Green & indigenous News

It's one of the latest technologies for sequestering carbon: crush silicate rocks, add to crop soil, and let the rock dust naturally react with carbon dioxide. The reactions bind carbon into stable mineral forms that can persist for millennia, while also enriching the soil with nutrients, boosting crop yields and increasing farmer profits.

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Levels of some of the most persistent industrial chemicals in the North Atlantic appear to be falling, at least in one unlikely place. Long-finned pilot whales (Globicephala melas) now carry markedly lower concentrations of several legacy PFAS compounds than they did a decade ago, according to a new multidecade analysis of tissue samples from the Faroe Islands. For a class of substances often described as indestructible, the finding is notable, reports Liz Kimbrough. PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — have been used since the mid-20th century in everything from nonstick cookware to firefighting foam. Their chemical stability allows them to persist in water, soil and living tissue. In marine food webs, that persistence is magnified. Apex predators such as whales tend to accumulate the highest burdens, making them useful sentinels of ocean contamination. The new study examined pilot whale samples collected between 1986 and 2023. Concentrations of bulk organofluorine, a proxy for total PFAS exposure, rose steadily until around 2011, then declined by more than 60% by 2023. The timing matters. Major manufacturers began phasing out several long-chain PFAS in the early 2000s. The decade-long delay before whale levels began to fall reflects the slow movement of chemicals through ocean currents into the open North Atlantic. That lag also helps explain why the result is unusual. In human blood samples, total organofluorine levels have not fallen in the same way. Newer replacement PFAS appear to be accumulating closer to where they’re produced and used, rather than dispersing widely into…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Deforestation in the Amazon is causing significant regional changes in climate compared to areas with forest cover above 80%. The loss of vegetation leads to an increase in surface temperature, a decrease in evapotranspiration, and a reduction in precipitation during the dry season and in the number of rainy days.

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The Baltic Sea has been under pressure for decades: Although phosphorus and nitrogen river loads, the main cause for its eutrophication, have been significantly reduced, adverse effects such as algal blooms and oxygen depletion still massively occur, leading to further ecological problems. Scientists at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW) have now published a comprehensive review showing how nutrient pollution, internal matter cycles and global warming interact, thereby delaying the impact of protective measures. They also identify potential approaches for effective Baltic Sea management. The study was recently published in the Annual Review of Marine Science.

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PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The U.S.’s ocean regulator plans to make industry-friendly changes to a longstanding rule designed to protect vanishing whales, prompting criticism from environmental groups who cite the recent death of an endangered whale. The rules protect the North Atlantic right whale, which numbers less than 400 and lives off the East Coast. The giant animals are protected by a vessel speed rule that requires large ships to slow down at certain times to avoid collisions, which is a leading cause of death for the whales. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a Thursday statement to The Associated Press that it plans to soon announce proposed new rules designed to “modernize” the whale protections. The proposal will be a “deregulatory-focused action” that will seek to “reduce unnecessary regulatory and economic burdens while ensuring responsible conservation practices for endangered North Atlantic right whales,” the statement said. A notice of rulemaking about the right whale rules is listed on the U.S. Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs website, but it does not include any details about the proposal. NOAA said in its statement that more information about the rules was forthcoming and that the agency was focused on “implementing new technologies, engineering approaches, and other advanced tools” to protect the whales. Several environmental groups criticized the move away from vessel speed rules. Some cited the Feb. 10 confirmation of the death of a 3-year-old female whale off Virginia. The cause of the animal’s death was not yet determined, but…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Gravity feels reliable—stable and consistent enough to count on. But reality is far stranger than our intuition. In truth, the strength of gravity varies over Earth's surface. And it is weakest beneath the frozen continent of Antarctica after accounting for Earth's rotation.

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A new species of crocodylomorph dating to about 215 million years ago has been described from the U.K. It has been called Galahadosuchus jonesi in recognition of David Rhys Jones, a secondary school physics teacher from Ysgol Uwchradd Aberteifi who gave inspiration and encouragement to one of the authors to pursue a career in science.

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The Canadian government's recent approval of the first gene-edited animal to enter the food system has reignited debates over whether foods produced using genetic engineering techniques should be labeled.

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More than 295 million people globally experienced hunger and starvation in 2025 because of conflict, displacement, climate change and economic disasters.

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A tiny, threatened marsupial not known to have inhabited South Australia's Yorke Peninsula may exist as a relict population and still be clinging to survival, according to new research that has re-examined historical field data from one of the region's most important conservation areas.

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Many view conservation as a ledger of discrete gains—acres saved or species rebounded—but for Gary Tabor, the more vital metric is architecture. He focuses on systems that hold when pressure builds. Few careers illustrate that preoccupation better than that of Tabor, an ecologist and wildlife veterinarian whose work prioritizes the relationship between places as much as the protection of the places themselves. Tabor’s conservation instincts were shaped early. As a child, he spent nine summers at a rustic camp in the Adirondack Park, climbing all 46 peaks above 4,000 feet and learning to navigate the portages and open lakes of the New York wilderness. The landscape endured by design, protected by New York’s “Forever Wild” clause and by a civic idea that wilderness and people might coexist. He has returned to those same mountains for decades, seeing the same relatively unchanged woods that inspired the founders of the Wilderness Society. The lesson stuck. (left) Tabor doing a tropical forest wildlife survey. (right) Tabor doing Cock of the Rock research in Suriname. Courtesy of Tabor That early exposure provided Tabor with a sense of scale that would eventually outsize the mountains themselves. Tabor trained as a scientist, but his education accelerated in East Africa, where he lived and worked for nearly a decade. In places like Lake Nakuru, he saw the limits of the “island” model; the park was iconic, but it was also entirely fenced in and cut off from the broader landscape. While wildlife crossed boundaries by instinct, governance…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Greenland's capital Nuuk registered its warmest ever January—beating a record that stood for 109 years—as temperatures soared across the Arctic island's west coast, the Danish Meteorological Institute said Monday.

