Government
The interplay between law and language is fascinating. “Blood quantum” started without the modern racist connotations in early English cases involving inheritance from a particular person rather than from a racially defined category of persons.
In 2010, after the United States as the final holdout endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), the Bolivian government called for a high level plenary meeting of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to be held in 2014.
Many federally recognized tribes are celebrating the reauthorization of VAWA, which contains key provisions that authorize tribal courts to prosecute non-Indians in sexual assault and domestic violence cases on reservation.
Today, voting rights are under assault by political partisans whose agenda is threatened by a healthy democracy.
Elders suffered terribly during the Great Depression. I did not live then, but I am among the last generation schooled by the people who lived it. I know my family’s stories and the statistics, but the rest is speculation.
Did Markwayne Mullin forget who he is? He is supposed to be a Cherokee man, a warrior, one who protects the women of his nation. Instead, he betrayed American Indian women, including the women of the Cherokee Nation, when he voted against the passage of the Violence Against Women Act.
There are some things we have not very often thought about or reflected upon because we have lacked the vocabulary necessary to name and think about those things.
Like many Natives and our allies across our Grandmother Earth, Unci Maka, I have joined the Idle No More movement, attending round dance gatherings, praying for Chief Theresa Spence and her supporters, sharing the stories I hear and read and perusing news and opinion pieces.
As an enrolled member of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe (SRMT), I have been made aware of yet another dilution of scant tribal rights and the absolute failure of treaty parties to live up to the spirit of the agreements made as the absolute law of the land.
March 7 was a momentous day -- President Obama was finally able to sign the reauthorized Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).
“The halls of Montezuma,” in the Marine Corps Hymn, refers to the Mexican War, in which the US regularized the border with Texas and acquired by conquest New Mexico,
I have been thinking about the “Indian Land problems” that continue to swirl around DC.
In speaking with a number of social activists recently, I have been noting a widening trend into their statements and what they have been seeing in their own “theatres of operation.” They report witnessing the highest levels of exhibited frustration in both younger, as well as more seasoned gener
I have been involved for the past several years in the Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative (JDAI). There is overwhelming evidence that the wholesale incarceration of juvenile offenders is a failed strategy for combating youth crime.