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ICT
The latest: Top museum exhibits, myth and reality in stories, Blackfoot men in film
ART: Community and Cherokee tales in art
Two ambitious shows now open in California and Arizona.
At The Autry in Los Angeles through June 27, 2027 is Creative Continuities: Family, Pride, and Community in Native Art, explores the meanings embedded in three aspects of Native culture: Knowing, Create, and Transference. Three contemporary Plains Indian artists — John Pepion, Blackfeet, Brocade Stops Black Eagle, Crow, and Jessa Rae Growing Thunder, Dakota/Nakoda ― reflect upon their relationships with works created by their ancestors.
The three each curated a section of the exhibit, framing works of painting, beadwork, sculpture, that originated within their communities with one of the three concepts at the heart of the exhibition. Through this unique combination of cultural objects and stories, the show aims to educate visitors about the diversity of Native American culture, history, and tradition that crosses tribal boundaries; past and present.
On Jan. 23, The Heard Museum opened two new related exhibitions: Kay WalkingStick / Hudson River School and Paintings from the Heard Museum. Each showcases the artistic talent and curatorial expertise of celebrated Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick.
Organized by the New York Historical Society, the show brings WalkingStick’s bold landscapes into dialogue with iconic 19th century paintings from the Hudson River School. WalkingStick’s work both connects to and diverges from the Hudson River School tradition and explores the depth of art in shaping human relationship to the land.
Highlights of the exhibition include WalkingStick’s paintings that are directly inspired by Hudson River School artists — a landscape that references the Trail of Tears, a journey WalkingStick’s Cherokee ancestors were forced to take, and examples of her early painted sculptural abstractions inspired by nature. More recent paintings, such as Niagara and Aquidneck, After the Storm, overlay abstract Indigenous patterns onto representational landscapes to imprint an Indigenous presence in depictions of North America as a pristine and unpopulated wilderness.
In 2002, the Heard Museum debuted So Fine! Masterworks of Fine Art from the Heard Museum, guest curated by WalkingStick. More than two decades later, she returns to select rarely exhibited large-scale paintings for a new look at the collection’s strength and will feature more than 30 works by Native American artists spanning multiple generations, offering a dynamic view of Native painting through the decades.
“Kay Walking Stick has contributed in transformative ways to our collection and archive, and these two exhibitions allow us to share with our visitors the dynamic relationship we have with her as an artist, scholar, interpreter, mentor, and friend,” said David M. Roche, Heard Museum Dickey Family Director and CEO.
“Kay’s willingness to work with our curator, Roshii K. Montano, on the installation of Paintings from the Heard Museum ensures a rare opportunity for the transference of knowledge from one generation of Indigenous leadership to the next.”
BOOKS: Salish and Cherokee stories move from ancient to futuristic
Coast Salish storyteller and multimedia artist Andrea Grant recently released MODERN NATIVES: An Illustrated Collection of Reimagined Coast Salish Myths, a community-rooted work that brings Coast Salish ancestral stories into contemporary Indigenous life.
Blending short fiction, poetry, and illustration, Modern Natives sees a world where the spirits never left: tricksters walk city streets, wolves appear under streetlights, and ancestral beings move through urban spaces Credit: Courtesy photo
Created with the knowledge and approval of Grant’s elders and grounded in Coast Salish protocol and responsibility to story, the project began following a visit to Penelakut Island, where Grant’s tribe is from. There she was gifted access to archival materials and ancestral knowledge, which became the foundation and inspiration for the book.
Blending short fiction, poetry, and illustration, Modern Natives sees a world where the spirits never left: tricksters walk city streets, wolves appear under streetlights, and ancestral beings move through urban spaces. Grant, the recipient of First Nations Storyteller Grants, writes from lived experience, bridging territory, diaspora, ceremony and city life. Illustrations by acclaimed Coast Salish artist Qwalsius–Shaun Peterson and Bowera Studio, place the book as a collaboration rooted in Indigenous community.
Woman of Many Names is a deep look into a woman who helped shape the history of the Nation. Nancy Ward had ties to Daniel Boone and George Washington, including having saved Washington’s life (and, it’s believed, vice versa). A letter written by Ward to Washington was found in Thomas Jefferson’s artifacts.
A role model akin to Joan of Arc, for young girls, Ward is also known as Nanyehi, she foretold one of the great American tragedies, the Trail of Tears. Her life story is rich with anecdotes.
Debra Yates hails from Ohio but now lives in St. Pete Beach, Florida. Being of Cherokee descent and having had stories passed down from generation to generation, Debra found herself drawn to family history, traveling to destinations along the East Coast and in the Midwest to write the stories of her seventh-great grandmother’s historic life.
