Indigenous Rights Movements & the Law

Reports, hotlines, toolkits, and information about MMIW

In the United States, American Indian/Alaskan Native people experience higher rates of violence than any other demographic.  Native women and girls, specifically, are disproportionately affected by the violence.

Background In Spring 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux began a protest of the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL for short, on their lands in North Dakota. DAPL is slated to connect the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota with other pipelines in Illinois and was mapped to go through lands belonging to Native American nations, including the Standing Rock tribe. The tribe and its supporters are demonstrating against the desecration of sacred lands, the abrogation tribal rights guaranteed by the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851), and the potential damage to the water supply.

Ṣapai Cui'ig, S-ke:g ‘Em-Jiwhidag, Yá'át'ééh, Dagot’ee, Welcome! The Labriola National American Indian Data Center is an Indigenous-led library center where students and community members can celebrate and critically engage with American Indian and Indigenous scholarly works and creative writing. Its staff provides culturally relevant information and research support, and the center is a culturally safe learning space for Indigenous library users.

Toolkit: Indigenous Rights and the Universal Periodic Review of the U.S. Suggested Social Media Content • Additional Resources & Background “The government of the United States has repeatedly failed to protect the human rights of the Gwich’in by aggressively pursuing oil and gas development i...

The University of New Mexico School of Law Library has an extensive and well-preserved in-house Indian Law Collection, and information on many online resources. We have five (5) separate research guides on distinct areas within Indian Law. Choosing one of these five (5) guides will have its own unique tabs across the top. Use the links below to move between guides, and within the guides. These guides are starting points

This research guide is designed to assist attorneys and scholars in researching federal Indian law, tribal law, and international law related to indigenous peoples. Federal Indian law consists of the legal and political relationship between federal, state, and tribal governments. The guide provides information on researching the statutes, regulations, court decisions, treaties, and executive orders that control intergovernmental relationships among Indian tribes, the United States, and the fifty states. Tribal law is the law individual Indian tribes develop and apply to their members and territories. The guide details resources for accessing tribal law for tribes located within Arizona as well as outside of the state. International indigenous law is the interaction between public international law and Indigenous peoples. The guide focuses on key resources for public international law related to indigenous peoples with particular attention paid to relevant secondary sources, key international documents, United Nations resources, and current awareness sources.

This page is a starting point for ASU students primarily, and the wider community seeking Indigenous-centric resources and tribal perspectives on COVID-19 (novel coronavirus).

This page is a starting point for all students researching American Indian issues. This guide is created by the Labriola National American Indian Data Center.

This guide covers federal, tribal, and state (primarily Minnesota) law-related resources. Use this guide to locate: secondary sources (books, articles, and, news) and primary sources (treaties, case law, statutes and agency rules, and decisions). Links to additional selected research guides & bibliographies are provided. Selected links are also provided to bar and law student associations, public and private research institutes, and centers, and Native American advocacy organizations. A separate section devoted to the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 and its aftermath provides links to recommended resources for research.

This guide will help you get started with your research on legal issues relating to Native Americans, Alaska Natives and other peoples indigenous to North America.

The Indigenous Digital Encyclopedia

Every year, thousands of Native American women are reported missing across the US. Many are never found and the murder rate of indigenous women is higher than for any other race in the country. Reporter Kate Hodal investigates. Plus: author Mike Carter on retracing his father’s steps on a walk from Liverpool to London

‎Show Real Crime Profile, Ep Missing Indigenous Women - Part 1 - Oct 27, 2021

The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 was signed on September 17, 1851 between United States treaty commissioners and representatives of the Cheyenne, Sioux, Arapaho, Crow, Assiniboine, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nations. Also known as Horse Creek Treaty, the treaty set forth traditional territorial claims of the tribes.

The Treaty of Fort Laramie is an agreement between the United States and the Oglala, Miniconjou, and Brulé bands of Lakota people, Yanktonai Dakota, and Arapaho Nation, following the failure of the first Fort Laramie treaty, signed in 1851.

