Sovereign Bodies Institute (SBI) builds on Indigenous traditions of data gathering and knowledge transfer to create, disseminate, and put into action research on gender and sexual violence against Indigenous people. SBI is committed to: conducting, supporting, and mobilizing culturally-informed and community-engaged research on gender and sexual violence against Indigenous people uplifting Indigenous researchers, knowledge keepers, and data visualists in their work to research and disseminate data on gender and sexual violence against Indigenous people empowering Indigenous communities and nations to continue their work to end gender and sexual violence against Indigenous people, through data-driven partnerships that enhance research efforts, develop best practices, and transform data to action to protect and heal their peoples. SBI is a home for generating new knowledge and understandings of how Indigenous nations and communities are impacted by gender and sexual violence, and how they may continue to work towards healing and freedom from such violence. In the spirit of building such freedom, SBI is strongly committed to upholding the sovereignty of all bodies Indigenous peoples hold sacred--our physical bodies, nations, land, and water--and does not accept grants from colonial governments or extractive industries. Similarly, SBI’s work is not limited by colonial borders, concepts of gender, politics of identity or recognition, or ways of knowing. SBI honors the epistemologies and lifeways of indigenous peoples, and is bound by accountability to the land, our ancestors, and each other. SBI is fiscally sponsored by Open Collective Foundation.

Our mission is to stop violence against Native women and children by advocating for social change in our communities.

Our mission is to stop violence against Native women and children by advocating for social change in our communities.

The Sobaípuri-O'odham occupied the San Pedro and Santa Cruz valleys of southern Arizona from the 1400s. Their descendants reside at the contemporary community if Wa:k (San Xavier del Bac). Most of the protohistory and history concerning the Sobaípuri-O'odham has been gleaned from documents written by the early Spanish colonizers and other Europeans and emphasizes the influence of Father Eusebio Kino; there are few accounts of the indigenous people themselves. In recent years, however, archaeological surveys and excavations in southern Arizona have revealed new information about this group. Where the Earth and Sky Are Sewn Together includes these archaeological findings to provide an enhanced interpretation of the Sobaípuri-O'odham lifeway, addressing questions that have been unanswerable by historical documents alone. Seymour considers new methods and theory for tackling the difficulties of working with a sparse archaeological record and proposes some very different answers. This book represents a much revised rendition of the historian's Sobaípuri-O'odham, a people who once dominated southern Arizona's landscape.

"Land Acknowledgements often begin academic conferences, cultural events, government press conferences, and even hockey games. They are supposed to be an act of Reconciliation between Indigenous people in Canada and non-Indigenous Canadians, but they have become so routine and formulaic that they have sometimes lost meaning. Seen more and more as empty words, some events have dropped Land Acknowledgements altogether. Me��tis artist and educator Suzanne Keeptwo wants to change that. She sees the Land Acknowledgement as an opportunity for Indigenous people in Canada to communicate their worldview to non-Indigenous Canadians--a worldview founded upon Age Old Wisdom about how to sustain the Land we all want to call home. For Keeptwo, the Land Acknowledgement is a way to teach and a way to learn: a living, evolving record of First Nation, Me��tis, and Inuit people in Canada and the Land that for millennia they held in pristine condition. As Keeptwo says: "Everything comes back to the Land--as our common denominator and most perfect unifier for Reconciliation." This is an indispensable guide to getting the contemporary Land Acknowledgement right."--

Indigenous cultures are not terra nullius -- nobody's land, free to be taken. True Tracks paves the way for the respectful and ethical engagement with Indigenous knowledges and cultures. Using real-world cases and personal stories, Meriam/Wuthathi lawyer Dr Terri Janke draws on twenty years of professional experience to inform and inspire people working across many industries -- from art and architecture, to film and publishing, dance, science and tourism. What Indigenous materials and knowledge are you using? How will your project affect and involve Indigenous communities? Are your sharing your profits with those communities? True Tracks helps answer these questions and many more, and provides invaluable guidelines that enable Indigenous peoples to actively practise, manage and strengthen their cultural life. If we keep our tracks true, Indigenous culture and knowledge can benefit everyone and empower future generations.

