Indigenous Rights & Tribal Sovereignty

"Indigenous Legalities, Pipeline Viscosities examines the relationship between the Wet'suwet'en nation and pipeline development, showing how colonial governments and corporations seek to control Indigenous claims, and how the Wet'suwet'en resist. Tyler McCreary offers historical context for the unfolding relationship between Indigenous peoples and colonialism and explores pipeline regulatory review processes, attempts to reconcile Indigeneity with development, as well as fundamental questions about territory and jurisdiction. Throughout, McCreary demonstrates how the cyclical and ongoing movements between resistance and reconciliation are affected by the unequal relations between Indigenous peoples and colonial government and development operations. This book will be of interest to readers interested in Indigenous and Wet'suwet'en politics, as well as the politics of pipeline development. Scholars in geography, environmental studies, political science, law, and Indigenous Studies will benefit from this sophisticated analysis."--

“I love working on iPretendians/i because it gives me an opportunity to use humor as a vehicle to teach and inform. ” says Angel Ellis, co-host of iPretendians/i, Apple Podcasts' Spotlight show for July 2024. Angel Ellis is a free-press activist and director of Mvskoke Media. Her co-host Robert Jago is a freelance writer, entrepreneur, and Indigenous rights activist from Richmond, British Columbia. Together, they pitched the show to the podcast network, Canadaland, as a new original series. “I broke one of the first big Pretendian stories of this whole moment,” says Jago, “and the way that I did it didn’t provide enough context. This series gives me a chance to try and reshape that.”Ellis and Jago hope listeners understand the serious nature of the problem, while becoming more acquainted to Native joy and humor. “The broadest part of society coming to understand its impact on Indigenous people, has always been a driving motivation for me,” says Ellis. “ If nothing else, I hope listeners learn that there is a way to be supportive of and enjoy Indigenous cultures without wearing it like some passing fad.”What do some of the most prominent and successful Indigenous artists, leaders and professors have in common? They aren’t Indigenous. There are hundreds of cases of Indigenous identity fraud that we know about, and likely thousands that we do not. So why do these so-called “pretendians” do it? How do they pull it off? And what happens when they are exposed? In each episode of this riveting new podcast series, co-hosts Robert Jago (Kwantlen First Nation and Nooksack Indian Tribe) and Angel Ellis (Muscogee (Creek) Nation) reveal unbelievable stories of audacious fraudsters and investigate the complex phenomenon of Indigenous identity theft.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This Note attempts to determine how tribal governments such as the Navajo Nation can exercise greater control over and protect their Nation’s data from external entities. Tribal Nations or Indigenous Nations can exercise their political and cultural sovereignty by utilizing both Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDSov) and Indigenous Data Governance (IDGov). This Note will examine the Māori’s application of IDSov within their own culturally-specific IDGov framework. Then, there will be an overview of the existing mechanisms available within the Navajo Nation legal system that govern data and the fundamental principles embedded in the culture of the Diné (Navajo) people. Finally, this Note will discuss recommendations that the Navajo Nation can incorporate into its legal system using the Māori’s example of its own data governance model and tools as a template. Overall, the goal of this Note is to demonstrate the legal mechanisms available to the Navajo Nation to implement its own set of data sovereignty principles aligning with its own traditional values, similar to the Māori in Aotearoa (New Zealand).

The Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica are investigating sexual violence in Alaska, and why the situation isn’t getting better.

Who is killing the indigenous women of Alaska? Spoiler alert, it is not that hard to figure out if proper investigations had been done, yet time and time again, these victims’ deaths are ignored, suspects are not questioned, evidence is not collected, autopsy reports are glossed over, known repeat offenders are not prosecuted, and on the rare occasions when they are prosecuted, judges are letting them go with less than a slap on the wrist. Joining us to discuss two such cases is victims’ advocate Antonia Unaqsiq Commack of Missing and Murdered In Alaska, a group that often focuses on violence against Alaska Natives. Antonia is Inupiaq from the Native Village of Shungnak. Antonia herself has had two close friends murdered by their intimate partners and since 2017 has devoted herself to shouting loudly to make the public aware of the injustices going on in her community. Antonia takes us through the deaths of two women in Kotzebue, Alaska - Jennifer Kirk and Sue Sue Norton -- who died under extremely suspicious circumstances and who need to get much more attention from those in power to deliver justice. Their stories are just the tip of the iceberg. Please go to the Lawless website to find out more. https://www.propublica.org/series/lawless

Trigger Warning This website contains stories about the ongoing genocide against Indigenous women, girls, transgender, gender-diverse, and Two-Spirit

"A call for the rethinking Navajo sovereignty in a way more rooted in Navajo beliefs, culture, and values"--Provided by publisher.

"Illuminating the First Nations struggles against the Canadian state, It's All about the Land exposes how racism underpins and shapes Indigenous-settler relationships. Renowned Kahnaw:ke Mohawk activist and scholar Taiaiake Alfred explains how the Canadian government's reconciliation agenda is a new form of colonization that is also guaranteed to fail. Bringing together Alfred's speeches and interviews from over the past two decades, the book shows that Indigenous peoples across the world face a stark choice: reconnect with their authentic cultures and values or continue following a slow road to annihilation. Alfred proposes a radical vision for contesting and confronting the ongoing genocide of the original peoples of this land: Indigenous Resurgence. This way of thinking, being, and practising represents an authentic politics that roots resistance in the spirit, knowledge, and laws of the ancestors. Set against the historic arc of Indigenous-settler relations in Canada and drawing on the rich heritage of First Nations resistance movements, It's All about the Land traces the evolution of Indigenous struggle and liberation through the dynamic processes of oratory, dialogue, action, and reflection."--