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Urban landscapes could be cooled by up to 3.5 degrees using a QUT-developed AI-based tool that optimizes where trees and which species are planted to make cities cooler, greener and more resilient in the face of climate change.

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Kevin Abourezk
ICT

FORT SNELLING, Minnesota – Last week, Native activists established a prayer camp near the site of a former internment camp for Dakota people.

The camp was established in Fort Snelling, Minnesota, just across a highway from the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, which has become a major center for immigration enforcement detainment processing, but the site has a much longer and more complex history.

The United States used Fort Snelling as a concentration camp during the Dakota Indian Wars to imprison thousands of Dakota and Ho-Chunk people in abysmal conditions.

Migizi Spears (Kevin Abourezk/ICT)

Migizi Spears, Red Lake Nation citizen and organizer for First Nations United, helped establish the camp, along with Dakota, Nakota and other tribal citizens. They raised four teepees at a place that the Dakota considered a creation site called Bdóte near the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers and within earshot of the Whipple Building.

Spears said he felt it was time to take back the land that his ancestors lost and from which they were removed following the Dakota War of 1862, also known as the Sioux or Dakota Uprising. Following the conflict, 38 Dakota men were hanged in the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

“We are getting the land back for our Dakota people who were exiled out,” Spears said. “Now they’re imprisoning brown people and other Indigenous people in there. Now they’re removing them too. History is repeating itself.”

Many Native and other activists have joined Spears and the other camp founders last week, erecting yurts and bringing firewood, food and other essentials.

The camp has drawn the attention of media organizations, including CBS News Minnesota and Unicorn Riot, as well as many social media influencers.

EMBED: https://ictnews.org/news/former-native-american-concentration-camp-lies-beneath-current-immigration-detention-center/

Currently, Fort Snelling houses the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, Fort Snelling State Park, several federal buildings including the Whipple building and the recreation of the historic Fort Snelling. The Whipple building is less than a mile from the Historic Fort Snelling complex, which is owned by the state of Minnesota.

A man sings and plays a drum before the recreation of the historic Fort Snelling in Fort Snelling, Minneapolis. Native activists are seeking to get the state of Minnesota to give the fort to them. (Kevin Abourezk/ICT)

Wasuduta, Dakota, said the use of the former Fort Snelling site as a federal detention center serves as a reminder of the federal government’s ongoing efforts to deprive Native people and Hispanic immigrants of their rights.

He said he’s hopeful more Indigenous peoples, non-Native allies and tribes will get involved in the effort to get the federal government and the state of Minnesota to give land back to Native people.

Despite the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw many of the federal immigration agents who were part of the recent surge in Minneapolis, Wasuduta said the camp will remain.

“It’s time to hold them accountable with diplomacy,” he said. “We’re not here to be hostile or trigger them.”

The post A former Native internment camp becomes site of prayer camp appeared first on ICT.

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BRUMADINHO, Brazil — In the rural community of Jangada, in the municipality of ​​Brumadinho in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, the water that supplies local families comes from springs that emerge onsite. In a Youtube video uploaded last December, local resident Lorraine Nascimento talks proudly about how “the water belongs to us.” More than 30 years ago, without any support from the state waterd board, Copasa, the residents built a system by themselves to collect and distribute water from the springs. Today, the system is managed autonomously by a community association created for this purpose, and supplies water to hundreds of families in Casa Branca, the rural district where the Jangada community is located. Cátia Patrocinia Cruz Maia is a schoolteacher who, like everyone in her family, was born and raised in the community. She’s a member of the association that manages the water collection and distribution system. She recalls that, before the system was created, residents used to get their water from a creek that ran through the area. As the community grew, the demand for piped water increased as well. That was when her father, João de Sousa Cruz, joined friends and neighbors to solve the problem. “They got together and started building a system to pipe water for all the families,” Maia says. “Those who could afford it pitched in to help buy the pipes. Not a single cent came from the local government; it was all a community effort.” Today, however, Jangada’s water is threatened by the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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If you told me a decade ago that I'd become an expert in mapping cemeteries, I would've laughed and been very confused about the dramatic turn my professional life must've taken at some point.

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Cattle auctions aren't often all-night affairs. But in Texas Lake Country in June 2022, ranchers facing dwindling water supplies and dried out pastures amid a worsening drought sold off more than 4,000 animals in an auction that lasted nearly 24 hours—about 200 cows an hour.

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This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Nigel Duara
CalMatters

A member of the Yurok tribe who advocated for better mental health treatment and suicide intervention in rural Northern California has died in an apparent murder-suicide.

Celinda Gonzales was 59.

In 2020, CalMatters wrote about her work in Humboldt County, where about 2 and a half times as many residents die by suicide per capita as the rest of the state.

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office said theyfound two bodies in a home in the Yurok reservation village of Weitchpec on Feb. 3.

