Here:
EPA’s New WOTUS Proposal Deepens the Regulatory Gap for Tribal Waters
EPA and the Army Corps have supplemented their proposed WOTUS rule with alternatives that could sharply reduce federal protection for Tribal waters in a prepublication document shared at the link above.
The agencies are now considering limiting “relatively permanent” waters to those flowing virtually year-round and requiring wetlands to contain perennial surface water continuously connected to another jurisdictional water, a standard they acknowledge would exclude most intermittent streams and a majority of currently jurisdictional adjacent wetlands, with especially significant effects in the arid West.
The proposal would result in significant implications for Tribes, since most eligible Tribes lack TAS authority to administer Clean Water Act programs, many lack resources to build equivalent Tribal programs, and pollution may originate in adjacent jurisdictions. In other words, the federalism premise that another sovereign can simply regulate waters abandoned by the federal government often fails in Indian country. The Tribal regulatory gap would effectively be made more consequential under this proposed substantially narrower federal rule. Tribes may request government-to-government consultation at CWAwotus@epa.gov once the supplemental notice is published in the Federal Register, opening the 30-day comment period.
From the supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking:
The agencies acknowledge that because they generally implement Clean Water Act programs on Tribal lands, a reduced scope of Federal jurisdiction as a result of the Sackett decision will affect Tribes differently than it will affect States. Currently, of the Tribes that are eligible, most have not received treatment in a manner similar to a State (TAS) status to administer Clean Water Act regulatory programs. While some Tribes have established Tribal water programs under Tribal law or have the authority to establish Tribal programs under Tribal law, many Tribes are still building capacity and may lack resources to create a Tribal water program under Tribal law, to administer a program, or to expand programs that currently exist.
Therefore, Tribes may disproportionately rely on the Federal Government for water program implementation and enforcement of water quality violations. Tribes may also be affected by pollution from adjacent jurisdictions. Many Tribes are located in the arid West, where there are fewer waters that may meet the relatively permanent standard. Nonetheless, the proposed rule, as supplemented by this notice, preserves Tribal authority to choose whether to include waters that are not covered under the Clean Water Act under Tribal laws and regulations. Any decision by the Tribes to protect beyond the limits of the Clean Water Act is not compelled by the statute or by this proposed rule, as supplemented.
Worth a Read: After more than a century, Fort Peck children are coming home from Carlisle
The Fort Peck Journal has provided community-centered coverage of the return of three Fort Peck children who were sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School together in 1890 and died there.
Louis H. Montclair’s coverage documents how the Fort Peck community has prepared to bring the children home through family participation, an awareness walk across the reservation, the Orange Flag Project, community prayers, and ceremony.
Peter Howe and Richard Morgan Disinterred at Carlisle; Christine Redstone Next by Louis H. Montclair for Fort Peck Journal, Sept. 1, 2026
After More Than a Century, Fort Peck Children Are Coming Home From Carlisle by Louis H. Montclair for Fort Peck Journal, September 1, 2026
From a Phone Screen to Carlisle: How the Orange Flag Project Took on a Life of Its Own by Louis H. Montclair for Fort Peck Journal, September 1, 2026
D.C. Federal Court Rules in Favor of Coquille Trust Land Acquisition
Here are the new materials in Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians v. Dept. of the Interior (D.D.C.):
Prior post here.
CFC Dismisses Takings Claim of Confiscated Hemp Products from Standing Rock Rez
Here are the materials in Luger v. United States (Fed. Cl.):
What the Record Shows: ACF’s Head Start Rulemaking, More Than 9,200 Comments, and a Tribal Consultation Ahead
More than 9,200 comments were submitted on the Administration for Children and Families’ proposed Head Start rewrite by September 6, 2026. 46 of them discussed Tribal programs, Tribal languages, Indigenous children, or other Tribal concerns. But none could be verified from the public record as having been submitted by a Tribe, Tribal organization, or Tribal Head Start provider.
