Native American

A long-awaited, controversial report weighs updates to standards that state officials say have failed to protect fish and wildlife. But environmentalists, Native tribes and others already are furious about how long this has taken — and the state is years away from putting a plan into action.

As four aging hydroelectric dams are demolished, tribes and communities along the Klamath River wait anxiously to see what the future holds. “Once a river is dammed, is it damned forever?” experts ask.

California voters last year rejected a ballot measure that could have settled a long-running feud between casino-owning tribes and poker parlors. Now the battle over betting turf is being revived in the Legislature with a tribe-backed bill.

A discrimination complaint filed by Native American tribes and environmental justice groups alleges that California has failed to protect water quality in the Bay-Delta. The EPA is investigating.

If you’re the author or supporter of a bill before the California Legislature, this is one list you dread: While getting sent to the “suspense file” doesn’t seal a measure’s fate, it does put it at some risk of being killed for the year.  Leading up to the big suspense file decision day next week, […]

The Problem Solvers Caucus, one of 16 non-party caucuses in the state Legislature, wants to put public policy before partisan politics, but that's a tall task. Other caucuses are bipartisan mostly in name only.

From 2018 to 2021, 109 Native Americans took their own lives in California. Can the new national hotline help save some lives? This week in Sacramento, Assemblymember James Ramos, a member of the Serrano/Cahuilla tribe who is the first Native American to be elected to the state Assembly, partnered with Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services […]

Despite reversing course last week, the February decision by Gov. Gavin Newsom and state water officials to bypass environmental rules for water storage allowed greater harm to salmon populations already besieged by drought. Native American tribal members argue that such environmental harm amounts to a civil rights violation.

Officials from California's largest tribe are concerned about the lack of engagement so far by offshore wind companies, reviving worries over the historic extraction of resources without their involvement.

They say money can’t buy you happiness — and that was likely true Tuesday for the proponents of two dueling initiatives on California’s Nov. 8 ballot to legalize sports betting. After all the money raised by the four campaigns on both sides of Propositions 26 and 27 — nearly $441 million so far, nearly double […]