FILM: Big Sky Country screens a film fest
In-person screenings at Big Sky 2026 in Missoula, Montana will take place February 13-22 at The Wilma, the Missoula Children’s Theater (MCT), The Roxy and the ZACC Showroom. The Big Sky Film Institute has announced the official selections of the 2026 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Entering its 23rd season, the festival is an expansive exhibition of nearly 140 nonfiction films in venues across downtown Missoula, Montana with screenings in the festival’s virtual cinema streaming February 15-25.
Big Sky’s 2026 official selections include 46 features and 69 short & mini documentary films, including 27 World Premieres, 11 North American Premieres and 10 U.S. Premieres. This year’s program is a powerful collection of storytelling from across the globe, showcasing the power of the human spirit, the beauty of the natural world, aging gracefully, Indigenous stories and the value of living life in the day-to-day.
A standout is the U.S. premiere of Blackfoot tribal member Sinakson Trevor Solway’s award-winning documentary SIKSIKAKOWAN: THE BLACKFOOT MAN on Saturday, February 21. The film had its world premiere at the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto and received the 2025 imagineNATIVE audience Award, among others. Trevor Solway received the 2025 Jean-Marc Vallée Discovery Award from the Directors Guild of Canada.
Solway portrays the lives of Blackfoot men as they navigate identity, kinship and the complex expectations of manhood. Through raw moments and revealing conversations placed against the vast landscape of the Prairies, the film reimagines what it means to be a Native man in an ode to strength and vulnerability.
The post INDIGENOUS A&E: Southwest museum art, book tales old and new, Montana film fest appeared first on ICT.
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The biomass industry promised these Southern towns prosperity. So why are they still dying?
(grist.org)
The mayor of Urania steered his pickup down a dirt road snaking through the weedy lots and patches of trees that had once been the bustling heart of his central Louisiana town.
Jay Ivy passed pines growing where the saws of the sprawling Urania mill turned similar specimens into lumber. He pointed out the log pond, now the domain of alligators, and stopped at the mill’s smokestack, still standing over an increasingly deserted townscape. Once a year, the smokestack belches celebratory black clouds over Urania.
“For our fall festival, we get it smoking again with some old tires or whatever we can find to burn,” the big-shouldered mayor said with a sheepish grin. “I suppose it reminds us of what we had here.”
Jay Ivy, the mayor of Urania, looks out over his small Louisiana town. He hopes a wood pellet mill operated by British energy giant Drax will revive its economy. Eric J. Shelton / Mississippi Today
Urania was devastated when the mill and a related fiberboard operation closed in 2002, putting more than 350 people out of work. There was little hope of a revival until the British energy giant Drax arrived in the Deep South a decade ago, hungry for cheap wood it could burn in England as a “renewable” alternative to coal.
Drax began opening wood pellet mills in former timber towns in Louisiana and Mississippi that had fallen on hard times. The region offered plentiful low-grade timber, a labor force desperate for work, and lax environmental regulations. The company was already producing pellets, which it calls “sustainable biomass,” in Mississippi and north Louisiana when Drax opened its biggest pellet mill just outside Urania in late 2017.
A ‘Welcome to Urania’ sign, stands at the entrance of the small Louisiana town, home to a Drax wood pellet mill. At the mill, LaSalle BioEnergy, logs await the grinders. Eric J. Shelton / Mississippi Today
A year later, then-Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, thanked Drax for “believing in Louisiana.” Jobs and other economic growth were soon to follow, he and the company promised. “Louisiana aggressively pursued Drax Biomass and today those efforts have paid off,” Edwards said at the time.
But more than a decade after Drax took root in the region, prosperity has yet to arrive. Drax employs a fraction of the workers the old mills did, and many commute from other towns. The money that might have flowed from Drax into investments in local roads, parks, and schools has been eroded by massive tax breaks.
Now home to around 700 residents, Urania has lost nearly half its population since 2010, a decline that continued after Drax built its mill in 2017. In 2023, it drew unwanted attention when a news site declared it “the poorest town in America.” According to the most recent census report, some 40 percent of Urania’s residents live in poverty, and the average income is $12,400 — roughly one-fifth the national average.
“It’s a town of old people — a poor town, really,” Ivy said.
A painted saw blade depicting Urania’s early days sits in the town’s recreation hall. The Louisiana town lost much of its population after its lumber mill closed. Eric J. Shelton / Mississippi Today
Gloster, Mississippi, a majority Black town of about 850 people near the Louisiana line, has also seen its population shrink since Drax opened a pellet mill near the shuttered elementary school in 2014. More than 10 percent of Gloster’s working-age residents are unemployed, and the typical household income of about $22,500 is less than half the Mississippi median.
