In remarks to the National Congress of American Indians 2021 Mid-Year Conference on Tuesday, June 22, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced a Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, a comprehensive review of the troubled legacy of federal boarding school policies.

The U.S. Mint announced recently that Chief Mankiller, who passed away in April 2010, will be one of five women featured on quarters in 2022 as part of the American Women Quarter Program including poet Maya Angelou, suffrage leader Adelina Otero-Warren, astronaut Sally Ride, and film actress Anna May Wong. 

The majority of the meeting was spent speaking with the Cherokee Indian Police Department (CIPD) on their monthly report. The May meeting of the Police Commission was cancelled, so the CIPD offered reports from both April and May.

Former massage therapist Anthony Brian Robinson, who worked at Mandara Spa in Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort, entered Alford pleas to sexually assaulting two clients, District Attorney Ashley Hornsby Welch said.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials closed Backcountry Campsite 29 in the Cosby section of the park due to a bear incident occurring at approximately 12:30 a.m. on Friday, June 18.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and the Peruvian government signed a memorandum of understanding to facilitate the return to Peru, for the benefit of the citizens of Peru and particularly the Indigenous communities of Peru, of the “Echenique Disc,” a pre-Inka gold ornament recognized as the symbol of the city of Cusco.