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President Obama will host Native American tribe leaders at the White House on Wednesday, as part of the annual White House Tribal Nations Conference. As McClatchy’s Anita Kumar points out, Obama is known to many Native Americans as “Barack Black Eagle Obama” after receiving an American Indian name in 2008 during his campaign for president.

President Barack Obama announced an initiative Wednesday aimed at improving conditions and opportunities for American Indian youth, more than a third of whom live in poverty. Obama’s Generation Indigenous initiative calls for programs focused on better preparing young American Indians for college and careers, and developing leadership skills through the Department of Education and the Aspen Institute’s Center for Native American Youth. Members of the president’s staff also plan to visit reservations next year. …

More than $380 million in government dollars left over from a federal discrimination settlement with American Indians is in limbo amid disagreements over how the money should be spent. U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on Tuesday reviewed a proposal to form a new foundation to help American Indian farmers with the money unexpectedly left over after the Obama administration settled a class-action suit filed by American Indian farmers in 2011. The farmers said they had lost out on decades of farm loans because of government discrimination. …

Nearly one-third of Native American genes come from west Eurasian people linked to the Middle East and Europe, rather than entirely from East Asians as previously thought, according to a newly sequenced genome. Based on the arm bone of a 24,000-year-old Siberian youth, the research could uncover new origins for America's indigenous peoples, as well as stir up fresh debate on Native American identities, experts say. The study authors believe the new study could also help resolve some long-standing puzzles on the peopling of the New World, which include genetic oddities and archaeological inconsistencies

In 1492, "Columbus sailed the ocean blue" and discovered the New World. And Oct. 12 was once a celebrated holiday in America. School children in the earliest grades knew the date and the names of the ships on which Columbus and his crew had sailed: the Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria. They knew his voyage had been financed by Queen Isabella of Spain, after the Genoese Admiral of the Ocean Sea had been turned down by other monarchs of Europe. Oct. 12, 1492, was considered a momentous and wonderful day in world history: the discovery of America -- by...

Tomorrow used to be called Columbus Day, but no more. Thanks to Seattle, it’s now “Indigenous Peoples’ Day!” Sound stupid? That’s only because it is. This week the city council of Seattle voted unanimously to rename the day—within the city only; Columbus Day as we know it is a federal holiday—because, like with everything these days, some whiny people found a way to be offended by something that doesn’t really affect them at all and demand their grievance be addressed. Progressive governments such as Seattle’s eagerly cave if the crying crowd has a non-white face in front of it. In...

Is It Time To Say Goodbye To Columbus Day? OCTOBER 11, 2014. Historian Kenneth C. Davis joins "CBS This Morning: Saturday" to discuss the controversial holiday that some Americans want to rename Indigenous People's Day

"Are you an American who's tired of recent-immigrant cab drivers who can't find their way from Grand Central Station to the Empire State Building? Welcome to Ameri-Rides, the new taxi service for Americans only that guarantees you a native-born American driver!" -- apocryphal ad. How do you think that concept would go over on Morning Joe or anywhere else in the MSM? But when Morning Joe today discussed SheRides, a new taxi service that hires only women drivers and accepts only women passengers, all the panel members—Mika, Joe and Willie—dug the idea. The notion is that some women riders feel...

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plans to spend up to $450,000 in taxpayer dollars to teach Native American tribes in the Great Basin region ”climate adaptation plans” for their hunting, fishing and gathering activities. “Due to climate change, the natural landscapes are becoming impacted,” and the “traditional practices for hunting, fishing, and gathering for ceremonial purposes” can potentially create further impacts,” according to BLM’s Cooperative Agreement announcement.

In Southwest Arizona, where the U.S. and Mexico borders meet, the U.S. Border Patrol has made huge strides in capturing border crossers and seizing drugs from Mexican cartels, but there is one stretch of land along the border that has made life a daily hell for a tribe of Native Americans. The Tohono O'odham Nation, a Native American reservation about the size of Connecticut, is located in the Sonoran Desert, about 60 miles south of Tucson, Ariz., right on the U.S. border with Mexico. Here, there is no barbed-wire high fence, but open desert, with only a vehicle barrier meant...

