Scott Clifton and Tamara Tunie earn lead acting Daytime Emmys. 'General Hospital' wins again

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Scott Clifton of “The Bold and the Beautiful” and Tamara Tunie of “Beyond the Gates” won lead acting honors at the 53rd annual Daytime Emmys on Friday night, with “General Hospital” honored as outstanding drama series for a record 19th time overall and sixth in a row.

Clifton plays Liam Spencer on the CBS show. It's his second lead actor trophy, having won in 2017, to go with previous wins as younger actor and supporting actor that made him the first male actor to sweep all three categories.

He beat out a heavyweight field of veterans Eric Braeden, Steve Burton, Thorsten Kaye and Christian Jules LeBlanc.

“I’m speechless,” Clifton said. “This means so much to me, not the thing, the atta boy from my peers. I think of few things that bring me more joy than that.”

Tunie plays strong-willed matriarch Anita Dupree on “Beyond the Gates,” which debuted on CBS last year featuring the first primarily Black cast since “Generations” in the 1990s and the first new network soap since 1999.

Tunie made her daytime debut in 1987 on “As the World Turns,” leaving in 2009, a year before the CBS show ended.

“My heart is so full right now," Tunie said. “This is the best welcome back to daytime ever. There is a host of Black actresses who paved the way for me, and I feel them as I stand here.”

Along with its outstanding drama series award, ABC’s “General Hospital” also earned trophies for writing and guest performance in a daytime drama for Jeff Kober.

Roger Howarth and Beth Maitland of “The Young and the Restless” swept the supporting acting categories, with both winning decades after their first triumphs.

Howarth currently plays Matt Clark on the CBS soap. He first won in 1994 in the younger actor category for his breakout role as Todd Manning on “One Life to Live.”

Maitland was honored for playing Traci Abbott, a role she originated in 1982 — the year of her first supporting actress win — and has played off and on ever since.

“Every one of you a winner, every one of you a part of the contribution daytime makes in a world gone mad, offering just a few minutes of relief — to laugh, to cry and to celebrate," she said in tribute to her peers.

Genie Francis, who began her role on “General Hospital” at age 14 in 1977, received the Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by her actor-director husband, Jonathan Frakes. She was teary-eyed watching a video of career highlights before taking the stage, supported by her two children because she's recovering from a broken right ankle.

“I know 50 years sounds like an awfully long time, but it doesn’t feel like it to me,” Francis said. “As they say, if you love what you do you don’t work a day in your life. I wouldn’t go that far because doing a party scene in high heels is hard work.”

Francis said she's worked with “all the greats,” ticking off such names as Anthony Geary, Erika Slezak, David Canary, Maurice Bernard, Michael Knight and Eric Braeden.

“I have had the most amazing ride and I am so grateful,” she said. “I would do it all over again if I could.”

Tracee Ellis Ross won in the travel and adventure category for her Roku show “Solo Traveling with Tracee Ellis Ross.”

“Wow, how fun is this?” Ross said, while thanking the countries of Morocco, Mexico and Spain.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, lost in the lifestyle program category. She was nominated for her Netflix show “With Love, Meghan” that ran for two seasons, but the Prime Video documentary series “A Different Breed” about competitive canine sports prevailed in that category.

Ambyr Michelle of CBS' “Beyond the Gates” won for emerging talent in a daytime drama, the second year the award was handed out.

Directing honors went to Peacock’s “Days of Our Lives.”

Two talk shows no longer in production scored victories. Sherri Shepherd won as daytime talk series host for “Sherri,” which ended its four-season run on Fox in May. Kelly Clarkson won for daytime talk series, having wrapped her eponymous NBC show in August after seven seasons. Neither was on hand to accept.

Giada De Laurentiis won as non-daily daytime personality for “Giada in the Kitchen.” The trophy for daytime personality daily went to Star Jones and Corey Jovan for Fox's “Divorce Court.”

Ina Garten was a two-time winner for culinary host and culinary instructional series for “Be My Guest” on Food Network.

The ceremony held at the Hollywood Palladium was streamed live for the second straight year after airing on CBS for five consecutive years.