“Based on the preliminary investigation, the incident appears to be consistent with a murder-suicide,” the sheriff’s office said in a press release.

The sheriff’s office declined to elaborate on the nature of the crime scene or the identities of the people they found.

The Yurok tribe confirmed Gonzales’s identity in a memorial.

“She was a beloved friend to many Tribal Councilmembers, staff and community members,” the tribe said in the memorial. “This is a tremendous tragedy for the Tribe.”

Gonzales once had a grant-funded role as a suicide intervention specialist, working with local police and fire departments to recognize potential signs of an intent to self-harm.

In 2019, the federal funds that paid for her grant position ran out, so she started working on her own.

Gonzales lost her son, Paul, to suicide, when he was 19. Her 43-year-old brother, Gaylord Lewis Jr., died by suicide five years later, in 2014.

As the pandemic swept through California and rates of anxiety and suicidal ideation skyrocketed, Gonzales was motivated by her own losses to help in Humboldt County, where access to mental health services is already difficult, compounded by the dearth of psychiatrists willing to relocate to rural California.

A 2016 Humboldt County grand jury investigation found that the county behavioral health board did not adequately serve the county’s residents.

Gonzales believed that, despite the challenges of the pandemic, her community was resilient.

“They’ve survived wars, floods, fires and landslides,” she told a CalMatters reporter in 2020.

The Yurok tribe is offering grief counseling at the village clinic.

The post Mental health advocate for California tribes dies; possible victim in murder-suicide appeared first on ICT.

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In 1532, in the city of Cajamarca, Peru, Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro and a group of Europeans took the Inca ruler Atahualpa hostage, setting the stage for the fall of the Inca Empire.

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Eishia Hudson, a 16-year-old member of Berens River First Nation in ‘Manitoba,’ was fatally shot by a Winnipeg police officer in 2020. Photo courtesy of Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth

Holding up an eagle feather, the father of Eishia Hudson — a teenage girl killed by Winnipeg police officers six years ago — remembered his daughter as “loved beyond words, missed beyond measure.”

William Hudson, the late teen’s father, gave an emotional opening statement earlier this month at the start of an inquest into the circumstances of her 2020 shooting.

The inquest launched with ceremonial protocols and drumming.

Hudson spoke of his daughter’s impact, pausing at times to compose himself from emotionally breaking down during his appearance.

“The dreams she would’ve chased in her life, she deserved to live,” he said, describing his daughter as kind, athletic, full of energy, and someone who made others laugh.

He said losing her “changed us forever,” leaving “an empty space that cannot be filled.”

“Our children deserve safety, love and a future,” he said. “Although her time was far too short, her impact was not.”

This week, nearly six years after 16-year-old Hudson was shot and killed by a Winnipeg Police Service officer, her shooter publicly testified about the incident for the first time.

An inquest is underway into the death of the teenage girl, an Ojibwe member of Berens River First Nation.

An earlier police watchdog report had declined to recommend criminal charges against the officer, Const. Kyle Pradinuk, setting off community protests and demands for an inquest.

Pradinuk shot the teen on April 8, 2020 after a liquor store robbery and high-speed chase in a stolen Jeep, which Hudson drove with four other passengers, all of them youth.

The inquest heard how Pradinuk refused requests to be interviewed by Manitoba’s Independent Investigation Unit (IIU) — an agency that probes serious incidents involving police officers — eventually providing the unit with only notes four days after the shooting.

The province’s Police Service Act does not force any officer to participate in investigations by the IIU, which eventually cleared Pradinuk of any wrongdoing.

Pradinuk told the inquest that the stolen Jeep was still moving slowly after it crashed into a Ford F-150 truck and veered onto a median near the intersection of Winnipeg’s Lagimodiere Boulevard and Fermor Avenue.

One of the Jeep’s passengers told the inquest the vehicle made a “grinding” sound when it landed on the boulevard and stopped.

Pradinuk fired his gun twice as he approached the Jeep driver’s window, with his second bullet hitting Hudson’s left shoulder and travelling downwards into her spine.

Pradinuk testified his actions were justified to protect the “safety of the police.”

“She was willing to potentially risk safety of the police and people within the Jeep,” he testified.

An ambulance took Hudson to the Health Sciences Centre emergency department, where she died that day.

Dad hopes youth seen as ‘precious and protected’

The inquest, which launched on Feb. 2, is examining what happened that day, but cannot assign blame. Instead, it’s looking at any systemic issues or circumstances at play in Hudson’s death and can make recommendations.

Hudson was not the only First Nations person killed by Winnipeg police that month in 2020.

Within a ten-day span that April, the Winnipeg Police Service killed three First Nations people, including Hudson.

Eleven hours after her death, a WPS officer fatally shot Jason Collins, a father of three. Then on April 18, officers shot Stewart Andrews, a 22-year-old father.

Because there are no publicly available government data tracking fatalities by police, several attempts have been made to collect such data — including CBC News’ Deadly Force database and Tracking In(Justice), launched by academics two years ago.

As his family grieves their loss of their youngest of five children, her father believes her death “created and will continue to create change for other Indigenous youth.”

His daughter’s story and spirit “stand as a reminder for our young people,” Hudson told the inquest, that young people “matter, that their lives be precious and protected.”

The teenage victim’s sister Mary-Ann read a statement on behalf of their mother, Christie Zebrasky, who described her late daughter as “a tomboy from an early age” who was “always beautiful, always smiling.”

