Issue 001
The Weekly Brief
For the week of May 10, 2026
Two stories dominated Indian Country this week, and they rhyme in important ways. At Pe' Sla in the Black Hills, a coalition of nine tribes, direct-action occupiers, and NDN Collective attorneys won a stunning reversal: the mining company Pete Lien and Sons withdrew its drilling permit after a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order and community members held the site. Closer to home, Bad River filed an emergency motion to halt construction on Enbridge's Line 5 reroute, while Ashland County quietly cut a deal to get reimbursed for policing protests of that same project. Both stories ask the same seventh-generation question: who decides what happens to the land, and whose sacred obligations count as law? Woven through the week are the quieter but equally consequential threads of a new MMIW task force at Mashkiiziibii, a fresh ICWA challenge at the Supreme Court, and Deb Haaland stepping onto a debate stage in New Mexico, reminding us that the people who shaped federal Indian policy are still very much in the arena.
Across the Wisconsin Nations
Four stories this week touch the twelve nations directly, ranging from a pipeline fight in Ashland County to a legislative standoff over online sports betting.
Bad River Establishes MMIW Task Force and Declares May 5 a Tribal Day of Awareness
The Bad River Band's governing board voted this week to formally recognize May 5 as a Tribal Day of Awareness for missing and murdered Indigenous women and relatives, and authorized the creation of a new tribal task force to address the crisis. The Wisconsin Examiner covered the vote, though the story would benefit from a direct quote from a Bad River council member or advocate. This is a meaningful institutional step: a task force with a home community mandate carries more weight than a state-level working group, and it grounds the national MMIW conversation in the specific geography and kinship networks of Mashkiiziibii.
Bad River Asks Federal Court to Stop Enbridge Line 5 Reroute Construction
The Bad River Band filed a motion in federal court this week seeking to halt construction on Enbridge's proposed Line 5 reroute through Ashland and Iron counties, arguing the project should not proceed while the tribe's underlying easement lawsuit remains unresolved. WPR's Native American coverage has the story, though the tribal filing itself is the document worth tracking down. This is the central legal front in a fight that has defined Bad River's public life for years, and the motion signals the band is not prepared to let construction create facts on the ground while the courts deliberate.
Ashland County Cuts Deal to Be Reimbursed for Policing Line 5 Reroute Protests
Ashland County approved an agreement this week that would provide county reimbursement for law enforcement costs associated with policing protests of the Enbridge Line 5 reroute project. WPR reported the development without specifying who funds the reimbursement, which is the question worth pressing. The arrangement has a familiar and troubling shape: public safety resources aligned with a private pipeline company's construction timeline, in the homeland of the very tribe whose treaty rights are at the center of the dispute.
U.S. Attorney General Backs Town's Demand That Lac du Flambeau Repay Road Dispute Costs
The U.S. Attorney General filed a brief this week endorsing the position that the Lac du Flambeau Band should repay the town of Lac du Flambeau for costs incurred during the 2023 road access dispute, when the tribe closed roads crossing allotment-era easements. WPR has the story. The federal government's alignment with the town rather than the tribe in this brief is worth noting carefully: it continues a pattern in which the current administration reads allotment-era property arrangements in ways that constrain rather than support tribal sovereignty.
Wisconsin Tribes and Commercial Gambling Companies Clash Over Online Sports Betting Bill
Wisconsin's tribal nations and commercial gambling interests are at odds over a state legislative proposal to legalize online sports betting, with tribes arguing the bill would undercut the exclusivity provisions in their gaming compacts. WPR has been tracking this story, which sits at the intersection of sovereignty, economic development, and the state's long-standing compact relationships with tribal governments. The compacts were hard-won; any erosion of exclusivity has real fiscal consequences for nations whose governmental programs depend on gaming revenue.
Federal Judge Blocks Lac du Flambeau from Restricting Fishing on Nearly Twenty Lakes
A federal judge ruled this week that the Lac du Flambeau Band cannot restrict non-tribal fishing on approximately twenty lakes within its territory, a decision that touches directly on the ongoing tension between tribal resource management authority and off-reservation public access claims. WPR reported the ruling. The legal reasoning matters here: whether the court grounded its decision in treaty rights, state law, or something else will shape how far the ruling reaches and whether it invites further challenges to tribal fisheries management across the ceded territories.