From one of our finest writers and leading environmental thinkers, a powerful book about how the land we share divides us--and how it could unite us Today, we are at a turning point as we face ecological and political crises that are rooted in conflicts over the land itself. But these problems can be solved if we draw on elements of our tradition that move us toward a new commonwealth--a community founded on the well-being of all people and the natural world. In this brief, powerful, timely, and hopeful book, Jedediah Purdy explores how we might begin to heal our fractured and contentious relationship with the land and with each other.

One of the most outspoken of current Native American activists, Churchill ( Fantasies of the Master Race ) here produces a fine volume of essays devoted to Native peoples' efforts to recover their lost lands and to protect what they have left. Threats to their territories take many forms, including expropriation, flooding for production of hydroelectric power and what Churchill terms ``radioactive colonization,'' whereby Native lands and waters are destroyed through uranium mining. Native resistance varies as well, ranging from legal suits and savvy marshaling of international public opinion to defense by force of arms. Deftly dealing with the situation in both the United States and Canada, Churchill debunks important myths (e.g., that there is a single ethnicity that can encompass all of North America's indigenous peoples). In the final essay, he expounds his version of ``indigenism,'' which he defines as giving the highest political priority to indigenous rights--whether in America, Australia or elsewhere. This is an important contribution to a growing body of work stressing Native sovereignty and self-determination. (Jan.)

Sovereignty Matters investigates the multiple perspectives that exist within indigenous communities regarding the significance of sovereignty as a category of intellectual, political, and cultural work. Much scholarship to date has treated sovereignty in geographical and political matters solely in terms of relationships between indigenous groups and their colonial states or with a bias toward American contexts. This groundbreaking anthology of essays by indigenous peoples from the Americas and the Pacific offers multiple perspectives on the significance of sovereignty. The noted Mohawk scholar Taiaiake Alfred provides a landmark essay on the philosophical foundations of sovereignty and the need for the decolonization of indigenous thinking about governance. Other essays explore the role of sovereignty in fueling cultural memory, theories of history and change, spiritual connections to the land, language revitalization, and repatriation efforts. These topics are examined in varied yet related contexts of indigenous struggles for self-determination, including those of the Chamorro of Guam, the Taino of Puerto Rico, the Quechua of the Andes, the Maori of New Zealand (Aotearoa), the Samoan Islanders, and the Kanaka Maoli and the Makah of the United States. Several essays also consider the politics of identity and identification. Sovereignty Matters emphasizes the relatedness of indigenous peoples' experiences of genocide, dispossession, and assimilation as well as the multiplicity of indigenous political and cultural agendas and perspectives regarding sovereignty.--Publisher description.

In the years following World War II, many multi-national energy firms, bolstered by outdated U.S. federal laws, turned their attention to the abundant resources buried beneath Native American reservations. By the 1970s, however, a coalition of Native Americans in the Northern Plains had successfully blocked the efforts of powerful energy corporations to develop coal reserves on sovereign Indian land. This challenge to corporate and federal authorities, initiated by the Crow and Northern Cheyenne nations, changed the laws of the land to expand Native American sovereignty while simultaneously reshaping Native identities and Indian Country itself. James Allison makes an important contribution to ethnic, environmental, and energy studies with this unique exploration of the influence of America's indigenous peoples on energy policy and development. Allison's fascinating history documents how certain federally supported, often environmentally damaging, energy projects were perceived by American Indians as potentially disruptive to indigenous lifeways. These perceived threats sparked a pan-tribal resistance movement that ultimately increased Native American autonomy over reservation lands and enabled an unprecedented boom in tribal entrepreneurship. At the same time, the author demonstrates how this movement generated great controversy within Native American communities, inspiring intense debates over culturally authentic forms of indigenous governance and the proper management of tribal lands. James Robert Allison III is assistant professor in the department of history at Christopher Newport University. He lives in Richmond, VA.

This book presents a comparative study of the land settlements and sovereign arrangements between the US government and the three major aggregated groups of indigenous peoples--American Indians, Native Alaskans, and Native Hawaiians--whose land rights claims have resulted in very different outcomes. It shows that the outcomes of their sovereign claims were different, though their bases were similar. While the US government insists that it is committed to the government-to-government relationship it has with the tribes, federal authority severely limits the ability of tribal governments to participate as an equal partner.

Red Nation Rising is the first book ever to investigate and explain the violent dynamics of border towns. Border towns are white-dominated towns and cities that operate at the borders of current-day reservation boundaries, which separate the territory of sovereign Native nations from lands claimed by the United States. Red Nation Rising marks the first effort to tell these entangled histories and inspire a new generation of Native freedom fighters to return to border towns as key front lines in the long struggle for Native liberation from US colonial control.

