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The Navajo Generating Station, once the largest coal-burning plant in the West, closed in 2019 when coal was no longer economically feasible fuel. It was the only client of the nearby Kayenta mine, which also closed. (Photo by Bill Morrow, Creative Commons)
News

How to transition from coal is the question

The cancellation of the 2020 Native American Basketball Invitational was a blow to a community that benefited from the event thanks to scholarships and exposure. (File photo by Nate Fain/Cronkite News)
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Keeping girls in the game

Justin Tafoya, a registered nurse serving as a public information officer, talks to Lafe Altaha about his health before a nurse checks Altaha’s vital signs at his home in Whiteriver, Ariz., on March 17, 2021. (Photo by Alberto Mariani/Cronkite News)
News

Apache reflections from a pandemic

Theresa Guerrero, of Tucson, raises a candle in memory of those lost to drug overdoses during an event in Gilbert, Ariz., on March 31, 2021. Her son died of a fentanyl overdose last May, and she says his struggles with drugs were exacerbated by isolation brought on by the pandemic. (Photo by Alberto Mariani/Cronkite News)
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Drug overdoses surge during pandemic

Apache Stronghold members march in Phoenix at a February, 2021 rally calling for courts to block plans for a copper mine at Oak Flat in southeast Arizona. (Photo by Alberto Mariani/Cronkite News)
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Oak Flat draws support of religious groups

Marlinda Bedonie has found a passion for running and representing her Indigenous culture on social media, highlighting her half-marathons, 10Ks and other races. (Photo by Ike Everard/Cronkite News)
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Run the land: Native women across the U.S.

“I think there is starting to be this recognition and movement of diversity and celebrating diverse bodies,” says Lisa MacDonald, who directs the student-led Body Positive Arizona. (Photo courtesy of Lisa MacDonald/University of Arizona)
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Body-image struggles, eating disorders converge during pandemic

Zhane Atene and her younger sister Leighan fill plastic containers with water to haul back home in this 2017 file photo. Lack of running water is just one of the many infrastructure problems on tribal lands, officials told a House panel Wednesday, April 21, 2021. (File photo by Devon Cordell/Cronkite News)
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Indian Country infrastructure gap ‘big as the Grand Canyon’

The black-and-white portrait of a teenage girl from Phoenix’s Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community is a break from historic photos that “romanticize Native people and kind of keep us in a time capsule,” the artists say. (Photo by Sofia Fuentes/Cronkite News)
Lifestyle

Honoring resilience, spirit and future of Salt River people

As a woman who’s proud of her Diné heritage, Yang shares stories about her cultural traditions to help raise awareness of racism against Native Americans. Story published April 1, 2021 (Photo by Jeff Rosenfield/Cronkite News)
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RezTok: Indigenous storytelling

“Today we are back at the battleground,” Mel Hannah of the Arizona NAACP tells the crowd of about two dozen on April 7, 2021. (Photo by Kelly Richmond/Cronkite News)
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21st century Jim Crow

The improved access of the COVID-19 vaccine has raised interesting ethical question in the sports world, including should getting the vaccine, as Georgia coach Kirby Smart is here, be mandated and should athletes be prioritized. (Photo courtesy of Piedmont Healthcare via Cronkite News)
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To mandate or not mandate?

Registered Nurse Shawna Snyder and her husband Ernesto Burbank, who sang Native American songs before she died of COVID-19 in July, 2020. (Photo courtesy of Ernesto Burbank)
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Lost on the front lines

Dr. Amy Wagner, a naturopathic physician in Phoenix, says cannabis “helps with the PTSD. I’ve had wives come in with their husbands that say, ‘You know what, we’re getting along again’ because they’re not drinking anymore.” Feb. 2021 (Photo by Taylor Eagleston/Special for Cronkite News)
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Marijuana and mental health

Latrinda Tohe enrolled at Diné College to learn more about her people’s traditions. “I feel like everyone on the reservation is family,” she says. March 23, 2021 (Photo by Jeff Rosenfield/Cronkite News)
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'One generation away'

A monarch butterfly pollinates a flower at the Pismo Beach Butterfly Grove in Pismo Beach, California. (Photo by Leo Tochterman/Cronkite News)
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2024 protection is 'too long' for monarch butterflies

Glendale, Arizona; March 14, 2021. Whitehorse throws his hand back as he rides Kent’s Wildride before getting bucked off in round 2. (Photo by Marlee Smith/Cronkite News)
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'Mom I want to ride some bulls'

Cremated remains lie in the incineration chamber at the Paradise Memorial Crematory in Scottsdale, one of the state’s largest. Partly fueled by the pandemic, the U.S. cremation rate reached 56 percent in 2020; it was 67 percent in Arizona. (Photo by Kevin Pirehpour/Cronkite News)
Coronavirus