Residents in both towns believe that noise, dust, and air pollution from the nearly identical mills are harming their health. While it remains unclear whether Drax’s operations can be tied to any one person’s illness, the mills release chemicals at concentrations that federal regulators and scientists say are toxic to humans. Louisiana and Mississippi state regulators have repeatedly fined the company for a host of pollution violations, but several residents and environmental groups say the penalties haven’t made a noticeable difference.
“Drax is a false solution,” said Jimmy Brown, a former worker at Gloster’s plywood mill, which closed 17 years ago. “They want to make something they can’t make in their own country, so they come here. We got this mill, but we don’t have schools anymore. We don’t have doctors anymore, and we got all these people with respiratory issues and heart issues now.”
Sawdust piles up at Drax’s wood pellet mill near Urania, Louisiana. The mill presses sawdust into pellets that are burned in a former coal plant in Yorkshire, England. Eric J. Shelton / Mississippi Today
On the outskirts of Urania, a giant hydraulic arm tips a tractor-trailer backward until its cab points to the sky. Several tons of tree limbs and other logging debris spill from the trailer into one of the mouths feeding Drax’s mill, called LaSalle BioEnergy.
The half-mile-long facility also consumes a steady diet of sawdust from a neighboring lumber mill and a huge volume of tree-length logs, hoisted by crane into the teeth of an industrial-size wood chipper.
“We take everything — the little bitty trees that’re so thin that nobody wants them, and also the limbs and even the pine needles,” Tommy Barbo, the mill’s manager, said during a tour. “Nothing gets wasted.”
Tommy Barbo, manager of Drax’s wood pellet mill in Urania, Louisiana, surveys operations at the facility. Eric J. Shelton / Mississippi Today
Drax and other utility-scale pellet makers initially promoted their industry as consumers of sawdust and other mill wastes, but these sources couldn’t meet their growing production goals. Large pellet mills now get most of their wood directly from logging whole trees.
At the Urania mill, log stacks larger than football fields and higher than houses are stripped of bark, shredded, cooked in a 1,000-degree tumble dryer, pulverized in hammermills, pressed into pellets and loaded on trains bound for Baton Rouge. From there, the pellets are shipped nearly 8,000 miles — through the Gulf of Mexico and across the Atlantic Ocean to northeast England.
Drax is riding high on explosive global demand for pellets, record profits, and government subsidies. Pellet exports from the U.S. have quintupled, growing from 2 million tons in 2012 to about 11 million tons in 2024, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. An increasing share of those exports has come from the South, reaching about 85 percent in 2023.
Including Drax’s five facilities in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, there are 30 large pellet mills across the region and at least four more are proposed. Enviva, one of the industry’s biggest players, was building the world’s largest-capacity pellet plant in Epes, Alabama, when it declared bankruptcy in early 2024. The Maryland-based company had no trouble finding buyers for its pellets. Enviva’s troubles arose when it failed to produce pellets in the quantities and prices it had promised. Enviva shuttered its mill in Amory, Mississippi, last year but still has a presence in the state, producing pellets in Lucedale and shipping from its terminal at the Port of Pascagoula.
Much of the pellet industry’s growth was driven by the European Union’s decision in 2009 to classify wood burning as a renewable energy source on par with solar and wind, making it eligible for subsidies, low-interest loans and other government incentives. By the end of 2027, when Drax’s current subsidy support is scheduled to run out, the company will have received more than $14 billion in subsidies from the U.K. government, according to the climate think tank Ember.
Louisiana has also been generous to the company. Drax’s two mills in the state, which employ about 140 workers, have been exempted from paying about $75 million in property taxes via the state’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program, known as ITEP, Verite News and Grist found in a review of estimates from Louisiana Economic Development, a state agency. Aimed at attracting jobs and economic activity, the tax-exemption program shields large companies from taxes that would otherwise help support school districts, police departments, and other local government operations.
Mississippi offered Drax $2.8 million in grants and more than $1.5 million in tax breaks to draw the company to Gloster.
While benefiting from taxpayer largesse, Drax has also seen its earnings climb. The company’s profits rose from nearly $1.3 billion in 2023 to about $1.4 billion in 2024.
Tommy Barbo inspects wood pellets produced at the mill in Urania. The pellets are shipped to England to be burned in a former coal power station. Eric J. Shelton / Mississippi Today
Drax recently expanded a mill in Alabama and brokered an investment and supply partnership with a company planning to build a jet fuel plant at a yet-to-be-determined location on the Gulf Coast. Drax also established a North American headquarters in Monroe, Louisiana, and opened an office in Houston to lead its carbon-capture enterprises.
