American Indians

YAKIMA, Wash. — The federal government will pay more than $1 billion to settle a series of lawsuits brought by American Indian tribes over mismanagement of tribal money and trust lands, under a settlement announced Wednesday.

OGDEN — Americans treasure their freedom of speech and freedom of religion, along with the ability to deny both to people they don’t like.

So Dan Mach, director of Freedom of Religion for the American Civil Liberties Union, told an audience at Weber State University on Wednesday.

The 3,000 students at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research at Weber State University have studied everything they need to know to run the world when they take over, and that’s good.

Judging by the results, the current operators — that’s us — are working blind.

I am sad to see Maine’s Olympia Snowe leaving the U.S. Senate.

Utah is not Maine, so normally I wouldn’t comment on Snowe, but I can’t get over the nagging thought that Snowe, a well-known moderate, is leaving because Utah’s voters elected Sen. Mike Lee two years ago.

BISMARCK, N.D. -- University of North Dakota teams risk forfeiting any postseason games if their athletes, cheerleaders or band wear or display the school's Fighting Sioux nickname and American Indian head logo, an NCAA official said Wednesday.

TOHONO O'ODHAM NATION, Ariz. -- Kevin Carlos hates how the drug runners tramp through the ancient cemeteries and holy places he holds dear.

That peak up there, he says, speeding toward the reservation's border with Mexico. That's where the creator lives. His name is I'itoi, the elder brother. He created the tribe out of wet clay after a summer rain. Tribe members still bring him offerings -- shell bracelets, beargrass baskets and family photos -- and leave them in his cave scooped out of the peak.

But the drug smugglers don't know that. On their way to supply America's drug markets, they use these sacred hilltops as lookouts, water holes as toilets and the desert as a trash can.

So Carlos hunts them.

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho -- The Idaho Falls Police Department has closed its investigation into a mummified hand found in a museum storeroom and officials said the remains will likely be turned over to Native American tribes in Utah.