer of HHS. “Your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the Agency’s current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment at the Agency,” the letter said.

‘Based on a lie’

But Alsup said the contention that the workers fired had been poor performers was a “sham” and that the firings were “based on a lie.” He added: “It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie.”

Former SAMHSA employees are not only worried and angry about the way they’ve been treated, they are concerned about the apparent dismembering of the agency whose mission they deeply believe in. One long-time veteran of SAMHSA who asked to remain anonymous is concerned about the undermining of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

“We’re still getting reports from contractors who can’t access funds for 988 work, and any potential funding pause there could mean life or death,” he said. The slowdown of resources at a time of rising hostility against the LGBTQ+ community is alarming because they “are at significant risk of death by suicide. Those populations are feeling heightened anxiety now, and our work in that area could be reduced.”

One Midwestern state worker involved in administering their state’s 988 lines told MindSite News in late February that SAMHSA officials had stopped communicating with their office and that funds had stopped flowing.

But Alsup said the contention that the workers fired had been poor performers was a “sham” and that the firings were “based on a lie.” He added: “It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie.”

Former SAMHSA employees are not only worried and angry about the way they’ve been treated, they are concerned about the apparent dismembering of the agency whose mission they deeply believe in. One long-time veteran of SAMHSA who asked to remain anonymous is concerned about the undermining of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

“We’re still getting reports from contractors who can’t access funds for 988 work, and any potential funding pause there could mean life or death,” he said. The slowdown of resources at a time of rising hostility against the LGBTQ+ community is alarming because they “are at significant risk of death by suicide. Those populations are feeling heightened anxiety now, and our work in that area could be reduced.”

One Midwestern state worker involved in administering their state’s 988 lines told MindSite News in late February that SAMHSA officials had stopped communicating with their office and that funds had stopped flowing.

No communication with the federal government

“We’ve had no communication from the federal government,” said the worker, who asked to remain anonymous because of a concern over retaliation. “We don’t really know what’s going on as far as continued funding for 988 moving forward.” She said the office’s regular submissions of progress reports to the SAMHSA project officer hadn’t been acknowledged, and as of late February, the state office had not received its usual grant installment payment.

“If we don’t receive funding moving forward, I don’t know if my job continues or the state has staff,” they said. “I don’t know how we will continue to fund our 988 contact centers. And if there’s not money going out the door to support the people that are doing the work and answering these calls, then people are going to die.”

MindSite News has been unable to learn whether communications or payments have resumed. Representatives of the Department of Health and Human Services didn’t reply to a request for comment sent after hours on Friday afternoon.

The state 988 worker is particularly alarmed about rumors that a feature allowing LGBTQ+ youth who call for help to “press 3” and get connected to specially trained crisis counselors will be shut down.

“If that lifeline goes away, then access to support for queer youth and young adults decreases,” they said. “And that would mean an increase in suicide rates for a very vulnerable population.” Calls to the line have soared since Trump’s election.

Identity erasure at SAMHSA

References to the needs and descriptions of services for LGBTQ+ people were largely eliminated from the websites of SAMHSA and other federal agencies, until a court ordered that they be reinstated. Now, many of the pre-Trump pages have reappeared, as on a page that says, “LGBTQI+ Youth: Like All Americans, They Deserve Evidence-Based Care.”

But the page comes with a surreal warning sticker: “Per a court order, HHS is required to restore this website as of February 14, 2025 at 11:59 p.m. Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female.”

SAMHSA’s new leadership also removed the initials “TQ+” – which stand for transgender and queer – and the renamed “LGB Center of Excellence” links to a resource page that omits any reference to gay or transgender people. Its former title at the same URL was: “Center of Excellence: LGBTQ+ Behavioral Health Equity.”

All this erasure may come at a high cost, since LGBTQ+ teens consider and attempt suicide at more than four times the rate of other adolescents, according to the Trevor Project – with a suicide attempt every 45 seconds on average.

Employees who remain at the agency “are deeply committed to this work, are very committed to making it through this to get us to the other side so that we can do the mission,” said the anonymous current employee. They are “trying to figure out how to make it through this time where there’s indifference to who is being fired.”

Nate Billy and two other senior SAMHSA employees who were fired spoke with MindSite News about their experiences. All bristled at the notion that they were terminated because of their performance. These are their stories.

Nate Billy of the Choctaw Nation: ‘It was a shock’

Nate Billy was raised in the Choctaw Nation in southeast Oklahoma. He earned his license as a mental health therapist, became deputy director of behavioral health at the Choctaw Nation Health Services Authority and then behavioral health director for the National Indian Health Board, a nonprofit advocate for the 574 federally recognized tribes. When he was hired in June 2024 as the director of SAMHSA’s region 10, the move felt logical and appropriate.



Nathan Billy, Choctaw citizen and SAMHSA’s former Region 10 director, in a photo he provided. (Photo courtesy of MindSite News)

“I was a funding recipient and (had) done work on the service end, so I was very confident about joining SAMSHA,” he told MindSite News in an interview. “I always had such great respect for that agency and the mental health services they provide.”

