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Here are some Native American-related news stories that made headlines last week:

Treasury secretary addresses poor access to cash, credit in Indian Country

The U.S. Financial Literacy Commission met Thursday to discuss barriers to financial stability in Indian Country.

“One of those main barriers is financial literacy – the understanding of concepts like saving, investing and debt that leads to an overall sense of financial well-being,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Lynn Malerba, chief of the Mohegan Tribe, told the commission.

She cited a lack of accessible banks.

“Some banks are hesitant to both locate and lend on reservations due to a lack of knowledge in navigating sovereign immunity, tribal jurisdiction and the status of land held in trust,” she said.

Malerba noted that Indian Country is growing, and so, too, is Native buying power. She called on the commission to help Native business owners and workers prosper.

Indian boarding school in Oregon misused funds, including student monies

A federal audit of finances at the Chemawa Indian Boarding School in Oregon shows that the school improperly used more than $590,000 in federal funds to purchase “inappropriate and potentially wasteful items.” These include excavating equipment, a pole barn and a horse trailer.

The Interior Department’s inspector general conducted an audit of the school’s accounting processes and the Bureau of Indian Education’s role in overseeing those finances.

Bureau of Indian Affairs policy allows junior and senior high schools enrolling one hundred or more students to operate a school bank for so-called “student enterprise moneys,” which includes money raised by student clubs, donations and students’ own funds.

Federal law also allows those schools to lease land to businesses.

Auditors say Chemawa Indian Boarding School mismanaged all student enterprise funds, averaging $600,000 over a three-year period; improperly accounted for businesses leases; and “inappropriately managed” property.

Furthermore, auditors say the Bureau of Indian Education did not live up to its supervisory responsibilities.

Read the report and auditors’ recommendations here.

Biggest lithium mine in North America gets green light to proceed

A federal appeals court this week ruled that the U.S. Interior Department did not break any environmental laws when it approved the construction of a lithium mine near Nevada’s border with Oregon.

This means that Lithium Nevada can continue the construction of the Thacker Pass Lithium mine.

Environmental groups sued to block it, arguing that the mine would irreversibly harm the environment. Co-plaintiffs include a Nevada cattle rancher who owns land above and below the site, tribes of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, the Burns Paiute Tribe, and the Atsa Koodakuh wyh Nuwu (” People of the Red Mountain”), an organization of Paiute and Shoshone people from the Fort McDermitt and Duck Valley reservations.

Lithium Nevada will initially mine more than 2,300 hectares (more than 5,000 acres), but environmental groups say that future mining could expand to 6,900 hectares (17,000 acres).

Lithium is an essential component for building batteries for electric vehicles, which are vital to President Joe Biden’s “clean energy by 2050” agenda.

Ute Tribe says public schools are not educating tribal children

The Ute Tribe of Northeastern Utah says the state school system has failed to educate Ute children effectively. An investigation by the Salt Lake Tribune backs the claim.

“In 2020, 58% of Ute seniors in Duchesne County School District graduated, for example — that’s lower than the percentage for students with disabilities,” the Tribune reported Monday.

Documentation shows the problems date back decades and are rooted in racism. A 1996 report noted that during the Great Depression of the 1930s, more than half of the region’s white people depended on emergency relief.

“Many [whites] blamed this on the fact that Indian land could not be taxed for the good of the county,” that report read.

In some cases, white schools turned Ute children away altogether.

Read more.

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