Danielle McLean

Landon was supposed to be at her high-school graduation on Saturday. Instead, she was preparing to travel to Washington, D.C. By Monday, the 17-year-old from Gulfport, Mississippi, was wearing a long, sleek blue dress and dancing in front of the U.S.…

Editor’s Note: Danielle McLean is a trans woman playing women’s hockey in the Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia region. She is a senior editor at the news publication Smart Cities Dive and an at-large member of the Society of Professional…

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. It is republished here with permission. RIO GRANDE VALLEY, Texas — Adelyn Vigil sometimes dreams of…

INSIGHTS REPORT Failed Connection

Moved by the nationwide protests against racial inequity last summer, the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis wanted to find ways to address the issue in its own community and help lift the Tennessee city’s most disadvantaged residents. So the…

SIOUX CITY, IOWA — Faith Spotted Eagle recalls, as if it were yesterday, the time she and three friends were viciously beaten by five white men. It was 1974, months after an armed occupation by members of the Oglala Nation in the town of Wounded Knee…

FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA — In a unified effort to rebuke North Dakota’s restrictive voter ID laws and defend their right to vote, the state’s Native American population showed up to the polls in record numbers on Tuesday. Voting advocacy groups and tribal…

FORT TOTTEN, NORTH DAKOTA — Hundreds of Native American voters may be unable to vote in North Dakota this election because of a new rule that requires their addresses in a government database to exactly match the one on their ID cards. Many don’t…

Lying in a psychosis ward bed, Amelia Perry couldn’t shake thoughts of suicide. The noise blaring from other patients in the hallway and the bright lights above felt like too much. Perry, a 25-year-old trans person, was in the hospital seeking help.…

At age 14, Sara ran away from home in western Maine, and a madame in Lewiston sold her for sex to countless men. After she escaped “the Life,” drug-addicted boyfriends beat her, and people she grew to trust traded her to other men for drugs. She had…

Sara was a teenage runaway from a western Maine town looking to earn some money. Since she was a child, the 15 year old had been raped by her older brother and molested by her mother’s boyfriend. She no longer trusted her mother and was becoming…