“It’s been six years since my baby brushed her teeth,” Zebrasky’s statement read. “She told me she’d be back right away.

“Eishia wasn’t violent or aggressive or misbehaved — she was a teenager. Eishia never had a criminal record, she wasn’t involved in the justice system either.”

In a press release, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs said Hudson’s family “asked for privacy” during the inquiry into her death.

“We are here to ensure her life is remembered with dignity,” the organization stated, “and that this process is carried out with the care and respect she deserved.”

Police contact ‘unnecessary and punitive’

A 2023 report by the Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth (MACY) said Hudson had previously been in the foster system, and that both she and her father were impacted by his mother’s traumatic experiences in day school.

The MACY report concluded that Hudson was easily influenced by others, but thrived when she had consistent and specialized help at school and from government agencies; however, it found those supports had tapered off during the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the advocate’s findings was “the potential negative consequences of police contact indicate that unnecessary and punitive contact must be mitigated when in the best interests of children and youth.”

Since 2020, her family has rallied and pushed for a public inquest to scrutinize her death, which caused widespread public outcry from the Indigenous community — demanding systemic changes.

The grassroots organization Winnipeg Police Cause Harm said they saw “a lot more allies” starting to “walk the talk” and Indigenous folks “providing kinship support” to the Hudson family.

“There was a real change in perspective that happened,” said Chantale Garand, a member of the group in a phone call with IndigiNews.

“You can notice it in the feeling at these events as well the amount of people that attended these events — because that was also the same time period that the Winnipeg Police killed three people.”

They added that the community’s support for Hudson’s family “was unwavering.”

“The strength of these vigils and round dances that were held was quite strong and consistent,” they said.

According to Kyra Wilson, Grand Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, it’s essential that the inquest be “grounded in respect, care, and truth” — and that most importantly it should “center” the victim, Hudson, “as a young person whose life mattered.”

“It is essential that this process be conducted with dignity, cultural awareness,” she said, “and a clear focus on the systemic conditions that continue to place Indigenous lives at risk.”

Teen victim’s last words: ‘We’re done’

Wiebe issued a publication ban giving anonymity to the three witnesses who were with Hudson at the time of her shooting, because they were all minors at the time.

When WPS counsel Kimberly Carswell addressed Hudson’s peers during the inquest, her questions focused on pushing the witnesses to agree with allegations they had been drinking alcohol and using cannabis and cocaine that day.

The first witness, a young Indigenous man who appeared in ankle shackles, remembered waking up at the police station, and discovering Hudson had died from his lawyer.

A second witness, Hudson’s female friend for three or four years, recounted sitting in Jeep’s middle backseat.

She noticed police were following them when they got to Lagimodiere Boulevard, after leaving Sage Creek liquor store.

“We were all saying that we’re going to get caught,” said the young woman who added she was “scared.”

The female witness said Hudson lost control of the Jeep, which then got stuck on the median curb facing back in the direction they had just driven from.

She recalled Hudson’s words: “We’re done.”

The female witness described a police cruiser approaching nose-to-nose with the Jeep on the median, followed by officers “coming out of cars with batons.”

“Then literally right after that, that’s when the shots were fired,” said the witness.

“I heard two shots.”

She agreed to a statement of facts that police were on both sides of the Jeep and hit its windows with batons on the driver and passenger side.

She said police yelled for them to “get on the ground,” before pulling her from the vehicle. She said officers shouted at her “to stop resisting” — but she asserted she wasn’t resisting.

She testified that police then piled onto her, partially blocking her from seeing the surroundings.

“I knew something was wrong because they took everyone out and they left her in the vehicle,” said the witness.

“Then I saw them drag her out of the vehicle and put her in the middle of the road, and they started giving her CPR.”

The young woman cried.

WPS counsel Carswell questioned her claim about being punched when she was in handcuffs and standing against a cruiser.

“You also indicated that you were … punched and hit during this arrest, is that correct?” Carswell asked.

“Yes,” the witness replied.

“If I were to say to you that there was video showing that there was no punching or police brutality, what do you have to say about that?” Carswell asked.

The witness disputed the lawyer’s statement, replied that “there was” brutality.

The Manitoba law courts in ‘Winnipeg.’ Photo by Crystal Greene

‘She was a good friend’

A male witness who was also in the Jeep said he befriended Hudson ten years ago, at General Wolfe junior high school.

“She was a good friend, she’d be there for me if I needed her,” the witness testified, wearing a black t-shirt that emblazoned with “Justice for Eishia Hudson.”

“If I called her, she’d answer.”

He also recounted his memories of the car chase.

“Everybody just kind of started panicking,” he testified. “Nobody wanted to get locked up, nobody wanted to get in trouble. We’re all kind of scared at that point.”

He said Hudson drove into a cul-de-sac, turned around, and swerved around a police cruiser to flee.

“It wasn’t until closer to Lagimodiere that the police cruiser started ramming us a bit,” said the male witness.

“At that point, there wasn’t really much we could do,” he recalled. “We were already in the chase.”

After the Jeep hit a Ford F-150 truck, she lost control and their vehicle turned to face south, coming to a halt on the median.

He recalled an officer smashing the front passenger window using a baton, and seeing the other male witness being pulled out in front of him.

“Then they grabbed me, threw me out,” the male witness told the inquest.

He then remembered police officers were pulling Hudson out of the vehicle and throwing her onto the ground.