In the past few primary elections the Tea Party has won some and lost some. Lately it's been more "lost some" than "won some." Several months ago I wrote that the Tea Party was founded on an act of impersonation based on an act of deception. They named themselves and patterned themselves after a bunch of so-called Boston Patriots who decided to rebel over a tax on tea by sneaking aboard a vessel that had received a shipment of tea and dumping the tea into the Boston Harbor. In order to conceal this criminal act from the authorities they dressed...

CLEVELAND - The red block letter C for Cleveland seems to be replacing Chief Wahoo outside Progressive Field. But not everyone sees it that way. Robert Roche is the director of the American Indian Education Center and one of the plaintiffs planing to file a federal lawsuit in late July against the Cleveland Indians. The group says the team's name and the Chief Wahoo logo are racist. The group wants a lot of money to help Native Americans with education, job training and housing. "We're going to be asking for $9 billion and we're basing it on a hundred years...

* In the United States today, the names Apache, Comanche, Chinook, Lakota, Cheyenne and Kiowa apply not only to Indian tribes but also to military helicopters. Add in the Black Hawk, named for a leader of the Sauk tribe. Then there is the Tomahawk, a low-altitude missile, and a drone named for an Indian chief, Gray Eagle. Operation Geronimo was the end of Osama bin Laden. Why do we name our battles and weapons after people we have vanquished? For the same reason the Washington team is the Redskins and my hometown Red Sox go to Cleveland to play the...

The white hypocrites who complain about the term "redskins" use the term "native American" which when used in the way they are using it isn't much better than the other n-word. The word "redskins" is a physically descriptive term that doesn't have inherently negative characteristics. The word is one of the English translations of the Ottawa term "Oklahoma". If we consider the characteristics of the people the term "redskins" was first applied to, it's a positive term. The word "native" has two different uses. In general use the term "native " followed by a geographic region is used to indicate...

Do you think leftists are the slightest bit troubled by the public's overwhelming opposition to their crusade to force the Washington Redskins to change their name? That was rhetorical; I give you more credit. Despite leftists' ongoing effort to convince Native Americans and the rest of us that Native Americans must be offended by the long-standing name, the polls don't seem to be moving in their direction. But that hardly deters them. They are the final arbiters of who may be (and who is being) offended. In the end, this liberal crusade has little to do with protecting the...

What does Oklahoma mean? Oklahoma is based on Choctaw Indian words which translate as red people (okla meaning "people" and humma meaning "red"). Recorded history for the name "Oklahoma" began with Spanish explorer Coronado in 1541 on his quest for the "Lost City of Gold." Oklahoma became the 46th state on November 16, 1907.

Native Americans are sending a loud message to the Washington Redskins. A northern California tribe paid for a commercial to air in seven major U.S. cities during halftime of Tuesday's NBA Finals game, their latest plea for the NFL team to change its “racist” name and mascot.

When we pledge allegiance to the flag, we also pledge allegiance to the Republic for which it stands — “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” The modern American left has put each of these qualities up for grabs. For example, implementing “social justice” would make it logically impossible to provide justice for all of us as individuals. The left is also unfavorably disposed to the idea of one indivisible nation. The Akaka Bill was a good example. As Gail Heriot and Peter Kirsanow explained, this legislation, which the House passed in 2010, would have enabled...

These are the American Indian reservations the Department of Interior plans to focus on in the next phase of a $1.9 billion buyback program of fractionated land parcels to turn over to tribal governments. The program is part of a $3.4 billion settlement over mismanaged money held in trust by the U.S. government for individual Indian landowners. …

70 year old Shoshone Tribal Elder describes Harry Reid and the BLM's 30 year-long GRAB for her family's ancestral lands. In the early nineties, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the US Government set it sights on another tract of land in Nevada… The target this time was the ANCESTRAL tribal land of two elderly, Native American sisters from the Dann band of Western Shoshones, Mary and Carrie Dann. In a case that sounds familiar to the Bundy family’s plight, the BLM charged that the Dann sisters' livestock was trespassing on federal land. The BLM first planned to round...