For Barbo, the global pellet boom means he feels compelled to check second-by-second production stats to make sure he’s meeting demand. “Even when I’m home, I’m checking all this on my phone,” he said.
Over the past seven years, the mill in Urania has produced enough pellets to fill the New Orleans Superdome nearly two times. Barbo is proud that his mill is the company’s top producer in the U.S., and he aims to keep it that way. “We did 377 tons this morning,” he said. “We try to keep it on pace at 95.2 tons an hour. Pretty good so far.”
Tommy Barbo walks through the Drax wood pellet mill in Urania, Louisiana. Eric J. Shelton / Mississippi Today
Mayor Ivy radiates pride when talking about Urania’s founder and all his mill provided. Henry Hardtner, a lumber baron who named both his land and business Urania, created a closed-loop company town. Most houses and stores were provided by Hardtner’s company. In one big building called the commissary, residents could find groceries, medicine, clothes, tools, a post office, and a soda fountain.
“You’d spend your whole paycheck there using the company’s own money,” Ivy said, referring to mill tokens that were worthless beyond the town’s limits.
Hardtner had a monopoly on almost every facet of town life, but he offered stability, security, and enough jobs to support hundreds of families. The leaders of many small, remote mill towns like Urania and Gloster still believe their communities can’t thrive without a large industrial facility, whether it be a mill, factory, or chemical plant.
“All of these small towns, we have nothing,” Gloster Mayor Jerry Norwood said. “If big business don’t commit the big dollars, we don’t have the tax base. We have to have that for community growth.”
he high school in Gloster, Mississippi closed several years ago as the town’s lumber mill-based economy crumbled. Despite the opening of a large wood pellet mill, the school remains closed. Kathleen Flynn / The Guardian
A larger tax base is the “lifeline” Drax offers to dying towns with dying industries, wrote Jessica Marcus, Drax’s North American head of public affairs and policy, in an opinion piece posted on the company’s website. “Particularly in hard-hit states across the U.S. South like Mississippi and Alabama, communities are looking for other reliable sources of income to provide a dependable path back to prosperity.”
Drax estimates that its annual “economic impact” from taxes and wages exceeds $150 million in Gloster and the surrounding area and close to $200 million around Urania. The company is a frequent donor to community groups, providing funds to replace the floor in a Urania school gym and to install a new air-conditioning system at a Gloster meeting hall. The company has also given away turkeys at Thanksgiving and helped stock local food banks.
Drax reported $907,000 in charitable giving in the U.S. in 2024, mostly focused on five Southern states. The company is more generous in its home country, giving away three times as much — about $3.3 million — to U.K.-based nonprofits and schools.
To Krystal Martin, the founder of the Greater Greener Gloster community group, these giveaways are a relatively cheap way for the company to build goodwill where it’s doing the most harm.
Krystal Martin runs the group Greater Greener Gloster out of a small office in Gloster, Mississippi. She has been raising concerns about air and noise pollution from the wood pellet mill. Kathleen Flynn / The Guardian
According to state regulators in Louisiana and Mississippi, Drax’s mills have repeatedly exceeded their pollution limits, releasing harmful levels of formaldehyde, methanol, and other chemicals that can cause cancer, damage brains, and harm lungs. Despite millions of dollars in fines and promises to improve, many residents — especially in Gloster — say their health is declining.
“They sell you hopes and dreams, but they don’t tell you the stuff they’re producing will make you die,” Martin said.
Bearing environmental dangers might be worthwhile if the company offered more jobs, residents in Urania and Gloster said. But Drax’s employment opportunities have fallen far below many people’s expectations. Each of the three Drax mills in Louisiana and Mississippi employs between 70 and 80 people. That’s a fraction of the hundreds working in mills in each town 20 years ago. In Gloster, most of Drax’s employees live outside town, beyond the reach of the mill’s noise and pollution. According to the company, only 15 percent of employees reside in Gloster.
The Urania Lumber Co. had at least 350 workers when it shut down in 2002. The International Paper mill in Bastrop, Louisiana — near Drax’s Morehouse BioEnergy mill — employed more than 1,100 people during the early 2000s and about 550 workers just before it closed in 2008.
In Gloster, the Georgia Pacific mill provided about 400 “good-paying, union jobs” until it closed in 2008, said Brown, who worked at the plywood mill for 24 years. Once it closed, many basic services evaporated, including schools and grocery stores. Without a doctor in town, Gloster residents with heart and respiratory ailments now must drive nearly an hour to McComb or two hours to Jackson for treatment.
