The Nebraska Winnebago Tribe's Ho-Chunk Community Development Corporation, or HCCDC, has been awarded $2 million through MacKenzie Scott's Yield Giving company.

Some 6,300 nonprofits applied to Yield Giving's open call for grants. The HCCDC was among 279 to receive a top tier rating. In the next-highest tier, 82 organizations each received $1 million.

Kristine Earth, executive director of the corporation, said the Tribe has a lot to be proud of but a lot of work left to do.

"We're so excited and are so thankful for this generous gift for our community," Earth stated. "We do have a lot of issues; we have a lot of health disparities. And so, a donation like this really is going to make an impact for our entire Tribe as a whole."

HCCDC marks its 20th anniversary this year, working to improve economic, educational and social opportunities for tribal members. Earth pointed out they have five key initiatives: housing development, commercial development, financial services, quality of life and food sovereignty.

The Winnebago Tribe has experienced huge growth in its middle class in the past few decades but roughly 30% of its members still live in poverty. HCCDC created a farmer's market, which Earth says is helping them address both health disparities and food sovereignty.

"Through our farmers market, now we're able to touch on not only agriculture and tribal farming, but also our health care system," Earth outlined. "Offering the fresh fruits and vegetables and the Indian corn; things that will restore the health of our people."

Earth added Winnebago is in a "food desert," making food security a major focus for the Tribe.

"It's hard for people to access fresh fruits and vegetables, and we have such a growing community," Earth stressed. "We are all coming together to grow our own food and to feed ourselves, so we can be sustainable in the future."

On the website, MacKenzie Scott called all the open call grant winners "vital agents of change." Scott's Yield Giving organization has donated more than $17 billion to 2,300 nonprofit organizations since 2019.

A Montana-based Indigenous advocacy group said it is increasing membership this year in a new way, with a traveling conference.

Western Native Voice on Tuesday held the last of about a dozen conferences it has hosted since March in tribal communities across Montana. The group offers programs to attendees that focus on leadership development, civic engagement and education, and public policy advocacy.

Denise Juneau, former Montana state superintendent of public instruction and a conference keynote speaker, said Native legislators made a lot of headway in this year's session.

"There was a sense of pride in seeing what got accomplished through the 12 Native legislators who got elected from all these different communities," Juneau explained. "I think really a glimmer of hope about what can happen when people get engaged."

Bills passing in 2025 included updates to the Montana Indian Child Welfare Act and a new approach to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons crisis, as well as reauthorization of Native language preservation programs and formal recognition of Indigenous Peoples Day.

Juneau, an enrolled member of the Mandan Hidatsa Tribes of North Dakota, credits her own success in part to growing up with parents in the state Legislature and tribal leadership.

"Being in those seats of power and speaking truth to power, and being engaged at that level really makes a difference for your community, for your state, for the country and for the people who are around you," Juneau recounted.

She encouraged people to get involved at any level, from ensuring your family is registered to vote to running for office.

Shane Doyle, executive director of the nonprofit coalition Yellowstone Peoples and a member of the Apsáalooke Nation, said there is a common misconception tribes across Montana were historically in conflict, when evidence shows they were largely friendly.

"Despite the enormous and remarkable language diversity here in Montana, the tribes were all able to coalesce over generations and create their own sign language," Doyle noted. "It just is a testimony to their stable relations."


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The FBI has said it will add resources in 10 states including New Mexico to tackle unresolved crimes, with a focus on those related to missing and murdered indigenous persons but not everyone is convinced it will have a significant effect.

The agency said 60 agents will be deployed to Albuquerque to investigate unsolved crimes.

Darlene Gomez, a tribal attorney, has spent her career advocating for missing and murdered Indigenous women. When it comes to investigations, she said accountability can be lacking.

"When the Department of Justice or President Trump enacts legislation or (a) special task force, we very rarely see any of the data that comes out of what those task forces were supposed to accomplish," Gomez noted.

Prior to the FBI announcement, the Trump administration scrubbed an online report from the Not Invisible Act Commission, mandated by bipartisan legislation and signed into law by President Donald Trump during his first term.

In the U.S., less than 4% of the population identifies as Native American but it is disproportionately affected by violence, domestic abuse and mental health disorders.

Gomez has a friend who's been missing for 24 years, so she is encouraged New Mexico recently adopted the "Turquoise Alert," a system to help locate missing Indigenous people, similar to an Amber Alert for missing children and already operational in California, Colorado and Washington. Nonetheless, Gomez worries New Mexico is backsliding on its commitment to locate the missing.

"I feel like New Mexico was once the premiere state in the country working on murdered, missing, Indigenous women and relative topics, and we were making huge, significant strides," Gomez explained. "Now we are down at the bottom again."

Recent numbers are not available, but as of 2019, homicide was the third most common cause of death for Native American girls ages 15-19 and 20-24. The FBI's National Crime Information Center showed more than 10,000 entries for missing Indigenous people in 2023, a number believed to be inaccurately low.

Protections for Indigenous rock art in Wyoming are in limbo after state lawmakers and the Trump administration took potentially conflicting actions related to them.

Senate File 91, which handily passed the state Legislature, increased the penalties for any kind of petroglyph or pictograph site destruction to a $750 fine and up to six months in prison.

The measure moved forward as the U.S. Department of the Interior fast-tracked energy projects through a decades-old legal review of such sites.

Crystal C'Bearing, tribal historic preservation officer for the Northern Arapaho Tribe, said she used to have 30 days to comment on a project, but now has seven.

"In terms of tribes, our sacred sites and our places of significance, that's our history on the ground," C'Bearing pointed out. "It's not in books, it's on the land. So it's really important for tribes to have that voice in there to protect those sites."

The original Wyoming bill included nearly $500,000 for the state's Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources to survey and make 3D models of Wyoming's petroglyphs but it was ultimately cut.

According to a 2024 "State of the Art" report, of the nearly 1,100 Indigenous rock art sites across Wyoming, about a quarter have been vandalized or defaced.

Beyond Wyoming's borders, C'Bearing noted her office provides legally mandated consultation on any projects in her tribe's ancestral migratory territory, which includes portions of 17 states. She added she takes on hundreds of requests.

"That 30-day window was barely enough time," C'Bearing contended. "Now we have to kind of prioritize those so we can push them through. But it's a challenge."

C'Bearing emphasized the office is allowed to request more time to review projects, giving consultants some leeway.


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