Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
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Alonzo Denney sets his phone on the conference table, pulls up a family photo and starts counting. There are 11 living relatives, including him, now sharing ownership of 80 acres along the Bazile Creek in Knox County, land originally allotted to their ancestor by the federal government. Then Denney does some quick math. He might, he says, be paid around $25,000 if this land, now mostly flooded and unusable, was placed into a flowage easement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Denney,...
There's a map tacked up on the wall in Kameron Runnels' office – squared lines and small text showing who owns what pieces of the Santee Sioux reservation. Six of the squares, big chunks of land, are labeled the same: "school land." Runnels, the tribe's vice chairman, said he always wondered what exactly that meant. Two of the squares are colored in green – land the tribe pays the state almost $65,500 per year to rent and farm, even though it's within reservation boundaries. When Nebraska was...
This week marked the halfway point of the 2024 legislative session, meaning the remaining time will be spent on senator, committee and speaker priority bills. Given the time left in the session, I will be focused on my priority bill for the year, LB1301. LB1301 would adopt the Foreign-owned Real Estate National Security Act, put guardrails and protections in place on foreign ownership of ag land and help safeguard sensitive military installations from threats posed by foreign adversaries. I...
Student pride – and the graduation rate – are on the upswing at the public school on the Santee Native Reservation. School leaders trace that success to a new effort to teach students the tribe’s culture. For the first time, students are learning Santee Dakota history, language and customs – subjects long ago banned. The new cultural program has boosted attendance and helped the iSanti Community School in Niobrara hit a 100% graduation rate two years running, school leaders say. It hasn’t...
In many communities across rural America, we are beginning to ease into new norms and routines of quarantine. Each of us is attending to the impacts of COVID-19 on our friends, families and communities as we all reflect on these unprecedented times. Similarly, yet distinct, tribal communities and indigenous people have been presented with unique challenges across America that many of us may not be familiar with. By taking a closer look at how food sovereignty rebuilds disconnected nutrition...
