After the classic series became a pandemic-era smash, a glossy new adaptation aims to explore the complexities of frontier life

Each incarnation of Little House on the Prairie has reflected the fears, hopes and hangups of its time – from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s semi-autobiographical children’s novels, first published in the wake of the Great Depression, to the television series they inspired, which premiered amid a recession and an oil crisis in 1974.

Netflix’s reboot, premiering on 9 July, is no exception. “The stories are able to transcend generations, which speaks to its basic nature,” says Luke Bracey, who stars in the new series as Charles “Pa” Ingalls, the rugged family patriarch. “This is a family trying to get along in the world.”

Jennifer Andrea Porras, now 53, says they were sexually abused by the union leader as a teen

A version of this story was published in Spanish in La Opinión.

When Jennifer Andrea Porras, a non-binary, Indigiqueer, Coahuiltecan artist and cultural worker from the San Francisco Bay Area, first found out about the New York Times investigation detailing allegations by multiple women of sexual abuse by civil rights icon Cesar Chavez, they were not surprised. The news confirmed their own experience with the co-founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union.

From peak-bagging to thru-hiking, Americans have turned traversing land into personal milestones. This wilderness ranger and Indigenous writer has witnessed it firsthand

Këmituxwe Éhènta Wehikiyànkw

You are walking in our old homeland

After spending 12 years backpacking some of America’s wildest trails as a wilderness ranger for the US Forest Service – and then losing that job to politics – last spring I set out for the Appalachian Trail (AT), the longest hiking-only footpath in the world.

Archaeological record suggests hunter gatherers were playing games of chance at the end of the last ice age

Native American hunter gatherers were using dice for gaming and gambling more than 6,000 years before the practice appeared anywhere else, a new study argues.

It says dice were being made and used on the western great plains of North America at the end of the last ice age, more than 12,000 years ago.

Rick Findler, photographer and Joan Wakelin bursary recipient, speaks to Navajo communities attempting to save a language and traditions that are being diluted by modern life

The Navajo Nation, home to the Navajo tribe, also known as the Diné, meaning “the people”, is the largest Native American reservation in the US, encompassing 27,000 sq miles across New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. The Navajo people exemplify resilience amid a rapidly changing cultural landscape and various threats to their heritage.

Despite challenges such as inadequate housing, unreliable infrastructure and limited access to technology, elders and youth are striving to preserve their rich cultural heritage and identity.

A Native American dancer, dressed in his traditional regalia, makes his way to a performance in Winslow, Arizona. During November there are many public performances and events celebrating Native American culture.

Researchers are weaving Native practices with western methods to revive ecosystems and reclaim food sovereignty

“I’m a glorified clam counter.”

So said Marco Hatch, a marine ecologist at Western Washington University and an enrolled member of the Samish Indian Nation. Hatch has been conducting surveys of mollusks growing in and around clam gardens in the Pacific north-west, as he collaborates with seven Indigenous communities to build or rebuild these rock-walled, terraced beaches once created and tended by their ancestors.

Indigenous doulas are creating support networks for mothers who are at the highest risk of pregnancy-related death

Mary Sherbick found out she was pregnant at the height of the pandemic in 2020. Although she and her partner had planned it, the pandemic was anxiety-inducing and isolating. While scrolling on social media, she came across online talking circles for Alaska Native women, organized by Alaska Native Birthworkers Community (ANBC), who were pregnant or postpartum. Sherbick, who is Yupik, immediately signed up.

“A lot of us were also just concerned about the way that we would be treated, and some of our concerns of pain or our birth plans within a hospital setting,” Sherbick said. “I think a lot of the women that I talked to just were aware of the history of how Indigenous women, Indigenous people in general, have been treated, and the sterilization programs that have been done unknowingly to Indigenous people.”

As Deep As the Grave, the true story of 1920s archeologists, will bring late actor back with support from his estate

Val Kilmer will be the latest Hollywood star to be resurrected by AI. The acting legend, who died last year at age 65, will star in the drama As Deep As the Grave.

Kilmer was attached to the project prior to his death from throat cancer.

The Quapaw Nation is the only US Native community to carry out a cleanup of one of the country’s worst sites of environmental contamination

They call this land the Laue. In the late 1800s, part of these 200 acres of grassland inside the Quapaw Nation were allotted to tribal citizen Charley Quapaw Blackhawk. After forcing dozens of tribes into Indian territory before the civil war, the US government then parceled out reservations and property to individual members. It was part of the government’s attempt to “civilize” Native Americans by turning them into private, not communal, landholders and yeoman farmers in the model of Thomas Jefferson’s ideal citizen.

Yet, for the last century, little grew on the Laue. Half of it was buried beneath towering mounds of toxic rock known as chat piles. The waste rock, laced with chemicals, was left after miners extracted millions of tons of lead and zinc from the Tri-State Mining District, where the valuable ores stretched across Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma between 1891 and the 1970s. By 1983, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had designated 40 sq miles that include nearly all the Quapaw Nation as the Tar Creek Superfund site, joining the EPA’s list of the most contaminated places in the country. Informally called a “megasite”, Tar Creek remains one of the largest and most complex environmental disasters in the country.