United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, 448 U.S. 371 (1980), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that: 1) the enactment by Congress of a law allowing the Sioux Nation to pursue a claim against the United States that had been previously adjudicated did not violate the doctrine of separation of powers; and 2) the taking of property that was set aside for the use of the tribe required just compensation, including interest. The Sioux have not accepted the compensation awarded to them by this case, valued at over $1 billion as of 2011.

Indigenous rights are those rights that exist in recognition of the specific condition of the Indigenous peoples. This includes not only the most basic human rights of physical survival and integrity, but also the rights over their land (including native title), language, religion, and other elements of cultural heritage that are a part of their existence and identity as a people. This can be used as an expression for advocacy of social organizations, or form a part of the national law in establishing the relation between a government and the right of self-determination among its Indigenous people, or in international law as a protection against violation of Indigenous rights by actions of governments or groups of private interests.

Native American civil rights are the civil rights of Native Americans in the United States. Native Americans are citizens of their respective Native nations as well as the United States, and those nations are characterized under United States law as "domestic dependent nations", a special relationship that creates a tension between rights retained via tribal sovereignty and rights that individual Natives have as U.S. citizens. This status creates tension today, but was far more extreme before Native people were uniformly granted U.S. citizenship in 1924. Assorted laws and policies of the United States government, some tracing to the pre-Revolutionary colonial period, denied basic human rights—particularly in the areas of cultural expression and travel—to indigenous people.

This guide in intended to provide access to resources pertaining to the epidemic of and movement for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls & Two-Spirit Peoples (MMIWG2S) specific to Tribal and non-tribal communities in Arizona. This guide includes policies and legislation; research, reports, academic scholarship, and databases; media; guides and toolkits; and information on where to get help and how to get involved specific to the state. This global problem cannot be addressed in a vacuum, so this intersectional guide also includes national and international resources intended to provide context to how local MMIWG2S cases and research are impacting and impacted by these connected tragedies and efforts.

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) is an epidemic of violence against Indigenous women in Canada, the United States, and Latin America; notably those in the FNIM and Native American communities. Across Latin America, it is estimated that Indigenous women and girls are disproportionately the victims of femicide. According to a report prepared by the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, representatives from Canada, Mexico, and the United States have resolved to work together as part of the North American Working Group on Violence Against Indigenous Women and Girls. A mass movement in the US and Canada works to raise awareness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) through organizing marches; building databases of the missing; holding local community, city council, and tribal council meetings; and conducting domestic violence trainings and other informational sessions for police.

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.

Rights of nature or Earth rights is a legal and jurisprudential theory that describes inherent rights as associated with ecosystems and species, similar to the concept of fundamental human rights. The rights of nature concept challenges twentieth-century laws as generally grounded in a flawed frame of nature as "resource" to be owned, used, and degraded. Proponents argue that laws grounded in rights of nature direct humanity to act appropriately and in a way consistent with modern, system-based science, which demonstrates that humans and the natural world are fundamentally interconnected.

The Standing Rock Reservation lies across the border between North and South Dakota in the United States, and is inhabited by ethnic "Hunkpapa and Sihasapa bands of Lakota Oyate and the Ihunktuwona and Pabaksa bands of the Dakota Oyate," as well as the Hunkpatina Dakota. The Ihanktonwana Dakota are the Upper Yanktonai, part of the collective of Wiciyena. The sixth-largest Native American reservation in land area in the US, Standing Rock includes all of Sioux County, North Dakota, and all of Corson County, South Dakota, plus slivers of northern Dewey and Ziebach counties in South Dakota, along their northern county lines at Highway 20.

The Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, also called by the hashtag #NoDAPL, began in April 2016 as a grassroots opposition to the construction of Energy Transfer Partners' Dakota Access Pipeline in the northern United States and ended on February 23, 2017 when National Guard and law enforcement officers evicted the last remaining protesters. The pipeline runs from the Bakken oil fields in western North Dakota to southern Illinois, crossing beneath the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, as well as under part of Lake Oahe near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Many members of the Standing Rock tribe and surrounding communities consider the pipeline to be a serious threat to the region's water. The construction also directly threatens ancient burial grounds and cultural sites of historic importance.