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After losing his job at Georgia Pacific, Sammy Jackson bounced around the Louisiana oil fields and worked as a security guard in Texas. He was quick to apply for a job with Drax’s Gloster mill. “They said they wanted to hire a lot of local people,” Jackson said. “Everybody was excited.”
He was one of hundreds who took a test required for employment. While everybody seemed to do well, Jackson was one of the few to get an offer. But it wasn’t Drax that hired him — it was a temporary labor agency that paid him $11 per hour to do cleanup work, mostly shoveling ashes and wood dust. He didn’t mind the sweat or long hours, but the conditions didn’t seem safe, with ash and dust coating everything, he said.
“Man, that shit would get in your eyes and on your skin, and it’d be burning and itching,” Jackson said.
In the oil business, Jackson had been supplied respirator kits and protective clothing for dirty jobs, but the gear provided at the mill was far more basic. “Just safety glasses and a surgical mask,” he said. “I wasn’t feeling right. Had a real dry cough all the time when I was working there. People’d be asking me, ‘What’s wrong with you?’”
Krystal Martin, a community leader in Gloster, Mississippi, shows a photo of the Amite BioEnergy wood pellet mill. She says air pollution from the mill is hurting her predominantly Black, low-income town. Kathleen Flynn / The Guardian
A Drax spokesperson couldn’t directly address Jackson’s experiences but said the company “maintains robust safety standards and contractor requirements.”
“We take all health and safety concerns seriously,” the spokesperson said. “We also have extensive and ongoing training requirements in place to ensure the safety of our employees.”
Mabel Williams, a lifelong resident of Gloster, said she never wanted a job at Drax, but once had high hopes that the mill would employ enough people to breathe life back into downtown. During a walk along Main Street, the 87-year-old didn’t see another soul, though her memories crowded every empty lot and darkened window.
“There were people everywhere,” said Williams, who spent decades cleaning the homes of the white residents who mostly moved away. “This was a clothing store and that was a jewelry store owned by a German man. And over there, my mama worked at the cafe.” Across the train tracks was the Black business district, with four barbershops, restaurants, and music venues.
All the buildings Williams points out are vacant or partially collapsed, but she slaps her thigh and smiles. “I get excited when I think about what Gloster had,” she said. Williams still has faith that Gloster is capable of a revival. She just doubts that it will be thanks to Drax. Despite the billions in profits, little of the company’s wealth is trickling down to Gloster, she said.
“Drax is making so much money. They’ve got to spend that money some kind of way, but they’re not spending it here.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The biomass industry promised these Southern towns prosperity. So why are they still dying? on Jan 30, 2026.
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The logic behind electric vehicles benefiting public health has long been solid: More EVs means fewer internal combustion engines on the road, and a reduction in harmful tailpipe emissions. But now researchers have confirmed, to the greatest extent yet, that this is indeed what’s actually happening on the ground. What’s more, they found that even relatively small upticks in EV adoption can have a measurably positive impact on a community.
Whereas previous work has largely been based on modeling, a study published this month in the journal Lancet Planetary Health used satellites to measure actual emissions. The study, conducted between 2019 and 2023, focused on California, which has among the highest rates of EV use in the country, and nitrogen oxide, one of the gases released during combustion, including when fossil fuels are burned. Exposure to the pollutant can contribute to heart and lung issues, or even premature death. Across nearly 1,700 ZIP codes, the analysis showed that, for every increase of 200 electric vehicles, nitrogen oxide emissions decreased by 1.1 percent.
“A pretty small addition of cars at the ZIP code level led to a decline in air pollution,” said Sandrah Eckel, a public health professor at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine and lead author of the study. “It’s remarkable.”
The group had tried to establish this link using Environmental Protection Agency air monitors before, but because there are only about 100 of them in California, the results weren’t statistically significant. The data also were from 2013 through 2019, when there were fewer electric vehicles on the road. Although the satellite instrument they ultimately used only detected nitrogen oxide, it did allow researchers to gather data for virtually the entire state, and this time the findings were clear.
“It’s making a real difference in our neighborhoods,” said Eckel, who said a methodology like theirs could be used anywhere in the world. The advent of such powerful satellites allows scientists to look at other sources of emissions, such as factories or homes, too. “It’s a revolutionary approach.”
Mary Johnson, who researches environmental health at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and was not involved in the study, said she’s not aware of a similar study of this size, or one that uses satellite data so extensively. “Their analysis seems sound,” she said, noting that the authors controlled for variables such as the COVID-19 pandemic and shifts toward working from home.
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The results, Johnson added, “totally make sense” and align with other research in this area. When London implemented congestion pricing in 2003, for example, it reduced traffic and emissions and increased life expectancy. That is the direction this latest research could go too. “They didn’t take the next step and look at health data,” she said, “which I think would be interesting.”
