Indigenous History and Rights & Tribal Sovereignty

Drawing on ethnographic research, this book explores different experiences of urban Native identity across two pan-Indian communities in NE Ohio. In addition to elucidating how false memories of Indian-ness invisibilize and overwrite the stories and identities of urban Indigenous people, this research reveals the significance of continuous relations with tribal nations to the persistence of Indigenous peoples and perspectives in twenty-first century US society.

"Pilar Sanchez Voelkl offers an anthropological account of the early arrival and prominence of Indigenous peoples in the Galapagos Islands. Their history and everyday life reveal how multiple notions of nature, race, and society travel and meet, shaping the way conservation thought is translated into law"--

The tribe is blocked from pursuing a lawsuit claiming the federal government has a duty to assert the tribe’s water rights.

New detailed social, economic, housing and demographic statistics for hundreds of race, tribal, Hispanic origin and ancestry populations.

We speak with Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagle about a major victory at the Supreme Court in a case that could have gutted Native American sovereignty. In a surprise 7-2 ruling Thursday, the court upheld the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, which protects Native children from being removed from their tribal communities for fostering or adoption in non-Native homes. The court rejected an argument from Republican-led states and white families who argued the system is based on race. Nagle has covered the case closely for The Nation and her podcast, This Land, and says the far right is attacking the Indian Child Welfare Act as part of a broader conservative agenda to destabilize federal Indian law. She calls the decision “really encouraging,” noting it is “good not just for Native nations and families, but for the rule of law.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 15, 2023 Contact: Nizhoni Begay communications@waterprotectorlegal.org Today, the Supreme Court upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act in a 7-2 landmark decision in Brackeen v. Haaland. The court rejects all of the challenges raised by petitioners to the Indian Child Welfare Act, "some on the merits and others for lack of standing." The opinion prevents states from removing Native children from their homes, writing “Texas therefore does not have standing to bring either i

American Genocide podcast about the crimes of Native American boarding schools, a story that is personal to many in our community.

The most enduring feature of U.S. history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This long practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, with a new generation of scholars insists that any full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations. Indigenous history is essential to understanding the evolution of modern America. Ned Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non‑Native histories, from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late twentieth century. In this transformative synthesis he shows that • European colonization in the 1600s was never a predetermined success; • Native nations helped shape England’s crisis of empire; • the first shots of the American Revolution were prompted by Indian affairs in the interior; • California Indians targeted by federally funded militias were among the first casualties of the Civil War; • the Union victory forever recalibrated Native communities across the West; • twentieth-century reservation activists refashioned American law and policy. Blackhawk’s retelling of U.S. history acknowledges the enduring power, agency, and survival of Indigenous peoples, yielding a truer account of the United States and revealing anew the varied meanings of America.

"This book illustrates the evolution and the current content of indigenous rights with respect to natural resources under customary international law, the possibility and the practical consequences to conceive those rights in terms of permanent sovereignty over natural resources and, finally, the latest developments on the implementation of such rights at the domestic level"--

"In the essays collected here, twelve scholars explore how Native peoples, despite the upheavals caused by the European intrusion, often thrived after contact, preserving their sovereignty, territory, and culture and shaping indigenous borderlands across the Americas, from the sixteenth-century U.S. South to twentieth-century Bolivia. The book defines borderlands as spaces where diverse populations interact, cross-cultural exchanges are frequent and consequential, and no polity or community holds dominion"--;"Pervasive myths of European domination and indigenous submission in the Americas receive an overdue corrective in this far-reaching revisionary work. Despite initial upheavals caused by the European intrusion, Native people often thrived after contact, preserving their sovereignty, territory, and culture and shaping indigenous borderlands across the hemisphere. Borderlands, in this context, are spaces where diverse populations interact, cross-cultural exchanges are frequent and consequential, and no polity or community holds dominion. Within the indigenous borderlands of the Americas, as this volume shows, Native peoples exercised considerable power, often retaining control of the land, and remaining paramount agents of historical transformation after the European incursion. Conversely, European conquest and colonialism were typically slow and incomplete, as the newcomers struggled to assert their authority and implement policies designed to subjugate Native societies and change their beliefs and practices. Indigenous Borderlands covers a wide chronological and geographical span, from the sixteenth-century U.S. South to twentieth-century Bolivia, and gathers leading scholars from the United States and Latin America. Drawing on previously untapped or underutilized primary sources, the original essays in this volume document the resilience and relative success of indigenous communities commonly and wrongly thought to have been subordinated by colonial forces, or even vanished, as well as the persistence of indigenous borderlands within territories claimed by people of European descent. Indeed, numerous indigenous groups remain culturally distinct and politically autonomous. Hemispheric in its scope, unique in its approach, this work significantly recasts our understanding of the important roles played by Native agents in constructing indigenous borderlands in the era of European imperialism. Chapters 5, 6, 8, and 9 are published with generous support from the Americas Research Network. "--

With a deep, anticolonial and antiracist critique and analysis of what “conservation” currently is, Decolonize Conservation presents an alternative vision–one already working–of the most effective and just way to fight against biodiversity loss and climate change. Through the voices of largely silenced or invisibilized Indigenous Peoples and local communities, the devastating consequences of making 30 percent of the globe “Protected Areas,” and other so-called “Nature-Based Solutions” are made clear. Evidence proves indigenous people understand and manage their environment better than anyone else. Eighty percent of the Earth’s biodiversity is in tribal territories and when indigenous peoples have secure rights over their land, they achieve at least equal if not better conservation results at a fraction of the cost of conventional conservation programs. But in Africa and Asia, governments and NGOs are stealing vast areas of land from tribal peoples and local communities under the false claim that this is necessary for conservation. As the editors write, “This is colonialism pure and simple: powerful global interests are shamelessly taking land and resources from vulnerable people while claiming they are doing it for the good of humanity.” The powerful collection of voices from the groundbreaking “Our Land, Our Nature” congress takes us to the heart of the climate justice movement and the struggle for life and land across the globe. With Indigenous Peoples and their rights at its center, the book exposes the brutal and deadly reality of colonial and racist conservation for people around the world, while revealing the problems of current climate policy approaches that do nothing to tackle the real causes of environmental destruction.

