Blogs

By Kirstin Nelson (Follow us on LinkedIn) When I started my job at the National Agricultural Library, I had yet to think much about land grant universities. I attended one (University of Nebra…

This blog post is a discussion of the history of the movement and passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

By Mikayla Redden (Follow us on LinkedIn) Last summer I posted a critique of the Library of Congress classification system’s treatment of materials about Indigenous peoples in We are Not Histo…

In Arizona v. Navajo Nation, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Indigenous tribe in their quest to assert their water rights.

This post describes the events reported in the Law Library's new acquistion, Alleged Frauds Agains Certain Indian Soldiers.

What water the United States owes the Navajo Nation under the 1868 Treaty of Bosque Redondo formed the crux of the argument in Arizona v. Navajo Nation. The treaty, known by the Navajo people as the Naal Tsoos Sani, or the Old Paper, established the Navajo Reservation as a “permanent home” for the N

This post remembers Native American Heritage Month, and discusses activist negotiator Hank Adams, Assiniboine-Sioux, and the impacts of his work.

Over the past year, a wave of higher education institutions and state governments have worked to reduce the cost of college for Indigenous students. These tuition relief efforts come at a critical tim

A digitization program allows tribes to decide who can access oral histories.

Amira Dehmani, a 2022 Liljenquist Family Fellow at the Library of Congress, explores the role of the Cherokee Nation in the Civil War.

November is both National Native American Heritage Month and National Adoption Month . Tomorrow, November 9, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a case that has implications related to both, Brackeen v. Haaland , which concerns the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA), 25 U.S.C. §§ 1

By Joan Policastri Finding tribal law is hard. Professor Elizabeth Reese’s talk to IALL annual course attendees outlined the difficulties, the reasons those exist, and proposed ways in which she fe…

Last month, the University of WI Law School hosted a weeklong legal boot camp culminating the National Tribal Trial College’s Certificate in Tribal Court Legal Advocacy.  This free, 6-month, skill-building course empowers laypersons to practice …

By Summer Blaze Aubrey, Esq. LL.M. (Cherokee/Blackfeet) & Patricia Handlin, Esq. Enbridge, Inc. is a Canadian company that moves oil from the Western Canadian oil tar sands through a pipeline from Alberta, Canada across Minnesota to Superior, Wisconsin on the shores of … Continue reading →

Being a native Tucsonan and a graduate student in the Human Rights Practice program at UArizona, I am very familiar with evolving issues relating to the border between Arizona and Mexico. With the 2016 election of President Trump, not only have I been following local, state, and federal laws and related news pertaining to topics of immigration and human rights as they relate to our border, I have also been following how these laws and the border wall has been negatively impacting the Tohono O’odham Nation. A topic I was less familiar with is the historical and ongoing border issues regularly taking place in bordertowns and such as those lining reservations bordering “urban” cities in New Mexico and Arizona.

The Law Library invites you to view and interact with our latest exhibition, “20 Years of Indigenous Advocacy: Indigenous Law Since Time Immemorial.” Available physically and digitally, this exhibit is curated by me and Law Library Fellows, Jen Bedier and Francesco Fasano, with guidance from various members of our Law Library Team. Our work aims to spotlight the 20th anniversary of the creation of the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program (IPLP) here at the James E. Rogers College of Law, the creation of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples mandate, and the scholarly contribution of IPLP alumnus (2014) and current SJD student Joseph K. Austin.

Osiyo! (That’s hello in Cherokee). November is National Native American Heritage Month, an official celebration to honor the ancestry, traditions and contributions of Indigenous peoples throughout history. Through the Library of Congress, you can learn more about the origin and purpose of this celebration. While it is important to have a formalized occasion for this celebration, every month should be a time to recognize the importance of Indigenous peoples to the United States. Indigenous peoples have lived in North America for approximately 15,000-25,000 years. Tucson is part of the traditional and current homelands of the Tohono O’odham and the Pasqua Yaqui, as the University of Arizona College of Law recognizes in its Land Acknowledgement.

This Women’s History Month, people rightfully are reflecting on the suffrage movement which helped grant many women the right to vote in 1920. What is too often overlooked, however, is Native American women’s vital role in this movement. Despite that they were an inspiration for the larger suffrage movement, Native American women were shut out by many other suffragists and endured lingering prohibitions on voting long after white women obtained access to that fundamental right.

This is the fourth post in a series about student organizations at the College of Law to help students find out what is going on at the school and get involved. Each blog post features an interview with the leadership of a student group. Vice President Callie Phillips agreed to answer some questions about NALSA. Thank you, Callie, for taking a break from your studies to answer a few questions!

The Law Library invites you to view and interact with our latest exhibition featuring the scholarship of two current students in the J.D. and the Indigenous Peoples Law & Policy (IPLP) program, Leo Killsback and Cheryl Redhorse Bennett.

Adopted September 6, 2019 Introduction/Executive Summary Skirts not required, but always admired 3 The term “Indigenous feminism” originated in demands from Indigenous women, femmes, and LGBTQ2+ relatives to address the … Continue reading Indigenous Feminism Does Not Discriminate

At times, U.S. governments have denied First Amendment rights to Native Americans. Indian religious beliefs have sometimes posed dilemmas for the application of such freedoms.

The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which the United Nations adopted in 2007, addresses both individual and collective rights of indigenous peoples and their relationship to land and natural resources.

“My young men are to lay aside their weapons; they are to take up the work of women; they will plow the field and raise the crops; for them I see a future, but my women, they to whom we owe everything, what is there for them to do? I see nothing! You are a woman; have pity on my women when everything is taken from them.”