Reclaiming Indigenous Governance examines the efforts of Indigenous peoples in four important countries to reclaim their right to self-govern. Showcasing Native nations, this timely book presents diverse perspectives of both practitioners and researchers involved in Indigenous governance in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States (the CANZUS states). Indigenous governance is dynamic, an ongoing relationship between Indigenous peoples and settler-states. The relationship may be vigorously contested, but it is often fragile-one that ebbs and flows, where hard-won gains can be swiftly lost by the policy reversals of central governments. The legacy of colonial relationships continues to limit advances in self-government. Yet Indigenous peoples in the CANZUS countries are no strangers to setbacks, and their growing movement provides ample evidence of resilience, resourcefulness, and determination to take back control of their own destiny. Demonstrating the struggles and achievements of Indigenous peoples, the chapter authors draw on the wisdom of Indigenous leaders and others involved in rebuilding institutions for governance, strategic issues, and managing lands and resources. This volume brings together the experiences, reflections, and insights of practitioners confronting the challenges of governing, as well as researchers seeking to learn what Indigenous governing involves in these contexts. Three things emerge: the enormity of the Indigenous governance task, the creative agency of Indigenous peoples determined to pursue their own objectives, and the diverse paths they choose to reach their goal.

"Oak Flat tells the story of a race-against-time struggle for a swath of American land, which pits one of the poorest communities in the United States against the federal government and two of the world's largest mining conglomerates. The book follows the fortunes of two families with profound connections to the contested site: the Nosies, an Apache family whose teenage daughter is an activist and leader in the Oak Flat fight, and the Gorhams, a mining family whose patriarch was a sheriff in the lawless early days of Arizona statehood."--Provided by publisher.

The chapters in this volume collect together perspectives on Indigenous epistemologies. These Indigenous ways of knowing pay particular attention to the relational aspects of language, culture, and place. They are not identified as specific themes, but as integrated parts of a philosophy, for Indigenous epistemologies think within a relational framework, so that all aspects are best understood from this perspective. Indigenous ways of knowing have resisted colonization and oppression, and as such, Indigenous research perspectives exemplify a commitment to social justice, one that recovers knowledges that have been silenced or subjugated. When such knowledge is shared, we can see how to challenge oppressive regimes. We can see how to seek truth in a relational way that's attendant to being together. Indigenous Researchtakes up issues of social justice in a way that is informed by Indigenous epistemologies, an important practice in contemporary research, particularly qualitative inquiry.

Land Uprising reframes Indigenous land reclamation as a horizon to decolonize the settler colonial conditions of literary, intellectual, and activist labor. Simón Ventura Trujillo argues that land provides grounding for rethinking the connection between Native storytelling practices and Latinx racialization across overlapping colonial and nation-state forms. Trujillo situates his inquiry in the cultural production of La Alianza Federal de Mercedes, a formative yet understudied organization of the Chicanx movement of the 1960s and 1970s. La Alianza sought to recover Mexican and Spanish land grants in New Mexico that had been dispossessed after the Mexican-American War. During graduate school, Trujillo realized that his grandparents were activists in La Alianza. Written in response to this discovery, Land Uprising bridges La Alianza's insurgency and New Mexican land grant struggles to the writings of Leslie Marmon Silko, Ana Castillo, Simon Ortiz, and the Zapatista Uprising in Chiapas, Mexico. In doing so, the book reveals uncanny connections between Chicanx, Latinx, Latin American, and Native American and Indigenous studies to grapple with Native land reclamation as the future horizon for Chicanx and Latinx indigeneities.  

"This book examines how indigenous peoples around the world are demanding greater data sovereignty, and challenging the ways in which governments have historically used Indigenous data to develop policies and programs. In the digital age, governments are increasingly dependent on data and data analytics to inform their policies and decision-making. However, indigenous peoples have often been the unwilling targets of policy interventions and have had little say over the collection, use and application of data about them, their lands and cultures. At the heart of indigenous peoples' demands for change are the enduring aspirations of self-determination over their institutions, resources, knowledge and information systems. With contributors from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, North and South America and Europe, this book offers a rich account of the potential for Indigenous data sovereignty to support human flourishing and to protect against the ever-growing threats of data-related risks and harms." -- provided by publisher.