A key focus of Nate’s work was to address disparities that cause some communities to have worse mental health and more limited access to services – what the agency called mental health “equity” until that term was banned by the Trump administration. (To implement an executive order, federal agencies are now using algorithms to search grant proposals, job descriptions and websites for words that signal a “woke” agenda. The New York Times compiled a list of almost 200 words that raise red flags including Native American, racial diversity and disparity.)

“When I go out into communities, I think, OK, not all communities are experiencing everything equally,” Billy said. “Some have certain vulnerabilities or just health disparities. What can be more human than saying, ‘I want to treat you equitably.’”

He is especially proud of helping Washington State Indian tribes amplify use of the community-based Icelandic Prevention Model, which cut teen drug abuse in Iceland almost in half over 20 years and put the responsibility on adults to create drug- and alcohol-free environments. One secret to the success of the model, Billy said, is that it isn’t a heavy-handed anti-drug program but incorporates fun, drug-free activities for youth.

In Washington, where Indian and Alaska Native tribes have the highest rate of opioid overdoses, five tribes adopted the model. He also helped increase tribal use of the overdose prevention drug naloxone, best known as Narcan. At SAMHSA, Billy became a key expert on the Icelandic prevention program and accompanied then-director Miriam Delphin-Rittmon and officials from the Indian Health Services, tribal leaders and Washington state health officials to visit Iceland last October.

When he came back from the trip, “my brain was on fire” with excitement about ways the model could be incorporated in the U.S., Billy said. But over the next three months, Trump was elected and “all of this turmoil and anxiety started.”

Billy was out with his husband on Saturday, Feb. 15, celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary when he began getting phone alerts about SAMHSA staffers getting termination notices. When he finally got home, he saw a notice on his work phone: “Open Immediately.”

Billy knew better. He and other staffers had been warned through word of mouth and social media – not from any supervisors or administrators — that as soon as they opened the email, their access to work computers would be cut off. He made sure to first print out his personnel files, employment history and other records he would need to file for unemployment insurance and other services.

Then, he hesitated. “There was kind of the hope in the back of my mind that this can’t really be happening and maybe there’ll be a backlash and it’ll be reversed,” he said. He finally went ahead and clicked on the email from Anoka. Like everyone else, he was infuriated by its curt, demeaning language.

“I was appalled, knowing that my performance was outstanding, knowing that I’ve been trusted to travel and got a government clearance,” he said. He was placed on administrative leave until March 14, and wasn’t allowed to attend a critical meeting on suicide prevention, a burning issue in Indian country. It was held in Florida, where local providers and advocates from around the country joined staffers from the decimated SAMHSA regional offices to discuss the looming mental health crisis.

“I was going to learn all these things and bring (them) back to Region 10 and begin our work together here,” he said. “But I was terminated.”

Mirna Herrera: Latino and LGBTQ communities “are scared for their lives”

Mirna Herrera knows what it’s like to struggle with mental health challenges. She grew up in Nazareth, Israel during the Palestinian uprisings known as the intifadas and as a teenager witnessed blown-up buses and dead bodies. She was later diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety and depression.

Support from peers proved to be critical to her own recovery, and she became an impassioned promoter of the power of peers in the mental health system. She came to the United States in 2008 for graduate work in music therapy and played a leadership role in peer support work, beginning with an eight-year stint at the University Health Kansas City hospital system. When she was recruited by a SAMHSA director in 2023, her lived experience was considered an asset.

Herrera had been planning key projects designed to incorporate more peers with “lived experience” in treatment and outreach, including through the expansion of mobile crisis teams that respond to 988 crisis emergency calls in Kansas City and other cities.

Peers “instill hope that recovery is possible,” she told MindSite News. “If you have a peer specialist, you immediately feel like you can trust that system.”

Herrera was less than two months from completing her two-year “probationary” period when she received the termination notice telling her that “your performance has not been adequate” and became one of roughly 30,000 federal employees on probationary status who have been fired to date. She said the wording in the letter was so at odds with the bonus she had recently been promised following a stellar evaluation that the firing seemed impossible.

“No one really anticipated it,” she said. “We knew our leaders at HHS got the presidential executive order to let go of all probationary employees, but we were all, like, ‘There’s no way it’s going to be happening.”

She and some of her colleagues figured that SAMHSA would be spared because it’s so small compared to other agencies within HHS and because Robert F Kennedy Jr., the newly confirmed HHS secretary, had “lived experience” through his recovery from an addiction. She thought: “Hey, we’re not even on the radar. And behavioral health issues are a bipartisan issue.”

She and her colleagues were wrong. She has now joined two class-action lawsuits that contend the firing of probationary workers was illegal.

Herrera and other former SAMHSA officials who no longer work at the agency are concerned about the fate of communities demonized by the Trump administration that the agency had previously been dedicated to serving. These include Hispanic immigrants, along with gay and trans youth.

“By the time I left my job, we had an increase in calls in our area for Hispanic communities and LGBTQ communities because they’re getting persecuted,” Herrera said. “Now they’re scared for their lives. The crisis is increasing, but I can not participate in that work anymore.”

Complying with Trump’s executive orders, SAMHSA erased all references to LGBTQ people on the agency website. They were later restored by a court in February, which ordered all purged health information on federal websites to be reinstated.

