Latest news with #AmericanIndians
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Oklahoma lawmakers overrides Stitt's veto of the Missing Murder Indigenous Persons funding
OKLAHOMA CITY – Oklahoma lawmakers overrode Gov. Kevin Stitt and passed the bill allowing state funding for the Office of Liaison for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons. Earlier this month, Stitt vetoed the bipartisan bill saying, that while he supports efforts to solve missing persons and homicide cases, he could not endorse legislation that singles out victims based solely on their race. The unit within the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation will focus exclusively on missing and murdered American Indians. Rep. Ron Stewart, D-Tulsa, who authored the bill, celebrated the veto override. 'Today, the Oklahoma Legislature demonstrated its unwavering commitment to justice and accountability by overriding the Governor's veto of House Bill 1137. I am deeply grateful to my colleagues in both chambers–Democrats and Republicans–who stood together to prioritize the safety and dignity of Indigenous communities across our state. Rep. Ron Stewart, D-Tulsa This vote is more than a legislative victory–it is a moral affirmation that missing and murdered Indigenous persons will not be forgotten or ignored in Oklahoma, he said. Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr., and the United Indian Nations of Oklahoma praised the lawmakers. 'This is a powerful and heartfelt step forward in the fight for justice,' said Margo Gray, Executive Director of United Indian Nations of Oklahoma. 'We are profoundly grateful to the legislators in both chambers who stood with Native families, survivors, and advocates across Oklahoma.' According to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), in 2016, there were 5,712 reports of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls. However, the agency reported that NamUs only logged 116 cases, a significantly lower number than the number reported by the federal agency. In Oklahoma, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation lists just 88 missing American Indians, including many Cherokee residents. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
CareView Communications announces three-year business agreement with HealthTrust
US-based virtual care solution provider CareView Communications has entered a three-year business agreement with group purchasing organisation (GPO) HealthTrust Purchasing Group. Based in Tennessee, HealthTrust works with 1,800 health systems and hospitals to help their providers manage expenses and enhance performance. The partnership aims to deliver 'immediate and sustainable' savings for these hospitals and health systems. CareView Communications chief operations officer Sandra McRee said: 'Our GPO relationships are a critical part of our business model and allow us to expand our products and services in a streamlined and cost-effective way. 'Through agreements with GPOs like HealthTrust, we can minimise overhead expenses and partner with those hospitals looking to adopt cutting-edge virtual sitting and virtual nursing solutions.' The agreement with HealthTrust is expected to build on CareView's virtual nursing solution, which involves reallocating tasks to virtual Registered Nurses (vRNs). This approach is designed to reduce workloads for bedside nurses and optimise the use of resources. CareView has been part of HealthTrust's organisation network since 2017. Based in Texas, the company has provided virtual care solutions for more than 200 hospitals across the US to date. CareView Communications Sales vice-president Patrick Conte said: 'Our GPO channels provide important synergies between CareView and current and prospective customers. 'When prospective customers see alignment with their GPO, they know they are working with a supplier that has been vetted and has demonstrated outcomes in their solution area.' Earlier this year, CareView Communications entered a business agreement with Alaska Native Medical Center in an effort to improve patient safety through the use of virtual care solutions. Alaska Native Medical Center provides services to Alaska Natives and American Indians, including a 182-bed hospital and a medical speciality suite. In December last year, CareView partnered with Confluence Health, a network of healthcare providers in Washington, with the aim to improve patient safety. "CareView Communications announces three-year business agreement with HealthTrust" was originally created and published by Hospital Management, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Miami Herald
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
As Trump administration floods the zone to combat crime in Indian Country, wariness prevails