That may soon change. The Office of Head Start has scheduled a virtual Tribal consultation specifically on the proposed rule for September 16, 2026, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. ET. Tribal leaders and their representatives may provide testimony regarding the proposed changes and their implications for American Indian and Alaska Native Head Start programs, children, families, and communities. Testimony will be included in the proposed rule’s public comment record unless the Tribe or individual providing it requests otherwise.
A signed letter authorizing a representative to speak for a Tribe is due September 11. Written testimony may be submitted to AIANHeadStart@acf.hhs.gov through October 6. Registration and additional information are available here.
As of September 6, therefore, the publicly visible docket contained other people’s descriptions of Tribal interests, but no identifiable submission from the Tribal governments and providers that operate the affected programs. The September 16 consultation offers an important opportunity to change that record.
The Office of Head Start also conducted its regularly scheduled Tribal Head Start consultation on June 18, 2026 before this proposed rule was published. ACF’s preamble says the proposal reflects feedback received over time from Head Start leadership, “including Tribal leaders,” but it doesn’t identify the Tribal leaders consulted about these particular changes or explain how their views shaped the proposal.
What ACF is Proposing
ACF’s proposed rule, Reducing Federal Burden for Head Start Programs, would replace much of the existing Head Start Program Performance Standards with a substantially shorter set of regulations. Among other changes, the proposal would:
- Reduce the administrative cost cap from 15% to 5%, subject to a waiver process
- Remove federal staff-child ratios and class size limits in favor of other applicable standards
- Eliminate or reduce requirements governing staff qualifications, professional development, coaching, and caseloads
- Remove or reduce requirements for health, developmental, dental, mental health, and family services
- Reduce requirements for home visits, program duration, parent committees, and community assessments
- Change eligibility documentation and enrollment requirements
- Require education to be conducted in English, with an exception allowing an Indian Head Start agency to use a Tribal language when doing so is related to “the furtherance of tribal heritage.”
Some provisions recognize Tribal circumstances or preserve existing Tribal flexibility. But the rule as a whole would apply to Tribal Head Start programs, not just the provisions that specifically reference Tribal Head Start. The Tribal language exception and the operation of Tribal Head Start programs in general should be considered together with the 5% administrative cost cap, elimination of federal standards, and changes to health, staffing, eligibility, governance, and home visiting requirements.
The proposal also raises a distinct jurisdictional question. ACF frequently presents deregulation as a choice between federal requirements and state or local control. Tribal Head Start programs don’t always fit that binary. If a federal regulatory standard disappears and particular Tribal Head Start program is not subject to state child care licensing, what becomes the governing minimum? Does Tribal law control? Does the proposed rule consistently recognize Tribal licensing and regulatory authority? Or does it create uncertainty for Tribes where the federal government claims to be creating flexibility?
What Other Commenters are Saying about Tribal Head Start Programs
I reviewed the 9,233 public submissions included in a regulations.gov bulk download that I obtained on September 6. I identified 46 comments that expressly discussed Tribal, American Indian, Alaska Native, Indigenous, reservation, or Tribal-program concerns.
Those comments repeatedly raised several issues:
- The 5 percent administrative cost cap. Commenters warned that the cap could fall especially heavily on small, rural, and Tribal programs, which cannot spread fixed costs for audits, payroll, human resources, technology, facilities, and federal compliance across large enrollments or multiple locations.
- Tribal languages and cultural continuity. Many commenters invoked Tribal language preservation to oppose the proposed English-instruction requirement. (The exception permitting use of Tribal language is limited to Indian Head Start programs.) Several connected language to identity, family relationships, intergenerational transmission, and cultural survival.
- Assimilation and boarding school history. Some commenters described English-only education as language erasure or compared it to the forced assimilation of Indigenous children in Indian boarding schools.
- Reservation geography and service access. Commenters identified rural and Tribal communities as particularly dependent on home visiting, transportation, and flexible service delivery systems.
- Consultation and participation. Several urged ACF to work with Tribal Nations, Tribal communities, or Tribal organizations before changing the standards.
- Child care and workforce infrastructure. Commenters described Tribal Head Start as essential not only to children’s education and health, but also to parents’ ability to work and to the economic stability of Tribal communities.