Hoping for relief from crematorium smoke

Volunteers deliver supplies to the Navajo Nation to help veterans living on the reservation. The efforts were coordinated by a new group called Native American Sustainability for Veterans and Those in Uniform. March, 2021 (Photo courtesy of Native American Sustainability for Veterans and Those in Uniform)
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Veterans helping Navajo veterans: 'A sense of hope'

The U.S. performed more than 100 above-ground nuclear tests over a 12-year period at the height of the Cold War, sending out plumes of radiation that sickened “downwinders” in Arizona and other states. The government has long compensated downwinders, but not people living in most of Mohave County. (File photo by Jessica Boehm/Cronkite News)
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Navajo officials push to broaden ‘downwinder’ coverage

Tribes in Arizona stand to get $88 million in housing block grant funding, part of a $450 million boost to tribal housing programs that was included in the American Rescue Plan. The Navajo Nation, shown above, will get an additional $49.8 million, the most of any tribe in the nation. (Photo by Quinn Dombrowski/Creative Commons)
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HUD invests $450 million in tribal housing

Water hauling the only way to deliver water on parts of the Navajo Nation, which says it has almost $4 billion in needed water projects. In this 2017 photo, Darlene Arviso fills her truck with well water for deliver from the St. Bonaventure Indian Mission and School. (Photo by Maria Esquinca/News21)
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More funding, less meddling for water projects

Registered nurse Elaine Crabb draws a dose of COVID-19 vaccine Monday, March 22, 2021 at a special vaccination site Bashas’ set up for its employees. It came as state officials announced that they will open registration for vaccine appointments to people as young as 16. (Photo by Travis Robertson, Cronkite News)
Coronavirus

Arizona opens COVID-19 vaccines to all 16 or older

Arizona National Guard Spc. Paige Curtiss speaks with a COVID-19 patient at an alternate care facility on the Navajo Nation in Chinle in this June 2020 photo. The Navajo Nation was hit hard by the coronavirus, with some of the highest infection rates in the country at one point. (Photo by Tech. Sgt. Michael Matkin/National Guard).
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Tribes welcome COVID-19 relief funds, say problems remain

From March 16 to 22, days after COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic last year, the FBI conducted more background checks for gun purchases than in any week since its instant system launched in 1998. (File photo by Daria Kadovik/Cronkite News)
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Rising gun sales 'most definitely increases risk'

New permits to drill for oil and natural gas on federal lands were paused for 60 days on Jan. 20, President Joe Biden's first day in office. (Photo by Zbynek Burival, Creative Commons)
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Pause on leasing public land draws mixed reaction

Grand Canyon. (Photo by Mark, Creative Commons)
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House OKs bill to ban mining around Grand Canyon

U.S. Army Sgt. Juan Arriaga repairs a light on a Border Patrol truck in Brownsville, Texas, in August. Thousands of National Guard troops and active-duty soldiers were deployed to the border, but they could only act in support roles – delivering meals, driving and repairing vehicles and assisting with border surveillance, among other jobs. (Photo by Staff Sgt. De’Jon Williams/National Guard)
Outside

Pentagon estimates of border duty costs, impact were unreliable

Diane J. Humetewa, Hopi, is the first Native American woman federal judge. (Photo by Patty Talahongva, Indian Country Today)
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More judges needed for ‘meaningful justice to all’

Christopher Carrillo, a clinical tester at the Southwest Center for HIV/AIDS in Phoenix, rolls a cart through the center’s parking garage for drive-thru HIV finger prick tests. (Photo by Gianluca D’Elia/Special for Cronkite News)
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Pandemic prompts changes to HIV testing, treatment

The sun rises over the Navajo Nation Reservation, which is the size of West Virginia but is home to just 173,000 people. The COVID-19 death rate on the reservation is greater than that of any U.S. state. (Photo by Megan Marples/Cronkite News)
Coronavirus

Vitamin D can help fight COVID-19

Klee Benally of the Navajo Nation at a 2016 protest outside the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, demanding cleanup of abandoned uranium mines. Even though mining stopped decades ago – and was banned by the tribe in 2005 – the fight to clean up the toxic sites has lingered. (File photo by Danika Worthington/Cronkite News)
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50 abandoned uranium mines + a mess = $220M from EPA

Researchers fitted this Mexican gray wolf with a radio collar in 2018. They estimate about two dozen Mexican gray wolf packs live in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico. (Photo courtesy of Jenna Miller, Cronkite News)
News

Return of Mexican wolves in Southwest

An airsoft player points his gun around a corner at Dreadnought Airsoft in Phoenix on Nov. 22. Like many players, he has removed the imitation gun’s orange tip, which is required under a 1988 federal law. (Photo by Payton Muse/Special for Cronkite News)
Outside

