Helios Education Foundation, in partnership with WestEd, headed research on chronic absences rates and found in 2021, one in five K-8 students in Arizona schools was chronically absent. The learning loss from absences, compounded with learning loss from the pandemic, continues to threaten student mobility and drop-out rates.
Read More »Buu Nygren sworn in as next Navajo Nation president 
Buu Nygren was sworn in Tuesday as the next president of the vast Navajo Nation, a job that will test his ability to make good on promises to deliver water, electricity and broadband to tens of thousands of residents who don't have it.
Read More »Native Americans want input in State Fair rodeo 
At the annual Arizona State Fair an event called the All-Indian Rodeo features Native American competitors but isn’t organized by Native Americans – and some indigenous Arizonans want to change that.
Read More »Tribal boarding schools much improved, but legacy of old schools remains 
Few dispute that Indian boarding schools led to more than a century of abuse, systematically seizing Indigenous land, separating children from their families, destroying communities and working to erase tribal languages, religions, cultures and economies in Arizona and elsewhere. While the abuses were in the past, the schools are not, entirely.
Read More »Flagstaff leaders seeking split from tribes in redistricting 
During the last redistricting cycle, Flagstaff narrowly avoided being split into two legislative districts. But in order to keep the city whole, it was coupled with the expansive, Native American-dominated Legislative District 2, a district so heavily Democratic that not one Republican ran for the Legislature there in 2010, an otherwise GOP-wave year.
Now leaders in Flagstaff say they want to be part of a more competitive district, which can only be accomplished by severing ties with their Native American neighbors to the north and east.
Cultural learning exception
Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill into law earlier this year to ban an Hispanic studies program in one school district while simultaneously crafting an exemption for culture-based classes for other minority populations.
Read More »Native American tribes say they won’t enforce immigration law
As the July 29 enforcement date for Arizona's strict new immigration law nears, Native American tribes are charging that the law was written without considering their unique circumstance and that it will violate their sovereignty and their members' civil rights.
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