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Monday Morning (September 21, 2026): Articles You May Have Missed This Past Weekend
Happy Monday Morning!
Here are some of the articles you may have missed this past weekend:
Three Years After Her Son Died of an Overdose, a Lummi Mother Keeps Showing Up
Evelyn Jefferson was one of the first people I spoke with about the overdose crisis in Indian Country. A member of the Lummi Nation, Jefferson is a crisis worker, meaning she spends her days responding to overdoses to administer naloxone, making contact with tribal members who are living in homeless encampments in the nearby city of Bellingham, Wash., and making sure they have food, water, and transportation to doctors’ appointments.
I already knew the numbers; I knew that Native people were overdosing at rates much higher than the rest of the country. Jefferson was the first person who told me what it’s like on the ground. She told me about caring for people’s open wounds caused by drug use, seeing the faces of people she grew up with in the encampments, and witnessing the omnipresence of death after waves of deadly fentanyl swept through the reservation. She helped me grasp the scale and depth of loss from overdoses and the power of continuing to care for community in the darkest of times.
Q&A: Leonard Peltier on Life After Prison, His Art, His Story and a Message to Native Youth
Native News Online founder and publisher Levi Rickert interviewed Leonard Peltier on Monday, September 14, 2026.
Peltier, who turned 82 on September 12, discussed life after prison, his health, his artwork, an upcoming exhibition in New York City, a new documentary about his case, plans for a biography, the progress and challenges facing Indian Country, and his message to Native youth.
Peltier, an Indigenous activist and elder associated with the American Indian Movement (AIM), was released from federal prison on Feb. 18, 2025, after President Joe Biden commuted his sentence to home confinement. Peltier had spent nearly five decades behind bars following his conviction in connection with the 1975 shooting deaths of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
Three Families Evacuated as San Juan River Flooding Impacts Shiprock on Navajo Nation
Three families were temporarily evacuated Friday as rising water from the San Juan River flooded areas near Nizhoni Park and the San Juan Bridge in Shiprock, New Mexico on the Navajo Nation.
Heavy rainfall earlier Friday in the Farmington area sent runoff downstream into the San Juan River, causing water levels to rise in Shiprock. Nizhoni Park, on the east side of the San Juan Bridge, was among the areas most impacted by the flooding.
The Navajo Police Department’s Shiprock District issued a temporary evacuation notice at approximately 3:41 p.m., directing residents in the affected area to leave their homes because of rising water and flooding near the bridge.
The post Monday Morning (September 21, 2026): Articles You May Have Missed This Past Weekend appeared first on Native News Online.