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University of Colorado Law School

Indigenous, Indian, and Aboriginal Law

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Publications

Sovereignty

Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Law

Constitutional Concern, Membership, And Race, Sarah Krakoff Jan 2014

Constitutional Concern, Membership, And Race, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

American Indian Tribes in the United States have a unique legal and political status shaped by fluctuating federal policies and the over-arching history of this country’s brand of settler-colonialism. One of the several legacies of this history is that federally recognized tribes have membership rules that diverge significantly from typical state or national citizenship criteria. These rules and their history are poorly understood by judges and members of the public, leading to misunderstandings about the “racial” status of tribes and Indian people, and on occasion to incoherent and damaging decisions on a range of Indian law issues. This article, which …


Settler Colonialism And Reclamation: Where American Indian Law And Natural Resources Law Meet, Sarah Krakoff Jan 2013

Settler Colonialism And Reclamation: Where American Indian Law And Natural Resources Law Meet, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

Three hours west of Phoenix, Arizona, the Colorado River Indian Tribes (“CRIT”), a federally recognized tribe that includes over 3,700 enrolled members of Mohave, Chemehuevi, Navajo, and Hopi descent, occupies a reservation nearly 300,000 acres in size. The CRIT was one of five tribes to have its water rights confirmed in the landmark case of Arizona v. California, and therefore has senior rights to 719,248 acre-feet of Colorado River water, nearly one-third of Arizona’s allocation. How the CRIT came to be a single federally recognized tribe composed of members from four indigenous peoples located on lands that were a fraction …


Inextricably Political: Race, Membership, And Tribal Sovereignty, Sarah Krakoff Jan 2012

Inextricably Political: Race, Membership, And Tribal Sovereignty, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

Courts address equal protection questions about the distinct legal treatment of American Indian tribes in the following dichotomous way: are classifications concerning American Indians "racial or political?" If the classification is political (i.e., based on federally recognized tribal status or membership in a federally recognized tribe) then courts will not subject it to heightened scrutiny. If the classification is racial rather than political, then courts may apply heightened scrutiny. This Article challenges the dichotomy itself. The legal categories "tribe" and "tribal member" are themselves political, and reflect the ways in which tribes and tribal members have been racialized by U.S. …


Tribal Civil Judicial Jurisdiction Over Nonmembers: A Practical Guide For Judges, Sarah Krakoff Jan 2010

Tribal Civil Judicial Jurisdiction Over Nonmembers: A Practical Guide For Judges, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

This Article provides a summary of the law of tribal civil jurisdiction over persons who are not members of the governing tribe ("nonmembers'), followed by an analysis of trends in the lower courts. It was written to respond to a consensus view at the University of Colorado Law Review Symposium: "The Next Great Generation of American Indian Law Judges," in January 2010, that a concise, practical, yet in-depth treatment of this subject would be useful to the judiciary as well as practitioners. The Article traces the development of the Supreme Court's common law of tribal civil judicial jurisdiction from 1959 …


The Last Indian Raid In Kansas: Context, Colonialism, And Philip P. Frickey's Contributions To American Indian Law, Sarah Krakoff Jan 2010

The Last Indian Raid In Kansas: Context, Colonialism, And Philip P. Frickey's Contributions To American Indian Law, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

To many, American Indian law is a remote and anomalous area of the law. To others, including Professor Phil Frickey, themes in American Indian law are central to our identity as a nation, and lessons from the field inform broader understandings of the competencies and limitations of the federal judiciary. One of Professor Frickey’s recurring scholarly arguments is that the federal courts are most within their areas of institutional competence when they approach contemporary Indian law questions as structural disputes between sovereigns, rather than as individual conflicts amenable to the application of mainstream public law values. An event described as …


Indigenous Law And Its Contribution To Global Pluralism, James Anaya Jan 2007

Indigenous Law And Its Contribution To Global Pluralism, James Anaya

Publications

No abstract provided.


Conference Transcript: The New Realism: The Next Generation Of Scholarship In Federal Indian Law, Sarah Krakoff Jan 2007

Conference Transcript: The New Realism: The Next Generation Of Scholarship In Federal Indian Law, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

No abstract provided.


The Virtues And Vices Of Sovereignty, Sarah Krakoff Jan 2006

The Virtues And Vices Of Sovereignty, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

American Indian tribal sovereignty is viewed very differently in the United States Supreme Court than it is in American Indian tribal nations. The United States Supreme Court, the progenitor of the legal doctrine of tribal sovereignty, appears skeptical of the doctrine's continuing viability. The Court is therefore veering away from any strong notion of retained inherent tribal sovereignty. American Indian tribes, the sources and perpetuators of de facto tribal sovereignty, are more committed than ever to enacting their sovereignty on the ground, as well as promoting and protecting its legal status in the courts and in Congress. There is an …


National Identity And Liberalism In International Law: Three Models, Justin Desautels-Stein Jan 2005

National Identity And Liberalism In International Law: Three Models, Justin Desautels-Stein

Publications

No abstract provided.


A Narrative Of Sovereignty: Illluminating The Paradox Of The Domestic Dependent Nation, Sarah Krakoff Jan 2004

A Narrative Of Sovereignty: Illluminating The Paradox Of The Domestic Dependent Nation, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

For the last thirty years the Supreme Court has been adjusting the boundaries of American Indian tribal sovereignty. Some cases affirm tribal inherent powers, but recently the trend has been to limit those powers. Yet neither the Court nor the Congress, which can reverse Supreme Court decisions on questions of tribal sovereignty, has been informed about how these alterations to tribal powers actually affect American Indian tribes on the ground. This article provides that information by examining the interplay between Supreme Court decisions and the Navajo Nation's exercise of its sovereign governmental powers from 1970-2003. In the categories of general …


Negotiated Sovereignty: Intergovernmental Agreements With American Indian Tribes As Models For Expanding First Nations’ Self-Government, David H. Getches Jan 1993

Negotiated Sovereignty: Intergovernmental Agreements With American Indian Tribes As Models For Expanding First Nations’ Self-Government, David H. Getches

Publications

Constitutional issues related to First Nations sovereignty have dominated Aboriginal affairs in Canada for a considerable period. The constitutional entrenchment of Aboriginal self-government has, however, received a setback with the recent failure of the Charlottetown Accord in October of 1992. Nonetheless, day-to-day issues must be accommodated, even while this more fundamental constitutional question remains unresolved. This paper illustrates the American experience with negotiated intergovernmental agreements between tribes and individual states. These agreements have, for example, resolved jurisdictional disputes over taxation, solid waste disposal, and law enforcement between state governments and tribal authorities. The author suggests that these intergovernmental agreements in …