Indigenous Rights & Tribal Sovereignty

A report to the Minnesota Legislature

How a single pipeline project became the epicenter of an enormous environmental, public health, and civil rights battle.

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 →

A Nevada federal judge on Friday rejected a legal effort by the Winnemucca Indian Colony to join a lawsuit attempting to stop a lithium mining project at Thacker Pass, a religiously and culturally significant area considered sacred to the tribe. Also last week, Department of Interior attorneys urged the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals […]

A Year 1 Project Report on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirit People of Northern California

Staving off attempts by Republican officials to talk about Russia, tribal leaders spent the morning in D.C. highlighting the benefits of co-management plans and tribal sovereignty.

Washington, D.C. - Yurok Tribe in northern California has been selected as the first pilot location for the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) Missing and Murdered

Tre C. James is accused of fatally shooting Jamie Yazzie, who was last seen on the Navajo Nation.

On June 22, 2021, you issued a memorandum directing Department of the Interior (Department) agencies to coordinate an investigation into the Federal Indian boarding school system to examine the scope of the system, with a focus on the location of schools, burial sites, and identification of children who attended the schools. You also directed that I submit a report of our investigation by April 1, 2022. In accordance with your direction, I am submitting to you the first Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report. This report shows for the first time that between 1819 and 1969, the United States operated or supported 408 boarding schools across 37 states (or then-territories), including 21 schools in Alaska and 7 schools in Hawaii. This report identifies each of those schools by name and location, some of which operated across multiple sites. This report confirms that the United States directly targeted American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children in the pursuit of a policy of cultural assimilation that coincided with Indian territorial dispossession. It identifies the Federal Indian boarding schools that were used as a means for these ends, along with at least 53 burial sites for children across this system- with more site discoveries and data expected as we continue our research...

Before the murder of Sabina Nessa, a 28-year-old primary school teacher killed in London, some were already speaking of a

Indigenous women migrants from Central America and Mexico face harrowing experiences of violence before, during, and after their migration to the United States, like all asylum seekers. But as Shannon Speed argues, the circumstances for Indigenous women are especially devastating, given their disproportionate vulnerability to neoliberal economic and political policies and practices in Latin America and the United States, including policing, detention, and human trafficking. Speed dubs this vulnerability "neoliberal multicriminalism" and identifies its relation to settler structures of Indigenous dispossession and elimination. Using innovative ethnographic practices to record and recount stories from Indigenous women in U.S. detention, Speed demonstrates that these women's vulnerability to individual and state violence is not rooted in a failure to exercise agency. Rather, it is a structural condition, created and reinforced by settler colonialism, which consistently deploys racial and gender ideologies to manage the ongoing business of occupation and capitalist exploitation. With sensitive narration and sophisticated analysis, this book reveals the human consequences of state policy and practices throughout the Americas and adds vital new context for understanding the circumstances of migrants seeking asylum in the United States. -- Provided by publisher.;"Incarcerated stories uses ethnography and oral history to document and assess the plight of indigenous women migrants from Mexico and Central America to the United States. Their harrowing experiences of violence before, during, and after their migration parallel the worst stories we hear about immigrants' journeys; but as Speed argues, the circumstances for indigenous women are especially devastating against the backdrop of neoliberal economic and political reforms that have taken hold in Latin America as well as the U.S. First these women were promised greater autonomy and economic opportunity under reforms meant to promote indigenous rights at home, but the attention given to indigenous recognition veiled policies that furthered the economic disruption for women"--

Trans people in Britain today have become a culture war 'issue'. Despite making up less than one per cent of the country's population, they are the subjects of a toxic and increasingly polarized 'debate' which generates reliable controversy for newspapers and talk shows. This media frenzy conceals a simple fact: that we are having the wrong conversation, a conversation in which trans people themselves are reduced to a talking point and denied a meaningful voice. In this powerful new book, Shon Faye reclaims the idea of the 'transgender issue' to uncover the reality of what it means to be trans in a transphobic society. In doing so, she provides a compelling, wide-ranging analysis of trans lives from youth to old age, exploring work, family, housing, healthcare, the prison system and trans participation in the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities, in contemporary Britain and beyond. The Transgender Issue is a landmark work that signals the beginning of a new, healthier conversation about trans life. It is a manifesto for change, and a call for justice and solidarity between all marginalized people and minorities. Trans liberation, as Faye sees it, goes to the root of what our society is and what it could be; it offers the possibility of a more just, free and joyful world for all of us.

Geo Neptune explores the history of the term "Two-Spirit" and who it pertains to. Does it mean two genders? Can anyone use it to describe themselves? InQueery is the series that takes a deeper look at the meaning, context, and history of LGBTQ+ vocabulary and culture. Powered by Google. What Does "Two-Spirit" Mean? | InQueery | them.

Author and Indigenous elder Ma-Nee Chacaby talks about Two Spirit identities.

The term Two-Spirit is a direct translation of the Ojibwe term, Niizh manidoowag.“Two-Spirited” or “Two-Spirit” is usually used to indicate a person whose body simultaneously houses a masculine spirit and a feminine spirit. The term can also be used more abstractly, to indicate the presence of two contrasting human spirits (such as Warrior and Clan Mother).

Two Spirit people have been present in Native communities for countless generations that predate LGBTQ terminology. Here are 8 things to know.

The Indian Health Service (IHS), an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, is responsible for providing federal health services to American Indians and Alaska Natives. The provision of health services to members of federally-recognized Tribes grew out of the special government-to-government relationship between the federal government and Indian Tribes. The IHS is the principal federal health care provider and health advocate for Indian people, and provides a comprehensive health service delivery system for American Indians and Alaska Natives. The IHS Mission is to raise the physical, mental, social, and spiritual health of American Indians and Alaska Natives to the highest level.

Indigenous feminism is an intersectional theory and practice of feminism that focuses on decolonization, indigenous sovereignty, and human rights for Indigenous women and their families. The focus is to empower Indigenous women in the context of Indigenous cultural values and priorities, rather than mainstream, white, patriarchal ones.[1] In this cultural perspective, it can be compared to womanism in the African-American communities.

The 19th Amendment didn’t secure the right to vote for Native American women, despite their strong influence on suffragist ideas.

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.

The 2021 short-film documentary Say Her Name, directed by Rain, began with Juliet Hayes (Coushatta) sharing the astonishing statistics at the heart of the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) taking place in the reservation border town of Hardin, Montana, located in Big Horn County. Drawing on similarities between well-known serial murders, Hayes went on to report that there were 27 documented MMIWG cases and that “86% of missing and murder Indigenous people [MMIP] cases in Montana remain[ed] unsolved.” Historically, Hayes said, “Big Horn County has the highest per capita rates of MMIWG cases in the U.S.”

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.

According to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Unit (MMU), U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, “American Indian and Alaska Native people are at a disproportionate risk of experiencing violence, murder, or going missing and make up a significant portion of the missing and murdered cases.” It is because of the recognition of the epidemic at a federal level, as well as the prior work done by Operation Lady Justice, the Presidential Task Force on Contains a quote from the NativeHope.org website which reads "There is widespread anger and sadness in First Nations communities. Sisters, wives, mothers, and daughters are gone from their families without clear answers. There are families whose loved ones are missing—babies growing up without mothers, mothers without daughters, and grandmothers without granddaughters. For Native America, this adds one more layer of trauma upon existing wounds that cannot heal. Communities are pleading for justice.Missing and Murdered American Indians and Alaskan Natives, that Secretary Deb Haaland, New Mexico congresswoman and the U.S.’s first Indigenous cabinet secretary, called for the formation of the MMU.

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.