“I remember them all jumping on top of her,” he testified. “She was bleeding quite a lot from her upper chest, and she was bleeding out of her mouth, and they were still using force on her, even though she was clearly not OK.”

He became emotional on the stand, and a young woman came from the public gallery to sit with him, to comfort him as he spoke.

A support dog named Glossy — a black labrador with provincial victim services — also came to his aid.

The witness was also asked about his perception of the police.

“All I can say is that there are some good ones, and that there are some bad ones who can get away with what they want,” he responded.

‘They shouldn’t have shot her’

At the inquest, IndigiNews viewed two videos used as evidence in the IIU investigation.

Missing from the initial IIU investigation was footage from a traffic camera located at Fermor and Lagimodiere, in which the IIU report stated, (pg 2, para 4) “it was not functioning at the time of the shooting.”

One video shown in court was from the Royal Canadian Mint’s security camera.

The inquest cross-examined police asking if Hudson had actually “rammed” the police cruiser.

Sgt. Dustin Dreger admitted that the “contact wasn’t significant,” but that his partner Vincent had radio’d that their cruiser was “rammed,” which he referred to as “police lingo” used when there’s any sort of contact.

Another video played in court came from Paul Dhillon.

Dhillon, who was on this daily commute from work to home, recorded the video while idling and facing southbound at the intersection of Lagimodiere and Fermor.

His vertical video showed a police car stopping traffic from moving through the intersection and the Jeep on the median.

“The girl was trying to get away from the police and she backed up to get away,” Dhillon said.

While he couldn’t see the shooting as it happened across the intersection, he said, “I knew something bad happened right there.”

“I’ve never seen so many police vehicles,” he added. “Been living 35 years there …  never seen anything like it before.”

Wiebe asked him for his opinion on how “to prevent such tragedies” in the future.

Dhillon replied, “Tragedy? Definitely.”

“It’s not like she’s holding a gun [that] she’s trying to shoot you or something. She’s panicked, she’s trying to get away from the police.”

He acknowledged a liquor store robbery did occur, but questioned the extent and scale of the police response.

”Why all those police for one person?” he asked. “In my opinion they shouldn’t have shot her.”

Tears flowed from members of Hudson’s family, as well as the teen’s friends and supporters.

Dhillon hugged Hudson’s father. They quietly shared words, and Dhillon sat with Hudson’s family.

Public outcry ‘for police to do something’

For the last six years, Pradinuk was granted anonymity by the IIU, which determined the incident as “case closed” after the Manitoba Prosecution Service advised it to not pursue charges.

The officer’s name was eventually revealed to the public at the inquiry when he took the stand.

The IIU is “independent” and arms-length of the police officially. But critics have questioned its independence because it includes current and former members of the RCMP or other police forces under the command of a civilian director.

The first six days of the inquest saw several police witnesses take the stand including Pradinuk, whose voice sounded faint.

Lawyer Dayna Steinfeld, who is counsel for the inquest itself, asked another officer who testified why police deemed it necessary “to initiate the pursuit” of the teen suspects.

That witness, Det. Sgt. Jeff Vincent, replied that around the time of the incident there had been “a lot of liquor store thefts” taking place, and the public “was getting fed up” and “taking matters into their own hands.”

“There was an outcry from the public for police to do something about these thefts that were happening,” he added.

Judge Margaret Wiebe asked all witnesses what they would recommend to prevent similar incidents in the future.

At least two of the police witnesses called for a new helicopter to be dedicated to supporting police chases of suspects.

Multiple officers agreed they would like to see WPS members wear body cameras.

Watchdog ‘should never be buddy-buddy with police’

The case has also shone a light of scrutiny on how closely police officers relate to their accountability watchdog, the IIU.

Zane Tessler, the IIU’s civilian director at the time it rejected pressing any charges over Hudson’s death, was quoted in the Jewish Post and News that initially investigators with the agency “were viewed as outsiders, an irritant” by police.

“It took a while for police officers to buy in,” he told the outlet. “To realize that the work we are doing benefits them. Now, we have a good relationship with law enforcement.”

University of Winnipeg criminal justice professor Kevin Walby told IndigiNews such statements raise troubling questions about the agency’s independence.

“I don’t think the IIU should ever seek to have a ‘good relationship’ with law enforcement,” Welby said. “They should seek the status of ‘irritant.’

“A review body should never be buddy-buddy with police.”

He alleged it could be a conflict of interest for police officers, either current and former, to be investigating other police.

“It should be a completely investigative mindset at the IIU,” he argued. “They shouldn’t be seeking to have warm relations with the WPS.”

Too often after WPS shootings, officers will say, “The officer was afraid, they can shoot whoever they want,” Walby said.

He said that justification often cites part of the Criminal Code which effectively provides immunity from charges if officers say they thought they were in danger.

“To live in a society like that, and call it a democracy,” Walby said, “when we have absolutely no say over what’s happening with these kinds of shootings — we have no say over the powers of these oversight bodies to investigate police.”

In 2021, a provincial bill was introduced to give IIU more powers to penalize officers who don’t comply with its investigators. For instance, if passed it would have required officers to hand over police notes or evidence, and participate in IIU interviews.

But the legislation was never implemented, according to CBC.

Inez Hillel, a member of Winnipeg Police Cause Harm, said changing such laws “has been a central demand” of many community and First Nations organizations at the inquest.

But the groups also recognize the inquest’s powers are very “limited.”

