This time of year, Christmas, people across our Tribe and the country tend to soften and be more generous, with our money, if not our time.

I’ve covered governments both on and off tribal land. They’ve ranged from Tribal Council and its committees to school boards, from county commissions to town councils and aldermen.

A familiar decoration at Christmas is the Nativity Scene.  Some people adorn their homes with small statues or their yards with large illumined figures of the Nativity.  We know the characters all too well. 

My wife and I recently watched a short documentary on YouTube entitled “Metal from the Dirt” which covered a fledging, and growing, metal band scene on the Navajo Nation.

I was watching the live feed of Tribal Council and again some of the official video archives of different sessions of government workings, and I came away a little sad at what we are allowing ourselves to be and how we talk to the people we say that we love. 

We will soon be the proud recipients of a tribal government that has, for the first time in our people’s history, decided to use tribal resources to directly benefit people who aren’t even citizens of the US. 

Getting youth engaged in the Cherokee language can be challenging.

Our congressional representative in congress, Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) was recently reprimanded by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee over how he chose to respond to allegations of sexual harassment from his female staffers.