scholarly journals Louise Erdrich's The Round House: Restorative Justice in a Coming of Age Thriller

Nordlit ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Virginia Castor
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Restorative Justice ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Federal Indian Law ◽  
American Law ◽  
International Audience ◽  
Indian Law

In a novel critics have described as a "thriller-like" coming-of-age story, Louise Erdrich's The Round House (2012) integrates two apparently conflicting approaches to Native American law. First, Felix S. Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law legitimizes the need for working with allies to Indigenous peoples in developing contextual applications of settler state laws. The second draws on the authority of authorless Anishinaabe stories and dreams. While Cohen and his descendants in tribal law practice are allies to the Anishinabeg, dream narrations by the narrator's grandfather affirm the contemporary vitality of Anishinaabe approaches to justice. Finally, Erdrich's narration suggests why restorative justice for women in Indigenous communities in the United States should matter for her international audience.

Religion as Collective Right

2020 ◽  
pp. 171-195
Author(s):  
Michael D. McNally
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
The United States ◽  
Native Peoples ◽  
Federal Indian Law ◽  
Indian Law ◽  
The One ◽  
Rhetorical Force

This chapter considers efforts to legislate Native American religious freedom in the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA, 1978). Where courts and even common sense have seen AIRFA as a religious freedom statute—as an extension of the legal protections of the First Amendment into the distinctive terrain of Native American traditions—the chapter suggests a different view. If the legal force of “religious freedom” discourse has been only dimly effective for Native sacred claims in courts, this chapter is the one that most pointedly shows how Native peoples drew on the rhetorical power of the sacred and religious freedom to win significant legislative protections specific to Native peoples. It does so through interviews with Suzan Shown Harjo. These interviews show how the remarkable legislative accomplishment of AIRFA and, later, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990), carry the rhetorical force of religious freedom into the legal shape of federal Indian law, with its recognition of treaty-based collective rights and the United States' nation-to-nation relationship with Native peoples.

Indigenous Law

2019 ◽  
pp. 516-530
Author(s):  
Gregory Ablavsky ◽  
Sarah Deer ◽  
Justin Richland
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The Body ◽  
Native Communities ◽  
Indigenous Law ◽  
Federal Indian Law ◽  
American Law ◽  
Adversarial Models ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Indian Law ◽  
Native Justice

Indigenous law is the category applied to the norms and legally binding practices of thousands of distinct indigenous communities spanning six continents. This chapter focuses on the content and construction of indigenous law within the borders of the present-day United States, equally marked by diversity among Native communities. Nonetheless, it identifies several important ways in which indigenous law broadly construed diverges from Euro-American legal systems. The chapter notes that indigenous communities have not drawn sharp distinctions between law and other methods for maintaining the proper ordering of society. And, while cautioning against essential accounts of Native justice, it also observes the ways in which Native dispute resolution focuses more on community and restoration than Anglo-American adversarial models. The chapter also recounts constructions of indigenous law by North America’s would-be European colonizers. It describes the long-standing practice by many colonizers of describing indigenous peoples as lawless. This language, the chapter argues, did important work in justifying colonization and the imposition of Anglo-American law. But it also traces the ways in which Native peoples forced Anglo-Americans to incorporate indigenous laws into US law. This incorporation happened both informally—as Anglo-Americans negotiating with Native nations adopted their rules to govern negotiations—and formally, as the body of law known as federal Indian law created a regime of legal pluralism that granted limited recognition to Native nations’ assertions of jurisdiction. The chapter concludes by noting the dangers of adopting the colonizers’ frame and defining indigenous law principally as a foil for Anglo-American law.

scholarly journals Transnationalism as a Decolonizing Strategy? ‘Trans-Indigenism’ and Native American Food Sovereignty

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (s1) ◽  
pp. 413-423
Author(s):  
Zuzanna Kruk-Buchowska
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Scientific Paradigms ◽  
Nation States ◽  
In Trans ◽  
Indigenous Methods

Abstract The aim of this paper is to analyze how Indigenous communities in the United States have been engaging in trans-Indigenous cooperation in their struggle for food sovereignty. I will look at inter-tribal conferences regarding food sovereignty and farming, and specifically at the discourse of the Indigenous Farming Conference held in Maplelag at the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota. I will show how it: (1) creates a space for Indigenous knowledge production and validation, using Indigenous methods (e.g., storytelling), without the need to adhere to Western scientific paradigms; (2) recovers pre-colonial maps and routes distorted by the formation of nation states; and (3) fosters novel sites for trans-indigenous cooperation and approaches to law, helping create a common front in the fight with neoliberal agribusiness and government. In my analysis, I will use Chadwick Allen’s (2014) concept of ‘trans-indigenism’ to demonstrate how decolonizing strategies are used by the Native American food sovereignty movement to achieve their goals.

