CULT OF JAMES

In 1953, Congress passed Public Law 280, transferring criminal jurisdiction over tribal lands to state governments in Oregon. No tribe was consulted. No tribe consented. In 1954, Congress passed the Western Oregon Indian Termination Act. Sixty-one tribes — more than any other state in the country — lost federal recognition in a single act. Their land base, their sovereignty, their…

On July 7, a picture appeared on X showing Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell in a hospital bed, covered in tubes, in extreme distress. McConnell has been hospitalized since an emergency call on June 14. The photo was fake. By July 8, Snopes had debunked it. OpenAI’s verification tool detected a SynthID watermark embedded in the image — invisible to the…

The timeline. 2011. Twitter fails to protect user data. The FTC issues a twenty-year compliance order. 2022. Twitter uses phone numbers and email addresses — the data 140 million users submitted for two-factor authentication, to protect their accounts — for targeted advertising. The FTC fines the company $150 million and extends the order through 2042. August 2022. Peiter “Mudge” Zatko,…

On June 25, 1876, combined forces of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho defeated the 7th U.S. Cavalry at the river the Lakota call the Greasy Grass. The United States called it Custer’s Last Stand. They named the monument after the man who lost. Custer Battlefield National Monument. For 115 years, the only names carved into the site belonged…

South Dakota has 105 open missing persons cases. Sixty-six involve Native Americans. Forty-five of those are children. Native Americans are 9 percent of South Dakota’s population. They are 63 percent of its missing. For three and a half years, the state’s entire response to this was one woman with a phone number. Allison Morrisette, Oglala Lakota, grew up on the…

Disney called Midjourney a “bottomless pit of plagiarism.” Midjourney’s response: show us yours. In June 2025, Disney and Universal sued Midjourney for copyright infringement, alleging its AI image generator trained on copyrighted characters — Darth Vader, Shrek, Homer Simpson — without permission and let paying subscribers generate endless images of them. Warner Bros. followed in September with its own complaint:…

Seventeen Indigenous performers will take the stage tonight at the National Monument. Two drum groups. Powwow dancers. Two songs. Around 8:40 p.m., between the Joint Armed Forces Orchestra and the President’s remarks. The occasion is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Craig Marbin, Akwesasne Mohawk, will carry the Mohawk Code Talker’s Eagle Staff — honoring relatives who served…

In 2015, a nineteen-year-old Navajo and Maidu student named Chiitaanibah Johnson sat in a history class at Sacramento State. The professor told the class he didn’t like the word “genocide” because it implied the decimation of American Indians was intentional. Johnson disagreed. The professor said she was hijacking his class. He dismissed the class early and told her she was…

June 28, 1969. Police raid the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. The patrons fight back. At the front: Marsha P. Johnson, a Black trans woman, age twenty-three. Sylvia Rivera, a Latina trans woman, age seventeen. Rivera stayed for six nights without sleeping. “I’m not missing a minute of this,” she said. “It’s the revolution.” Fifty-seven years later, the National Park…

Terrence Lozeau spent years watching skateboarders on the Flathead Reservation and not joining them. He thought the sport was incompatible with being Indigenous. Then he saw Alishon Kelly — skater, artist, jingle dress dancer — and the incompatibility collapsed. “Another Native kid,” he told IndigiNews, “making something out of themselves through skateboarding and art.” He started showing up daily. The…