Daniel Horton, who leads Northwestern University’s climate change research group, also sees value in this latest work. “The results help to confirm the sort of predictions that numerical air quality modelers have been making for the past decade,” he said, adding that it could also lay the foundation for similar research. “This proof of concept paper is a great start and augurs good things to come.”
Eckel hopes that, eventually, advances in satellite technology will allow for more widespread detection of other types of emissions too, such as fine particulate matter. That could even help account for some of the potential downsides of EVs, which are heavier and could therefore kick up more tire or brake dust than their gasoline counterparts. On the whole, though, she believes the picture overwhelmingly illustrates how driving an electric car is better not just for the planet but for people.
Research like this, she says, underscores the importance of continued EV adoption, the sales of which have slumped recently, and the need to do so equitably. Although lower-income neighborhoods have historically borne the brunt of pollution from highways and traffic, they can’t always afford the relatively high cost of EVs. Eckel hopes that research like this can help guide policymakers.
“There are concerns that some of the communities that really stand to benefit the most from reductions in air pollution are also some of the communities that are really at risk of being left behind in the transition,” she said. Previous research has shown that EVs could alleviate harms such as asthma in children, and detailed data like this latest study can help highlight both where more work needs to be done and what’s working.
“It’s really exciting that we were able to show that there were these measurable improvements in the air that we’re all breathing,” she said. Another arguably hopeful finding was that the median increase in electric vehicle usage during the study was 272 per ZIP code.
That, Eckel says, means there is plenty of opportunity to make our air even cleaner.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline EVs are already making your air cleaner on Jan 30, 2026.
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Scientists in the Midwest are asking for help from the public this winter to measure ice thickness on the Great Lakes and other inland lakes in the region, which they plan to use to improve ice-forecasting models.
Satellites do a good job at capturing how much ice coverage there is, but not how thick it is, according to researchers at the Great Lakes Observing System, or GLOS, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
More data could give researchers insight as to how climate change is altering ice cover in the region and provide important safety information for people out on the ice. Improved ice models are also useful for navigational safety, like when ice-breaking ships clear frozen waterways.
“Usually it’s the scientists putting data out to the public, and this time, we’re asking the public to give feedback to the scientists so they can improve the models,” said Shelby Brunner, science and observations manager at GLOS.
She said buoys that collect data on lakes typically get pulled out in the winter because of harsh conditions.
The citizen science program is in its second year of data collection. Last year, the program recruited around a dozen people in the Great Lakes region and logged around 30 measurements. Data collected by the public can be submitted online as long as there’s ice to measure, and stipends are available to participants.
Recreation aside, the Great Lakes also make up the region’s largest source of fresh water — more than 30 million people rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Brunner said the data from last year showed researchers that ice is more variable than they initially predicted. That’s why more data from people who are already “in tune with the ice” is useful to tap into, she said.
“They’re posting pictures of when there’s water in between layers of ice, and that’s information that is so novel for the modelers to have,” Brunner said. “If we can continually improve, we’re going to get safer and safer predictions.”
A charter fish captain uses an auger on ice-covered Saginaw Bay in Michigan in 2025. Courtesy of Ayumi Fujisake-Manome
The data is also useful as ice formation on the Great Lakes shifts with climate change, Brunner said.
Research suggests that average ice cover on the Great Lakes has decreased overall since the 1990s, but year-to-year variability is high. That means there are years with very little ice or years with a lot of it — as of January 28, 38 percent of the Great Lakes had iced over this winter, higher than the historical average at this time of year.
“We don’t get to go back in time and measure the past. We have to measure it now and keep it safe. So we can use it for reference for how things are looking in the future,” Brunner said.
It’s not just ice fishers contributing data. Mandi Young, a science teacher in Traverse City, took her middle school students out last year to measure ice thickness on Cedar Lake, a long, narrow lake adjacent to Grand Traverse Bay popular for boating and fishing.
Young has her students regularly collect information from the water, like its temperature or depth, to compare with previous years. Ice thickness was another data point they could add to the mix, she said.
“The students really love it. They get the chance to be outside. They know that their information is being saved and used by other community members,” Young said.
Young plans to have her students measure ice thickness again this winter. This time, they have an auger to drill holes into the icy lake.
She said one of her favorite parts is the questions students ask while they’re out taking measurements: “Could we throw a rock on it? Will it break? Oh, what about throwing ice on ice, what’s gonna happen? Oh, did you hear that sound?”
“Kids just get curious about ice,” she said.
The data they collect from inland lakes like this one will be kept for archives and used in future research, Brunner, the scientist, said. She hopes citizen scientists see the benefit in contributing data that could help the many people, from ice fishers and ship captains to researchers, who spend time on the ice.