The erasures are deeply worrisome to Herrera. “They’re not going to be acknowledged as who they truly are, so there’s a fear for them losing essential services, medical services, behavioral health services because of their sexual orientation and identity.”

Scott Gagnon: The Trump administration “is simply lying about us”

Scott Gagnon, a veteran addiction specialist, became director of SAMHSA’s Region 1 in New England last June after spending almost 20 years as a program analyst and administrator at a series of behavioral health programs. Among his positions, he spent nearly nine years as an executive of a New England agency that contracts with SAMHSA. He was three months short of completing his one-year probationary period when he received the same form-letter as other probationary hires declaring his performance sub-par and terminating him.

He was so angry about the firing and the letter, he wrote an op-ed about it for the Portland Press Herald. It included this paragraph:

The administration is simply lying about us as they fire us. In the termination letter I received from HHS, it was stated I was being fired for a lack of knowledge, skills and abilities for my position, and for issues with performance. Both statements are provable lies. I received an exceptional rating in my 2024 performance evaluation, of which I have documented proof. I was specifically recruited to apply for this job precisely because of the national reputation I have for my knowledge, skills and abilities in the addiction field…This is the case with so many of my fellow fired feds, to a person, all with exceptional performance ratings and individuals with very impressive resumes.

Last year, while serving as the director of Region 1, Gagnon was honored as the 2024 National Prevention Specialist of the Year by an organization that certifies counseling, peer support and recovery professionals.

“I was pretty angry, because I know I had an exceptional performance review,” Gagnon told MindSite News. He made sure to download the laudatory 2024 review while he still had access to it.

Even before he was fired, he worried about the directions the agency was taking under Trump. He noticed that the freezes on external communications and funding continued past the time the administration claimed they had been lifted. For a regional office, communicating with partners, stakeholders and outside organizations is essential, yet “we couldn’t talk to the outside world,” Gagnon said. “We work with the outside world. So as regional offices, it made us so we couldn’t do our jobs.”

Cancelled were Zoom conferences with healthcare leaders in six states on suicide prevention and improving the 988 services. He also was invited to two conferences on opioid addiction prevention in Rhode Island and Connecticut but was barred from going even before he was fired.

He hears that the freeze on outside communications is still in place, with rare exceptions. “My colleagues who are still there say they’re still getting blocked,” he said.

Like Billy, Gagnon was celebrating his wedding anniversary with his wife on the day after Valentine’s Day when he received his termination letter. He held off reading it until the next day.

He’s not sure what’s coming next, but figures he’ll do consulting work in addiction prevention. Ironically, the destruction of SAMSHA may prove to be a boon for his potential business. “There’s going to be a lot of gaps,” he said.

One thing, he said, is clear: The massive cuts to federal agencies have little to do with saving money or making the government more efficient. “The Musk-Trump war on the federal workforce will have the opposite effect of what was stated. It will make government ineffective and more inefficient,” he writes at the conclusion of his Maine op-ed. “It’s time for Mainers to come together and speak out against this assault upon the country.”

MindSite News, an independent, nonprofit journalism site focused on mental health. Get a roundup of mental health news in your in-box by signing up for the newsletter here.

Support for reporting on mental health policy issues is provided by the Commonwealth Fund.

ICT News

US Federal appeals court upholds 2023 Great Lakes Fishing Decree

The decree granted Ottawa and Chippewa hunting and fishing rights in exchange for ceding millions of acres of land and water


The sun sets over Lake Michigan in October 2023.

 (Photo: Izzy Ross/IPR News Radio)

Izzy Ross
Interlochen Public Radio

GRIST
MAR 21, 2025

A federal appeals court ruling on Thursday means the latest version of the Great Lakes Fishing Decree will stand.

The decree deals with the allocation, management, and regulation of certain parts of the Great Lakes governed by the 1836 Treaty of Washington. Under that treaty, Ottawa and Chippewa nations ceded millions acres of land and water to the United States, which in turn recognized their rights to hunt, fish and gather there.

Seven sovereign governments are subject to the decree: the U.S., the state of Michigan, the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Bay Mills Indian Community, Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians and Little River Band of Ottawa Indians.

The Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians began an appeal of the order and decree in the fall of 2023. The tribe said it had not consented to the deal and had effectively been shut out of negotiations and that the decree violated its treaty rights. Tribal representatives have also said it restricts fishing rights and won’t meet the needs of tribal members.

But Bill Rastetter, an attorney with the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, applauded the decision from the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“I think that we’re all living with it and I think we’re all working cooperatively,” he said. “But at the same time, I think it was really important, from the Grand Traverse Band’s standpoint, to protect our ability to control access to the natural resources in our area.”

Rastetter said the court’s ruling clarifies that while treaties are the law of the land, the decree still stands because it’s dealing with a shared fishery.
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“We have the ability to withhold our permission if necessary to protect the natural resources,” he said. “That’s essentially the situation we’re in today, that there’s a scarce resource, and we have to make sure that whatever is there is sustainable, and one way to deal with that is to restrict the folks who have access to it.

