Friday, July 11, 2025

Manitoba has again declared a state of emergency because of wildfires. It’s the second time this year. As Dan Karpenchuk reports, the province’s premier Wab Kinew says more shelter is needed for people forced to leave their homes. The wildfires continue to force community evacuations, especially in northern areas. The province is in the middle of one of the worst wildfire season in 30 years. So far, about 20 million acres of land have burned in the province, 11 times worse than the average.  And there are more than 100 active fires burning in Manitoba. Now thousands of people are fleeing, some of them for the second time in the past couple of months. Here’s Manitoba premier Wab Kinew. “The primary reason that we have called this latest state of emergency is because we need access to more facilities to be able to shelter this large number of Manitobans who are being forced to flee their homes due to wildfires.” The community of Snow Lake declared a local state of emergency earlier this week. Then the Garden Hill First Nation also issued an evacuation notice. Canadian Armed Forces transport plans have already removed about 1,000 residents. So far, about 6,000 people have been transferred from their communities and 12,000 have been displaced. The state of emergency allows the province to use convention centers and arenas to help provide shelter space. Archaeologists with the Alutiiq Museum dig into layers on layers site at Karluk Lake called site 309, which revealed a “super structure”. This is separate from what was surveyed on Shuyak Island. (Courtesy Alutiiq Museum Archaeology Department & Repository) Shuyak Island, Alaska is one of several located in the Kodiak Archipelago and like many islands in the area it has a rich history. The Alutiiq Museum’s archaeological team has been surveying sites on the island for years and as KMXT’s Davis Hovey reports, they have pieced together more of the historical timeline of the island’s use. Patrick Saltonstall is the archaeology curator with the Alutiiq Museum. He’s heavily involved in site surveys and excavations around the Kodiak Archipelago. This spring, Saltonstall and staff from the museum’s archaeology team finished surveying Shuyak Island, which is located 54 air miles north of Kodiak. “A lot of the old research had focused on the northwest part of Shuyak and we surveyed the whole island. And we found a lot of really big villages on the east side.” He says they surveyed one site that dates back to roughly 7,000 years ago, which he suspects is the oldest found on that island thus far. “I think we found that one village that had 11 house pits, probably had two to three hundred people living in it, you know, 300 years ago.” Alutiiq/Sugpiaq people have inhabited areas around Kodiak Island for at least 7,500 years, according to archaeologists. And thousands of archaeological sites have been documented across the archipelago. According to the Alutiiq Museum, Shuyak Island was an integral part of that history with at least two established Alutiiq villages. But Russian fur trader Gregorii Shelikov destroyed one of the villages and by the late 1700s there were no communities left on the island. The word Suu’aq in Alutiiq means “rising out of the water”. And true to its name, Saltonstall says the island itself is rising at a faster rate than the sea level is, so the threat of eroding sites is not as prevalent today. “What we found up there is that’s not happening anymore. All the sites are much more stable. You see grass growing on all the beaches, and it demonstrates…the land sank in 1964 and it’s rebounded ever since, and it’s outpacing sea level rise up there.” Most of the island is now owned by the state and is included in the Shuyak Island State Park. Mark Macarro, seen here on Air Force One with President Joe Biden in 2024. Condemnation over conservative commentator Ann Coulter’s anti-Native post on social media site X continues. Brian Bull has more. Earlier this week, Coulter posted a video of Melanie Yazzie, a University of Minnesota professor and Navajo Nation member at a 2023 conference discussing colonization. Coulter posted “We didn’t kill enough Indians”, sparking outrage. The post has since disappeared from X, but tribal leaders and organizations have continued to denounce it as “violent” and low, even for a controversial figure like Coulter. The National Congress of American Indians has added to the criticism. NCAI President Mark Macarro says “Careless comments like this glorify the darkest chapters of U.S. history and actively endanger Native peoples’ lives today.” Larry Wright Jr., the NCAI’s executive director, adds, “Free speech does not confer a license to advocate for or justify mass murder — past or present.  When a public figure with more than two million followers romanticizes extermination, it fuels harassment, hate crimes, and political violence.” Others have pointed out the callousness of the post given the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) crisis that has affected Indian Country. Oklahoma’s Democratic Party has condemned Coulter’s post as disgusting, and supported boycotting Coulter and her associated products and media. Amy Barela, chairwoman of New Mexico’s Republican Party, called Coulter’s statement “vile, reprehensible, and fundamentally opposed to the values of human dignity, respect, and decency.” While Coulter’s post has disappeared, she has not recanted or apologized for her remarks.   Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our daily newsletter today.