“Our job is to collect information that’s relevant now, but also make sure we do our due diligence and make it useful in the future,” she said.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How thick is the ice on the Great Lakes? Scientists want your help. on Jan 30, 2026.
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Mary Clare Jalonick, Keving Freking and Seung Min Kim
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Democrats and White House struck a deal to avert a partial government shutdown and temporarily fund the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday as they consider new restrictions for President Donald Trump’s surge of immigration enforcement.
As the country reels from the deaths of two protesters at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis, the two sides have agreed to separate homeland security funding from a larger spending bill and fund the Homeland department for two weeks while they debate Democratic demands for curbs on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The deal comes after Democrats voted to block legislation to fund DHS on Thursday.
“Republicans and Democrats have come together to get the vast majority of the government funded until September” while extending current funding for Homeland Security, Trump said in a social media post Thursday evening, He encouraged members of both parties to cast a “much needed Bipartisan ‘YES’ vote.”
Democrats had requested the two-week extension and say they are prepared to block the wide-ranging spending bill if their demands aren’t met, denying Republicans the votes they need to pass it and potentially triggering a shutdown.
The Senate could vote on the deal as soon as Thursday evening. Republican leaders who had wanted a longer extension of the Homeland funding were still checking with their conference to make sure there were no objections to the deal and it could pass quickly.
In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told The Associated Press on Thursday that he had been “vehemently opposed” to breaking up the funding package, but “if it is broken up, we will have to move it as quickly as possible. We can’t have the government shut down.”
Rare bipartisan talks
The rare bipartisan talks between Trump and his frequent adversary, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, came after the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minnesota over the weekend and calls by senators in both parties for a full investigation. Schumer called it “a moment of truth.”
“The American people support law enforcement. They support border security. They do not support ICE terrorizing our streets and killing American citizens,” Schumer said.
The standoff has threatened to plunge the country into another shutdown, just two months after Democrats blocked a spending bill over expiring federal health care subsidies. That dispute closed the government for 43 days as Republicans refused to negotiate.
That shutdown ended when a small group of moderate Democrats broke away to strike a deal with Republicans, but Democrats are more unified this time after the fatal shootings of Pretti and Renee Good by federal agents.
Democrats lay out demands
Democrats have laid out several demands, asking the White House to “end roving patrols” in cities and coordinate with local law enforcement on immigration arrests, including requiring tighter rules for warrants.
They also want an enforceable code of conduct so agents are held accountable when they violate rules. Schumer said agents should be required to have “masks off, body cameras on” and carry proper identification, as is common practice in most law enforcement agencies.
The Democratic caucus is united in those “common sense reforms,” and the burden is on Republicans to accept them, Schumer said.
“Boil it all down, what we are talking about is that these lawless ICE agents should be following the same rules that your local police department does,” said Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota. “There has to be accountability.”
Earlier on Thursday, Tom Homan, the president’s border czar, stated during a press conference in Minneapolis that federal immigration officials are developing a plan to reduce the number of agents in Minnesota, but this would depend on cooperation from state authorities.
Still far apart on policy
Negotiations down the road on a final agreement on the Homeland Security bill are likely to be difficult.
Democrats want Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown to end. “If the Trump administration resists reforms, we shut down the agency,” said Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal.
“We need to take a stand,” he said.
But Republicans are unlikely to agree to all of the Democrats’ demands.
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis said he is opposed to requiring immigration enforcement officers to show their faces, even as he blamed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for decisions that he said are “tarnishing” the agency’s reputation.
“You know, there’s a lot of vicious people out there, and they’ll take a picture of your face, and the next thing you know, your children or your wife or your husband are being threatened at home,” Tillis said.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said some of the Democratic proposals “make sense,” such as better training and body cameras. Still, he said he was putting his Senate colleagues “on notice” that if Democrats try to make changes to the funding bill, he would insist on new language preventing local governments from resisting the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
“I think the best legislative solution for our country would be to adopt some of these reforms to ICE and Border Patrol,” Graham posted on X, but also end so-called “sanctuary city” policies.
Uncertainty in the House
Across the Capitol, House Republicans have said they do not want any changes to the bill they passed last week. In a letter to Trump on Tuesday, the conservative House Freedom Caucus wrote that its members stand with the Republican president and ICE.
“The package will not come back through the House without funding for the Department of Homeland Security,” they wrote.
Speaker Johnson appeared open to the changes, albeit reluctantly, and told the AP he would want to approve the bills “as quickly as possible” once the Senate acts.
“The American people will be hanging in the balance over this,” Johnson said. “A shutdown doesn’t help anybody.”