Decree’s history: The first Great Lakes Fishing Decree was approved in 1985, followed by a second decree in 2000. After years of negotiations, four tribes, the state and the federal government agreed to the latest version in 2022, and U.S. District Court Judge Paul Maloney issued an opinion approving it in August of 2023.

Ryan Mills, an attorney with the Sault Tribe, said they’re disappointed in the decision; they wanted to defend their treaty and fishing rights in a trial.

“This decree is a 24-year decree,” he said. “We’ve kind of tied the hands of our legislators here, our board of directors, in what they can do to try to help preserve and regulate their fishery.”

Other concerns include reporting requirements for tribal commercial and subsistence fishers; Mills said state fishers don’t face the same restrictions. He also said the tribe hoped certain treaty waters closed under the last decree would be opened up for fishing.

“Although we are able to use a lot of our traditional gear, Sault Tribe was hoping there’d be more flexibility in how the tribes themselves could regulate the type of gear, and the seasons and the amount of harvest,” he said, adding that much “was still dictated a lot by the state of Michigan in their asks during negotiations.”

The court dismissed a separate appeal from recreational fishing groups earlier this week.

Mills said the tribe’s board of directors will discuss next steps, which could include an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between IPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

BY GRIST

ICT News

BACKGROUNDER

Energy Transfer board chair says he sought settlement with Standing Rock in 2016

Former tribal chair says he only met with company to discuss safety

Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II stands before protesters against the Dakota Access pipeline outside U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. after a hearing on the tribe's lawsuit contesting the project's approval.

MAR 21, 2025
Mary Steurer
South Dakota Searchlight

Energy Transfer Executive Chairman Kelcy Warren claimed in court testimony he traveled to North Dakota in December 2016 to discuss a settlement with then-tribal chair David Archambault II to end protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

“I said, ‘David, I’m here to make a deal with you,’” Warren said in a video deposition shown to jurors last week during a trial involving Energy Transfer and Greenpeace. “‘What do you want? Money? Land?’”

Warren, who was CEO of Energy Transfer at the time, said he was willing to give the tribe a ranch that the company had purchased near part of the pipeline construction site in North Dakota. Energy Transfer just months prior had bought Cannonball Ranch, which is north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in an area that became the center of the anti-pipeline demonstrations.

Warren said he also offered to build a new school on the reservation.

Archambault in a Monday statement to the North Dakota Monitor said his memory of his meeting with Warren is very different. Archambault did not appear as a witness during the trial.

“From my perspective, the purpose of the meeting was not to negotiate a settlement,” Archambault wrote.

Archambault said he met with Warren because he was concerned about growing violence at the protests.

“Given the growing danger, I felt it was necessary to have a direct conversation to discuss de-escalation,” he wrote.

Archambault said that oil and gas magnate Harold Hamm and then-Quapaw Nation chair John Berrey helped arrange his meeting with Warren.

He said he told Warren at the meeting that he was not there to end the protests.

“He asked what it would take to stop the movement, and I explained that it was no longer in my control,” Archambault said. “The fight against the pipeline had become much bigger than Standing Rock; it was about Indigenous rights and the long history of injustice faced by our people.”

According to Archambault, Warren told him if he had been aware of the history of how infrastructure projects have affected the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe then “we might not be in this situation.”

Archambault said in the statement that more than a year before his meeting with Warren, he met with another Energy Transfer executive, Joey Mahmoud, to relay his concerns about the Dakota Access Pipeline. Mahmoud was in charge of the project for Energy Transfer.

“At that time, I made it clear that the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe would resist the pipeline due to the historical and ongoing harm caused by infrastructure projects on Indigenous lands,” Archambault wrote.
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Archambault said Mahmoud told him that Energy Transfer is used to dealing with protests.

“I let him know I thought this was going to be different,” Archambault wrote.

Warren in his video deposition speculated that Archambault rejected his offer to settle because he had already made a separate deal with a third party. Warren said he suspects someone had paid money to the tribe and that Earthjustice, an environmental law group, was “the carrier of that money.”

“It was very clear to me he had struck a deal with the devil,” Warren said of Archambault.

Warren acknowledged that he did not have concrete evidence that the deal took place.

“Warren has no evidence of it because it never happened,” Jan Hasselman, a senior attorney for Earthjustice who previously represented the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, said in a statement to the Monitor.

Archambault said that his meeting with Warren “ended with an understanding that neither side would change course.”

“Energy Transfer would attempt to push the pipeline through, and we would continue to resist,” he wrote.

Warren’s deposition came as part of Energy Transfer’s lawsuit against Greenpeace over its involvement in protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and 2017. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe started the protests to oppose the project, which it states is a pollution threat to its water and a violation of Native sovereignty. Greenpeace was one of many organizations present at the demonstrations.

In his testimony, Warren said that he was not privy to the day-to-day operations of Energy Transfer at the time of the protests. He said that he had no personal knowledge of Greenpeace’s involvement in the demonstrations, and that his legal staff were heading up the lawsuit against the environmental group.

Warren said that it was his understanding that the purpose of the lawsuit was to push back against an organized effort to harm the company, which he said included “defamation” and “paid protesters.”

“I did feel strongly that we’ve got to stand up for ourselves,” Warren said.

