A 7 p.m. curfew for juveniles in the Gila River Indian Community will continue, despite being scheduled to end on Monday. Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis issued the emergency declaration, citing public safety reasons in late February.
It has now been extended a second time. His latest executive order, signed on March 28, lengthened that curfew across the nearly 600-square-mile reservation just south of Phoenix.
U.S. Census data shows a fifth – or nearly 3,000 residents – among the reservation’s total population are younger than 14 years old.
While officials say conditions have improved, “threats to public safety still remain and calls of shots fired in tribal neighborhoods continue,” adding that “much of the violence has taken place at night.”
The Valley-based tribe’s marquee Mul-Chu-Tha Fair and Rodeo – one of the largest in Indian Country – was cancelled earlier this month. Now the curfew is expected to end on May 1.
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Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren made his third annual state address in Shiprock on Tuesday, outlining his administration’s accomplishments amid ongoing efforts to remove him from office before his term expires this year. -
That pending land swap between the U.S. Forest Service and a multinational mining company would result in a six-decade underground copper project that is estimated to create a two-mile-wide crater, devouring an Apache holy site called Oak Flat. -
Tribes are still figuring out how to start and finish renewable energy projects amid the Trump administration freezing or eliminating federal dollars from the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, which directed more than $720 million to Indian Country. -
Scientists, writers, artists and others with an interest in the Colorado River got together recently in Moab, Utah, for an event called Rivers of Change. -
As currently written, the proposed EPA rule would narrow the 1972 landmark law’s enforcement with estimates suggesting that 80% of the nation’s wetlands could be at risk.