“The value that we see in it is bringing the story from multiple perspectives, and bringing the inconsistency of the cop stories to light … and being able to get the names of the police officers involved,” Hillel said.

“The inquest is a very limited avenue for transformation, because it doesn’t assign blame,” said Hillel.

The inquest is planned to continue until Feb. 27, with further hearing dates scheduled in April. It will also hear from MACY and a police use-of-force expert.

The post Inquest continues into Winnipeg police shooting death of Eishia Hudson, 16 appeared first on Indiginews.

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Extreme rainfall is reshaping coastal waters along South Korea's shoreline, flushing nutrients from land into the sea and fueling the growth of algal blooms. A new multi-year study, published in Frontiers in Marine Science, tracked water quality in and around a major river estuary and shows how intense downpours can shift where and when these blooms appear, with consequences for marine ecosystems and coastal communities.

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The Mediterranean Sea is rapidly changing under ongoing climate change. In the eastern basin, tropicalization is already well documented and driven by a combination of strong warming and the influx of tropical species through the Suez Canal. In contrast, the western Mediterranean has, until now, shown fewer such signals. However, a recent study demonstrates that the expansion of microscopic warm-water species provides a clear and early indication of tropicalization impacts on marine ecosystems.

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It was sunny and warm for the end of November on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation in northern Montana. Joseph Eagleman was standing on a grassy hill looking at a 20-panel solar array in the backyard of a Chippewa Cree elder.

It was built under the Solar for All program, a Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act-funded project that distributed $7 billion to build residential solar across the country. Here on Rocky Boy’s, around 200 homes would have received solar funded by the federal dollars.

This home was the first to get panels in Queensville, a small community of modest homes in one of the reservation’s valleys. The home is brown, two stories, and fully electric, which is one of the requirements to qualify for Solar for All funding. Eagleman met me there to give me a tour of the panels that all but eliminated the resident’s $200–300 monthly electricity bills, according to Eagleman.

Eagleman is the CEO of the Chippewa Cree Energy Corporation, an organization that manages energy development for the tribe. Here in the northern Plains, a coalition of 14 tribes received a $135 million grant. The money would have provided around $7.6 million for each reservation to build residential solar, and Eagleman would have managed the Solar for All funds for the Chippewa Cree.

Then came President Donald Trump. His administration cut Solar for All in August of 2025.

Joseph Eagleman, standing beneath the solar array, looks out onto the Rocky Boy’s Reservation.
Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder

“It’s terrible. We were getting ready to take off,” Eagleman said.

Residents had seen this solar array, which was built in the fall of 2024, and were excited about the possibility of free solar. Eagleman had a list of 40 households that were applying for the first round of the project. But only this home got a completed solar array before the program was stopped.

“It was a gut punch,” he said.

The reservation is about an hour and a half from the closest city, Great Falls, Montana, and has a population of 3,300. Driving down to meet Eagleman, I passed a cafe/casino/bar/gas station, a school, a skate park, and many residences, but little else. “There’s not a lot of opportunities, except for leaving the reservation,” said Eagleman.

Electricity costs are high on the reservation, as they are across rural America. Building and maintaining infrastructure without density drives up costs in these areas. Applicants showed Eagleman their bills to demonstrate why they wanted solar so badly, and some were up to $900 a month. Around 35 percent of the reservation’s residents live below the poverty line, more than double the rate for the United States. Solar installations like these cost thousands of dollars — money that most residents don’t have.

Eagleman had hired Zane Patacsil, a local resident who had experience installing solar, a month before the cuts. Patacsil joined us in the sunny backyard, overlooking the hills and valleys that make up the Rocky Boy’s Reservation.

Around 200 solar arrays would have been installed on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation in northern Montana with funding from Solar for All. This was the first, and ultimately the only one, installed in fall 2024. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder

He said Solar for All would have brought some economic development to Rocky Boy’s and the other reservations that received the grant: an office and people to manage it, as well as training and hiring solar installers to do the labor.

“There were even members who were talking about starting their own solar businesses so they could be installing,” added Patacsil. “It was very disheartening to hear that news, because we lost all of that with it.”

A question of sovereignty

When protests raged against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016, Cody Two Bears was on the tribal council for the Standing Rock Sioux. He saw another layer to the dispute: energy extraction on tribal land that not only hurt residents, but also brought no relief for high energy bills.

Two Bears wanted to bring energy sovereignty to his community and other tribal nations. He started the nonprofit Indigenized Energy in 2017. “I do this because of energy and energy sovereignty as well, but it creates a sense of hope for our tribal nations,” he said.

Sovereignty and self-governance are what tribes allegedly gained in exchange for giving up traditional homelands when treaties were signed over the past centuries. Tribal sovereignty is not only about protecting culture and traditions; it’s also about self-sufficiency. It’s also legally protected by the U.S. Constitution. But that’s easier said than done without the resources to support true independence, which have been systemically removed by the U.S. government.

Native Americans are more food insecure and rely on Medicaid at higher rates than their white counterparts, depending on the U.S. government for subsidies while desiring the sovereignty that was promised. Energy independence is a way to regain a degree of that sovereignty, and Two Bears has made that his goal with Indigenized Energy.

Donica Brady outside Busby, Montana on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder

“My ultimate goal is to work myself out of a job. I want to build so much capacity into these tribes where they don’t need Indigenized Energy anymore,” said Two Bears.

But the funding picture changed dramatically when Trump’s administration slashed solar spending.