Indigenous Studies in the United States and Canada

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aubrey Jean Hanson ◽  
Sam McKegney
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
First Nations ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Indigenous Voices

Indigenous literary studies, as a field, is as diverse as Indigenous Peoples. Comprising study of texts by Indigenous authors, as well as literary study using Indigenous interpretive methods, Indigenous literary studies is centered on the significance of stories within Indigenous communities. Embodying continuity with traditional oral stories, expanding rapidly with growth in publishing, and traversing a wild range of generic innovation, Indigenous voices ring out powerfully across the literary landscape. Having always had a central place within Indigenous communities, where they are interwoven with the significance of people’s lives, Indigenous stories also gained more attention among non-Indigenous readers in the United States and Canada as the 20th century rolled into the 21st. As relationships between Indigenous Peoples (Native American, First Nations, Métis, and Inuit) and non-Indigenous people continue to be a social, political, and cultural focus in these two nation-states, and as Indigenous Peoples continue to work for self-determination amid colonial systems and structures, literary art plays an important role in representing Indigenous realities and inspiring continuity and change. An educational dimension also exists for Indigenous literatures, in that they offer opportunities for non-Indigenous readerships—and, indeed, for readers from within Indigenous nations—to learn about Indigenous people and perspectives. Texts are crucially tied to contexts; therefore, engaging with Indigenous literatures requires readers to pursue and step into that beauty and complexity. Indigenous literatures are also impressive in their artistry; in conveying the brilliance of Indigenous Peoples; in expressing Indigenous voices and stories; in connecting pasts, presents, and futures; and in imagining better ways to enact relationality with other people and with other-than-human relatives. Indigenous literatures span diverse nations across vast territories and materialize in every genre. While critics new to the field may find it an adjustment to step into the responsibility—for instance, to land, community, and Peoplehood—that these literatures call for, the returns are great, as engaging with Indigenous literatures opens up space for relationship, self-reflexivity, and appreciation for exceptional literary artistry. Indigenous literatures invite readers and critics to center in Indigeneity, to build good relations, to engage beyond the text, and to attend to Indigenous storyways—ways of knowing, being, and doing through story.

Federal Indian Law

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Bruce Duthu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Executive Orders ◽  
Federal Indian Law ◽  
Dominant Society ◽  
Indian Tribes ◽  
Formal Relations ◽  
Indian Law ◽  
The U.S

United States law recognizes American Indian tribes as distinct political bodies with powers of self-government. Their status as sovereign entities predates the formation of the United States and they are enumerated in the U.S. Constitution as among the subjects (along with foreign nations and the several states) with whom Congress may engage in formal relations. And yet, despite this long-standing recognition, federal Indian law remains curiously ambivalent, even conflicted, about the legal and political status of Indian tribes within the U.S. constitutional structure. On the one hand, tribes are recognized as sovereign bodies with powers of self-government within their lands. On the other, long-standing precedents of the Supreme Court maintain that Congress possesses plenary power over Indian tribes, with authority to modify or even eliminate their powers of self-government. These two propositions are in tension with one another and are at the root of the challenges faced by political leaders and academics alike in trying to understand and accommodate the tribal rights to self-government. The body of laws that make up the field of federal Indian law include select provisions of the U.S. Constitution (notably the so-called Indian Commerce Clause), treaties between the United States and various Indian tribes, congressional statutes, executive orders, regulations, and a complex and rich body of court decisions dating back to the nation’s formative years. The noted legal scholar Felix Cohen brought much-needed coherence and order to this legal landscape in the 1940s when he led a team of scholars within the Office of the Solicitor in the Department of the Interior to produce a handbook on federal Indian law. The revised edition of Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law is still regarded as the seminal treatise in the field. Critically, however, this rich body of law only hints at the real story in federal Indian law. The laws themselves serve as historical and moral markers in the ongoing clash between indigenous and nonindigenous societies and cultures still seeking to establish systems of peaceful coexistence in shared territories. It is a story about the limits of legal pluralism and the willingness of a dominant society and nation to acknowledge and honor its promises to the first inhabitants and first sovereigns.

scholarly journals A systematic literature review of Native American and Pacific Islanders’ perspectives on health data privacy in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (12) ◽  
pp. 1987-1998
Author(s):  
Riley Taitingfong ◽  
Cinnamon S Bloss ◽  
Cynthia Triplett ◽  
Julie Cakici ◽  
Nanibaa’ Garrison ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Systematic Literature Review ◽  
Alaska Native ◽  
Health Research ◽  
Data Privacy ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Health Data ◽  
Willingness To Participate