Treaty Rights, Water, and the Pipeline Fight
The Line 5 reroute is in active litigation and active construction simultaneously, a combination that should alarm anyone paying attention.
What Would It Take to Actually Halt Line 5 Reroute Construction? WPR Explains the Legal Landscape
WPR's explainer this week lays out the procedural terrain for Bad River's emergency motion to stop Enbridge construction, walking through the Bayfield County court proceedings and the federal case running in parallel. It is a useful primer, though it would be stronger with more direct tribal voice. The core tension the piece surfaces is real: construction is advancing on the ground while the legal question of whether the reroute can proceed at all remains genuinely open.
Tribal Leader on Northern Wisconsin Priorities: 'North of Highway 29' Is Its Own Country
WPR's conversation with a northern Wisconsin tribal leader this week surfaced the persistent frustration that state and federal policy is made by people who rarely travel north of Highway 29, let alone understand what treaty-protected resources mean to communities whose livelihoods and spiritual lives depend on them. The framing is one Patty, you will recognize from your own fieldwork: the geography of neglect is not accidental. The piece is worth reading alongside the Line 5 and fishing-restriction stories as a reminder of the political context in which those legal fights unfold.
Controversial Gas Pipeline Across Navajo Nation Moves Forward, Catching Community Members Off Guard
High Country News reports that a 234-mile gas pipeline across Navajo Nation land is moving toward construction after a hearing that community members say they were not adequately notified about. The story echoes Line 5 in its structure: a pipeline company, a federal permitting process, and a tribal community whose consultation rights appear to have been honored in form but not in substance. For the Ice Worlds frame, the Navajo Nation's water and land relationships are as central to its future as manoomin is to the Anishinaabe.
Indian Country: Federal Policy, Courts, and Sovereignty
A busy week in federal Indian law, with a new ICWA challenge at the Supreme Court, a Voting Rights Act gutting that affects Native voters, and the Pe' Sla victory reminding everyone what organized resistance can accomplish.
Pe' Sla Victory: Mining Company Withdraws Drilling Permit After Occupation, Lawsuit, and Community Ceremony
In a striking win for Indigenous land protection, Pete Lien and Sons formally withdrew its permit to drill for graphite near Pe' Sla, the high mountain meadow at the heart of Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota creation stories, after a week of direct action occupation, a federal temporary restraining order, and sustained legal pressure from NDN Collective and allied tribes. NDN Collective's own announcement is the primary source here, and it is worth reading in full: the organization names the specific combination of forces that produced the outcome, which is a model worth studying. The win is real, though the underlying permit framework that allowed the drilling application in the first place remains unchanged.
ICWA Faces Another Supreme Court Challenge, Three Years After Brackeen Was Decided
ICT reports that a new petition has reached the U.S. Supreme Court asking the justices to overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act as unconstitutional, just three years after the Court upheld ICWA in Brackeen v. Haaland. The new challenge appears to come from a different doctrinal angle, and the current Court's composition makes the outcome genuinely uncertain in a way it was not before. This is a story to watch closely: ICWA is the floor beneath tribal child welfare programs across the country, and another round of Supreme Court litigation would consume enormous tribal legal resources regardless of outcome.
NARF Marks 25 Years of the Tribal Supreme Court Project with a New Report
The Native American Rights Fund released its 25-year retrospective on the Tribal Supreme Court Project this week, documenting a quarter century of coordinated advocacy before the nation's highest court on behalf of tribal sovereignty. The report is a useful reference document, and its timing alongside the new ICWA challenge is pointed: the Project exists precisely because the Supreme Court is not a neutral forum, and tribal nations need sustained, coordinated legal strategy to navigate it. Worth downloading for your files.
'Alligator Alcatraz' Immigration Detention Center May Close After Miccosukee-Led Resistance in the Everglades
Native News Online reports that the controversial immigration detention facility built in the Florida Everglades, which critics dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz,' may be shut down following sustained resistance from the Miccosukee Tribe and allied environmental and Native advocates who argued the facility threatened both the ecosystem and tribal sacred sites. The story is a useful reminder that tribal resistance to federal land use decisions takes many forms and that the Miccosukee have been among the most consistent defenders of Everglades ecology for generations.
