Reznet

Richard West, while director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, spent $48,500 in museum funds for a portrait of himself by a non-Native artist. Two U.S. senators call for an investigation into West's spending.

The National Park Service is completing its journey to Congress with the thoughts of the Navajo and Mescalero Apache about making the Long Walk a national historic trail.

The Tohono O'odham Nation will soon rebury the remains of nearly 200 of their ancestors, dug up in the late 1970s and early '80s by teams of archaeologists working on what was then known as the Anamax-Rosemont site.

By the end of this summer, the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Michigan hopes to turn over the remains of 65 individuals believed to have been Native American to the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians, which will help return them to their communities.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says she will launch a new multiyear effort to improve health care for American Indians, which she calls a "historic failure."

President Obama announced the appointment of Kimberly Teehee of the Cherokee Nation as his long-awaited senior policy adviser for Native American affairs, a position he promised to create while campaigning for the presidency.

The U.S. has an obligation, based on a 1787 agreement between tribes and the government, to provide American Indians with free health care on reservations. But that promise has not been kept.

In a movement intended to mend the decades-old physical, emotional and mental abuse suffered by American Indian children in boarding schools, an American Indian group stopped in Tahlequah, Okla., on its 40-day, 6,800-mile "Journey For Forgiveness."

A Wisconsin effort to open communication and cooperation between tribal and state law enforcement agencies has gotten attention from far away. While some have raised questions about the potential impact on tribal sovereignty, others point to the effectiveness of the new approach.