Genie Francis accepts the lifetime achievement award during the 53rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Scott Clifton accepts the award for outstanding lead actor in a daytime drama series for "The Bold and the Beautiful" during the 53rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Star Jones accepts the award for outstanding daytime personality (daily) for "Divorce Court" during the 53rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Tamara Tunie accepts the award for outstanding lead performer in a daytime drama series: actress for "Beyond the Gates" during the 53rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Ambyr Michelle arrives at the 53rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

Roger Howarth accepts the award for outstanding supporting actor in a daytime drama series for "The Young and the Restless" during the 53rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Beth Maitland accepts the award for outstanding supporting actress in a daytime drama series for "The Young and the Restless" during the 53rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles.

Tracee Ellis Ross, right, and the team from "Solo Traveling with Tracee Ellis Ross" accept the award for outstanding travel and adventure program during the 53rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. Tamara Tunie looks on from far left. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Fawn Douglas puts an urban spin on traditional basketmaking.

Instead of using desert plants, she tightly weaves heavy conduit wire to form the base of a basket she plans to display at the new Wai Gallery in Las Vegas. There, she and her partner, A.B. Wilkinson, showcase pieces from Indigenous artists and host free art programs, from collage projects to sidewalk chalk paintings.

Douglas, a Las Vegas Paiute Tribe citizen, says she sees how art can heal and bring people together.

“They’re off their phones. They’re having actual conversations together,” Douglas said.

The gallery and IndigenousAF storefront dismantle stereotypes, including that Native Americans and Alaska Natives are a monolith and all live on reservations, she said. It opened just ahead of National Native American Heritage Month, which celebrates the diverse histories and cultures of hundreds of tribal communities across the U.S. in November.

Native American art isn’t just geometric, Douglas said, and each piece has a narrative.

A painting behind her featured a silhouetted Joshua tree and a backlit mountain range with a brilliant night sky. It’s a desert twist on Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” — and it acted as a call to action for turning Gold Butte into a national monument in Nevada.

A black-and-white underwater photograph depicts a Hawaiian dancer, seemingly floating in space. It is called “Ha’ina ’ia mai,” which translates to “let the story be told.”

Here is a collection of short stories highlighting joy in Native American and Alaska Native communities:

When the salmonberries are ripe in Kipnuk, Alaska, the Paul family isn’t far behind.

They are one of several families who returned to practice subsistence gathering a year after Typhoon Halong struck their village, damaging 90% of its buildings, floating some houses miles away and leaving nearly all of the community’s residents displaced.

It’s been an especially good year for salmonberries because of heavy snow last winter, locals say.

From a boat, Burt Paul scanned the tundra for the orange berries — or naunraqs as they’re called in coastal Yup’ik — like orange carpet on a sea of green grass. They giggled as the dogs ferociously defended them against two musk oxen grazing on shore.

The Pauls typically camp out for several days and pick berries. But this summer was broken up into shorter trips when Burt Paul’s scattered family could return together.

The family never misses a year of berry picking, they said.

“Coming home, seeing everyone, the community — it’s heartwarming,” Caley Paul said.

When the day ended, the family had a five-gallon bucket filled to the brim. Not as much as most years but enough for Burt Paul to make his famous naunraq pie. Enough for everyone to have a taste.

— Samantha Watson, KYUK

Foster care didn’t separate Rosa Soto Alvarez from her Pascua Yaqui community.

She and her siblings were placed with another family on the tribe’s reservation in Arizona, where their foster mother served up tortillas and fry bread with pots of chile con carne. They grew up surrounded by saguaros and the sounds of relatives speaking the Yaqui language. They took road trips to powwows.

Under the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, tribal children taken into foster care have the right to remain with Indigenous families.

That experience has guided Alvarez’s life work. At 50, she is a mother and grandmother who has cared for 25 foster children in her home. She leads the tribe’s ICWA Committee, coordinating statewide advocacy that supports the federal child welfare law and encourages states to adopt versions of it.

Nationwide, Native children are disproportionately represented in state foster care systems.

“I’m just a rez girl trying to make a difference,” she said. “There’s so many children out there who don’t have a voice, and I know I have to be that voice.”

