protecting each other

On September 9 of this year, during a public gathering for the 150-year anniversary of Treaty 6 — an agreement signed between several First Nations and the British Crown in 1876 that legally recognized the sovereignty of Indigenous communities — leaders of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation said that they will not allow the Canadian government to make decisions involving the welfare of their trans and gender-nonconforming youth. Specifically, the Saddle Lake Cree are invoking the “medicine chest clause” in the very same treaty establishing the nation’s right to comprehensive healthcare, which its leaders say includes gender-affirming care.

“No longer will our children and families have their rights taken away,” Saddle Lake chief Dale Steinhauer said during the gathering, per CBC News. “When one group's rights are removed, we are all affected.”

Instead, Steinhauer announced that the Saddle Lake Cree Nation, located 100 miles northeast of the province’s capital Edmonton, will recruit doctors to provide gender-affirming care services on its land reserve, so that youth within its borders and in surrounding provinces can legally and safely access the care they need.

As Minnesotans continue to receive recognition across the country and around the world, we must be clear about what the world is recognizing: people power. It is recognizing what became possible when regular people refused to look away, stepped into leadership, and organized with discipline, courage, and love.

Before a single school bell rings in Los Angeles this week, some educators are already behind the wheel — not commuting to campus, but slowly circling neighborhood blocks near their schools, scanning for unmarked vehicles and federal immigration agents. This is what back-to-school looks like in the nation's second-largest school district in the summer of 2026, as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested approximately 51,000 people in July — the highest single-month total in the agency's 23-year history — and roughly 400,000 students prepared to return to Los Angeles Unified School District classrooms for the 2026-27 year.

In September, Nathan Phillips and Nastasia Lawton-Sticklor tried to deliver food to immigrants at the ICE facility in Burlington, following months of revelations about the office being used to house detainees for multiple days. They were arrested and charged by Burlington Police with misdemeanor trespassing.

Instead of striking a deal with prosecutors, the pair decided to go to trial and bring witnesses to testify about the controversial facility.

“I am disappointed that we weren't able to tell those stories in [court] and really shed light on what's happening,” said Lawton-Sticklor, a Leominster-based activist who was representing herself pro se in the proceedings. “But I also think that criminalizing protest is not a good thing.”

The Las Culturistas podcast hosts, while receiving the Stephen F. Kolzak Award at the 2026 GLAAD Media Awards, announced they were donating $10,000 to Equality Kansas in response to the state's recent and immediate revocation of transgender people's driver's licenses. Onstage at the Beverly Hilton Thursday, the pair called the Republican-controlled legislature's act "unconscionable and inhumane." "We can’t accept this award without condemning the rampant, active transphobia from this administration and its supporters. And we are also here to let them know in advance that they are fighting a losing battle," Rogers said. "Because when we gather in rooms like this, we are always going to have each other's backs."