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U.S. House Republicans are proposing sweeping cuts to the Interior Department, Environmental Protection Agency and other executive departments with major influence in the Mountain West.
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The federal commission compiling a report about missing and murdered Indigenous peoples’ is traveling to Indigenous communities to hear their stories. The next stops are Albuquerque and Billings.
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The Interior Department is spending another $64 million to clean up abandoned oil and gas wells that threaten the environment and public health, including some wells in the Mountain West.
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The Biden administration has ordered a 20-year ban on new oil and gas development around Chaco Canyon in northwest New Mexico, a landscape considered sacred to many tribes.
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As a part of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, the Department of Interior and the National Endowment for the Humanities will be digitizing records that document the experiences of those who survived such schools, as well as their descendants. $4 million from the NEH will also support an oral history project with those people.
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That law bars efforts to misleadingly present products as having been produced by tribal members, and the changes would expand the definition of what constitutes an "Indian Product" under the law and in some cases allow for non-native labor in the making of such products.
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The 83 projects are located in 11 mostly Western states, including Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico and Nevada.
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The Interior Department has announced new funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to clean up polluted areas and conserve ecosystems. Nearly $10 million will go towards 17 projects, including several in the Mountain West.
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Interior Secretary Deb Haaland recently announced an advisory committee to do away with place names considered derogatory and offensive toward Indigenous people.
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Methane is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. That’s why the Biden Administration is working with 24 states to identify 10,000 high-priority wells to plug as soon as possible, usually by pumping cement into the leaking area.