It's our weekly roundup of the stories that mattered most in Indian country

HOMES ON THE RANGE: Financing unimaginable two decades ago is generating a large ripping sound on the desert plateaus of New Mexico. The noise is the welcome sound of barriers to homeownership being torn down for tribes in the state.

ANTI-MASCOT EFFORT: The Oneida Indian Nation has launched changethemascot.org, a site that will offer football fans ideas and tools to further the cause of changing the mascot of the Washington, DC NFL team.

GROUP GOES TO COURT: On September 6, six Blackfeet tribal members who are part of a group calling itself the Blackfeet Against Corruption, pleaded not guilty in tribal court to charges of assault and other disorderly conduct.

PROFESSOR X'ED: Michigan State University professor William Penn’s fall classes have been assigned to other professors after a student secretly recorded his views on Republicans during the first lecture of the semester.

ON THE CATWALK: Native designers Sho Sho Esquiro and Cree Nisga'a Clothing showed their creations at Couture Fashion Week in New York City.

SAVING LACE: Lace found at the Spiro Mounds in eastern Oklahoma by a University of Oklahoma excavation team in the 1930s has been classified as one of the state’s top 10 most endangered artifacts.

FUNDS FOR EVERYONE: Concerned that unclaimed monies involving the Keepseagle settlement could be misdirected by plaintiffs’ lawyers in the case, the Choctaw Nation has asked a federal court to intervene and direct a sizeable portion of the funds to the tribe’s foundation.

EMPOWERMENT ZONES: A limited pilot plan that would aid reservation economies by promoting tax-friendly incentives for private business creation and growth could easily have enough support in Congress to get done this year, tribal analysts say, but, for a myriad of reasons, legislators have yet to include it in their larger tax reform proposals.

THE DJ AND THE REDSKINS: Ian Campeau, better known as Deejay NDN, member of and frequent spokesman for Canadian electronic dance music act A Tribe Called Red, has filed a discrimination complaint against the Nepean Redskins with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.