"The book provides individual Diné/Navajo examinations and understandings of Níhi kéyah, Navajo homeland. These examinations and understandings represent a distinctive lens of Diné/Navajo peoples and way of life"--

Diné perspectives : revitalizing and reclaiming Navajo thought-book

"Informed by personal experience and offering an inclusive view, Diné Identity in a Twenty-First-Century World showcases the complexity of understanding and the richness of current Diné identities"--

"An original account of the stakes of sovereignty for recovering anticolonial pasts and fashioning anticolonial futures. Despite their signal contributions to present-day anticolonial struggles from #NODAPL to Idle No More, Indigenous societies around the globe are recurrently neglected in histories and theories of decolonization. What results from this disregard is not only skewed history, but also diminished political horizons for those (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) striving to transform an unequal world profoundly shaped by colonialism. Bridging political theory and Indigenous Studies, political theorist David Temin shows how key 20th-century Indigenous intellectual-activists in lands today claimed by Canada and the United States fundamentally recast the philosophical substance and normative goals of decolonization. Through history, textual interpretation, and conceptual analysis, his book recasts a vision of anticolonial thought and agency that circles around a politics of self-determination disentangled from sovereignty as institution and ideal-one committed to the relational flourishing of human and other-than-human beings against colonial domination"--

Leaders from the Indigenous Resilience Center shared at the One Water Summit about their efforts to work with tribal communities on water audits, filtration systems, and other solutions.

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

Lakota historian Nick Estes talks about the violent origins of Thanksgiving and his book Our History Is the Future. “This history … is a continuing history of genocide, of settler colonialism and, basically, the founding myths of this country,” says Estes, who is a co-founder of the Indigenous resistance group The Red Nation and a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.

"An award-winning author investigates the entangled history of her Jewish ancestors' land in South Dakota and the Lakota, who were forced off that land by the United States government. "A brilliantly conceived family history, one that places questions of responsibility and atonement at the center of the conversation about America's political future."--the Whiting Foundation. Growing up, Rebecca Clarren only knew the major plot points of her tenacious immigrant family's origins. Her great-great-grandparents, the Sinykins, and their six children fled antisemitism in Russia and arrived in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, ultimately settling on a 160-acre homestead in South Dakota. Over the next few decades, despite tough years on a merciless prairie and multiple setbacks, the Sinykins became an American immigrant success story. What none of Clarren's ancestors ever mentioned was that their land, the foundation for much of their wealth, had been cruelly taken from the Lakota by the United States government. By the time the Sinykins moved to South Dakota, America had broken hundreds of treaties with hundreds of Indigenous nations across the continent, and the land that had once been reserved for the seven bands of the Lakota had been diminished, splintered, and handed for free, or practically free, to white settlers. In The Cost of Free Land, Clarren melds investigative reporting with personal family history to reveal the intertwined stories of her family and the Lakota, and the devastating cycle of loss of Indigenous land, culture, and resources that continues today. With deep empathy and clarity of purpose, Clarren grapples with the personal and national consequences of this legacy of violence and dispossession. What does it mean to survive oppression only to perpetuate and benefit from the oppression of others? By shining a light on the people and families tangled up in this country's difficult history, The Cost of Free Land invites readers to consider their own culpability and what, now, can be done"--

‘Indigenous presence is vital to the stewardship of the land.’

Director Martin Scorsese’s new movie, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” tells the true story of a string of murders on the Osage Nation’s land in Oklahoma in the 1920s. Based on David Grann’s meticulously researched 2017 book, the movie delves into racial and family dynamics that rocked Oklahoma to the…

"Over the span of ten years, seven high school students died in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The seven were hundreds of miles away from their families, forced to leave their reserve because there was no high school there for them to attend. Award-winning journalist Tanya Talaga delves into the history of this northern city that has come to manifest, and struggle with, human rights violations past and present against aboriginal communities."--

A UNIQUE MONUMENT TO HEALING AND INCLUSION IN WAIKIKI Visit Legend History Exhibition Portraits News About Team Films Facebook Instagram Envelope

President Joe Biden has signed a national monument designation for the greater Grand Canyon, declaring it good “not only for Arizona but for the planet.”

"This book examines the construction of memory in two indigenous sacred sites in the US and Mexico. It juxtaposes two relationships, the Chemehuevi people and their ties with the Old Woman Mountains of the East Mojave Desert, and the Caxcan people and their ties with Tlachialoyantepec in Zacatecas, Mexico. This research outlines a personal journey, a process of making connections through indigenous decolonial methodologies, and a research project in histories of both the Chemehuevi and Caxcan and their relationships to sacred mountains. This work emphasizes cultural engagements with performative and phenomenological insights as having historic preservation value"--

"In Defense of Sovereignty recounts the history of the Oneida Nation and its struggles for self-determination. Since the nation's removal from New York in the 1820s to what would become the state of Wisconsin, it has been engaged in legal conflicts with US actors to retain its sovereignty and its lands. Legal scholar and former Oneida Nation senior staff attorney Rebecca M. Webster traces this history, including the nation's treaties with the US but focusing especially on its relationship with the village of Hobart, Wisconsin. Since 2003 there have been six disputes that have led to litigation between the local government and the nation. Central to these disputes are the local government's attempts to regulate the nation and relegate its government to the position of a common landowner, subject to municipal authority. As in so many conflicts between Indigenous nations and local municipalities, the media narrative about the Oneida Nation's battle for sovereignty has been dominated by the local government's standpoint. In Defense of Sovereignty offers another perspective, that of a nation citizen directly involved in the litigation, augmented by contributions from historians, attorneys, and a retired nation employee. It makes an important contribution to public debates about the inherent right of Indigenous nations to continue to exist and exercise self-governance within their territories without being challenged at every turn"--