— Nancy Marie Spears, The Imprint

A group of Indigenous girls carried a vessel of river water to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Tribal Council and walked out with rights for the river.

The council unanimously passed a resolution this year recognizing the rights of the water system that rises in the Great Smoky Mountains and flows into the Gulf of Mexico. To the Cherokee, these waterways are known as Longperson and are a living relative.

The NAIWA Daughters, girls ages 10 to 17, brought the resolution forward after receiving training on the rights of nature, hosting community dinners, conducting surveys and meeting with council members. The Earth Law Center says it’s the first all-female-led rights-of-nature effort in the U.S.

The resolution grants the waterway five rights, including the right to flow freely and to be free from pollution.

The council later passed another resolution to raise money to remove the decommissioned Ela Dam in North Carolina, which has blocked the sicklefin redhorse, a freshwater fish, for more than a century.

“We hold the responsibility of stewarding the headwaters, so every living being downstream has water for life,” said NAIWA Daughters co-founder and Chairwoman Jasmine Smith.

— Liz Kimbrough, Mongabay

Sugarbush is a springtime tradition in many Native communities.

Students in the Minneapolis-based Wicoie Nandagikendan early childhood program trekked through the snow this past winter to learn about tapping maple trees and processing the syrup at Porky’s Sugarbush Camp.

The children and their parents walked past colorful buckets hanging on trees to catch the sap. They helped stir syrup already boiling in a large black kettle and helped make sugar and cakes. One student placed tobacco at a maple tree during a ceremony.

For parents like Christian Swor, the program provided his son and family an opportunity to connect with Indigenous culture and language. The early childhood program immerses children in the Ojibwe and Dakota languages.

Other cultural activities in the curriculum include how to cook dishes with rabbit or duck and how to process wild rice.

“We do hit all the state standards, but it’s like hitting all those early childhood indicators, progress and more,” said Ojibwe classroom teacher Liz Zoongwegiizhigook Zinsli.

— Chandra Colvin, Report for America corps member, MPR News

At 67, Kerry Butler still fits into his old Tulsa Indian Youth Center boxing jacket.

He joined the team for three years in the 1970s when he was 15. The center served a vital role for Native Americans after the federal government pushed them off their ancestral homelands and into major cities to assimilate them into white society.

Many Native youth had low self-esteem in those days, but a common gathering space and boxing helped change that, Butler said.

“When you got in front of a crowd of people, and they were cheering for you, and when you got into the ring, and people were clapping, ‘Awesome! Let’s go, Kerry! You can do it!’"

"It just rose up confidence inside that you never felt before,” Butler, who is Muscogee and Cherokee, added.

The youth center no longer exists. But a nonprofit called Tulsa Indian Community Center, Inc., recently formed with a vision to provide another gathering space for youth.

More than 60 tribes are represented in the Tulsa Public Schools district.

— Brittany Harlow, Crosswinds News

Hodokii Johnson leans in closely, as they tattoo three brown lines on each of Kristin Gentry’s fingers.

One is for the strength of Gentry’s mother. One is for Gentry. And one is for Gentry’s daughter.

When all the lines are darkened, the two say a prayer.

Johnson, a 24-year-old Muscogee Nation citizen and descendant of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, have been interested in body art since they were a teenager to cope with mental health struggles and now sees it with greater purpose.

They’ve worked with Inchunwa, a project dedicated to healing through traditional tattoos from the southeastern U.S., and recently attended a convention highlighting Indigenous tattoo practitioners in Oklahoma City.

Giving tattoos and ancestral markings is sacred work, they say, because of the permanence and deeper meaning.

“So much of the tattoo tradition that we had has since been weeded out through the efforts of colonization,” Johnson said. “Tattoos are seen as a taboo, unholy thing. When we talk about ancestral markings, it’s rather the opposite.”

— Sarah Liese, KOSU

Fawn Douglas puts a cup on a shelf at IndigenousAF, her store and gallery in Las Vegas, Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)

Students use wooden paddles to process maple syrup at a skigamizigan (sugarbush) camp in Maple Plain, Minn., Wednesday, March 18, 2026. (Kerem Yücel/Minnesota Public Radio via AP)