In The Extractive Zone Macarena Gómez-Barris traces the political, aesthetic, and performative practices that emerge in opposition to the ruinous effects of extractive capital. The work of Indigenous activists, intellectuals, and artists in spaces Gómez-Barris labels extractive zones--majority indigenous regions in South America noted for their biodiversity and long history of exploitative natural resource extraction--resist and refuse the terms of racial capital and the continued legacies of colonialism. Extending decolonial theory with race, sexuality, and critical Indigenous studies, Gómez-Barris develops new vocabularies for alternative forms of social and political life. She shows how from Colombia to southern Chile artists like filmmaker Huichaqueo Perez and visual artist Carolina Caycedo formulate decolonial aesthetics. She also examines the decolonizing politics of a Bolivian anarcho-feminist collective and a coalition in eastern Ecuador that protects the region from oil drilling. In so doing, Gómez-Barris reveals the continued presence of colonial logics and locates emergent modes of living beyond the boundaries of destructive extractive capital.

"With the end of the Civil War, the nation recommenced its expansion onto traditional Indian tribal lands, setting off a wide-ranging conflict that would last more than three decades. In an exploration of the wars and negotiations that destroyed tribal ways of life even as they made possible the emergence of the modern United States, Peter Cozzens gives us both sides in comprehensive and singularly intimate detail. He illuminates the encroachment experienced by the tribes and the tribal conflicts over whether to fight or make peace, and explores the squalid lives of soldiers posted to the frontier and the ethical quandaries faced by generals who often sympathized with their native enemies"--Amazon.com

The border region of the Sonoran Desert, which spans southern Arizona in the United States and northern Sonora, Mexico, has attracted national and international attention. But what is less discussed in national discourses is the impact of current border policies on the Native peoples of the region. There are twenty-six tribal nations recognized by the U.S. federal government in the southern border region and approximately eight groups of Indigenous peoples in the United States with historical ties to Mexico--the Yaqui, the O'odham, the Cocopah, the Kumeyaay, the Pai, the Apaches, the Tiwa (Tigua), and the Kickapoo. Divided Peoples addresses the impact border policies have on traditional lands and the peoples who live there--whether environmental degradation, border patrol harassment, or the disruption of traditional ceremonies. Anthropologist Christina Leza shows how such policies affect the traditional cultural survival of Indigenous peoples along the border. The author examines local interpretations and uses of international rights tools by Native activists, counterdiscourse on the U.S.-Mexico border, and challenges faced by Indigenous border activists when communicating their issues to a broader public. Through ethnographic research with grassroots Indigenous activists in the region, the author reveals several layers of division--the division of Indigenous peoples by the physical U.S.-Mexico border, the divisions that exist between Indigenous perspectives and mainstream U.S. perspectives regarding the border, and the traditionalist/nontraditionalist split among Indigenous nations within the United States. Divided Peoples asks us to consider the possibilities for challenging settler colonialism both in sociopolitical movements and in scholarship about Indigenous peoples and lands.

"Tucked away in the northeastern corner of Alaska is one of the most contested landscapes in all of North America: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Considered sacred by Indigenous peoples in Alaska and Canada and treasured by environmentalists, the refuge provides life-sustaining habitat for caribou, polar bears, migratory birds, and other species. For decades, though, the fossil fuel industry and powerful politicians have sought to turn this unique ecosystem into an oil field. 'Defending the Arctic Refuge' tells the improbable story of how the people fought back"--

"There is powerful evidence that the colonization of Indigenous people was and is a crime, and that that crime is on-going. Achieving historical colonial goals often meant committing acts that were criminal even at the time. The consequences of this oppression and criminal victimization is perhaps the critical factor explaining why Indigenous people today are overrepresented as victims and offenders in the settler colonist criminal justice systems. This book presents an analysis of the relationship between these colonial crimes and their continuing criminal and social consequences that exist today. The authors focus primarily on countries colonized by Britain, especially the United States. Social harm theory, human rights covenants, and law are used to explain the criminal aspects of the historical laws and their continued effects. The final chapter looks at the responsibilities of settler-colonists in ameliorating these harms and the actions currently being taken by Indigenous people themselves." --Amazon.com.

