The Yonder Report

An Indigenous project in South Dakota seeks to protect tribal data sovereignty, advocates in North Carolina are pushing back against attacks on public schools, and Arkansas wants the hungriest to have access to more fruits and veggies.

Colorado’s small towns are caught between a rock and a river to build more affordable housing, mental health services expand in Illinois for rural residents, including farmers and Big Sky Country pitches its tent as a recreational mecca. Image courtesy The Yonder Report

Residents of East Palestine, Ohio impacted by a train derailment get DNA testing, rural communities have a second chance for wildfire protection money, and North Carolina’s “Road to Nowhere” is popular with curious tourists.

Millions of Americans are navigating a post-pandemic Medicaid purge, rural “news deserts” turn to nonprofits for local coverage in response to hedge-fund buyouts, and the Cornhusker State is preserving the stories of Nebraskans who trekked to one-room school houses in days gone by.

A fight is heating up over who gets first dibs on Colorado River water, renewed preservation is being pursued for America’s grasslands, and United Methodist congregations debate cutting ties over same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy bans.

A rural Tennessee community has restored limited ER, Washington State’s Quinault Indian Nation is building better broadband, the blockbuster Oppenheimer has renewed conversations around fallout from nuclear testing, and kids return to “reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic.”

Gentrification in small-town West Virginia worries the local creative community, a Kentucky nursing student wants to bring more trauma centers to rural Indiana, and all-terrain electric wheelchairs now available in some state parks open new vistas for those with disabilities.