Every Friday, The Takeaway convenes a panel to look back at the week's big stories. This week, we'll hear more about Newt Gingrich pulling out of the Presidential race; Richard Grenell, the openly gay foreign policy spokesperson who resigned from Mitt Romney's campaign just days after joining it; and Elizabeth Warren's Native American heritage. Ron Christie is a Takeaway contributor and Republican political strategist. And Farai Chideya is ajournalist and blogger.

As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama promised to improve the relationship between Washington and American Indian tribes. This year's meeting between the President and tribal leaders is the third such meeting, and comes with many Native Americans approving of the President's outreach effort to their community.

White Americans were not the only ones who kept black slaves in the pre-Civil War era. Until an 1886 treaty that freed their slaves, black slavery was also a part of the Cherokee nation. Generations later, black descendants of those freed slaves, who went on to become part of the Cherokee tribe, are fighting for their right to keep their status as members of the Cherokee nation. Many Cherokee now want to push the freedmen out, unless they can prove they are of blood descent, saying that the treaty of 1866 did not give those freed slaves citizenship.

"Geronimo" — that was the codename given to America’s most hated man, the world’s most hunted terrorist, and the object of one of our most high profile military missions ever. But now, many are taking issue with the United States government associating Osama bin Laden with an iconic Native American leader. And the Fort Still Apache Tribe in Oklahoma is asking President Obama for an apology. We talk with Jeff Houser, Tribal Chairman of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe.

This week, descendants of the Dakota people are walking 150 miles through southern Minnesota to remember the 1,700 people who, in 1862, were forced to march to concentration camps as punishment for uprising against the whites. Many people died of starvation and disease along the way, and the survivors were scattered to other parts of the Midwest. 

We continue our summer reading series with journalist S.C. Gwynne, who brings us his new book, "Empire of the Summer Moon," about the final battles between Comanche Indians and white settlers. It's the story of the last great chief of the tribe that was once the most powerful in the nation. 

Tell us: What summer reading would you recommend?

The Tohono O'odham Nation that straddles Mexico and Arizona has found itself at the center of the region's lucrative drug smuggling trade. The reservation is at times overrun by smugglers, and some of the reservation's 28,000 members say they are afraid to leave their homes. Eric Eckholm is covering this story for our partner The New York Times. He reports on how this peaceful reservation now resembles what one tribal chairman calls a "militarized zone."