Indigenous Rights Movements & the Law

Judges put the transfer on hold while lawsuits over the sacred Apache site move forward.

President Donald Trump took a strong stance on Tuesday on the ongoing Resolution Copper dispute, issuing pointed criticism of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals following its decision to temporarily halt the planned land transfer.

Federal funding cuts could put tribal colleges and universities like Tohono O’odham Community College in southern Arizona at risk of closing.

Keith Richotte models his narrative on the Native tradition of the trickster story — parables of creation and change where an unreliable narrator dupes the listener into reshaping their perception of reality.

Indigenous leaders warn higher education institutions will close if the funding-slashing 2026 budget proposal passes

This month I interviewed Kelti McGloin, our brilliant Library Intern at the Sir James Dunn Law Library, about the development of her style guide, Best Practices for Writing About Indigenous Peoples in the Canadian Legal Context: An Evolving Style Guide for the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University. Share a bit about your background […]

"A sweeping and trenchant exploration of the history of Native American boarding schools in the U.S., and the legacy of abuse wrought by systemic attempts to use education as a tool through which to destroy Native culture. From the mid-19th century to the late 1930s, tens of thousands of Native children were pulled from their families to attend boarding schools that claimed to help create opportunity for these children to pursue professions outside their communities and otherwise "assimilate" into American life. In reality, these boarding schools--sponsored by the US Government but often run by various religious orders with little to no regulation--were an insidious attempt to destroy tribes, break up families, and stamp out the traditions of generations of Native people. Children were beaten for speaking their native languages, forced to complete menial tasks in terrible conditions, and utterly deprived of love and affection. Ojibwe journalist Mary Pember's mother was forced to attend one of these institutions--a seminary in Wisconsin, and the impacts of her experience have cast a pall over Mary's own childhood, and her relationship with her mother. Highlighting both her mother's experience and the experiences of countless other students at such schools, their families, and their children, Medicine River paints a stark portrait of communities still reckoning with the legacy of acculturation that has affected generations of Native communities. Through searing interviews and assiduous historical reporting, Pember traces the evolution and continued rebirth of a culture whose country has been seemingly intent upon destroying it"-- Provided by publisher.

The ABA Journal is read by half of the nation's 1 million lawyers every month. It covers the trends, people and finances of the legal profession from Wall Street to Main Street to Pennsylvania Avenue.

pspanNative Americans (American Indians and Alaska Natives) have a long tradition of service in the U.S. military, dating back to the Revolutionary War. In

In recognition of National Indigenous History Month, the Libraries unveiled a mural in the Dana Porter Library lobby by Tehatsistahawi (Tsista) Kennedy.

Today, Statistics Canada is releasing data on students from Canadian colleges and universities (cohorts of 2014 to 2022) by Indigenous identity and racialized group. This release includes information on the number of Canadian new students, enrolled students and graduates by Indigenous identity and racialized group, educational qualification, field of study, age group and gender. Data are available at the national, provincial and territorial levels.

When Stephanie Russo Carroll, a citizen of the Native Village of Kluti-Kaah in Alaska, set out to earn her doctorate in tribal health 15 years ago, she focused her research on tribal cultural and health programs within six tribes. She needed vital statistics data, such as birth and death rates, for each of them. But […]

Native students at University of Arizona are worried after their cultural group leader was fired and replaced with someone they don't trust.

The latest edition of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation is hot off the presses.  Although this 22nd edition retains the same basic approach to legal citation, there are some notable changes, including one that …

pspanNative Americans (American Indians and Alaska Natives) have a long tradition of service in the U.S. military, dating back to the Revolutionary War. In

President Donald Trump is looking to reopen Alcatraz Island, which once housed 19 Hopi men who didn’t want their children going to Indian boarding schools.

Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren says Donald Trump's push to revitalize coal could bring jobs, revenue and energy security.

Formal letter from all Native organizations reframes cultural center closures as constitutional matter involving tribal sovereignty

Ask Alex Hansen from the Rocky Mountain Veterans Advocacy Project the best way to connect with a veteran in need, and she talks about food.

Ofelia Zepeda is a renowned poet and linguist, and one of the world’s foremost experts on the Tohono O’odham language.

"Drawing its title from the 1863 Federal Act that banished the Dakota people from their homelands, this remarkable debut collection reckons with the present-day repercussions of historical violence. Through an array of brief lyrics, visual forms, chronologies, and sequences, these virtuosic poems trace a path through the labyrinth of distances and absences haunting the American colonial experiment. Removal Acts takes its speaker's fraught methods of accessing the past as both subject and material: family photos, the fragile artifacts of primary documents, and the digital abyss of web browsers and word processors. Alongside studies of two of her Dakota ancestors, Lynch has assembled an intimate record of recovery from bulimia, insisting that self-erasure cannot be separated from the erasures of genocide. In these rigorous, scrutinizing examinations of "removal" in its many forms-as physical displacement, archival absence, Whiteness, and vomit-Lynch has crafted a harrowing portrait of the entwined relationship between the personal and historical. The result is a powerful affirmation of resilience and resolute presence in the face of eradication"--

"To be Native American is to live in a world of contradictions. At the same time that the number of people in the U.S. who claim Native identity has exploded -- increasing 85 percent in just ten years -- the number of people formally enrolled in Tribes has not. While the federal government recognizes Tribal sovereignty, being a member of a Tribe requires navigating blood quantum laws and rolls that the federal government created with the intention of wiping out Native people altogether. Over two million Native people are Tribally enrolled, yet there are Native people who will never be. Native people who, for a variety of reasons ranging from displacement to disconnection, cannot be card-carrying members of their Tribe. Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz grapples with these contradictions. Through in-depth interviews, she shares the stories of people caught in the mire of identity formation, trying to define themselves outside of bureaucratic processes. With archival research, she pieces together the history of blood quantum and tribal rolls and federal government intrusion on Native identity-making. Reckoning with her own identity -- her own story of enrollment and the enrollment of her children -- she investigates the cultural, racial, and political dynamics of today's Tribal identity policing. She faces the question that many Native people do: Who is Indian enough?" --

Tribes that rely on the Colorado River — and the complex set of rules that govern it — are worried as the Donald Trump administration takes actions affecting their access to water.

Language is at the heart of Diné identity, carrying with it stories, traditions, and a worldview deeply rooted in the land and history of the Navajo people. As Diné poets, educators, and language advocates work to sustain Diné Bizaad, many are embracing poetry, playwriting, and performance as tools for preservation and revitalization.Aresta Tsosie-Paddock is Naakaii Dine’é and born for Bįįh Bitoodnii. Her cheii is Tł’ízíłání and her nálí is Kinyaa’áanii.

The Tohono O’odham language is at risk of disappearing, with far fewer people speaking it today. To help keep it alive, the Tohono O’odham Nation has opened the O’odham Ňi’okĭ Ki: Language Center, which offers classes and resources for learning the language. There have also been events put on by the community to discuss how to continue the language into the future. Efforts by educators, elders and the community continue to look for solutions to keep O’odham alive.