Eastern Shoshone

With a $2 million construction grant currently on hold, Energize Wind River is searching for other funding sources to make solar a reality for some Eastern Shoshone homes.

Paleontologists collaborated with members of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe to honor the fact that the dinosaur was found on the tribe’s ancestral lands. We hear how the project braided together two different ways of knowing from an Eastern Shoshone elder and a research scientist.

Leaders on the Wind River Reservation are encouraging tribal members to carry some sort of identification with them. That comes in response to ramped-up efforts to enforce immigration policy under the Trump administration.

Other avenues to change the monument’s name are on hold while Congress considers the bill.

Jacqueline White is Northern Arapaho and the tribal relations specialist for the Food Bank of Wyoming. Her passion: increasing access to traditional foods. From White’s perspective, this goal is possible because of collaboration.

The U.S. Forest Service is spending another $20 million to remove flammable underbrush and logs from forests to reduce wildfire risk. Some of the funding will be used to turn that chopped timber into firewood for Indigenous families in parts of the Mountain West to heat their homes.

President Biden recently apologized for the federally-run boarding school system, which sought to assimilate Native children into white culture and separated them from their languages and communities. But people on the Wind River Reservation say the apology needs follow-up.

Democrat and Eastern Shoshone tribal member Ivan Posey won the race to represent House District 33, which includes much of the Wind River Reservation. He beat incumbent Republican Sarah Penn, who was endorsed by the Freedom Caucus and held the seat for two years.

The Eastern Shoshone Tribe is holding its general election on Oct. 22. Six people are competing for three seats on the Eastern Shoshone Business Council and a dozen people are competing for six seats on the tribe’s Entertainment Committee.

Many of the 17 candidates for the Eastern Shoshone Business Council discussed the need for more grant writers for the tribe, more support for elders in the community and a tougher stance on non-Native American hunters encroaching on fee lands. Three of the body’s six seats are up for grabs in the primary election on Sept. 17.