One unidentified commenter asked how Tribal child care subsidy payments would be included, noting that Tribal subsidy rates were even lower than state rates.
These comments recognize many important problems. What they generally can’t supply is evidence that Tribes possess that establish the scale, operation, and legal significance of these problems.
- Non-Tribal commenters can predict that the 5% administrative cost cap will harm Tribal programs, but they can’t document a Tribal program’s existing administrative costs, or the positions and services that would be lost under the proposed cap.
- Non-Tribal commenters can invoke the importance of teaching Tribal languages, but they can’t determine whether the proposed exception adequately protects immersion programs, intertribal classrooms, urban Native children, or how it interacts with a Tribe’s own language and education laws.
- They can mention the challenges of access to Tribal Head Start programs given reservation geography, but Tribes are in the best position to establish what home visiting, transportation, health coordination, and workforce recruitment actually require.
Tribal interests are not absent from the docket. But as of September 6, identifiable Tribally authored comments, and the financial, governmental, cultural, and operational evidence that Tribes themselves are uniquely positioned to provide, was absent.
What the Record Still Needs
Tribal governments, Tribal organizations, and Tribal Head Start providers are uniquely positioned to tell ACF:
- What percentage of their budgets currently qualifies as administrative costs.
- How a 5% administrative cost cap would interact with negotiated indirect-cost rates and shared Tribal-government services.
- Which staff positions, services, or enrollment slots would be affected.
- Whether reliance on the Tribal language exception offers meaningful protection, how broadly it applies, and who determines whether language furthers Tribal heritage.
- Which statutory, Tribal, state, or other standards would govern when particular federal regulatory requirements are removed.
- How reservation geography and remoteness affect transportation, home visiting, facilities, workforce recruitment, and access to health and mental health providers.
- How the proposed changes would interact with Tribal health, education, licensing, and child care systems
- Whether the Tribal language exception protects the language models Tribes actually use.
- Who should determine whether instruction furthers Tribal heritage.
- Whether the proposal is consistent with the Head Start Act, the Native American Languages Act, Tribal law, federal consultation requirements, and the federal trust responsibility.
- Whether ACF’s Tribal consultation was timely, adequate, and capable of influencing the proposed rule.
The existing comments frequently address Tribal programs, but the docket still needs evidence from the Tribal governments and providers that operate them.
Comments are due October 6, 2026. The public docket is available here.
A note on method: This review covers the 9,233 public submissions included in a regulations.gov bulk download obtained September 6, 2026, covering comments submitted in response to ACF-2026-0595-0001 and ACF-2026-0595-0002. The bulk download includes a Government Agency Type field that lets a submitter self-identify as a federal, state, local, or Tribal government; none of the 9,233 submissions had this field populated as Tribal, or, in fact, populated at all, for any government type. 46 submissions expressly addressed Tribal, American Indian, Alaska Native, Indigenous, reservation, or Tribal program issues, based on a keyword search of the comment text included in that download. That search could not reach the substance of 4,678 submissions, just over half the docket, whose comment field contains only a placeholder (“See Attached”) pointing to an attachment file not included in the bulk download; those attachments were not separately reviewed. No submission could be verified from the available metadata, comment text, or the Government Agency Type field as filed by a Tribe, Tribal organization, or Tribal Head Start provider, but that finding necessarily reflects only the roughly half of the docket whose substance was available for review. A Tribal government, organization, or provider could be among the submissions whose content appears solely in an unreviewed attachment. This review also predates the Tribal consultation scheduled for September 16; testimony from that consultation will become part of the public comment record unless its inclusion is declined.
Akwesasne Governments Reject “Lake America” Across the International Border
From a statement posted by the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe and published on Sept. 4:
AKWESASNE — (Seskehkó:wa/September 1, 2026) The Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe (SRMT) and Mohawk Council of Akwesasne (MCA) stand together in opposition to the recent Executive Order issued by the current United States administration seeking to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America.”
