Reporting live from Native America and the Republican National Convention

Republican National Convention in Milwaukee | Shaun Griswold / Source NM

MILWAUKEE — I’m in Milwaukee with a team of Native American journalists at the Republican National Convention to understand more about the relationship between the federal government and the colonized people that will continue to exist within the United States project — whichever man becomes president again in 2025.

Wherever the U.S. goes after Nov. 5, Native Americans will be here. We were here before real de plata and the dollar. I’d take any future bet that we’ll be around much longer.

And if former President Donald Trump can use the GOP nomination as another step back to the White House, there will be Native journalists on the ground to report and begin the conversation about how tribal nations and Native American people will interact with another Trump administration.

Project 2025 — The Heritage Foundation blueprint for reversing everything Biden — is here too. The group boasts responsibility for hundreds of Trump administration policies in his first year as president and has hundreds more ready should he return to office.

I punched ctrl+f in my pdf viewer to page 517 for the Department of Interior plan written by Trump’s last department head, William Perry Pendley. It commits to keeping up U.S. energy production that began to boom under President Barack Obama, with a focus on reducing new energy investments (electric) and bringing back the old (coal).

He writes an administrative plan that starts where he left off — moving D.C. Bureau of Land Management offices to places like Grand Junction, Colorado, (his home state) and trying to manage the 95,000 wild horses and burros he estimates are across the West.

Alaska gets its own section about energy and public lands.

He begins his views on the U.S. Trust to Natives by accurately placing President Joe Biden in line with every U.S. president by stating, “The Biden Administration has breached its federal trust responsibilities to American Indians. This is unconscionable.” Then he hits the energy policy point again that will be the directive for how Trump will work with Indian Country, saying “the Biden Administration’s war on domestically available fossil fuels and mineral sources has been devastating.”

He even proposes to “restore the right of tribal governments to enforce environmental regulation on their lands.”

Now, the questions I have out to Project 2025 and Mr. Pendley: How would your plan for the U.S. government to finally meet its Trust Responsibility to American Indians support tribes that choose land conservation plans over expanding energy options?

Will he continue to use the Antiquity Act to fight tribes over places like Bears Ears National Monument where tribal coalitions are fighting to preserve land that Trump wants to drill?

For tribes with robust energy investments, how would the federal government ensure revenues support housing, education programs and health care for tribal citizens?

I’ll be there to ask those questions with the Koahnic Broadcasting team that airs Native America Calling, a live one-hour radio show on tribal and non–tribal radio stations across North America. Starting on Monday, you can listen to live coverage from the RNC and even call in to ask your questions, or leave comments about how you want the U.S. government to meet its Trust obligations to people that were the original recipients of U.S. political violence.

On our first show, we will interview leaders from the Oneida Nation and Ho-Chunk Tribe, sovereign nations in Wisconsin, who will share their thoughts on the Republican convention and their views on how they would work with a Trump-run U.S. government.

They can also share experiences from the first go around.

In New Mexico, you can hear our coverage at 11 a.m. each day on KUNM (89.9 F.M.) on any of its translators statewide, or from anywhere in the world online here. The Native American Calling engineers will be working from Koahnic Broadcasting studios in Albuquerque.

We’ll post full shows and stories from the convention at Source New Mexico, and you’ll see those republished by our news partners like ICTnews.org to reach even more people.

Source New Mexico is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Shaun Griswold for questions: info@sourcenm.com. Follow Source New Mexico on Facebook and X.

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