Indigenized Energy had already been building residential solar on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation for a few years, and it ramped up to prepare for more work through Solar for All. But when the program was cut, Indigenized Energy laid off around half its staff, including Donica Brady, the coordinator for the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeastern Montana.

I first met Brady in September 2025, about a month after the layoff, and the pain of losing a job she loved was evident. Brady had spent the past couple of years building trust in a community where promises have been made and broken over and over again. Solar for All became yet another one.

Part of programs like Solar for All is job development within the solar industry. Brady was part of a training program through Red Cloud Renewable, funded by previous grants for solar on reservations. Solar for All would also have funded training and trade development on these reservations.

When I caught up with Brady again at her house in Busby, she was working two jobs, and the only time she had for me was at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, after her daughter’s choir recital. I found her in the garage with a kitchen knife in hand, skinning a deer her wife had shot a few days previously. She asked if I wanted to help and handed me a knife.

Donica Brady carves out meat from a deer in her garage in Busby, Montana. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder

We chatted as we worked on the deer skin, cutting fat and sinew away from the dark red meat. She’d returned to her previous job as a bus driver and was hired by Freedom Forever, a solar installation company based in California. She’s still working in renewable energy, and Freedom Forever does work on reservations at times, but Brady’s job is no longer on the ground working with her community like she craves.

“I want my people to be able to be self-sufficient, not have to rely on funding or things like that that can be taken away,” Brady said. I heard this over and over: People don’t want to have to depend on the federal government for “handouts.”

As Brady cut out the tender backstraps and set them aside to give to her auntie, she talked about solar’s deeper meaning. “People call it progress, but I see it as going back to what we were taught, but in a new way,” she said. It’s more than just energy; it’s harnessing the sun, an important reflection of Northern Cheyenne culture.

The deer we were cutting up felt like a symbol summarizing everything we talked about. It was one way Brady could become self-sufficient and support those she loves. If only the power of the sun could be harnessed as easily as a deer skinned in a garage.

Residents are hurt most

Some time later, just outside of Lame Deer, Montana, the tribal headquarters of Northern Cheyenne, I got lost looking for Thomasine Woodenlegs’ house. My phone had no service, so all I had was Woodenlegs’ instructions: Look for a bright-green house at the end of the road. Many U-turns later, Woodenlegs welcomed me into her kitchen, where photos of loved ones covered the walls and two cats, one orange and one black, lounged on the couch.

Woodenlegs works for her tribe, and she has lived in this house for 50 years. She plans to pass it down to her family. But she knows she will be saddling them with a financial burden, too.

“How am I going to survive after I retire? And how is whoever inherits my house?” Woodenlegs asked. “I’ll need to warn them that the electricity runs like $400 or $500, and they’d have to have a really secure income to live here. Otherwise, they’d be without lights.”

Power lines cross the short grass prairie on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder

Woodenlegs saw solar panels from previous grant programs like the White River Community Solar Project, funded by the Department of Energy, going up around the reservation in 2020 and 2021. Back then, Solar for All’s big allocation for Indigenous communities brought more hope. She put in her own applications, feeling jealous of friends and acquaintances who received them, wondering when it would be her turn. She’s still waiting.

Tina Cady, another Northern Cheyenne resident, lives just outside of Busby and has applied for solar panels multiple times. She worked for the Indian Health Service for 25 years until she went on disability. Now she lives on a fixed income of about $1,000 a month, and her husband picks up as many hours as he can as an adjunct professor at the tribal college. She showed me her October electric bill, which was $225.13.

Brady handled her application and told Cady what she’d learned in the field so far: Cady was a prime applicant for solar panels and she should be at the top of the list. “I’m an elder, and I’m disabled,” Cady said. Plus, she owns her own land. But Cady never heard anything more about it.

I asked whether she felt betrayed by the funding cuts, after so many previous letdowns to tribal communities. Cady said no, because it wasn’t her money to be betrayed. But she was disappointed and disenchanted. “I have seen them do this before. You get so you don’t trust anybody anymore.”

The fight continues

Four different lawsuits have been filed in federal courts against the Trump administration for ending Solar for All. It was terminated after the One Big Beautiful Bill Actrescinded “the unobligated funds for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund,” which had provided the funding for Solar for All.

The lawsuits claim that Solar for All was already a year into operation, so the funds were obligated, and that taking away already obligated funds is illegal.

All the lawsuits are still active. One from Climate United will move into oral arguments in February. Another from a coalition of 22 states is seeking an injunction to keep the Solar for All funds available.

Eagleman hopes to find additional funding to build residential solar arrays like this one for many more Chippewa Cree elders. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder

But even without results from the lawsuits, solar installers like Cody Two Bears and Joseph Eagleman plan to continue to fight for solar development on northern Plains reservations.

Eagleman said he’s going to keep looking for funding to help bring affordable electricity to the Chippewa Cree on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation. He’s been looking at other public funding through the Department of Energy, as well as private philanthropic options.

Two Bears said he is moving forward with his company’s list of families awaiting solar. Indigenized Energy is ready to break ground on a project on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin, which was next in line when the funding was cut. He said they found private funding for that project, as well as another solar array for the Rosebud Sioux.

“So even though the money is not there, we’re still finding alternative resources and funding to make these possible and make ’em feasible,” said Two Bears. “It’s just going to take longer.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Native families were promised free solar. Trump took it away. on Feb 15, 2026.