MORTON, Minn. – Sitting on a bench surrounded by Lower Sioux Community members, Ana Negrete presented two industrial-sized bins to the tribe's leaders in a somber exchange. "I hope this helps," Negrete said quietly, gesturing at black crates filled with items she wishes they'd never have to use: tools to help find missing Indigenous people. Negrete leads the state's Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR) Office, a first-of-its-kind effort to address the disproportionately high rates of violent crime against Indigenous people. The kits delivered this month are part of a broader strategy involving tribal, local and state resources - and now, a promised surge in federal reinforcements. Last month, the Trump administration announced it would boost the FBI's "Operation Not Forgotten" with more agents to swarm Indian Country, including in Minnesota, in the "longest and most intense national deployment" of FBI investigators to date aimed at solving crimes against Indigenous people. In Minnesota, the pledge is prompting hope - but also deep skepticism. Some question whether the government will follow through on its promises; others wonder if the long-term solution has to come from within, given that many crimes involve victims and perpetrators from the same community. "It's a bit ironic actually. It's no secret that the Native American community in Minnesota is highly critical of President [Donald] Trump," said Irene Folstrom, a former Department of Public Safety tribal relations director who worked with the MMIR Office. FBI surge The latest phase of Operation Not Forgotten will see a boost of agents, totaling 60, the third deployment since the initiative began in 2023. Last year, there were closer to 50. "The additional resources from Operation Not Forgotten along with our continued partnership with local, state, federal, and tribal agencies will bolster the efforts of our dedicated personnel to bring cases closer to resolution," said Alvin Winston Sr., special agent in charge of Minneapolis' FBI office. The operation was created after the start of the federal government's Task Force on Missing and Murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives, which Trump established in his first term through an executive order. Since its start, Operation Not Forgotten has helped with more than 500 cases resulting in 52 arrests and 25 charges, according to the Department of Justice. The FBI will partner with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and tribal law enforcement agencies. Cases will be referred to U.S. Attorney's Offices for prosecution. Officials with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota said the operation supplements their efforts in recent years to prosecute crimes and "better serve" Indian Country, including opening an office in Duluth. An assistant U.S. attorney has been placed in the Duluth office and a victim witness specialist in Bemidji. "The U.S. Attorney's Office remains deeply committed to pursuing justice for our tribal communities," said acting U.S. Attorney Lisa Kirkpatrick. "We are grateful to the Department of Justice for their commitment to Operation Not Forgotten and its surge of much-needed FBI resources to our tribal lands." Agents have been stationed in Minneapolis and Bemidji for years as part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Missing and Murdered Unit. Shawn Carr, an advocate in Duluth who's held annual news conferences for Sheila St. Clair since her disappearance in 2015, said missing persons cases in particular are a multifaceted issue. But the extra national resources "definitely helps," Carr said. However, for each case solved, or yet to be solved after years of searching, more missing person reports are filed. Kits to assist Beyond the influx of FBI agents, Negrete hopes the bins she's sent to tribes will supplement search efforts across the state. The kits are filled with a range of materials, from the practical (marking flags), to the technical (handheld GPS map) to the spiritual (sage). The office has now given out four kits to tribes across Minnesota, reserving one for the MMIR Office. The rate of missing and murdered Indigenous people remains elevated: While the community makes up 1% of Minnesota's population, it comprises nearly 9% of missing person cases. The MMIR Office reports having 20 active missing person and homicides cases. Last year, 10 people whose missing person cases were filed to the office were found. About 4% of people killed in Minnesota last year were Indigenous, the office's latest data show. This year, there's been more high-profile violence: A member of the Native gang is accused of shooting five Indigenous people, four fatally, earlier this month. Negrete said the need for the kits became apparent during a search for a 47-year-old man who went missing in November 2022 in the area of the Mille Lacs Reservation. The snow reached the waists of the search party. Sharp tree branches got in their way. "We just weren't prepared," Negrete recalled. The office provided its first kit to the Mille Lacs Band following the search. Each cost $13,000, totaling $65,000 for the five kits. To Negrete, the kits provide a tangible solution to a problem that can quickly become bogged down by bureaucracy and jurisdictional snafus. The MMIR Office has just four staffers, she said, making conducting searches across the state difficult. Negrete acknowledges the kits aren't a cure-all, but hopes they provide a balm to families whose only path forward is to scour the land for any clue. "Searching is a way for them to actively do something at a time when they feel powerless," Negrete said. A search within Some remain critical of state and federal efforts, saying they can be seen as performative instead of real boots-on-the-ground work. Those critics also say it's up to people, often within the Indigenous community, to stop withholding information on active cases. "It's time for people to start opening up and holding your own relatives accountable," said Lissa Yellow Bird-Chase, who founded in 2013 the Sahnish Scouts, a grassroots effort responding to disappearances of people in the Bakken