On Thursday evening, at a premiere of a movie about first lady Melania Trump at the Kennedy Center, Johnson said he would have some “tough decisions” to make about when to bring the House back to Washington to approve the bills separated by the Senate, if they pass.
“We’ll see what they do,” Johnson said.
Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro, Stephen Groves, Joey Cappelletti, Michelle L. Price and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.
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Miles Morrisseau
ICT
In response to increased aggression and illegal detainment of Native people by U.S. immigration officers, First Nations in Canada are issuing travel advisories and warnings for citizens traveling across the border.
The Assembly of First Nations, the national organization representing the majority of First Nations in Canada, issued a strongly worded advisory on Jan. 23 amid ongoing tensions in Minneapolis and other cities across the U.S.
Other First Nations have reached out to their own members to warn about the rising tensions.
“The Assembly of First Nations has heard reports that some First Nation citizens have been subjected to increased questioning and detainment by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),” according to the statement from the Assembly of First Nations.
“The AFN strongly condemns these actions and reaffirms First Nations inherent and Treaty rights to cross-border mobility.”
For years, the Indian Status card was all that was required of First Nations members in Canada when crossing the border into the United States. AFN is now recommending that First Nations members may want to carry a Canadian passport or other valid identification. Some first nations are also recommending travelers obtain a border crossing letter to take with them.
“Please note that the federal law enforcement may not be familiar with Tribal IDs,” AFN stated. “If an ICE agent does not accept your Tribal ID as identification, the Native American Rights Fund recommends that you request to speak to their supervisor.”
The Grand Council Treaty #3, which represents First Nations members in the area of International Falls and the border crossing into Minnesota, issued an advisory on Jan. 21 to its members and has reached out to the Canadian government.
“We have been in contact with Indigenous Services Canada and Global Affairs Canada over the past week and we expect to meet further over the next two days,” Daniel Morriseau, political advisor to Grand Council Treaty #3, told ICT.
“Right now we at Grand Council Treaty #3, our First Nation communities, tribal councils, Indigenous Services, Global Affairs, and the Canadian Consulate in Minneapolis are all working to make sure our citizens have resources available to them should the need arise,” he said.
Members were advised to obtain a valid Canadian passport and carry any documentation that may demonstrate citizenship or legal status at all times.
“Members are also encouraged to request a border crossing letter from the membership office prior to travel for assistance,” the advisory stated. “If issues arise while in the United States, Canadian citizens contact the Canadian Consulate for emergency assistance.”
A border crossing letter is issued by a First Nation stating that the traveler is a member, that they have more than 50 percent Native American blood quantum and that they are exercising their rights under the Jay Treaty. That treaty was signed in1794 between the U.S. and Great Britain, which held authority over the Canadian territory at the time, to ensure peace between the two countries and to foster trade and commerce. The treaty also ensured that First Nations people would be allowed to travel, trade and work in both countries as they were an essential part of each nation’s economies.
“Recent reports indicate that some First Nation citizens have experienced increased scrutiny, questioning, or enforcement actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” the council stated. “Individuals are reminded of the importance of carrying valid identification, including a Status Card and or a Canadian passport, as proper documentation may help reduce the risk of unnecessary delays or detention.”
Treaty # 3 leadership also advised its members to contact the Canadian government for support.
“In extreme circumstances, Canadian citizens may contact the Canadian Consulate for assistance while in the United States,” they said. “Although consular officials cannot intervene in legal matters, they can offer guidance, help connect individuals with resources, and support communication with family or Canadian authorities.”
Other First Nations are issuing their own warnings.
The Mississauga First Nation in Ontario, which is about 90 miles from the border at Sault St. Marie, Michigan, issued a travel advisory to its members on Jan. 19, citing “ongoing actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) involving the detention of First Nation and Indigenous peoples, including individuals who are legally entitled to be in the United States.”
“Chief and Council of Mississauga First Nation strongly condemn these actions,” according to the Mississauga advisory. “Members travelling to the U.S. are urged to take extra precautions by ensuring all identification is up to date.”
On Jan. 26, Aamjiwnaang First Nation located across the St. Clair River from Port Huron, Michigan, also issued a warning.
“Due to the ongoing actions by the U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the detention of First Nations people, Aamjiwnaang Chief and Council are urging members to take extra precautions when travelling to the United States,” the advisory notes.
The First Nation also reiterated its historical Indigenous and treaty rights to safe passage.
“Since time immemorial, our people have crossed the river into what is now called the United States of America.,” officials said. “In 1794, the Jay Treaty was signed between the United States and Great Britain. This meant Indigenous People could pass freely across the border.”
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