Stephanie Russo Carroll, associate director of the Native Nations Institute, has focused her career on encouraging institutions to adopt policies and practices that recognize Indigenous Peoples'

Authorities say U.S. Border Patrol agents answering reports of gunfire shot and killed a man on a tribal reservation in southern Arizona after he threw something and abruptly raised his arm. The Thursday night death of Raymond Mattia is under investigation by the FBI and Tohono O’odham Nation. A statement Monday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection says tribal police had asked Border Patrol agents for help in responding to a report of shots fired near the home of a man in a tribal community near the U.S.-Mexico border. The statement says three Border Patrol agents opened fire after encountering a man who threw some kind of object and “abruptly extended” his arm.

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Raymond Mattia of the Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona was shot by agents after calling them for assistance

The Pascua Yaqui Tribe has drafted regulations in an effort to formalize the border-crossing process for their relatives in Mexico coming to their reservation in Arizona. Like dozens of Native American nations across the U.S., the Pascua Yaqui Tribe was sliced in two by modern-day international borders. When deer dancers and musicians living in Sonora, Mexico, make the trip into the U.S. for ceremonies, they may be detained or have their cultural objects confiscated. The effort is part of their work with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s recently formed Tribal Homeland Security Advisory Council. DHS did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the status of the regulations.

"Although Native Americans have been subjugated by every American government since The Founding, they have persevered and, in some cases, thrived. What explains the existence of separate, semi-sovereign nations within the larger American nation? In large part it has been victories won at the Supreme Court that have preserved the opportunity for Native Americans to ?make their own laws and be ruled by them.? The Supreme Court could have gone further, creating truly sovereign nations with whom the United States could have negotiated on an equal basis. The Supreme Court could also have done away with tribes and tribalism with the stroke of a pen. Instead, the Court set a compromise course, declaring tribes not fully sovereign but also something far more than a mere social club. This book describes several of the most famous Supreme Court cases impacting the course of Native American history. The author provides an analysis of canonical American Indian Law cases with historical and legal context and brings a fresh perspective to the issues. Law students, policy makers and judges looking for an introduction to American Indian Law will gain an understanding of this complicated history. This exploration will also appeal to academics interested in a new perspective on old and current cases."--Back cover.

"Lavender Fields uses autoethnography to explore how Black girls and women are living with and through COVID-19. It centers their pain, joys, and imaginations for a more just future as we confront all the inequalities that COVID-19 exposes"--

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

A Ninth Circuit panel on Monday said the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe's usual and accustomed fishing grounds don't include the Skagit River, a win for the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe in a fishing rights suit involving a Washington state river that supports important populations of wild salmon.

EPA News Release: EPA Proposes to Establish First-Time Clean Water Act Protections for Over 250 Tribes

This weekend, Democracy Now! co-host Juan González gives the opening plenary at American University’s one-day conference, “Burying 200 Years of the U.S. Monroe Doctrine,” marking 200 years since the Monroe Doctrine, the foreign policy directive from President James Monroe that effectively declared all of Latin America a U.S. sphere of influence. For the past two centuries, the Monroe Doctrine has been repeatedly used to justify scores of invasions, interventions and CIA regime changes in the Americas. On today’s show, we speak to two other conference guests, CodePink’s Medea Benjamin and The Red Nation’s Nick Estes, about the Monroe Doctrine’s long and brutal legacy within U.S. imperialism.

The call for Indigenous data sovereignty (ID-Sov) —the right of a nation to govern the collection, ownership, and application of its own data—has grown in intensity and scope over the past five years. To date three national-level Indigenous data sovereignty networks exist: Te Mana Raraunga - Maori Data Sovereignty Network, the United States Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network (USIDSN), and the Maiamnayri Wingara Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Data Sovereignty Group in Australia. Similar initiatives are underway in Hawaii and Sweden.

02/2021

The Arizona Journal of Environmental Law and Policy focused our annual Spring Symposium on the topic of Indigenous Land Stewardship. The Symposium brought together a diverse array of leaders from tribal communities, academia, the public sector, and advocacy organizations to discuss current efforts and developments within the field of Indigenous land stewardship and its intersections with domestic and international law and policy. The Symposium Keynote Address was given by Dorothy FireCloud, Native American Affairs Liaison to the Director of the National Park Service. Ms. FireCloud was introduced by Charles F. Sams, III, the first Native American to serve as the Director of the National Park Service. The rest of the Symposium consisted of four panels: Land Back in Action (Panel I), Protecting Indigenous Sacred Sites (Panel II), Tribal Co-Management of Federal Lands (Panel III), and Indigenous Knowledge in Land Stewardship Law and Policy (Panel IV).

TUCSON, Ariz. (KVOA) – After a unanimous city council vote, 10.6 acres of ancestral land will begin to be returned to the Tohono O’odham Nation.

The city of Tucson is returning a portion of ancestral land to the Tohono O’odham Nation in a new resolution unanimously passed by the City Council this week. The nearly 11-acre stretch of land is located at the base of Sentinel Peak, a more than 2,000 foot peak southwest of what is today downtown Tucson. The Santa Cruz river runs right next to one side of the mountain's base and the Tohono O’odham’s Hohokam ancestors have farmed and lived there for more than 4,500 years.Mayor Regina Romero calls it the birthplace of Tucson.