Friday, March 13, 2026

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This month, 34 bison were loaded into trailers at a park in Colorado’s foothills – and sent across the Mountain West region to tribal lands.

Rachel Cohen reports.

The bison are part of herds that the City and County of Denver has managed for almost a century. And since 2020, 170 animals have been gifted to tribes.

Jason Baldes is a member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe in Wyoming and works with the Intertribal Buffalo Council. He says Denver’s donations play a big role in bison restoration.

“Because there are so few animals in isolated populations, it’s important to diversify your gene pool so that you have a healthy population.”

In this year’s transfer, Navajo Nation received 11 bison and the Northern Cheyenne in Montana got 10.

Jody Potts-Joseph in McGrath, Alaska. (Courtesy Jody Potts-Joseph)

The leaders in the 1,000-mile sled dog race from Anchorage to Nome have reached the halfway point.

Two of the mushers — Ryan Redington (Inupiat) and Pete Kaiser (Yup’ik) — are former champs of the Iditarod.

Both have teams with some of the fastest speeds on the trail.

Redington was in third place early this morning and Kaiser was not far behind in the 11th spot.

There are three other Indigenous mushers in the Iditarod.

Kevin Hansen and Jesse Terry, who are in the middle of the pack, are rookies to the race, as is Jody Potts-Joseph, who as Rhonda McBride reports, has been holding her own at the back of the pack.

The Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma recently added an amendment to the tribe’s Public Health and Wellness Fund Act to set aside funds for the tribe’s reentry program.

$6.5 million is being set aside in new opioid settlement funds, which will include building and operating transitional housing for formerly incarcerated Cherokee citizens.

According to the Cherokee Nation, in 2017, it became the first tribe in the country to sue the opioid industry for damages. The tribe has continued its legal efforts, which include the latest settlement.

The reentry program served 500 Cherokee citizens last year.