Indian Law professor and blog author of Native America, Discovered and Conquered Robert Miller was noted by The Wall Street Journal’s Blog Watch in the category of Native Americans.

In September 2009, Wesley Hodges and James Roberts were discovered illegally digging on private property in Burke County, Georgia. When state Department of Natural Resources Ranger Jeff Billips found the pair, they had already dug up piles of artifacts and human bone fragments. Hodges and Roberts appeared before State Court Judge Jerry M. Daniel last Wednesday where they entered guilty pleas for excavating without written permission, criminal trespass, and littering...

Alaskan and Yupik Eskimo Callan Chythlook-Sifsof was named to the U.S. Olympic team. In 2006, Chythlook-Sifsof earned a berth on the U.S. Snowboard Team and took third place in her first World Cup snowboardcross competition in Japan. She won the U.S. National Championship title that same year and took a fourth-place in World Cup Finals in Quebec. Read the full story.

Indian Country Today reports that the 3,000 citizens of the Jemez Pueblo in New Mexico are on the verge of building the nation’s first utility-scale solar plant on tribal land. “We don’t have any revenue coming in except for a little convenience store,” said James Roger Madalena, a former tribal governor who now represents the pueblo in the state Legislature. “It’s very critical that we become innovative, creative, that we come up with something that wil...

The news reports that a rare 400-year-old slate tablet was discovered this past summer at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America. With the help of enhanced imagery and an expert in Elizabethan script, archaeologists are beginning to unravel the meaning of the mysterious text and images etched into this tablet. Various enhancements of the images and writing have helped researchers identify a 16th-century writing style and to discern ne...

As a young archaeologist, Jeff Blick helped make an astounding discovery in Virginia – the skeletons of 112 dogs buried by American Indians nearly 1,000 years ago. He is still studying the bones, and he hopes the latest tests will guide scientists to study the ancient transformation of wolf to dog. After 13 or so years of spent digging ended in the ’80s, Blick’s work continues in his archaeology lab at Georgia College and State University. Blick and his st...

The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation in Connecticut could become a “green” island unto itself in a few years. That is the ultimate goal of a cogeneration approach the Tribe will embrace with a $34 million project it expects to start testing this spring. Initially, it is expected to provide nearly 60% of the tribe’s electricity needs and at the same time heat and cool Foxwoods Resort Casino. Two 10,300-horsepower jet engines will propel the system, which w...

A University of Minnesota study suggests that, if assisted, Native American artists could become a major economic asset to the state. Demographer Ann Markusen and writer Marcie Rendon, an enrolled citizen at the White Earth Band, interviewed dozens of native artists. Working alone means these artists often have to do everything from booking shows and publicity and finding educational opportunities in their field. All this while actually doing their creative work...

The Mashantucket Pequot Tribe in Connecticut operates the Foxwoods Casino and Resort. It has been attempting to restructure more than $2 billion worth of debt since last summer. It is reported that it has reached an agreement to continue these negotiations with its senior lenders. According to a New York public relations firm, the Tribe and “a majority of its senior lenders” have reached “an agreement in principle” to extend a forbearance agreement through A...

The news reports that the Klamath Tribes in Oregon are the first to approve a $1 billion agreement for restoring Klamath River salmon and bringing peace to the long-standing water battles in the basin. The Tribes announced that their citizens voted to approve the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, which is part of a broader settlement designed to remove aging hydroelectric dams that block salmon. The overall settlement is expected to be signed by the dozens of...

The Crow Creek Sioux tribal council last week unanimously approved signing a memorandum of understanding with EcoTech Fuels. The company is supposed to be in South Dakota this week to meet with tribal officials to choose a site for a $39 million fuel production plant that would turn municipal waste into Torqazine, a fuel or fuel additive recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency that produces greater octane than ethanol and burns a bit cleaner. The plant...