TAHLEQUAH, Oklahoma – Since November 2020, a building on the corner of Downing and Muskogee in downtown Tahlequah, capital of the Cherokee Nation, has featured a mural by indigenous artist Yatika Starr Fields. But that piece was painted over the last week of July, drawing immediate public notice.

TAHLEQUAH, Oklahoma –  The nation's largest Indigenous tribe recently expanded cultural and educational opportunities at museum locations with new interactive programs designed to keep ancient traditions alive.

Pope Francis has apologized for the Catholic Church’s cooperation with Canada’s “catastrophic” policy of Indigenous residential schools. The pontiff says the forced assimilation of Native peoples into Christian society destroyed their cultures, severed their families and marginalized generations in ways still being felt today. Francis spoke Monday near the site of the former Ermineskin Indian Residential School, on lands of four Cree nations south of Edmonton, Alberta. He said, “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples.” The long-awaited apology opens Francis’ weeklong “penitential pilgrimage” to Canada, which is meant to help the church on its path of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and help victims heal.

The men were told they were being treated for “bad blood.” In truth, the federal government enrolled around 600 black men from rural Alabama in a 40-year study of untreated syphilis. The federal government let hundreds of the men go untreated for syphilis in order to study the impact of the disease on the human body. The men were denied access to a cure, even when one became widely available. The study came to an end nearly four months after a July 25, 1972, Associated Press report by investigative reporter Jean Heller. More than two decades later, President Bill Clinton apologized for what he called a racist and shameful study.

For four decades, the United States government enrolled hundreds of Black men in Alabama in a study on syphilis, just so they could document the disease’s ravages on the human body. On July 25, 1972, Jean Heller, a then 29-year-old investigative reporter at The Associated Press shocked the world with a story of what is now known as the “Tuskegee Study.” Within four months, the U.S. Public Health Service would end the study, but dozens had already died. Even now, 50 years after it was revealed, the study casts a long shadow over the nation, as some African Americans cite Tuskegee in refusing to seek medical treatment or participate in clinical trials.