Total Solar Eclipse, July 11, 1991: Photo by Mark Ryan

Before his story made the Anchorage paper, before the first death threat arrived from across the world, before his elders began to worry and his mother cried over the things she read on Facebook, Chris Apassingok, age 16, caught a whale.

Since August 2015, the Institute of American Indian Arts has hosted month-long artist residencies, and recently the school announced its lineup for the Fall 2017 Artist-in-Residence program. Native American and First Nations artists visit the school in Santa Fe, New Mexico to make art and interact with both the campus community and the Santa Fe arts community. The program also includes public receptions and artist talks with each of the artists.

The first recipient of the Sherman Alexie Scholarship for the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts has been named.

Jamie Natonabah, Diné, will receive $7,500 each semester for four semesters, for a total of $30,000, $24,000 of which will apply to tuition. The remaining $6,000 will help her to pay for travel, books, lodging, and meals during the five residencies in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Team B.C. will be arriving at the North American Indigenous Games in style with a brand new theme song to drum up enthusiasm and energy.

After a provincewide competition, the team's new anthem, composed by William Wasden Jr. from the Kwakwa_ka_'wakw Nation, was revealed just days before 2017 games, which begin Sunday and run through July 23.

"The song is steady and upbeat and is meant to be used for celebrating and uplifting spirit," said Wasden.

On South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, home to the Oglala Lakota people, many students only dream of going to college. More than 60 percent of children on the reservation live below the poverty line. Statewide, the high school graduation rate for Native American students is less than 50 percent. And life expectancy in Oglala Lakota County, where Pine Ridge Reservation sits, is the lowest in the United States.

But this year, one Lakota student at Red Cloud Indian School defied the negative statistics that continue to plague young people on Pine Ridge. Not only is nineteen-year-old Jacob Rosales going to college this fall, but he was accepted into seven of the nation’s eight Ivy League universities.

The Red Lake Nation Tribal Council has set its Native American youth a bold goal: 100 percent graduation rate for Red Lake students. The council wants all students to earn a high school diploma, whether they go to school on the reservation or in other school districts.

"We want our kids to succeed and this resolution demonstrates our commitment," said Annette Johnson, Red Lake Nation tribal treasurer, who earned a B.S. in accounting from Bemidji State University in 1998 and a masters in tribal administration from the University of Minnesota-Duluth in 2013. "Education is critical and important for our youth," she added.

The Trail of Tears set a national precedent for the confiscation of Indian lands

This persuasive essay was submitted to ICTMN by Matthew Scraper, Megan Scraper’s father. Megan, 12, is a student at Marlow Middle School in Oklahoma. They are citizens of the Cherokee Nation, and Matthew pointed out that their last name is an English translation of the Cherokee word "disugasgi," which means something along the lines of "the one who repeatedly scrapes the skin." She chose to write about the Trail of Tears on her own when given a class assignment.

It takes a lot of courage to stick your neck out, but one Rapid City resident has been dubbed a hero for doing just that.

Charmaine White Face, an Oglala Sioux scientist, environmentalist and activist, has been named a Giraffe Hero by the Giraffe Heroes Project, a nonprofit organization that encourages people to "stick their necks out for the common good." White Face, who learned of the honor just days before it was announced last Wednesday, was surprised.

A Flathead Reservation youth group was selected as the Tribal Youth Council of The Year at the UNITY (United National Indian Tribal Youth) Conference in Denver last week.

Last spring, a group of Arlee and St. Ignatius students formed The NkWucin One Voice Youth Council as a support entity for each other and the youth community. Tribal youth develop leadership skills as part of the council’s promotion of a drug- and alcohol-free lifestyle

She was just 12 years old when she made her first star quilt. Now at 28, one of her beautifully handcrafted signature star quilts will grace the walls of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Indian in Washington D.C. as part of their permanent collection of Northern Plains Quilts.

Julian Brave NoiseCat (Secwepemc/St'at'imc) is one of two recipients of the 2017 CJF-CBC Indigenous Journalism Fellowships, established to encourage Indigenous voices and better understanding of Indigenous issues in Canada's major media and community outlets. He is reporting on the annual Tribal Canoe Journey paddle to Campbell River, B.C. with generous support from the fellowship.

During our first week and half in the field, we had some incredible experiences. We conducted our first interviews; tried subsistence-harvested foods, including berries and sockeye salmon; and watched fishermen set their lines in anticipation of the king salmon arriving. We also had a fourth member join our team. Kitty Sopow hails from Sitka, Alaska, and is interning with the Bristol Bay Native Association (BBNA) for the summer. She has a dog named Fawn and shared some of her own subsistence practices with us. She fishes for salmon, hunts deer, and harvests mushrooms, berries, and medicinal herbs like Devil’s Club. Kitty assisted us with interviews and served as our community liaison.

Nancy Plemmons pulls a bag out of the freezer. "This sochan might look bad now, but it's delicious," she chirps.

Plemmons is a full-blooded member of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee, living on tribal land outside Murphy, North Carolina. She gathered these wild greens in her front yard months ago. Before they soften in the pork fat pooling in her skillet, they're a frosty mass the emerald color of first growth. "This is a spring tonic, and everybody eats it. Everybody! Even Bill."

These efforts included a number of things that became a part of everyday life, such as the ending of Prohibition, the establishment of Social Security and the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which put unemployed men to work in a time when jobs were hard to find.

Alutiiq Museum archaeologists have located the remains of a stone fish trap and an associated set of petroglyphs on northern Kodiak Island. The features are believed to be prehistoric and reflect Alutiiq salmon fishing traditions. While petroglyphs are a well-known feature of Kodiak’s cultural landscape, the fish trap is a rare find. It is the first intertidal fishing structure identified in the Kodiak region.The trap lies in the lower intertidal zone, a muddy area below the mouth of a productive salmon stream. At high tide, salmon headed up the stream could swim over the stone-walled feature, but as the tide dropped, fish were stranded in one of two corrals. The walls of the corrals are incomplete today.

Two professors at Cape Breton University — a chemist and a Mi'kmaq scholar — have been awarded $150,000 to study the healing powers of birch bark.

Tuma Young, assistant professor of L'nu studies, and Matthias Bierenstiel, associate professor of chemistry, are combining traditional knowledge and fundamental science to determine how and why the bark works to soothe skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis.