ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Indigenous activists are reacting to news that President Donald Trump recently issued a presidential border-crossing permit for the Bridger Pipeline in northcentral Montana.
Yellowstone Public Radio’s Kayla Desroches reports.
The Bridger Pipeline would start in Phillips County, Mont. at the Canadian border and carry Alberta oil sands down through eastern Montana.
Fort Peck Assiniboine Tribal member and Wolf Point city councilman Lance FourStar says he fought for years against the Keystone XL pipeline.
“This was all kind of new to me. I was hoping it wasn’t real, and that it was just a rumor.”
Indigenous activists and environmental groups have been rallying around the public comment period for the Bridger Pipeline’s environmental analysis.
FourStar says he is disappointed by the presidential approval, but not surprised.
“That sinking feeling didn’t happen this time.”
A spokesperson with developer Bridger Pipeline says construction is slated to begin in fall 2027.
The pipeline still needs several permits to go ahead.
Kelly Hunt’s Funeral. (Courtesy Shaktoolik School / Facebook)
The Norton Sound community of Shaktoolik said their goodbyes to Kelly Hunt at a memorial service this Saturday, as Rhonda McBride from our flagship station KNBA reports.
She was the 19 year old whose remains were found in ravine in the Anchorage, Alaska area of Spenard two weeks ago, following her disappearance in January.
Friends and family gathered in the school gym for a simple, but emotional, service, with arms held open and voices raised in song.
“Where the tree of life is always blooming and the roses never fade.”
Prayers to bring Kelly Hunt home were finally answered, though not in the way the community had hoped. She was last seen visiting friends in Anchorage, on her way to attend the Alaska Christian College.
During the service, the lingering question of what happened to Hunt was set aside, to grieve and remember her as a young person, so was full of life and potential – qualities that Lynda Bekoalok says she cherishes.
In her more than two decades as a teacher in Shaktoolik, she remembers Hunt as one of the community’s most promising students.
“She was always positive and willing to jump in and help no matter where. She was always diligent in school. She always had a smile on her face.”
Bekoalok says everyone at the school encouraged Hunt to go to college. The community even raised money to help her with expenses, because they were proud of how she had overcome so many challenges at an early age.
Anchorage Police continue to investigate her case with no word yet on how she died.
No suspects have been arrested.
New footage of an ocelot in southern Arizona have captured. (Courtesy Center for Biological Diversity)
The ocelot is seldom seen in the Southwest anymore.
Few animals from the wild, spotted cat species still roam between the borderlands of northern Mexico and southern Arizona.
But as KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio reports, a group of tribal youth with ties to this now-endangered creature have bestowed one with an Indigenous name.
Tucson high school first-year Isaac Valencia was among nearly three dozen O’odham students part of the Voices of Our Youth program, working with a tribal linguist. Then, a couple hundred ballots were cast to decide a fitting moniker through a recent online vote.
“When I came up with the name, I named it an O’odham. And Himdam means traveler, like he has [an] untold story.”
Himdam was first spotted in the Atascosa Highlands in 2024.
More sightings of the same feline soon followed in the Whetstone, Patagonia and Santa Rita mountain ranges.
The nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity shared insights about ocelots and their fragile habitat, the Sky Islands, with this group of students.
For 14-year-old Valencia, who is from the San Xavier District of the Tohono O’odham Nation, Himdam’s survival is inspiring.
“It makes me real proud.”
And naming the rare cat means so much more.
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