The name Ontario is widely understood to be derived from an Iroquoian word, often transcribed as ontarí:io, or similar spellings in historical records. The word has been interpreted as meaning “great lake”, “beautiful lake”, or “sparkling water”.
More importantly, the name predates the creation of Canada and United States. European explorers adopted an existing indigenous name for the lake and the name was later applied to the province when Ontario was established in 1867.
For the Kanien’kehá:ka, however, the lake is known as Kaniatari:io, often translated as “Beautiful/nice lake.” This name reflects our own language, worldview, and enduring relationship with the lake.
These names are not simply words on a map to our people. They carry our languages, histories and responsibilities to the lands and waters since time immemorial.
For Akwesasronon, the international boundary is a present-day reality that came long after our ancestors’ presence here. Akwesasne territory extends across both Canada and the United States, and is a stark reminder that our people were here long before either country was established. Replacing a name derived from one of the original languages of these lands with one intended to assert a modern national identity disregards that Indigenous history.
What has carried meaning for generations should not be rewritten to satisfy the politics of a moment.
Governments and administrations will change. Our language, our history and our relationship with these lands and waters will remain.
The Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe and Mohawk Council of Akwesasne will continue to recognize the history and Indigenous origins of Lake Ontario and uphold the Kanien’kehá relationship with Kaniatari:io.
No act of government can erase that relationship.
Our earlier post on this topic is here.
Tribal Innovations Update: Chickasaw Nation Begins Construction on 160-acre Health Campus
The medical campus will include twelve buildings, a hospital, an outpatient clinic, and more than twenty-three specialties.
From the Chickasaw Nation press release:
Upon completion, the facility will grow to include a nearly 2.5 million-square-foot medical campus with 140 inpatient beds and will employ more than 5,500 staff. It is expected to serve more than 100,000 First Americans in the region.
“This campus will do things most hospitals cannot. We are building medical residencies, training the next generation of doctors right here in Oklahoma, and in Newcastle,” Governor Anoatubby said. “We are building a First American research center owned and operated by a tribal nation, the first of its kind anywhere in the country.”
Happy Labor Day
Photographer David Grant Noble took a series of photos of Mohawk ironworkers in New York City in 1970. The workers were from Kahnawake Reserve. Below is a slideshow of his pictures.
Slideshow – Mohawk Steelworker Series
In 1971, Noble was also invited to accompany Anishinaabeg from the Bad River Reservation in Wisconsin for a day of gathering wild rice. On another occasion, he visited the Nett lake community in Minnesota during their wild rice harvest, where he accompanied Ira Isham and his family. Below is a slideshow of Noble’s photos from the manoomin harvest in both Tribal communities.
David Grant Noble at http://www.davidgrantnoble.com
Click here to see the manoomin harvest slideshow.
Tribal Courts in Action: Northern Cheyenne Court Rules on the Relationship Between the Tribal Constitution and Traditional Authority
The Northern Cheyenne Tribal Court recently granted partial summary judgment in a case arising from a dispute between Northern Cheyenne Traditional Chiefs invoking asserted traditional authority and members of the Tribe’s elected Council.
Judge Frans Andersson held that the September 10, 2025 Chiefs’ Declaration, which purported to remove eight elected Council members, was void and had no legal effect. Because those officials had never lawfully been removed, the court also concluded that the subsequent special election could not create a lawful replacement Council. The defendants were ordered to “immediately peaceably surrender” control of the Council offices and government resources to the plaintiff Council members.
What’s especially interesting is the court’s treatment of custom and tradition. The opinion doesn’t treat them as irrelevant to Tribal governance. Rather, it recognizes their continuing cultural and political significance while distinguishing that influence from the exercise of governmental power under the Tribe’s Constitution.
Any exercise of the inherent power of custom and tradition must occur within the bounds of the law governing the Tribe.
In other words, custom and tradition can inform and legitimate Tribal governance, but under the Northern Cheyenne governmental structure addressed in this case, they cannot independently displace the Constitution’s procedures for removing elected officials. Traditional leaders remain free to pursue political change through mechanisms available under Tribal law, including the constitutional referendum process.
Turtle Talk 
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