Culture

NASA is honoring Diné Bizaad through the names of different features found by the Mars Perseverance rover that landed in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater on Feb. 18.

NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission on March 11 announced Diné Bizaad is being used to name landmarks and features in a place with a high potential for finding signs of past microbial life.

It was a January afternoon in Table Top Wilderness, located 32 miles south of Phoenix, a region of flat-topped mesas, wide canyons, and desert ridges.

African-American and Indigenous history are colorful intertwined threads that run through the tapestry of the American story, sometimes unnoticed in the dense fabric and sometimes prominently displayed.

“I remember running into the open arms of my new family. Because of the (federal) Indian Child Welfare Act,” said Joseph Talachy, governor of Pojoaque Pueblo, at a Senate committee hearing on a state ICWA, “I was raised in a beneficial home.”