Energy Transfer alleges Greenpeace coordinated illegal attacks against the pipeline that cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars. Greenpeace denies the claims.

The lawsuit, originally filed in 2019, went to trial in Mandan in late February. The parties presented their closing arguments on Monday, though the jury has yet to render a verdict.



BY SOUTH DAKOTA SEARCHLIGHT
South Dakota Searchlight provides free news and commentary on critical issues facing the state. We seek to serve the public interest with accuracy, fairness, insight and civility.


Former Greenpeace leader disputes allegations by Dakota Access Pipeline developer

Energy Transfer has taken Greenpeace to trial over claims that the environmental group incited illegal acts by protesters in North Dakota that cost the company millions of dollars in alleged property damages and lost revenue

Greenpeace Senior Legal Adviser Deepa Padmanabha is pictured outside the Morton County Courthouse on March 3, 2025. 

(Michael Achterling/North Dakota Monitor)

Mary Steurer
North Dakota Mirror

MAR 17, 2025

A former executive director of Greenpeace’s U.S. affiliate on Wednesday refuted accusations from the developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline that the environmental group was a major force driving protests against the pipeline in 2016 and 2017.

Energy Transfer has taken Greenpeace to trial over claims that the environmental group incited illegal acts by protesters in North Dakota that cost the company millions of dollars in alleged property damages and lost revenue. It also claims Greenpeace conspired to defame Energy Transfer in order to harm its relationship with banks financing the construction loan for the pipeline.

Annie Leonard, who led Greenpeace USA from 2014 to 2023, told jurors that Greenpeace only got involved in the protests because the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe asked. Tribal citizens started the demonstrations against the pipeline out of concerns that it poses a pollution threat to the tribe’s drinking water. The tribe also sees the pipeline as an infringement on tribal sovereignty because it crosses unceded Sioux Nation land.

Leonard said that at some point during the protests, a Navajo activist named Tom Goldtooth — a longtime friend of hers — asked if there was anything Greenpeace could do to help the cause. Leonard said that while Goldtooth was not a spokesperson for the protests, he helped relay messages from Standing Rock leaders.

She said Goldtooth shared with her that the demonstration camps had nowhere for people to charge their phones. This made it difficult for organizers to communicate with one another and spread word about the protests, she said. According to Leonard, Goldtooth also said that Standing Rock wanted help keeping the protests peaceful.

In response, Greenpeace sent a truck equipped with solar panels to the camps, Leonard said. It also set aside money to pay for Native organizers to go to the camps and teach people nonviolent protest strategies, including deescalation tactics, she said.

Records shown in court on Wednesday indicated Greenpeace’s U.S. affiliate approved a grant for roughly $20,000 to send trainers to North Dakota. Leonard privately fundraised another $90,000 in donations for the same purpose, the documents showed.

Leonard said one reason she raised the money privately was because Greenpeace didn’t have any enough funds to award another grant. She also said she wanted to help be a “matchmaker” to directly connect donors with Native organizations working at Standing Rock.

Greenpeace never tried to make its involvement in the demonstrations secret, though it also didn’t want to bring too much attention to itself, Leonard said. She said that since Greenpeace is a household name, it has the tendency to overshadow local organizers when it gets involved in a cause.

“We didn’t want to make the story be about us,” she said.

Trey Cox, an attorney representing Energy Transfer, asked whether her testimony conflicted with an internal email Leonard sent during the protests describing Greenpeace’s support for Standing Rock as “massive.”

Leonard on Wednesday said she had exaggerated. She said she had written the email out of “exuberance” for the amount of money and resources Greenpeace was able to contribute to the cause.

She said that even though she went out of her way to help support Standing Rock activists, she spent most of her time focused on other tasks.

“It was not major compared to the universe of things I was doing for Greenpeace,” Leonard said. She said she never went to the protests in person.

Brent Maness, a former Greenpeace employee, also testified about Greenpeace’s role in the protests on Wednesday. Maness never went to the protests, but was in charge of some employees Greenpeace sent to the camps.

During his questioning of Maness, Cox displayed an agenda for one Greenpeace nonviolent direct action training that occurred in 2015. The agenda indicates that the training discussed the use of lockboxes and other technical blockades.



Energy Transfer has repeatedly brought up lockboxes and blockades as evidence Greenpeace wanted protesters to obstruct work on the pipeline. Pipeline opponents used the lockboxes, also known as “sleeping dragons,” to attach themselves to construction equipment.

One bullet point on the agenda also referenced “shaming police.”

Maness said he didn’t remember why that was listed on the program. He said that the trainings had a lot more “content and context” that is not in the agenda.

“I can tell you unequivocally Greenpeace doesn’t teach people to shame police,” he said.

Maness also testified Wednesday that while Greenpeace provided funding to send trainers there, the organization did not control the trainers’ curriculum.

Greenpeace witnesses have acknowledged they brought lockboxes to the protests but maintain that the trainers didn’t encourage or instruct protesters to use them.

Leonard said that it was her understanding that Greenpeace provided the lockboxes because organizers on the ground at the protests had asked for the devices.

