Social Movements & the Law

Firm moves ore through land without telling tribal leaders as mine resurfaces painful legacy of nuclear development

The Navajo Nation has temporarily banned any transport of uranium and other radioactive material over its land without an explicit approval. The executive order issued by Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren will be in effect for at least the next six months. Earlier this week, Navajo police attempted to stop two trucks carrying uranium ore across the reservation from an Arizona mine to a Utah processing mill. Nygren said Energy Fuels Inc., which owns the mine and processing mill, did not provide any notice that the trucks would be crossing through Navajo Nation. Nygren said in a statement, “We’re taking this stance of interpreting and executing the law to ensure the safety of our people and respect for Navajo sovereignty.”

The I-Portal contains full-text electronic resources including articles, e-books, theses, government publications, videos, oral histories, reports, and digitized archival documents and photographs. As of 2022, the I-Portal had over 71,000 records and new content is added on a continuing basis.

A call to action and guide to open public events and gatherings with acknowledgment of the traditional Native inhabitants of the land. Acknowledgment is a simple, powerful way of showing respect and a step toward correcting the stories and practices that erase Indigenous people’s history and cultu

An aid to those who are conducting legal research on the Navajo Nation

Across America, it is altogether too hard for Native Americans to vote. They often must go off-reservation and travel outrageous distances to reach voting services. Many do not have home addresses or mail delivery, making registering and receiving a ballot difficult, if not impossible. Native Americans still face racial discrimination and hostilities when casting their ballots. NARF, in collaboration with Native American advocates across the country, have extensively documented these barriers and are fighting every day against this discrimination.

In June 2021, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, a comprehensive effort to recognize the troubled legacy of federal Indian boarding school policies with the goal of addressing their intergenerational impact and to shed light on the traumas of the past. The announcement directed the Department, under the leadership of Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland, to prepare an investigative report, the first volume of which was released in May 2022, detailing available historical records relating to federal Indian boarding schools and to develop the first official list of sites. The Department released the second and final volume of the investigative report, in July 2024. The second volume builds on the initial volume to significantly expand on the number and details of institutions to include student deaths, the number of burial sites, participation of religious institutions and organizations, and federal dollars spent to operate these locations. It also included policy recommendations for consideration by Congress and the Executive Branch to continue to chart a path to healing and redress for Indigenous communities and the nation.

"A People's Guide to Abolition and Disability Justice explains the history and theories behind abolition and disability justice in a way that is easy to understand for those new to these concepts yet also gives insights that will be useful to seasoned activists. The book uses extensive research and professional and lived experience to illuminate the way the State uses disability and its power to disable to incarcerate multiply marginalized disabled people, especially those who are queer, trans, Black, or Indigenous. Because disabled people are much more likely than nondisabled people to be locked up in prisons, jails, and other sites of incarceration, abolitionists, and others critical of carceral systems must incorporate a disability justice perspective into our work. A People's Guide to Abolition and Disability Justice gives personal and policy examples of how and why disabled people are disproportionately caught up in the carceral net, and how we can use this information to work toward prison and police abolition more effectively. This book includes practical tools and strategies that will be useful for anyone who cares about disability justice or abolition and explains why we can't have one without the other"--Amazon.com.

"Restoring Relations introduces, synthesizes, and analyzes traditional stories by Dine and Dene storytellers in orature and film. Restoring storied autonomy, identities, kinship, and languages is coming to a state of harmony, beauty, wellness, peace, and balance by recognizing hane' (story/narrative) in oral, literary, and visual formats (spoken, published, directed, and beaded). The book conceptualizes narrative autonomy as hane'tonomy and visual storytelling from a Dine perspective and offers a map for restorying that resists inauthentic and misappropriated stories. The base of the argument privilege Indigenous narratives and how these narratives are tied to land and relations. In the book's final movement, the author explores the power of story to forge ancestral and kinship ties between the Dine and Dene, across time and space through re-storying of relations"--

"Indigenous Legalities, Pipeline Viscosities examines the relationship between the Wet'suwet'en nation and pipeline development, showing how colonial governments and corporations seek to control Indigenous claims, and how the Wet'suwet'en resist. Tyler McCreary offers historical context for the unfolding relationship between Indigenous peoples and colonialism and explores pipeline regulatory review processes, attempts to reconcile Indigeneity with development, as well as fundamental questions about territory and jurisdiction. Throughout, McCreary demonstrates how the cyclical and ongoing movements between resistance and reconciliation are affected by the unequal relations between Indigenous peoples and colonial government and development operations. This book will be of interest to readers interested in Indigenous and Wet'suwet'en politics, as well as the politics of pipeline development. Scholars in geography, environmental studies, political science, law, and Indigenous Studies will benefit from this sophisticated analysis."--

"In New York Harbour, at the entrance to the United States of America, stands the Statue of Liberty: Liberty Enlightening the World. Liberty stands as a beacon welcoming all to the land of the free, holding a torch and a tablet inscribed with the date of American Declaration of Independence. At her feet lies a broken chain. The ideal of freedom is celebrated as the definitive ideal of modern western civilization, and is exported to the world, often by force. Wars and invasions are justified with the claim that we must free the foreign people, whom we will then turn away at our borders. Many are excluded from the ideal of freedom: the American Declaration of Independence was signed by slave owners, and the land that was declared independent was stolen from Indigenous peoples. Indigenous lands and peoples around the world remain colonized, and the practice of Black slavery continues in practices of mass incarceration. The land of the free, like other "developed" nations, polices its borders to keep out unwanted foreigners. Walls are not really necessary. Worldwide, the freedom of some depends on the exploitation and oppression and exclusion of most of the world's people"--

