Native Americans are routinely being harassed by ICE and border patrol which, as that women in the video above is quite rich considering they were literally in the country first.
And that’s not all. Bolts reports that their voting rights are being attacked by the federal government as well.
The water system that provides for the entire Spirit Lake Reservation in North Dakota has been contaminated with dangerous levels of manganese that have made the water undrinkable since May.
For Lonna Jackson-Street, chair of the Spirit Lake Tribal Council, which is now scrambling to provide bottled water to residents and install a filtration system, the crisis underscores the need for Native voices in government. The federal government fails to properly maintain infrastructure it’s supposed to be managing, and state leaders don’t dedicate enough resources to reservations they see as outside their jurisdiction. “Native representation is so important,” she said, “because they understand the gaps in these services and how they are administered to our tribal nations.”
A member of Spirit Lake Nation was elected to North Dakota’s legislature for the first time last fall thanks to a redistricting lawsuit filed by Jackson-Street’s tribe, alongside the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. The suit claimed that the districts drawn by North Dakota in 2021 violated the Voting Rights Act, and the tribes’ initial success in court triggered a new map and increased representation in 2024.
But last month, a federal appeals court tossed out their victory and declared that only the federal government can sue over violations of the Voting Rights Act, a devastating blow to the ability of these tribes—and others in the region—to seek legal recourse.
The decision was a major win for the conservative lawyers who’ve been trying to gut the VRA, and it came just as the Trump administration is signaling that it has little interest in enforcing voter discrimination laws.
With little federal support and little ability to pursue fair representation in court, it’s fallen to civic and voting organizations to battle to fill in the gaps, with grassroots actions like registration drives, and to help ensure that Native voters have a fair shot at political power. But these groups, too, are facing difficulties this spring, with many reporting that they have felt the financial pressure of the GOP’s war on all things “DEI.”
These folks are among the most vulnerable in our society (which has been a national shame since the very beginning) and the Trump administration is doing everything they can to make them even more miserable. I don’t think they plan to deport them (although that wouldn’t surprise me) but they are certainly trying to disenfranchise them, starve them and make them sick. There’s not a lot of political upside so I think it’s just because they enjoy it.
Read the whole thing. This stuff doesn’t get enough circulation and it should.