The realism of imitation firearms

Jesse Yazzie is a Navajo artist and the first of four creatives who will exhibit their artwork quarterly on a 8X20-foot shipping container near the Roosevelt Row Welcome Center. Behind him is his mural “Triumph Over Tragedy.” (Photo by Eunique Yazzie/KJZZ)
News

Decking out downtown Phoenix

A 2013 photo of the Tres Rios wetlands, a reclaimed part of the Salt, Gila and Agua Fria rivers that is now teeming with wildlife. Tres Rios is one of the projects named in a bill creating a $150 million fund for local water projects in Arizona, with the first $900,000 being released for a Pascua Yaqui irrigation project. (Photo by doncentjoyce, Creative Commons)
News

Pascua Yaqui win water funds

Lonely alone loneliness (Photo by R. Fazio via Creative Commons)
News

The other pandemic: Loneliness

Hate crimes driven by religious bias are typically among the most frequent hate crimes in Arizona, after race and sexual orientation. They were the second-highest hate crime cited in the state in 2019, according to FBI data. Vandals in this 2017 photo spray-painted swastikas on the home of a Jewish political candidate in Pinal County. (File photo courtesy the Arizona Anti-Defamation League).
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Arizona hate crimes bounced back in 2019; experts fear a surge in 2020

Jordan Marie Brings Three White Horses Daniel, a distance runner from South Dakota, wanted to do more to help the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Movement, so she made it part of her running experience and featured it on her social media. (Photo courtesy Devin Whetstone)
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Athletes lend a hand(print) to MMIW

Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez was one of three tribal leaders who cast Arizona’s Electoral College votes Monday. (Photo courtesy of Nez via Twitter)
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3 Arizona tribal leaders among electoral voters

Priscilla Coronado Madrid, a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, cast her vote for Democrat Joe Biden on Election Day. She was a cashier at a Shell gas station before the pandemic cost her her job. “We’re still trying to get back on our feet,” she says. (Photo by Franco LaTona/Cronkite News)
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Pandemic, Trump and racism drive voter turnout in some tribal communities

Activists have been protesting against the Resolution Copper mine at Oak Flat for years, including this 2015 protest in Washington. Opponents of the mine now worry that the Trump administration has fast-tracked the mine’s final environmental impact statement – a claim both the mine and the U.S. Forest Service deny. (File photo by Jamie Cochran/Cronkite News)
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Opponents worry feds are fast-tracking mine

Mikayla Prudholme has her eye on the ball – and on a college scholarship. The four-year varsity starter from Tustin, California, has been traveling with her club team since August. So far, she has played six tournaments in Arizona. (Photo courtesy of Brenda Leon)
Outside

California high school athletes hit the road

In this Thursday, May 7, 2020 file photo, a pregnant woman wearing a face mask and gloves holds her belly as she waits in line for groceries with hundreds during a food pantry sponsored by Healthy Waltham for those in need due to the COVID-19 virus outbreak, at St. Mary's Church in Waltham, Mass. On Thursday, June 25, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its list of which Americans are at higher risk for severe cases of COVID-19, adding pregnant women and removing age alone as a factor. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
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Alternative births

Second-grader Winona Begaye uploads homework in her family’s vehicle near Piñon. Navajo Nation schools have remained virtual this fall because it’s too dangerous to reopen their doors. To help families with no internet or poor access get online, the Piñon Unified School District outfitted school buses with Wi-Fi. (Photo by Megan Marples/Cronkite News)
News

‘It’s creating a new normal’

Dineh Benally operated a network of hemp farms on the Navajo Nation, but tribal and federal officials are now investigating his Navajo Gold farms for allegations of marijuana production, drug trafficking, labor and child labor law violations. (File photo by Marcella Baietto/Cronkite News)
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Hemp investigation expands to federal pot, labor probe

Girlsfinal
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Native American Basketball Invitational eyes 2021 return

Tohono O'odham Nation
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11 Arizona tribes among broadband license winners

The voters who sued for extra time to count ballots mailed from the Navajo Nation cited a report that said a voter on the reservation has an average of 10 days less to consider and return a ballot than a voter in Sedona, because of differences in the level of postal service between the two places. (Photo by Upupa4me/Creative Commons)
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Court rules against Navajo vote count extension

Legislation making its way through Congress aims to reaffirm that tribal epidemiology centers should have access to state and federal health data. Tribal leaders have had trouble accessing information to help fight COVID-19 and other diseases in places like the Navajo Nation, where this sign stands. (Photo by Daja E. Henry/Cronkite News)
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Bill would remove barriers to federal health data