Law Commons^™

Federal Indian Law, Verónica C. Gonzales-Zamora

Faculty Scholarship

Introduction to Federal Indian Law, broken down by years: 1492, 1787, 1828, 1887, 1934, 1953, 1968 to the present. Includes major cases and additional resources.

The Heart Of K'E: Transforming Dine Special Education And Unsettling The Colonial Logics Of Disability, Sandra Yellowhorse

American Studies ETDs

This paper takes up the roles of ideology and spatiality as they impact Diné students and learners in understanding conceptions of normativity, neuro-diversity and bodily variance. I am concerned with how the movement and creation of Indigenous schools and their praxis still maintain and often times produce settler colonial ideologies of being, personhood, difference and ability. I illustrate the challenges that Diné planners and educators face in entrenching cultural knowledge and language into their educational initiatives, while some of the problematic manifestations and expressions of normativity present themselves through state polices, federal law and mainstream curriculum.

I focus on the …

Brief For Southwest Indian Law Clinic As Amici Curiae, United States V. Smith, Verónica C. Gonzales-Zamora, Barbara L. Creel

Faculty Scholarship

Prior cases, have assumed, without analysis that the ACA applies to Indian Country. This review of the ACA failed to consider and incorporate clearly established Indian law principles and foundational tenets of criminal law in the analysis of its applicability to Indians and Indian Country. Most importantly, the precedent and the Court below failed to understand the racial component involved in the analysis. These failures to understand the principles of Indian law and criminal law, have rendered haphazard and incoherent decisions.

Amici seek to bring clarity to the complex jurisdictional interplay and provide a practical framework for the proper analysis …

Republication And Translation Of 1998 Introduction And Welcome, Robert Yazzie, Navajo Nation

Tribal Law Journal

In 1998, for the first volume of the Tribal Law Journal, Former Chief Justice Robert Yazzie, Navajo Nation, was asked to submit an introduction and welcome for the Tribal Law Journal.

In his Introduction and Welcome, he details how the Tribal Law Journal will further the understanding of the internal laws of Indian nations, along with those of indigenous nations throughout the world. He emphasizes that this Journal will be a place for native voices to be heard and will allow others to speak with the tribes.

In effort to integrate native languages into the Tribal Law Journal, the Tribal …

Battling For Human Rights In Indian Country (Speech At The 50 Years Of The Indian Civil Rights Act Symposium), David E. Wilkins, Lumbee Nation

Tribal Law Journal

The speech discusses the Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA) and its implications on citizenship, specifically disenrollment. Prof. Wilkins discusses his view of “‘dismemberment’ as the act of cutting off a part of the tribal body—doing harm to both the politically discarded individual and the Nation itself—taking place behind the cloak of native sovereignty.”

The speech first provides a brief history of banishment within tribal communities followed by a discussion of federal Indian law and its impact on tribal banishment through a review of important federal Supreme Court cases as well as significant tribal court cases.

Second, the speech provides a …

Views From A Tribal Court: How The Indian Civil Rights Act Led To Civil Rights Violations, Anne Bruno

Tribal Law Journal

This article examines the implications of the Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA), and its impact on one tribe in New Mexico. The article first discusses the development of the ICRA and its subsequent effect on individual rights and tribal nation’s responsibilities when handling criminal offenses in tribal courts. Second, the article provides some historical context and background of pueblo Indian communities in New Mexico as a prelude to providing observations that were made of one specific Pueblo’s Contemporary Tribal Court. Third, the article provides a detailed glimpse into the procedures that were followed during six criminal arraignments: focusing on the …

Human "Being", Laura Spitz

Faculty Scholarship

In this summary, Professor Spitz discusses how the Douglas Treaties acknowledged Aboriginal title when negotiations with Indigenous populations when purchasing land. She looks at how what the definition of “human being” is during the 18th century and how Douglas’ respect of Aboriginal land title also indicated he was these people as people. This diverges from categorizations surrounding the term Indian, and its implication that populations were subhuman and/or a different species.

Douglas is still embedded in a larger social and legal structure even as he understands indigenous populations as human when it comes to resources and allocations. Where the …