Rhonda LeValdo is exhausted, but she’s refusing to slow down. For the fourth time in five years, her hometown team and the focus of her decadeslong activism against the use of Native American imagery and references in sports is in the Super Bowl. As the Kansas City Chiefs prepare for Sunday's big game, so does LeValdo.
Non-profit news outlet Retro Report recently released a short film, , about the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz Island, which sparked a wave of Native American activism in the 1970s. Native News Online sat down with the film’s producer, Colleen Thurston (Choctaw Nation), to discuss how the occupation of Alcatraz was the beginning of the modern Indigenous rights era, what inspired her to create this film, and what she would like Native and non-Native audiences to gain from watching.
The 23 schools in Massachusetts that use an image of an indigenous person as their school mascot would have to start looking for new names and logos under a bill that advocates are hoping will get passed this session.