December 2025 Native News Roundup

Happy New Year (belatedly)! I’m starting January off with a (also belated) recap of Native News from December.

Happy New Year (belatedly)! I’m starting January off with a (also belated) recap of Native News from December. You’ll still hear from me two more times this month with the January Native News Roundup and a longer form article.

ICE + Native America

Last Wednesday an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a Minneapolis resident and mother of three. While Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claims the shooting was in self defense, video of the incident shows Good attempting to drive away from the scene.

Since the Trump administration sent 2,000 ICE agents to Minneapolis, at least five Native American community members have been detained. The area where Good was killed is near a historic urban Native community and the Little Earth housing project. Near Little Earth, ICE agents detained four men who are Oglala Lakota. One man was released after a 12 hour hold, but the whereabouts of the other men are unknown. In a separate incident, Jose Roberto “Beto” Ramirez was driving to his aunt’s house North of Minneapolis when he noticed he was being followed by people in an unmarked car. Ramirez is a descendant of Red Lake Nation. ICE agents pulled Ramirez out of his car. “I felt like I was kidnapped,” he told ICT news. After detaining him for 6 hours, ICE eventually released Ramirez.

Last month it was revealed that two tribes–Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation and Oneida Nation–were making money from ICE contracts. The same ICE that has been taking parents in front of their children, attacking journalists, and targeting Native Americans because of the color of their skin.

A business owned by Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation signed a $30 million contract with ICE in October to design detention facilities for the agency. After criticism from tribal citizens and Native communities, the Nation fired the leaders behind the deal, terminated the contract, and announced they would not work with ICE in the future. In the 1830’s the federal government forcibly relocated the Potawatomi from their homelands near the great lakes to land in present day Missouri and later Kansas. This relocation happened during an era of ethnic cleansing in which the U.S. exiled all Indigenous people living east of the Mississippi River. Many Prairie Band tribal citizens pointed out the similarities between ICE’s removal of undocumented immigrants today and their own violent history.

Other tribes also came under fire for signing contracts with ICE. A business owned by Oneida Nation was awarded two contracts to construct ICE facilities–one last December and another in September. Facing similar backlash, the Nation replaced the business’ leaders and plans to terminate the contract. As Politico reported, other tribes still have ICE contracts–and despite the backlash have not canceled them–including an LLC owned by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians and Akima, owned by an Alaska Native Corporation.

Actress Elaine Miles, who became famous for her role in the 90s TV show Northern Exposure, was detained by ICE last month after officers called her tribal ID “fake.” When Miles appeared on Northern Exposure, she was one of only two Native people on popular television between 1987 and 2007. No wonder ICE agents don’t know what a tribal ID is–Indigenous people almost never appear in the media they consume.

Native American Boarding Schools in the News

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, over a third of Native children were sent to government-run assimilation schools, where many faced physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and thousands died. Many of those children are still buried in unmarked graves. In December, a provision to create a Truth and Reconciliation committee to address the legacy of boarding schools did not pass the House. Our country is unwilling to look at and understand this history. As ICE sends hundreds of immigrant kids to detention facilities, it is no wonder US history is repeating itself.

Even as America turns a blind eye, Tribes are still fighting to bring home the remains of the children who died at these boarding schools. Because of cemetery mismanagement, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes found out last month that they would be unable to bring two of their relatives home who were buried at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

Native issues before Congress

Last month, Congress failed to pass a bill that would a truth and healing commission to investigate boarding school history as well as an Act to establish the Wounded Knee Sacred Site. The Wounded Knee provision later passed on its own. In the same week, the Senate also approved a bipartisan measure from the House to expand the Miccosukee Tribe’s land base. That bill was vetoed by Trump on the grounds that the tribe had undermined his immigration agenda–a reference to the Tribe’s efforts to stop the construction of “Alligator Alcatraz” on top of sacred sites. The House failed to override that veto last week.

(Good!) News from Oklahoma

After some Muscogee tribal leaders dug their heels into the ground, enrollment for Muscogee Freedmen descendants is finally moving forward. Last month, the Tribe’s highest court ordered the administration to comply with the ruling and provide status updates.

Also in December, Cherokee Nation acquired the cemetery where Elias Boudinot is buried. This means a lot to me! Elias Boudinot is a relative and published the first Native-run newspaper in the U.S. He was murdered not far from his grave for signing the Treaty of New Echota.

Criminal Injustice

Native kids are being punished more harshly in juvenile courts compared to white kids. A new study found that in Washington state, Native & Black kids are less likely to be offered diversion instead of prison time. And in South Dakota, a new study found that 59 percent of Native Americans released from prison return within three years, even though they account for just 39 percent of people incarcerated. The recidivism rate among Native women is even higher, at 66 percent.

Oil and Gas and Imperialism

After invading Venezuela and kidnapping their head of state, Trump has announced his plans to run their government and to tap their oil reserves for American profit. Venezuela has the largest known crude oil reserves in the world.

6,000 miles away, in Ambler, Alaska, the Trump administration is also exploiting natural resources. His administration approved a new mining road through the wilderness last year that threatens the lives of the Iñupiat people. The Iñupiat are facing warm temperatures and unimaginable changes–the regional caribou herd, once numbering at half a million caribou, has fallen by 66% percent in the last 20 years. The road threatens what remains.

Nearby, in Alaska’s North Slope, Alaska Native groups are suing the Trump Administration after it approved a new oil and gas project on top of ongoing drilling that is projected to generate billions in dollars in profits in the next several decades. In the past, the neighboring largely Alaska Native community has received a portion of that revenue back as compensation for the damages incurred by the drilling. Now, Alaska’s governor has unveiled a plan to take more of that money for the state’s general fund, taking it away from the communities whose way of life are threatened by oil production.

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