Born on this day in 1952 in Syracuse, New York, Thaioronióhte Dan David was raised from the age of four at Kanehsatà:ke Mohawk territory. Remembered as the father of Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) and a mentor to countless young journalists around the world. He remembered about his vision when starting APTN - “The dream was that these journalists would actually do real news for a change instead of constantly softening their words and tone to make it more appealing or appeasing to a Euro-Canadian overseer.” In 1990, he was working for CBC when the crisis erupted in Kanehsatà:ke. CBC refused to have him cover the events. He snuck in to the reserve anyways with diabetes medicine and other supplies and hosted a radio show for the community. In 1994, Thaioronióhte was asked to travel to post-apartheid South Africa to help train journalists to cover the first election. Following his experiences there, he came home to launch APTN.

Suzan Harjo is a poet, writer, lecturer, curator, and policy advocate who has helped Native peoples recover more than one million acres of tribal lands. Born on Cheyenne and Arapaho lands in Oklahoma, she has been an active part of the fight for Indigenous sovereignty since the 1960's. She co-produced Seeing Red, a bi-weekly radio program on New York's WBAI FM station; it was the first Indigenous news show in the United States. In the 1970's US President Jimmy Carter appointed Harjo as a Congressional liaison for Indian affairs where she worked on such issues as hunting and fishing rights on traditional lands, voting, and land contracts rights. Her lobbying for religious freedom helped lead to passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) in 1978. She served as Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) from 1984 to 1989. She also was involved in working for the 1989 National Museum of the American Indian Act, and the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which allows tribes to reclaim their human remains and ceremonial items from publicly funded institutions. She founded the Morning Star Institute in 1984 in memory of her late husband, Frank Harjo, through which she promotes sacred land claims and protection for traditional cultural rights, artistic expression, and research. Along with seven Native plaintiffs, including Vine Deloria, Jr. and Mateo Romero, Harjo was a party in Harjo et al v. Pro Football, Inc., filed on September 12, 1992 with the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) to cancel the registration of the Washington Redskins football team. Harjo's many accomplishments and work for Indigenous liberation are nearly impossible to summarize here. We honor her life and work on this day and note that she continues the struggle, being specifically targeted by the Trump administration in a July 4th, 2026 report titled "Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage."

On this day in 1763, a group of Ojibwe and Thâkîwaki (Sauk) warriors played a game of baaga'adowe (lacrosse) outside the fort, inviting the British soldiers to watch. After purposefully throwing the ball near the gate, they gained entry and killed most of the British inhabitants. Michilimackinac was the The fifth fort to fall in Pontiac's War, and the largest fort taken by surprise. The fort was held for a year.