Cox brought up a text message exchange between Leonard and Goldtooth in 2016 in which he sent a photo of a Dakota Access Pipeline protester using a lockbox on construction equipment. Leonard replied that the action “ups the ante.”

Cox asked what she meant by this.

Leonard said that lockboxes can be tools for nonviolent civil disobedience, which she views as a “tried and true” component of American protest movements.

“When Rosa Parks refused to leave that seat, that upped the ante,” she said.

Cox said Parks wasn’t a fair comparison because she wasn’t trespassing on private land.

“She had permission to be on that bus, did she not?” he asked Leonard.

“She didn’t have permission to be on that seat,” Leonard replied.

Cox countered that Parks’ action did not disrupt business for Montgomery’s public transit in the same way that the Dakota Access Pipeline protests disrupted construction.

Leonard pointed out that Parks’ act of civil disobedience, and her subsequent arrest, was the catalyst for the Montgomery bus boycott — which did disrupt profits for the bus system. That boycott led to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation on public buses unconstitutional.

Greenpeace attorneys said they anticipate wrapping up their case on Friday.

BY NORTH DAKOTA MIRROR
North Dakota Monitor is an independent source for watchdog reporting on state government, public policy and other critical issues affecting all of us in the Peace Garden State.

Jury finds Greenpeace must pay hundreds of millions in case over Dakota Access protest activities

Pentagon restores Navajo Code Talkers histories after outcry

Defense Department has yet to restore history of Iowa Jima flagraiser Ira Hayes, Pima


WWII veteran and Navajo Code Talker Peter MacDonald Sr. is photographed at his home on the Navajo Reservation in Tuba City, Ariz., April 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

MAR 20, 2025
Terry Tang
Associated Press

PHOENIX — The Pentagon restored some webpages highlighting the crucial wartime contributions of Navajo Code Talkers and other Native American veterans on Wednesday, days after tribes condemned the action.

The initial removal was part of a sweep of any military content that promoted diversity, equity and inclusion, or commonly referred to as DEI. Following President Donald Trump’s broader executive order ending the federal government’s DEI programs, the Defense Department deleted thousands of pages honoring contributions by women and minority groups. Department officials say the Navajo Code Talker material was erroneously erased.

“In the rare cases that content is removed — either deliberately or by mistake — that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct the components and they correct the content so it recognizes our heroes for their dedicated service alongside their fellow Americans, period,” Pentagon press secretary John Ullyot said in a statement.

Several webpages on the Code Talkers landed on a “404 - Page not found” message Tuesday. Some were back up Wednesday — although any that also mention Native American Heritage Month remain down. Thousands of other pages deleted in the DEI purge are still offline.

White House officials informed the Navajo Nation that an artificial intelligence-powered automated review process looking for content with DEI initiatives led to the elimination of anything mentioning “Navajo," according to a statement from Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren.

Nygren, who sent a letter to the Defense Department requesting clarity on the issue, said he's pleased by the resolution.

“I want to assure the Navajo people that we remain in close communication with federal officials to ensure the legacy of our cherished Navajo Code Talkers is never erased from American and Navajo history,” Nygren said.

He also pointed out the 574 federally recognized tribes across the U.S. are sovereign nations and not defined by DEI classifications, a stance broadly supported by other Native American leaders who also sent letters to the Trump administration.

The U.S. Marine Corps initially recruited 29 Navajo men to develop a code based on the unwritten Navajo language in World War II. Using Navajo words for red soil, war chief, clan, braided hair, beads, ant and hummingbird, for example, they came up with a glossary of more than 200 terms, later expanded, and an alphabet. To convey the word “send,” Code Talkers would say the Navajo words for “sheep, eyes, nose and deer.”

Hundreds of Navajos followed in their footsteps, sending thousands of messages without error on Japanese troop movements, battlefield tactics and other communications crucial to the war’s ultimate outcome. The code stumped Japanese military cryptologists.

The Code Talkers participated in all assaults the Marines led in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945 and are credited with helping the U.S. win the war. Hundreds of Native Americans from more than 20 tribes also served as code talkers during World War I and World War II, according to the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. Among them were Choctaw, Cherokee, Osage, Chippewa and Hopi speakers.

Among those alarmed to hear of the missing Navajo Code Talker webpages was Peter MacDonald, 96. He and Thomas H. Begay are the only two Navajo Code Talkers still living today.

“That code became a very valuable weapon and not only saved hundreds of thousands of soldiers, but it also helped win the war in the Pacific,” MacDonald said by phone from his home in Tuba City in the Arizona portion of the Navajo Nation. "And it has absolutely nothing to do with DEI."

A Republican who voted for Trump, MacDonald said he thinks the current administration needs to better walk the line between getting rid of DEI and ignoring history.

“That’s why I’m very concerned that communication from the Pentagon down to the various military units should be taught or learn that this information is history, and you don’t want to hide history,” MacDonald said.

The Defense Department has had to issue reassurances that it is not omitting historic achievements by servicemen and women of color. Besides the Code Talkers, the agency also on Wednesday restored a webpage describing baseball and civil rights icon Jackie Robinson’s military service after it was missing earlier in the day. Last week, pages honoring a Black Medal of Honor winner and Japanese American service members were also restored.

