It has been a long journey for Apache Stronghold. A journey stretching out over two decades to save a sacred Apache site outside Phoenix ― and close to the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation ― from being swallowed up by destructive copper mining.

In her seven years as executive director of the Gwichʹin Steering Committee (GSC), Bernadette Demientieff has fought hard against the powerful oil and gas industries, lobbyists, and congressional leaders to protect the Coastal Plain of the 19.3-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

Walt Pourier, a well-known artist and owner of Nakota Designs, thought the best way to keep Native kids out of trouble is to get them on a skateboard. “Rather than feel defeated by the narrative that suicide is the second leading cause of death among Native youth, we created a movement that uses the Lakota concept of ‘skan skan,’ or ‘moving forward together,’ to give youth reasons to live."

The Aleut Community of St. Paul Island (ACSPI) is a federally recognized tribe of more than 1,800 enrolled members from St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea. This rural Indigenous community is historically and culturally tied to the ecosystem of the Bering Sea, home to large numbers of mammals, birds, shellfish, and at least 419 species of fish.

Some people were born for a life of adventure. Jenifer Marx is one of those fortunate few. Once married to the late Robert F. Marx, a famous marine archaeologist and pioneering scuba diver, Jenifer has traveled the world, written books about buried treasures and shipwrecks, and has become a passionate supporter of Native causes.

Tina King Washington had more than enough good reasons for starting the Kwiyagat Community Academy on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation. “I knew my tribe needed a school because our kids were not doing well in the Montezuma-Cortez School District. They didn’t feel like they belonged,” says the tribal education director at the time.

Emery Golson has loved to grow things ever since she was a young girl helping her mom in the family garden. “I think that experience really connected me with the earth,” she says. Now everything that the 31-year-old philanthropist, herbalist, wife, and mother of two has a hand in seems to blossom.

For more than a decade, Kathy Carnevale has supported many Native causes. The one that most resonates with her is food sovereignty. “Native people, the food, the culture, and the land are all connected. And when people are disconnected from the land and their culture, it is very detrimental.," she says.

Early in his life, Dr. Norbert Goldfield had his sights set on a career in Renaissance art history. Instead, he went into medicine to honor his parents’ wishes. “I come from a generation where I did what my parents told me to do,” he tells First Nations. For more than 30 years, Dr. Goldfield has worked at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, as a board-certified internist, caring for the “poorest of the poor” in his city.

The green-energy agenda coming out of Washington, D.C., is being touted as the panacea to climate change. But at what cost to some Native American communities? That’s what People of Red Mountain is asking ─ a grassroots organization of traditional knowledge keepers and members of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe fighting hard against a proposed lithium mine in Thacker Pass, Nevada.