The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "American Indians" ...
-
Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families
NPR launched a three-part series investigating the placement of hundreds of Native American children in foster care and a troubling incentive behind the effort: money.
Tags: native Americans; foster care; Indian Child Welfare Act
-
Rape on the Reservation
One in three Native American women in the United States will be raped in their lifetimes. The perpetrators who commit crimes of sexual assault do so without fear of punishment because those responsible are rarely brought to justice.
Tags: sexual assault; rape; Indian; Native American; reservation
-
Yellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed
This book reveals how the U.S. government consciously looked away as miners, and then the neighbors, were exposed to uranium's dangers as it was mined on a Navajo reservation, in a slow-motion environmental catastrophe that last for decades and continues today.
Tags: uranium; radiation; mining; Navajo; Indian reservation; yellow cake; yellow dirt; EPA; Environmental Protection Agency; Indian Health Service; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Atomic Energy Commission; National Cancer Institute; environmental pollution; environmental disaster; nuclear power; atomic bomb
-
Aid to Indian County
Amidst an impoverished American Indian reservation lies nearly of decade of corrupt practices from a welfare program meant to help those who need it. The Torres-Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians' Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program has misused more than $6 million in taxpayer money over two years.
Tags: Native Americans; Indians; welfare; Torres-Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians' Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
-
Failure of Justice
The failed investigation of a police imposter who sexually assaulted at least 15 Apache teenagers serves as a window into the breakdown of law enforcement in Indian country. Native Americans suffer from disproportionate crime rates - especially sexual assaults - largely because of a dysfunctional criminal justice system. In this case, two men were falsely arrested and jailed; the real criminal got away and victims saw no justice. The government's own records, obtained through a federal lawsuit, demonstrate that the problem is systemic - a result of overlapping jurisdictions, mismanagement, lack of funding inadequate training and multiple other flaws.
Tags: Law Enforcement; Native American; Justice; Jurisdiction; Sexual Assault; Rape; Police; Imposter; Apache; Whiteriver; Indian Reservation
-
Sexual Abuse of Native American Women
A look at the serious flaw in law enforcement and prosecution regarding the sexual abuse of Native American women in South Dakota and Oklahoma.
Tags: Leslie Ironroad; reservation; Indian; Bureau of Indian Affairs; sexual abuse; Native American
-
Lawless Lands: The Crisis in Indian Country
"This four-part series uncovers the systemic failure of the federal judicial system to investigate and prosecute serious crime on America's Indian reservations and charts the cost of that failure to indigenous communities. The series presents the first detailed picture of the gap between reported crime, criminal investigation, and felony prosecution on American Indian lands under federal jurisdiction."
Tags: crime; Native Americans; federal government; Indian Affairs
-
Forgery claim blurs tribe's fate
Forged documents were used as part of a land development deal involving the ousted leader of the Amah Mutsun Indian Tribe and her San Diego-based development partner. The Bureau of Indian Affairs remained neutral on the matter even after learning that the documents were forged.
Tags: Native Americans; Indians; forgery; real estate; development; Bureau of Indian Affairs; zoning laws
-
The Churchill Files
The Rocky Mountain News tells how University of Colorado-Boulder ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill ignited a major controversy when he called the victims of the World Trade Center terrorist attack "Little Eichmanns." After calls for his firing, he was also accused of plagiarism and misrepresenting himself as having American Indian heritage. The News investigated and found evidence of academic misconduct through unauthorized use of others' material and language, inaccurate historical references in his scholarly work and no Indian ancestry.
Tags: Ward Churchill; University of Colorado; CAR; September 11; 9/11; Cherokee; corruption
-
Indian Givers
Without permission, an ASU research project used blood obtained from a local Indian tribe years earlier for a new project which detailed their genetic origins and showed links to schizophrenia. This investigation shows how that project was misleading to the tribe and also how it was insulting and against tribe religious belief.
Tags: Indian; Native American; scam; incest; breeding; medical; research; Arizona State University; Havasupai; blood; anthropology