oilfields of North Dakota where she lives. "As long as we keep blaming the white guys or the oil field people or whatever, then that makes an excuse for us not to look at ourselves," said Yellow Bird-Chase, 56, a member of the Arikara tribe. Her independent work brings her to place across the country helping Indigenous families find loved ones, including her own. She recently spent a week in Bemidji knocking on doors and tracking down information on Nevaeh Kingbird, who was 15 when she went missing in 2021, and Jeremy Jourdain, who was 17 when he disappeared in 2016. The Native teens went missing from the same neighborhood in Bemidji that Yellow Bird-Chase searched with her two golden retriever cadaver dogs. She's done this before over the years, along with searches on the Red Lake and White Earth reservations. But investigations stalled after the recent quadruple fatal shooting. She left Bemidji to help another family in South Dakota and allow time for Minnesota to mourn. "This might be the eye opener that people need," she said. Yellow Bird-Chase wants to see more searches instead of marches. Instead of gathering masses to protest and giving out signs to hold, she said groups of volunteers should be given neon vests and sent to knock on doors, areas to comb. Agencies tasked with solving cases are duplicating services, yet not producing results, Yellow-Bird Chase said. In 2021, the same year the state's MMIR Office began, BIA started a Missing and Murdered Unit (MMU). The unit has two agents in its Minneapolis field office and one agent in Bemidji. MMU has five active cases in Minnesota, including Kingbird and Jourdain. The MMIR Office is given $774,000 from the state, an increase from $500,000 at its inception. The office also generated $92,000 in revenue from the sale of nearly 3,500 special MMIR license places, money that will be steered into the reward fund once it launches. But Folstrom and Yellow Bird-Chase are critical of the MMIR Office still not having rewards for information from the public. Folstrom, who is enrolled in the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and considers Jourdain a relative, said it's unclear how the office is measuring outcomes of its work. "Show the intended beneficiaries what the results are," she said, "because we're out here looking around and not seeing any." Negrete countered that the search kits are just "one piece of the puzzle," and the root causes behind the missing and murdered Indigenous person epidemic "are complex and require a complex response." "The MMIR Office has a staff of four to serve the entire state and we do this work alone. The families cannot do it alone. Even law enforcement cannot do it alone," she said. Yellow Bird-Chase said Operation Not Forgotten has potential, but she's "not impressed until I'm impressed." Federal agents need to build rapport and trust in Native communities to counteract a historically fraught relationship. "We're in a Stockholm relationship with the government," she said. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
RFK Jr. Attacks Health Agency, Defends Cuts Before Congress
(Bloomberg) -- Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended cutting thousands of staff while attacking the agency's past work in one of his first appearances before Congress since taking office. As Coastline Erodes, One California City Considers 'Retreat Now' A New Central Park Amenity, Tailored to Its East Harlem Neighbors Power-Hungry Data Centers Are Warming Homes in the Nordics How a Highway Became San Francisco's Newest Park In exchanges with lawmakers that at times became tense, Kennedy told the House Appropriations Committee Wednesday that the cuts made progress toward President Donald Trump's goal to shrink federal spending. He also said the focus of the agency had turned to disease prevention rather than treatment, framing past efforts on addressing existing diseases instead of stopping them as evidence of corruption. In particular, he said there has been research on treatments for colorectal cancer at the National Institutes of Health, but not research on why rates are rising in children. 'No research was done on it. The etiology of all these chronic diseases were just buried because they didn't want to offend the large industries who are putting poisons in our food and putting them in our pharmaceutical products,' Kennedy said. Kennedy was pressed on the workforce reductions, which amounted to about 20% of staff with the inclusion of workers who voluntarily left and took buyouts or early retirement packages. In one instance, he doubled down on cuts to employees who ran a heating assistance program for low-income people and said he has the power to reverse firings. While Kennedy characterizes the cuts as a bid to streamline redundancies, the agency has also laid off employees conducting research in food safety labs, running firefighter health programs, working to make infant formula safer and studying childhood lead exposure. In response to questions from House Democrats about whether he is spending money that Congress allocated for specific causes, Kennedy said he will follow the law and spend money if lawmakers designate it for a certain program. The Trump administration is asking for $94 billion for HHS and its sub-agencies — $33 billion less than last year — according to budget documents released earlier this month. The biggest cuts are focused on the NIH and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Trump