"Who counts as an American Indian? Which groups qualify as Indian tribes? These questions have become increasingly complex in the past several decades, and federal legislation and the rise of tribal-owned casinos have raised the stakes in the ongoing debate. In this revealing study, historian Mark Edwin Miller describes how and why dozens of previously unrecognized tribal groups in the southeastern states have sought, and sometimes won, recognition, often to the dismay of the Five Tribe--the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles."--Publisher's website

""Since the arrival of European settlers, Native American cultural sovereignty has been under attack. Self-determination is a tribal right of Native people, but colonial oppression banned their traditions and religion, purloined and misused sacred sites, and betrayed treaties when convenient. Over time, the settlers usurped Native American culture to make room for white settlers, and these destructive behaviors continue today. Within the dearth of Native American culture left after forced assimilation, American Indians still struggle to retain their rights. In this historical account of the despotism against Native American culture, the altercations of sovereignty, territory, and pluralistic democracy are analyzed in an effort to provide a path towards justice."-Provided by publisher"--

"Jason Edward Black examines the ways the US government's rhetoric and American Indian responses contributed to the policies of Native-US relations throughout the nineteenth century's removal and allotment eras. Black shows how these discourses together constructed the perception of the US government and of American Indian communities. Such interactions--though certainly not equal--illustrated the hybrid nature of Native-US rhetoric in the nineteenth century. Both governmental, colonizing discourse and indigenous, decolonizing discourse shaped arguments, constructions of identity, and rhetoric in the colonial relationship. American Indians and the Rhetoric of Removal and Allotment demonstrates how American Indians decolonized dominant rhetoric through impeding removal and allotment policies. By turning around the US government's narrative and inventing their own tactics, American Indian communities helped restyle their own identities as well as the government's. During the first third of the twentieth century, American Indians lobbied for the successful passage of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 and the Indian New Deal of 1934, changing the relationship once again. In the end, Native communities were granted increased rhetorical power through decolonization, though the US government retained an undeniable colonial influence through its territorial management of Natives. The Indian Citizenship Act and the Indian New Deal--as the conclusion of this book indicates--are emblematic of the prevalence of the duality of US citizenship that fused American Indians to the nation, yet segregated them on reservations. This duality of inclusion and exclusion grew incrementally and persists now, as a lasting effect of nineteenth-century Native-US rhetorical relations"--

"A powerful and historically accurate graphic portayal of Indigenous resistance to the European colonization of the Americas, beginning with the Spanish invasion under Christopher Columbus." "Other events depicted include the 1680 Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico; the Inca insurgency in Peru from the 1500s to the 1780s; Pontiac and the 1763 Rebellion & Royal Proclamation; Geronimo and the 1860s Seminole Wars; Crazy Horse and the 1877 War on the Plains; the rise of the American Indian Movement in the 1960s; 1973's Wounded Knee; the Mohawk Oka Crisis in Quebec in 1990; and the 1995 Aazhoodena/Stoney Point resistance."--back cover

Tribal sovereignty in the United States is the concept of the inherent authority of indigenous tribes to govern themselves within the borders of the United States.

Pėhéveéšeēva (good day). I am an Assistant Professor of Sociology and American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. As a social demographer, I apply critical quantitative and mixed methods to research at the intersection of race, indigeneity, data, and inequality. I specialize in survey research in partnership with Indigenous communities and other marginalized populations. I ground my research in the following disciplinary lenses: Indigenous studies, sociology of race and ethnicity, political sociology, sociology of knowledge, critical demography, health policy research, and science and technology studies. As an Indigenous woman (Northern Cheyenne and Chicana), I believe that I cannot be a good researcher and teacher without being a good relative. Building strong relationships with Indigenous communities, organizations, Native Nations, and students requires humility, flexibility, and honoring the lived experiences of Indigenous Peoples—past, present, and future. I nurture these relationships by directing the Data Warriors Lab, which is an Indigenous social science laboratory. We connect researchers, students, and Indigenous communities to build data that support strong self-determined Indigenous futures. Our research model is grounded in the principles of Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Governance. Our work is driven by Indigenous communities (reservation, urban, and rural) and their pursuit of robust and meaningful data systems, policies, and practices. More on the Data Warriors Lab is coming soon.

PROMOTING INDIGENOUS DATA SOVEREIGNTY THROUGH DECOLONIZING DATA AND INDIGENOUS DATA GOVERNANCE