Indigenous Rights & Tribal Sovereignty

Raymond Mattia’s family said the partial release of body camera footage “feels like a cheap attempt to justify what they did.”

Oak Flat, a mountainous area east of Phoenix, is an Apache sacred site where Native Americans gather to pray and perform coming-of-age ceremonies and sweat rituals.

Oak Flat, a mountainous area east of Phoenix, is an Apache sacred site where Native Americans gather to pray and perform coming-of-age ceremonies and sweat rituals.

For young Navajo people, the lack of water makes it more difficult to return to the Navajo Nation to make a permanent home.

By a narrow margin, the Supreme Court has ruled against the Navajo Nation in a case over water rights in the drought-stricken US Southwest.

"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"--

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 the parents of Mika Westwolf, a 22-year-old Indigenous woman struck and killed in March by a driver as she was walking home along the highway in the early morning hours. The parents and allies are on a “Justice to Be Seen” march to call for justice and an investigation. Westwolf was a member of the Blackfeet Tribe and was also Diné, Cree and Klamath. The driver has been identified as Sunny White, a suspected white nationalist whose children are reportedly named “Aryan” and “Nation” and were in the car at the time of the crash. White has not been charged in connection with Westwolf’s death, but it’s part of an apparent pattern in which many Indigenous people are killed or hit by vehicles along Highway 93. “They need to hear us and see us,” says Westwolf’s mother, Carissa Heavy Runner. “Listen to our stories and feel our pain and see our pain.” Erica Shelby, a tribal legal advocate for missing and murdered Indigenous women, discusses the details of the case and how she is in Washington, D.C., to demand action from lawmakers. “Everybody has the same story about the same players, the same agencies, the same police, the same attorneys,” says Shelby. “Enough is enough.”

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.

"In the summer of 2017, twenty-two-year-old Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind vanished. A week after she disappeared, police arrested the white couple who lived upstairs from Savanna and emerged from their apartment carrying an infant girl. The baby was Savanna's, but Savanna's body would not be found for days. The horrifying crime sent shock waves far beyond Fargo, North Dakota, where it occurred, and helped expose the sexual and physical violence Native American women and girls have endured since the country's colonization. With pathos and compassion, Searching for Savanna confronts this history of dehumanization toward Indigenous women and the government's complicity in the crisis. Featuring in-depth interviews, personal accounts, and trial analysis, Searching for Savanna investigates these injustices and the decades-long struggle by Native American advocates for meaningful change."--Amazon.com

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.