Deb Haaland Debates for New Mexico Governor, Bringing Indian Country's Former Interior Secretary into State Politics
Native News Online hosted a watch party and live commentary as former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland faced Sam Bregman in a New Mexico gubernatorial debate this week. The moment is worth noting beyond the horse-race framing: Haaland's candidacy represents a direct translation of federal Indian policy experience into state executive politics, and New Mexico's tribal nations have significant stakes in who governs. ICT's Pauly Denetclaw was among the commentators, which is the kind of Native-press-first framing this brief tries to privilege.
NARF Explains What Tribal Sovereignty Means for Birthright Citizenship Debates
The Native American Rights Fund published a clear-eyed explainer on tribal sovereignty and birthright citizenship, addressing the question of whether current legal debates about the Fourteenth Amendment affect the citizenship status of tribal members. The piece is careful to distinguish tribal citizenship from U.S. citizenship and to ground the analysis in the pre-constitutional existence of tribal nations. It is a useful resource for anyone navigating these questions in a policy or classroom context.
Third Annual MMIP Walk in Anchorage Honors Alaska Native Victims
ICT reports on the third annual Walk for Missing and Murdered Indigenous People hosted by the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program at the University of Alaska Anchorage, drawing relatives, friends, and supporters to raise visibility for Alaska Native victims. The Alaska MMIW crisis has its own distinct geography and jurisdictional tangle, with vast rural distances and limited law enforcement presence compounding the federal gaps that affect tribal communities everywhere. The walk is a community act of witness, and ICT names it as such.
Climate, Land, and Traditional Knowledge
Western drought, a sacred meadow under threat from graphite mining, and a pipeline crossing Navajo land: the climate and land-use stories this week all carry the seventh-generation weight.
Grist: Indigenous Action Wins the Day at Pe' Sla, and the Broader Pattern It Represents
Grist's Indigenous coverage this week frames the Pe' Sla victory within the larger pattern of Indigenous-led environmental resistance, connecting the Black Hills win to a documented record of Native communities halting or delaying extractive projects. Tristan Ahtone's team at Grist has been building this beat carefully, and the framing here is consistent with the research showing that Indigenous land protection produces measurable climate outcomes. The story is worth reading alongside the NDN Collective primary source.
Western Drought Deepens Ahead of Summer, Threatening Tribal Water, Crops, and Electricity
Native News Online reports that Western states are entering summer with critically low water reserves, with consequences that fall disproportionately on tribal communities whose water rights are often junior in practice even when senior in law. The story does not center tribal voices as strongly as it should, but the underlying conditions it describes are directly relevant to the Ice Worlds frame: water scarcity, disrupted seasonal cycles, and the gap between treaty-protected rights and on-the-ground reality.
South Dakota's Missouri River Water Plan Ignores Tribal Ownership, Native Sun News Reports
Native Sun News Today flags that South Dakota Congressman Dusty Johnson's federal bills to expand Missouri River water use for the state do not address the question of who actually holds water rights in that river system, a question that implicates multiple Oceti Sakowin nations whose treaty territories the Missouri runs through. The piece is a good example of the kind of story that only a Native publication is likely to frame this way: the mainstream coverage of the same bills would almost certainly not lead with tribal water rights.
People: Honors, Transitions, and Voices Worth Knowing
Ihanktonwan Dakota Elder Faith Spotted Eagle to Receive Honorary Doctorate from South Dakota State University
Native Sun News Today reports that Faith Spotted Eagle, one of the most respected culture carriers in the Oceti Sakowin and a longtime leader in the movement against the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from South Dakota State University at its 140th commencement. The recognition is overdue and meaningful. Spotted Eagle has spent decades doing the patient, unglamorous work of cultural transmission and political resistance that honorary degrees are supposed to honor.
Canada's First Indigenous Governor General, Mary Simon, Leaves Office After Nearly Five Years
ICT marks the departure of Mary Simon, an Inuk leader who served as Canada's first Indigenous Governor General, being replaced by a former Supreme Court justice. Simon's tenure was consequential: she used the ceremonial platform of the office to advance Indigenous reconciliation conversations at the highest levels of Canadian government. Her exit is worth noting as a moment of transition in the broader continental Indigenous political landscape that Patty tracks.
