Thursday, August 27, 2026

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Photo: Notah Begay III, who is Diné and from the pueblos of San Felipe and Isleta, is the 2026 recipient of the Payne Stewart Award. (Courtesy PGA)

The PGA Tour has bestowed one of its highest honors, the Payne Stewart Award, to a four-time PGA Tour winner who is also a citizen of the Navajo Nation.

KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio has details.

Born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Notah Begay III excelled at swinging a club. His success on the fairway afforded him the chance to play college golf beside Tiger Woods at Stanford University – winning a national team championship in 1994.

Begay is widely considered the first Indigenous golfer to compete on the PGA Tour.

When accepting the award on Tuesday, Begay noted how Native Americans have the lowest graduation rates and life expectancies in the U.S. among all ethnicities.

“So for me to be standing up here as a Stanford graduate with a degree in economics, four-time PGA Tour winner and a television broadcaster accepting this prestigious award is a miracle.”

A uranium mining company missed a Monday deadline to turn over communications between its executives and the feds.

KNAU’s Chris Clements reports that is according to House Democrats, who have launched an investigation into Energy Fuels for potential insider trading.

Two House Democrats allege the Trump administration may have tipped Energy Fuels off about the cut to Bears Ears National Monument before it happened, leading company executives to invest in their own firm.

One of the Democrats is U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-California.

“The timing and the volume of these stock purchases are conspicuous and speak for themselves.”

Huffman asked the company to send a year’s worth of communications with the feds, as well as its lobbying contracts, by August 24, but Energy Fuels did not provide the materials by that deadline, according to a spokesperson for Huffman.

In a statement, the company said it strongly rejects the idea that anything improper took place, but did not deny that it missed the deadline.

Energy Fuels stands to benefit from less protections to the uranium-rich monument, the lawmakers argue, because the company owns the White Mesa Mill, the only conventional uranium processing mill in the United States.

Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minnesota, has signed an executive order blocking new state mineral leases and halting permitting work for proposed nonferrous mining projects in the Rainy River Headwaters Watershed near the Boundary Waters.

The National Congress of American Indians praised the move, saying it protects treaty rights, Tribal resources, and culturally significant lands from potential mining-related pollution.

NCAI also recognized the Bois Forte, Fond du Lac, and Grand Portage Bands of Lake Superior Chippewa.

The three 1854 Treaty Tribes have pushed for protections in the region and earlier this year joined the Red Lake Nation and an Anishinaabe First Nation in Canada in a cross-border effort to protect the watershed.

NCAI Executive Director Larry Wright Jr. says the order provides immediate relief, but permanent protections are still needed.

The organization is calling for federal legislation permanently withdrawing the Boundary Waters and Rainy River Headwaters from mineral leasing and development.

And on this day in 1763, British commander Jeffery Amherst wrote a letter calling for the destruction of Native people resisting British expansion.

The letter came during Pontiac’s War, when a confederation of Native nations fought British forces around the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley.

Amherst also supported efforts to spread smallpox among Native people, one of the most infamous examples of biological warfare discussed during the colonial era.

 

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Check out today’s Native America Calling episode

Thursday, August 27, 2026 — Native Bookshelf: ‘Treat Them as Buffalo’ by Blair Palmer Yoxall