Live coverage of North America and the Republican National Convention • Kansas Reflector

I’m in Milwaukee with a group of Native American journalists for the Republican National Convention to better understand the relationship between the federal government and colonial nations that will continue to exist as part of the project of the United States — regardless of which man is re-elected president in 2025.

Wherever the US goes after November 5th, the Indians will be here. We were here before the real de plata and the dollar. I would take any bet that we will be around much longer.

And if former President Donald Trump uses the Republican nomination as another step back on his path to the White House, Native journalists will be on the ground to cover the events and start a discussion about how tribal nations and Native Americans will engage with the next Trump administration.

Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation’s plan to reverse everything Biden has done — is also here. The group boasts responsibility for hundreds of Trump administration policies in his first year as president, and has hundreds more ready to go if he returns to office.

I pressed ctrl+f in my PDF viewer on page 517 to get to the Interior Department plan written by Trump’s last department chief, William Perry Pendley. It pledges to maintain U.S. energy production, which began to grow rapidly under President Barack Obama, with a focus on reducing new energy investment (electricity) and restoring old (coal).

He develops an administrative plan that picks up where he left off — moving D.C. Bureau of Land Management offices to places like Grand Junction, Colorado (his home state), and trying to manage the 95,000 wild horses and burros he estimates inhabit the West.

Alaska has its own section dedicated to energy and public lands.

He begins his views on the US Trust to Natives by accurately placing President Joe Biden in line with every US president, stating, “The Biden administration has violated its federal fiduciary duties to American Indians. This is unthinkable.” He then returns to the issue of energy policy, which will be the directive for how Trump will engage with Indian Country, saying that “the Biden administration’s war on domestically available fossil fuels and mineral resources is devastating.”

He even proposes “restoring the right of tribal governments to enforce environmental regulations on their lands.”

Now, here are the questions I have for Project 2025 and Mr. Pendley: How will your plan enable the U.S. government to finally fulfill its fiduciary responsibility to American Indians and support tribes who choose to protect their lands over develop energy resources?

Will he continue to invoke the Antiquities Act to fight tribes in cases like Bears Ears National Monument, where tribal coalitions are fighting to protect land that Trump wants to use for drilling?

How will the federal government ensure that revenues from these investments are spent on housing, education programs, and health care for tribal members?

I’ll be there to ask these questions to the Koahnic Broadcasting team, which airs Native America Calling, a live, hour-long radio show on tribal and non-tribal radio stations across North America. You can listen to the live coverage from the RNC this week, and even call in to ask questions or leave comments about how you want the U.S. government to fulfill its Trust obligations to those who were the original recipients of American political violence.

In our first program, we will interview leaders of the Oneida Nation and Ho-Chunk Tribe, sovereign states in Wisconsin, who will share their thoughts on the Republican National Convention as well as their views on working with the U.S. government under Trump’s leadership.

They can also exchange experiences from the first attempt.

In New Mexico, you can listen to our coverage at 11 a.m. each day on KUNM (89.9 FM) on any of its translators throughout the state, or from anywhere in the world online here. Native American Calling engineers will be working from the Koahnic Broadcasting studios in Albuquerque.

We will publish full coverage of the shows and conferences on Source New Mexico, and our news partners like ICTnews.org will republish them to reach even more people.

Shaun Griswold is the editor of Source New Mexico, where this article originally appeared. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector seeks to amplify the voices of those who are affected by public policy or who are excluded from public discourse. Find information, including how to submit your own comment, here.