Kimberly Blaeser, Former Wisconsin Poet Laureate and Ojibwe Writer, Wins National Book Foundation Prize for 'Ancient Light'
WPR reports that Kimberly Blaeser, a White Earth Ojibwe poet and former Wisconsin Poet Laureate, has received a National Book Foundation prize for her collection 'Ancient Light.' Blaeser's work has long woven Anishinaabemowin, landscape, and memory into forms that resist easy categorization, and this recognition from a major national literary institution is a genuine milestone. Patty, you know her work well, and this is the kind of story that belongs in your files for the next edition of Indian Nations of Wisconsin.
Culture, Arts, and Language
Two Wisconsin stories this week that foreground Native artists and activists as people doing their work, not as symbols.
Ojibwe Jingle Dress Dancer Carries Family Legacy of Activism into Digital Spaces
WPR profiles an Ojibwe jingle dress dancer who is using digital platforms to extend a family tradition of activism, connecting the physical practice of dance to contemporary forms of Indigenous visibility and resistance. The story is exactly the kind of 'Native People Up Close' framing Patty's textbook calls for: a specific person, a specific practice, a specific lineage, no vanishing-race framing in sight. The jingle dress itself carries a healing origin story from the flu pandemic era, which gives the digital extension of that tradition an additional layer of resonance.
Wisconsin Author's Debut Middle-Grade Novel Brings Epic Indigenous Fantasy to Young Readers
WPR covers a Wisconsin author whose debut middle-grade novel is being described as an epic Indigenous fantasy, a genre that has been growing in visibility since Rebecca Roanhorse and others demonstrated its commercial and cultural reach. Middle-grade fiction is a particularly important space for Indigenous storytelling because it reaches young readers before the mainstream curriculum has had a chance to flatten Native history into the past tense. The Wisconsin connection makes this especially worth tracking for Patty's Indigenous youth media beat.
ICT's Indigenous Arts and Entertainment Column: Native Style, a 'Borders' Series, and a Buffalo Stamp
ICT's biweekly Indigenous arts and entertainment column this week covers Native fashion, a new 'Borders' documentary series, and a U.S. Postal Service buffalo stamp, offering a useful snapshot of where Indigenous creative work is landing in mainstream cultural spaces right now. The column is a reliable aggregator for this beat, and the 'Borders' series in particular sounds worth tracking as a potential model for the kind of Indigenous-produced documentary work that Ice Worlds is also doing.
High Country News Investigates the Ongoing Harm of Indigenous Identity Fraud
High Country News published a reported piece this week on the 'Red Wind commune,' a case study in Indigenous identity fraud and the real harm it causes to Native communities, from diluted cultural authority to legal and financial exploitation. The piece is careful and does not sensationalize, which is the right approach to a story that can easily tip into spectacle. For Patty, who has spent a career insisting on the specificity of tribal citizenship and the difference between self-identification and belonging, this is a story with direct professional relevance.
Long Read: The Pe' Sla Arc, from Permit to Victory
One story, told in full, is worth your Sunday morning.
ICT: Mining Company Pulls Out of Pe' Sla After Indigenous Occupation Forces the Question
ICT's account of the Pe' Sla victory is the single best long read of the week, not because it is the longest piece but because it synthesizes the full arc of the fight: the U.S. Forest Service permit issued over tribal objections, the NDN Collective lawsuit alleging NEPA and Religious Freedom Restoration Act violations, the direct-action occupation of the site, the federal temporary restraining order, and finally the withdrawal of the permit by Pete Lien and Sons. ICT names the specific combination of legal, ceremonial, and physical presence that produced the outcome, and it does so with the kind of sourcing that privileges tribal voices over agency statements. Read this alongside the NDN Collective primary release (candidate 7) and the Native Sun News coverage (candidate 132) for the full picture. The story matters beyond its immediate facts: it is a working model of how Indigenous communities can use multiple pressure points simultaneously, and it arrives in a week when Bad River is doing exactly that on Line 5.