Social Movements & the Law

Rep. Deb Haaland got emotional while questioning a witness at a hearing on missing and murdered indigenous women Thursday. Choking back tears, Haaland asked ...

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland says extensive news media coverage of the death of Gabby Petito should be a reminder of hundreds of Native American girls and women who are missing or murdered in the United States.

Environmentalists and some Alaskan Native communities had opposed the plan over climate, wildlife and food-shortage fears

The Navajo Nation is providing new safe water sources for in-home use to residents living in homes with no piped water during the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency.This website describes how people without piped water in their homes can gain access to water from safe sources. This website provides information on water point locations, operating hours, and contact information. There is also information provided that will explain the importance of accessing and hauling your drinking and cooking water from safe water points.This site is best viewed using Chrome, Firefox or Microsoft Edge explorers. It does not work on Internet Explorer.

Ashley Loring Heavy Runner vanished in 2017. She’s just one of nearly 6,000 missing indigenous women. A complicated, underfunded justice system often leaves these sometimes violent crimes unsolved.

Native American women are being murdered and sexually assaulted on reservations and nearby towns at far higher rates than other American women.

In the United States the use of unregulated water sources – defined as sources that do not meet criteria to be classified as a public water system as defined by the Safe Drinking Water Act - are used regularly for livestock watering, agriculture, domestic, and other purposes. Nationally, more than 45 million people rely on unregulated water sources for drinking water; however, there remains infrastructure disparities for drinking water access in communities on Tribal nations. For the Navajo Nation, a sovereign Indigenous nation in the Southwestern United States, between 7% and 30% of homes lack plumbing to deliver household drinking water, so residents are compelled to access other water sources – regulated and unregulated alike. Previous unregulated water quality studies on the Navajo Nation were regionally focused and unsuitable for evaluating water quality trends across the Navajo Nation, an area that encompasses more than 71,000 square kilometers in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Therefore, beginning in 2011 the Community Environmental Health Program at the University of New Mexico began to compile existing water quality datasets, principally for unregulated groundwater sources, in a single geospatial relational database. Researchers at the University of New Mexico Center for Native Environmental Health Equity Research of the New Mexico METALS Superfund Research Program, University of Arizona, Northern Arizona University, and the Southwest Research and Information Center have compiled a database of water quality measurements from groundwater wells on the Navajo Nation using data from the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, and data from researchers at the University of New Mexico, Diné College and Northern Arizona University. To date, this data compilation has been used for publications but has not been disseminated publicly. The purpose of this website is to facilitate access to these compiled water quality data. The application design enables users to view water quality information using statistical and geospatial tools. Our hope is that this information will support individual and community decisions about water use from unregulated sources.

This is the second in a series of posts introducing readers to various organizations, conferences, and/or listservs, relevant to the FCIL-SIS Interest Groups. The series seeks to increase awareness…

Indigenous Studies is an interdisciplinary field grounded in the languages, histories, geographies, and contemporary experiences of Indigenous peoples

This report was prepared by RTI International using federal funding provided by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

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

The Michigan Legislature Website is a free service of the Legislative Internet Technology Team in cooperation with the Michigan Legislative Council, the Michigan House of Representatives, and the Michigan Senate.

LGBTQ history is now required in Illinois public schools.

Free & Equal’s newest video – narrated by movie star Zachary Quinto – exposes just how much LGBT exclusion really costs. Rates of poverty, homelessness, depression and suicide have been found to be far higher among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people than in the general population. But it’s not just LGBT people who pay the price. We all do. Every LGBT child thrown out of home and forced to miss out on education is a loss for society. Every LGBT worker denied their rights is a lost opportunity to build a fairer and more productive economy. These losses are entirely self-inflicted. With different laws and policies in place and a different mind-set, we could and would achieve a more free and equal world – that is more prosperous too! For more info visit: https://www.unfe.org/the-price Special thanks to Zachary Quinto, Shape History and the Cutting Room Studios, New York. NB: For closed captions in additional languages, click the "CC" button in the bottom of the viewing screen and select language.

These maps show state housing, public accommodations, and credit and lending nondiscrimination laws that explicitly enumerate sexual orientation and/or gender identity as protected classes, as well as states that explicitly interpret existing sex protections to include sexual orientation and/or gender identity.

Despite major changes in LGBT rights around the world, acceptance of homosexuality remains sharply divided by country, region and economic development.

Gender Transition and Transgender Inclusion in the Museum Workplace: A Toolkit for Trans Individuals, Institutions, and Coworkers is the result of three teams of trans and allied museum professionals working across the country to create resources that are approachable even to those without any prior knowledge about the trans community. The Toolkit comes at a time when the transgender community is constantly under attack. The education and knowledge it provides can create a path for those interested in becoming allies and can foster a more inclusive atmosphere within the museum field. We hope that the Toolkit will prove useful to those who are transitioning or those who wish to improve the diversity and inclusion policies around them.

We make the case for equality in the nation's courts and in the court of public opinion. The work we do has impact on the way all of us live we change laws, policies and ideas.