“Everyone at the Defense Department loves Jackie Robinson, as well as the Navajo Code Talkers, the Tuskegee airmen, the Marines at Iwo Jima and so many others — we salute them for their strong and in many cases heroic service to our country, full stop,” Ullyot said. “We do not view or highlight them through the prism of immutable characteristics, such as race, ethnicity or sex.”

Michael Smith, whose father, Samuel “Jesse” Smith Sr., was a Navajo Code Talker, questioned why these pages were removed at all.

“I don’t know how taking Navajo Code Talkers off the Department of Defense website is saving the United States any money because that’s not consistent with the president’s order,” said Smith, who helps organize annual celebrations of the Code Talkers.

Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis of the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona also expressed disappointment, claiming there was missing content relating to all Native American veterans, including Ira Hayes. Hayes was an enrolled member of the tribe and one of six Marines featured in an iconic 1945 Associated Press photograph of U.S. forces raising an American flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima. As of March 20, Hayes' history page had yet to be restored.

Even with some being reposted, he remains worried web content removal is “the tip of the iceberg.”

“The way it looks in the (executive) order, this language is skewed and made to sound like the diversity programs are the ones that are unethical," Smith said.

‘My dad didn’t go to war for nothing’: Pentagon scrubs Native American heroes from website

Department of Defense deletes Code Talkers, Iwo Jima flag raiser Hayes under Trump’s DEI order




Navajo Code Talkers and their family members met with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace at the Pentagon, Aug. 10, 2007. (Photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. D. Myles Cullen | Public domain)


SHONDIIN SILVERSMITH AND ARIZONA MIRROR
MAR 19, 2025

Prominent Native American figures in U.S. military history have been erased from the U.S. Department of Defense’s website as part of the sweeping effort stemming from President Donald Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion.

The Department of Defense website removed articles featuring details about the Navajo Code Talkers — Navajo men who served during World War II and used their language as a secret code in battle — along with U.S. Marine Ira Hayes from the Gila River Indian Community, who helped raise the flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.

“Navajo code has absolutely nothing to do with DEI because Navajo code was a weapon,” Navajo Code Talker Peter MacDonald said in response to the removal during an interview with the Arizona Mirror.

MacDonald, 96, is one of two living Navajo Code Talkers. He served in the South Pacific as a Code Talker and in North China with the 6th Marine Division.

MacDonald said that dismissing the Navajo Code Talkers as DEI is a “terrible misinterpretation by the United States.”

The complex Navajo language was used as a weapon in World War II against the enemy because the Japanese were breaking every military code that U.S. troops were using in the Pacific theater.

It took the Navajo people to develop a whole new code in the Navajo language, he added, and “it became the only military code in modern history never broken by an enemy.”

In a general keyword search on Tuesday of the Department of Defense’s website for the Navajo Code Talkers, only eight results appeared, but none related to information or articles detailing their role in World War II.

Zero results appeared in a search for Ira Hayes.





Ira Hayes is memorialized in a monument at Wesley Bolin Plaza in Phoenix. (Photo by Shondiin Silversmith, Arizona Mirror)

“The Navajo Code Talkers earned their place in history through their courage and sacrifice, giving their lives in defense of this nation,” Navajo Nation Council Speaker Crystalyne Curley said in a press release. “Erasing their extraordinary contributions from formal military history is not only disrespectful, it is dishonorable.”

Having articles and information about the Navajo Code Talkers on the department’s website is the right thing, MacDonald said, because it provides education for everyone that weapons do not just include guns but language.

He added that their weapon helped preserve America’s freedom, and “we were happy to use that weapon to help.”

“It’s important for the entire nation to know that the Navajo Code has absolutely nothing to do with DEI,” he said. He hopes the Pentagon will return all the content so they can learn.

In an email response to the Arizona Mirror, a Department of Defense spokesperson who wouldn’t provide their name said the DOD is in the process of restoring the content about the Navajo Code Talkers, which had been removed during the auto-removal process.

No time frame was provided for restoring the content, and the spokesperson did not respond to questions about the deleted content related to Ira Hayes.

Ronald Kinsel, the son of the late Navajo Code Talker John Kensel, Sr., said he was shocked to learn that all articles featuring the Navajo Code Talkers had been removed.

“My dad didn’t go to war for nothing,” he said, adding that the United States wouldn’t be the country it is now if it wasn’t for the Navajo Code Talkers.



Navajo Code Talker Thomas H. Begay salutes the Navajo Code Talker Memorial Statue during the National Navajo Code Talkers Day celebration on Aug. 14, 2022.

 (Photo by Shondiin Silversmith, Arizona Mirror)

The Navajo Code Talkers participated in all assaults led by the U.S. Marines in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945, including Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu and Iwo Jima. The total number of Navajo Code Talkers who served in the U.S. Marines is unknown, but it is estimated to be between 350 and 420.

MacDonald’s daughter, Charity, said she wasn’t shocked by the removal. It is merely a new form of erasure of Indigenous people, something the United States has done throughout its history.

“You can not erase an entire history of people,” she said, especially today when information can be accessed in various ways.

“Our federal government is doing this purposely,” Charity said, adding that it’s an action they’re taking to show people that they can.