"In Judging Insanity, Punishing Difference, Chloe Deambrogio explores how developments in the field of forensic psychiatry shaped American courts' assessments of defendants' mental health and criminal responsibility over the course of the 20th century. During this period, new psychiatric notions of the mind and its readability, legal doctrines of insanity and diminished culpability, and cultural stereotypes about race and gender shaped the ways in which legal professionals, mental health experts, and lay witnesses approached mental disability evidence, especially in cases carrying the death penalty. Using Texas as a case-study, Deambrogio examines how these medical, legal, and cultural trends shaped psycho-legal debates in state criminal courts, while shedding light on the ways in which experts and lay actors' interpretations of 'pathological' mental states influenced trial verdicts in capital cases. She shows that despite mounting pressures from advocates of the 'rehabilitative penology', Texas courts maintained a punitive approach towards defendants allegedly affected by severe mental disabilities, while allowing for moralized views about personalities, habits, and lifestyle to influence psycho-legal assessments, in potentially prejudicial ways"--

“I love working on iPretendians/i because it gives me an opportunity to use humor as a vehicle to teach and inform. ” says Angel Ellis, co-host of iPretendians/i, Apple Podcasts' Spotlight show for July 2024. Angel Ellis is a free-press activist and director of Mvskoke Media. Her co-host Robert Jago is a freelance writer, entrepreneur, and Indigenous rights activist from Richmond, British Columbia. Together, they pitched the show to the podcast network, Canadaland, as a new original series. “I broke one of the first big Pretendian stories of this whole moment,” says Jago, “and the way that I did it didn’t provide enough context. This series gives me a chance to try and reshape that.”Ellis and Jago hope listeners understand the serious nature of the problem, while becoming more acquainted to Native joy and humor. “The broadest part of society coming to understand its impact on Indigenous people, has always been a driving motivation for me,” says Ellis. “ If nothing else, I hope listeners learn that there is a way to be supportive of and enjoy Indigenous cultures without wearing it like some passing fad.”What do some of the most prominent and successful Indigenous artists, leaders and professors have in common? They aren’t Indigenous. There are hundreds of cases of Indigenous identity fraud that we know about, and likely thousands that we do not. So why do these so-called “pretendians” do it? How do they pull it off? And what happens when they are exposed? In each episode of this riveting new podcast series, co-hosts Robert Jago (Kwantlen First Nation and Nooksack Indian Tribe) and Angel Ellis (Muscogee (Creek) Nation) reveal unbelievable stories of audacious fraudsters and investigate the complex phenomenon of Indigenous identity theft.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kamala Harris news and opinion

People of various political backgrounds in the US state say they are increasingly feeling like pawns in a political game

Representation of the LGBTQ+ lawyers in the legal profession is growing, especially as younger generations move into the workplace.

Worldwide Pride Month events are underway but they are coming at a time when many people who identify as LGBTQ+ say they are facing increasing difficulties at work, ranging from being repeatedly misgendered to physically assaulted.

In commemoration of Pride Month, the Lillian Goldman Law Library invites you to view “Out in Print: Early LGBT Legal Periodical Literature,” a new

Wisconsin is home to 12 tribal nations, each with its own unique history, culture, and government. As sovereign entities, these nations have the inherent right to create, enforce, and adjudicate laws to protect and enhance …

Independent News and Analysis on the U.S. Supreme Court

DALLAS — At least three teen female carhops were subjected to sex harassment by SDI of Mineola, LLC, doing business as Sonic Drive-In, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit announced today.

NEW YORK – Stardust Diners, Inc., a restaurant that has operated for decades in East Meadow, Nassau County, N.Y., under the name Colony Diner, violated federal law by subjecting its female employees to harassment on the basis of sex, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit filed today.

Company Knew Assistant Manager Was Sending Female Employees Pornographic Messages but Took No Action for a Year, Federal Agency Charged - ...

This Note attempts to determine how tribal governments such as the Navajo Nation can exercise greater control over and protect their Nation’s data from external entities. Tribal Nations or Indigenous Nations can exercise their political and cultural sovereignty by utilizing both Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDSov) and Indigenous Data Governance (IDGov). This Note will examine the Māori’s application of IDSov within their own culturally-specific IDGov framework. Then, there will be an overview of the existing mechanisms available within the Navajo Nation legal system that govern data and the fundamental principles embedded in the culture of the Diné (Navajo) people. Finally, this Note will discuss recommendations that the Navajo Nation can incorporate into its legal system using the Māori’s example of its own data governance model and tools as a template. Overall, the goal of this Note is to demonstrate the legal mechanisms available to the Navajo Nation to implement its own set of data sovereignty principles aligning with its own traditional values, similar to the Māori in Aotearoa (New Zealand).

This action occured on June 23, 2023.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced today that it will promote greater equity and inclusion for members of the LGBTQI+ community by giving individuals the option to select a nonbinary “X” gender marker during the voluntary self-identification questions that are part of the intake process for filing a charge of discrimination. This announcement comes on Transgender Day of Visibility, which recognizes the resilience and accomplishments of the transgender community.