Abstract Background Privacy-related concerns can prevent equitable participation in health research by US Indigenous communities. However, studies focused on these communities' views regarding health data privacy, including systematic reviews, are lacking. Methods We conducted a systematic literature review analyzing empirical, US-based studies involving American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander (NHPI) perspectives on health data privacy, which we define as the practice of maintaining the security and confidentiality of an individual’s personal health records and/or biological samples (including data derived from biological specimens, such as personal genetic information), as well as the secure and approved use of those data. Results Twenty-one studies involving 3234 AI/AN and NHPI participants were eligible for review. The results of this review suggest that concerns about the privacy of health data are both prevalent and complex in AI/AN and NHPI communities. Many respondents raised concerns about the potential for misuse of their health data, including discrimination or stigma, confidentiality breaches, and undesirable or unknown uses of biological specimens. Conclusions Participants cited a variety of individual and community-level concerns about the privacy of their health data, and indicated that these deter their willingness to participate in health research. Future investigations should explore in more depth which health data privacy concerns are most salient to specific AI/AN and NHPI communities, and identify the practices that will make the collection and use of health data more trustworthy and transparent for participants.

scholarly journals Felix Cohen and the Spanish Moment in Federal Indian Law: A Study in Law, Politics and Historiography

2008 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 419
Author(s):  
Richard P Boast
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Land Claims ◽  
Old Spanish ◽  
Spanish Law ◽  
Federal Indian Law ◽  
Legal Writing ◽  
Famous Paper ◽  
Indian Law

One of the best-known discussions of the historical foundations of native title law is Felix Cohen's famous paper on the Spanish Origins of Federal Indian Law, published originally in 1942 and since then reprinted many times.This article cites Cohen's paper in its political and historiographical context, paying particular attention to Cohen's role as one of the architects of the Indian Reorganisation Act of 1934, and considering also shifts in American historiography and legal writing relating to the Spanish legacy as exemplified by legal historians such as James Brown Scott and historians such as H E Bolton. This article also considers fully Cohen's analysis of the precise ways in which Spanish law penetrated the legal framework of Federal Indian Law in the United States and concludes that, as a historical discussion, Cohen's work is in need of substantial revision. In particular Cohen's arguments that Spanish law influenced federal Indian law via international law and by means of judicial consideration of old Spanish land claims seem difficult to sustain.

scholarly journals Digital Knowledge Sharing: Forging Partnerships between Scholars, Archives, and Indigenous Communities

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy B. Powell
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Cultural Sensitivity ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Digital Archives ◽  
American Philosophical Society ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Eastern Band ◽  
Digital Knowledge

The article reviews a digital repatriation project carried out by the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at the American Philosophical Society over the course of eight years (2008-present). The project focused on building digital archives in four indigenous communities: Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Penobscot Nation, Tuscarora Nation, and Ojibwe communities in both the United States and Canada. The article features insights from traditional knowledge keepers who helped to create a new system of co-stewarding the APS’ indigenous archival materials and recounts how the APS established protocols for cultural sensitivity. A new model of community-based scholarship is proposed to create a more equal and respectful relationship between indigenous communities, scholars, and archives.

Native American Religions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Dees
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Native American Religions

Native American religious traditions encompass a diverse array of beliefs, practices, and features of material culture and society that reflect and shape individual experiences and communal life among Indigenous communities in what is today the United States. While Native American religious traditions have long been the subject of scholarly inquiry, a field of study dedicated specifically to this topic only emerged in the mid-20th century. Because historical sources describing Native religions often wove ethnocentric biases or anti-Indian sentiments into descriptions of Native beliefs and practices, present-day inquiry requires critically reflexive interpretation of primary sources and attention to insiders’ perspectives. Today, scholarship on Native American religions draws on numerous methodological approaches to explore key features of these traditions, including ceremonies, stories, philosophies, art, and social institutions. While these features vary greatly by religious community, practitioners of Native religions often emphasize the significance of land and the environment, their cultural heritage, and relationships between humans and non-human entities, spirits, and ancestors. Many practitioners of Native American religions would resist the notion that a “religious” or “spiritual” realm can be separated from “secular” aspects of society or culture; thus, in addition to focusing on constitutive features of the religious beliefs and practices themselves, an understanding of Native American religions requires attention to broader social and cultural issues, including politics, law, health, and education. Furthermore, just as Native traditions were dynamic prior to the 15th century, they have been shaped by contact with non-Native religions and cultures since the first instances of European colonization. The historical conditions of European and Euro-American settler colonialism and encounter between Native and non-Native communities necessitate attention to issues such as Christian missionization and the ensuing Indigenous responses to Christianity, U.S. federal Indian policy, legal battles over Native American religious freedom and self-determination, and the place of Native religions in mainstream U.S. culture. While these themes and issues illuminate some shared features of Native American religions, the unique histories and characteristics of specific communities necessarily subvert efforts to articulate a simple, comprehensive definition of “Native American religion.” And, while knowledge of the past is essential for understanding Native American religions, a historical focus in itself is insufficient if it ignores the ongoing presence of Native American religious expression. Practitioners of Native American religions today emphasize religious continuity as well as creativity and change, blending long-standing historical traditions with more recently established religious innovations.

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