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Sandra Hale Schulman
Special to ICT

The disappearance of a teenage Navajo girl from her boarding school anchors the new season of “Dark Winds,” with the first of eight, hour-long episodes premiering Sunday, Feb. 15.

The gripping fourth season, set in 1973, focuses on the search for the missing girl that takes detectives from the safety of Navajo Nation to the gritty — but kinda groovy — hoods of 1970s Los Angeles in a race against the clock to save her from an obsessive killer.

Executive produced by the late Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin, “Dark Winds” stars Zahn McClarnon as Lt. Joe Leaphorn, Kiowa Gordon (“The Red Road”) as Jim Chee, Jessica Matten (“Rez Ball”) as Navajo Sgt. Bernadette Manuelito, and Deanna Allison (“Accused”) as Emma Leaphorn.

Actress Isabel DeRoy-Olson (“Fancy Dance”) plays the Navajo girl, Billie Tsosie, who goes missing from a boarding school near the Navajo reservation. Franka Potente (“Run Lola Run”) is Irene Vaggan, a German sniper with a secret agenda.

Other notable guest stars include Chaske Spencer (“The Twilight Saga”) as Sonny, a sleazy recruiter for a Los Angeles crime ring who lures young Native American men into lives of crime, and A. Martinez (“Longmire”) who returns as Scarborough Police Department Acting Chief Gordo Sena.

Actress Isabel DeRoy-Olson (“Fancy Dance”) plays missing Navajo girl in “Dark Winds: Season 4,” which premieres Feb. 15, 2026, on AMC. Credit: Photo courtesy of AMC

This season all the characters are in search of something — home, family they lost, spiritual connection, self-worth, and in a bizarre twist, even the Third Reich.

How did McClarnon use his three-season backstory to propel his character in the new season?

“There’s universals,” McClarnon told ICT in a joint interview with Potente. “It’s human beings and we’re just seeing it through a different cultural lens. That’s all. Joe is struggling with possibly losing his wife, and it has to do with Joe’s struggle with dealing with what he goes through at work and straddling that fine line between his culture and between being a cop, and losing his son.”

“Obviously, these things affect human beings, relationships change. And so this season, I think Joe is wrestling with retiring because his job has caused so many issues in his marriage. He’s in search of a way to mend those things.”

Leaphorn hunkers down at his desert home, gardening, building an adobe sweat lodge, and staring longingly at his half-empty closet and a photo of him and Emma.

The “Dark Winds” series kicks off Season 4 on AMC and AMC+ on Feb. 15, 2026. Credit: Courtesy of AMC

“He relies on his ceremonies as well as what the Diné people call Hozho, which is a balance, finding that balance, finding a piece of mind, finding your place in the universe. So Joe is exploring that through this season and we’ll see what happens in the end if he actually is able to obtain Hozho or not,” he said.

“I think that’s a thing that we all struggle with as human beings,” he said. “We’re always looking for that balance and that piece of mind. I know I am, as a human being, and I’m sure you are, too, as well.”

As for Potente, she is a newcomer, so she has to define her reason for her actions pretty quickly.

Actress Franka Potente plays a German sniper with a secret agenda in Season 4 of “Dark Winds,” which premieres Feb. 15, 2026. Credit: Photo courtesy of AMC

“I was given a couple of chunks to use,” Potente told ICT. “One was the information that Irene Vaggan was raised by just her grandfather, Gunther, [played by famed German actor Udo Kier who died in November], and her father, two Nazis in Nazi Germany. She was void of love. There was no love of family in that sense. She was basically trained to be a sniper, awaiting a Fourth Reich and another global war, and so she’s very self-sufficient. She’s a killer-for-hire.”

Potente’s character grew up in Germany with a romanticized view of Native Americans from books, and those ingredients come together when she crosses Leaphorn’s path. Then everything changes for her. She discovers he’s alone and becomes obsessed with him; he seems to be the answer to her quest for a family, as impossible and twisted as it seems.

“I just kept it all in mind but made very simple choices in the beginning and then that’s the great thing about TV, right? We’re given so much time, it’s really a journey and as actors we don’t know the next script,” Potente said. “I took a lot of the details that inform her journey also from my interactions with Joe in the scenes to become more and more enthralled with Leaphorn.”

The series takes a wild turn as the detectives trail Tsosie to Los Angeles in 1973 with its cool cars, seedy Hollywood motels, funky nightclubs, and lots of bell bottoms.

Will they find Tsosie in time? Will Joe get Emma, now working as a nurse in LA, back? Can Chee and Manuelitio’s relationship survive working together?

The stories will continue. Before the new season even aired it was announced that “Dark Winds: Season 5” will begin filming in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in March. It is set to debut in 2027.

“Thank you to Kristin Dolan, Dan McDermott, and all of AMC Networks for continuing to support and believe in Dark Winds,” McClarnon said. “It’s such a privilege to embody the character of Joe Leaphorn, and I’m excited to return to Santa Fe with this amazing cast and crew to craft another thrilling season of the show that means so much to all of us.”

Season 4 kicks off Sunday, Feb. 15, at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT, on AMC and AMC+, with new episodes airing weekly on Sundays.

The post ‘Dark Winds’ returns for Season 4 with missing, murdered and more appeared first on ICT.

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The Japanese priest and his parishioners gathered before dawn, hoping that climate change had not robbed them of the chance to experience an increasingly rare communion with the sacred.

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