“The federal government is making a statement, saying that this is how they feel,” she added.

Charity said Indigenous people have given a lot to the federal government, and during World War II, the military came to the Navajo people and asked them for help.

“They used the Navajo language to help them win the war,” she said.

Navajo Nation, Gila River Indian Community respond

Leaders from the Navajo Nation and the Gila River Indian Community sent letters to the Department of Defense to ask why the details about the Navajo Code Talkers and Hayes were deleted.

Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis said removing information about Hayes and the Navajo Code Talkers due to the scrubbing for DEI initiatives is “misguided” and “irresponsible.”

Lewis said his tribe sent a official letter to the Department of Defense on Tuesday but have not received a response.

“Sadly, we’re no strangers to being erased,” Lewis said, noting it has happened to Indigenous peoples throughout history.

“All the stories of Ira Hayes and all Native veterans, including the code talkers, have to be rectified ASAP,” he said.

Lewis said Hayes is a significant figure in military history, and members of the Gila River Indian Community learn about him from a very young age.

Hayes, alongside five other Marines, raised the U.S. flag on the island of Iwo Jima at the summit of Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945. He was part of the 5th Marine Division and fought in the Battle of Iwo Jima until the island was secured on March 26, 1945.

The photograph of the flag raising during the Battle of Iwo Jima is one of the most iconic images of World War II, taken months into the battle by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal.

Lewis said Hayes’ story and the image of the Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima is historic for Native military service.

“Native Americans have always served in our country’s military, in all branches, at the highest levels of any other group,” Lewis said.

Indigenous people across the United States serve in the armed forces at five times the national average, according to the National Indian Council on Aging, and have served with distinction in every major conflict for over 200 years.

Lewis said that recognizing the patriotism and courage of Native American soldiers has nothing to do with any type of DEI initiative.

“It’s simply an offering of respect for extraordinary service and bravery in the line of duty,” he added.

Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday asking him to explain the removal of the Navajo Code Talkers’ information from military websites.

“Appropriately recognizing the work of the Navajo Code Talkers is profoundly significant to the Navajo Nation,” Nygren said in his letter, requesting the rationale behind the removal.

In the letter, Nygren wrote about how Trump welcomed the Navajo Code Talkers to the White House in 2017, during his first term in office, and praised their contributions to the country.

“We sincerely appreciate this recognition and believe it highlights the importance of preserving the history and legacy of the Navajo Code Talkers,” he wrote.

“Given the profound impact and historic importance of these American heroes, it is imperative that their legacy remains visible and accessible to all Americans,” the letter stated.

The Navajo Nation Council voiced its disappointment in the removal of the Code Talkers, emphasizing that the Navajo Nation is not a racial group but a distinct political entity.

“The Navajo Nation Council is deeply concerned by being conflated into DEI initiatives that fail to recognize our unique political status,” Curley said in a press release. The Navajo Nation Council is engaging with the administration to clarify the reasoning behind removing articles.

“The United States would not be the nation it is today without the bravery and service of the Navajo Nation Code Talkers,” Curley said. “Their legacy is a cornerstone of American history, and it is essential that their contributions be honored and recognized.”

 SHONDIIN SILVERSMITH  is an award-winning Native journalist with AZ Mirror. Silversmith has covered Indigenous communities for more than 10 years, and covers Arizona's 22 federally recognized sovereign tribal nations, as well as national and international Indigenous issues.  Follow DiinSilversmith

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

Trump's DEI Executive Order Prompts the Removal of Navajo Code Talkers from Some Military Websites


Yahoo News
Native News Online 

 March 17, 2025

The code developed by the Navajo Marines during WWII was never broken. 

file photoBy Levi Rickert

Native American Code Talkers are highly revered across Indian Country for their patriotism and service to the United States. During World War II, Navajo Code Talkers, a group of Diné citizens serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, used the Navajo language to securely transmit classified tactical messages.

On Monday, in an exclusive article, Axios reported articles about the renowned Native American Code Talkers have disappeared from some military websites, with several broken URLs now labeled "DEI."

Axios identified at least 10 articles mentioning the Code Talkers that had disappeared from the U.S. Army and Department of Defense websites as of Monday.

During World War II in the South Pacific theater, the Navajo Code Talkers used a secret code that was never broken by the Japanese, enabling the United States military to communicate securely and ensure victory. The Navajo language secured military communication lines that allowed Marines to advance on the battlefields of the Pacific Theater.

The original group of 29 Navajo Code Talkers transmitted information about tactics, troop movements, orders, and other battlefield messages using telephones and radios. Their work was so successful that by the end of World War II, more than 400 Navajos were called upon to serve as Code Talkers. The code has never been broken. The story about the contributions to save democracy remained classified until 1968.

This rich history has been diminished due to a Trump executive order aimed at removing Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DEI) initiatives throughout the federal government.

Asked about the missing pages, Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot replied in a statement: "As Secretary [Pete] Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department. ...We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms."

The irony of the erasure is one of the far right’s heroic presidents, Ronald Reagan in 1982 declared August 14th as "National Navajo Code Talkers Day" to honor the contributions of the Navajo Code Talkers.