Objectives Kennedy, who will also testify on his agency's 2026 budget request in front of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Wednesday, is planning to use the budget as a tool to pursue his so-called Make America Healthy Again agenda. That means including funding for chronic disease prevention, protection from environmental toxins, nutrition, food and drug safety, and services for American Indians and Alaska Natives. Also included are programs that push what he calls healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments and the effects of new technological habits, according to prepared remarks seen by Bloomberg. Kennedy told the Appropriations Committee new dietary guidelines will be released potentially 'before August' that will focus more on unprocessed foods. In addition to aligning the budget with Trump's goals, Kennedy touted work he'd done to boost US drug manufacturing — one of the president's longtime objectives. Kennedy spoke positively about his relationships with companies that make food and pharmaceuticals, and mentioned he's met repeatedly with Eli Lilly & Co. and other drugmakers about domestic drug manufacturing. He's also gone after topics that frequently draw Trump's ire, like diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. 'Americans do not want their tax dollars going to initiatives that espouse radical ideologies,' Kennedy said in his prepared remarks. 'We are committed to restoring a tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science — not one driven by politicized DEI, gender ideology, nor sexual identity.' The topic was the subject of a particularly charged back-and-forth between Kennedy and Democratic Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman. The Congresswoman grilled Kennedy about why the agency was targeting grants with language like 'Black,' 'race,' 'bias' and 'oppression.' Kennedy said Trump is 'deeply concerned' about disproportionately bad outcomes in maternal health for Black mothers and wants a 'color blind' administration. 'I don't need this rhetoric about Donald Trump and the lie that he cares about me or Black people,' she replied. (Updates details throughout.) Cartoon Network's Last Gasp DeepSeek's 'Tech Madman' Founder Is Threatening US Dominance in AI Race Why Obesity Drugs Are Getting Cheaper — and Also More Expensive Trump Has Already Ruined Christmas The Recession Chatter Is Getting Louder. Watch These Metrics ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
New York Post
14-05-2025
- Health
- New York Post
RFK Jr. says ultra-processed food is a ‘genocide' on Native Americans
Ultra-processed foods are a 'genocide' on the Native American population, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified Wednesday, as he vowed to get 'high-quality food' onto reservations. Kennedy said he's devoted about a fifth of his career working on tribal issues and noted how he spared Indian Health Services — an HHS program that provides services to the Native American and Alaska native population — from the sweeping cuts he enacted across HHS. 'I'll say one thing, the Pima Indians were a Blue Zone in Arizona, the longest-living people on the continent. Today, they're among the shortest-lived. I think their lifespan is around 47 years old,' the Kennedy scion claimed, during testimony before the House Appropriations Committee. 3 The HHS secretary has been working to crack down on processed foods in the US. REUTERS 'Across the border in Mexico, the Pima Indians, who are still long-lived, have no diabetes, no heart disease, no obesity — because they're not being fed ultra-processed food. 'Ultra-processed food is a genocide on the American Indian,' he said. 'One of my big priorities will be getting good food, high-quality food, traditional foods onto the reservation, because American Indians, because processed food for American Indians is poison.' Kennedy's remarks came in response to questioning from Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who chairs the House Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee that oversees Native American issues. 3 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he is deeply passionate about improving conditions for Native Americans, like the Pima community. Joseph Hendrickson – 'Yeah, I agree,' Simpson replied to Kennedy's stunning 'genocide' claim. It is not entirely clear what data Kennedy was referencing. The Pima Indian males have an average life expectancy of 53 years, while women live an average of 63, according to the National Institute of Health. The average American male's life expectancy is 74.8 years, while women are 80.2 years, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 3 Rep. Mike Simpson agreed with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s characterization. Getty Images Kennedy also noted how the Indian Health Service is 'chronically understaffed.' 'It is very, very difficult to find competent personnel who will move to Indian country or to a distant location,' he said. Reservations have long been plagued by high rates of alcoholism, obesity and chronic diseases relative to the rest of the US. Kennedy has been on a crusade to tackle the spate of chronic diseases that have ravaged the US and to crack down on processed food. Last month, he championed an initiative to push the food industry to abandon eight artificial dyes. Kennedy's testimony before the House Appropriations Committee was given to defend HHS' budget request.
