Results by title

19 books match the query 'Indigenous Law & Legal Systems'

cover of Accomplishing NAGPRA: Perspectives on the Intent, Impact, and Future of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

Accomplishing NAGPRA

Perspectives on the Intent, Impact, and Future of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

Sangita Chari and Jaime M. N. Lavallee

Oregon State University Press, 2013

Accomplishing NAGPRA reveals the day-to-day reality of implementing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The diverse contributors to this timely volume reflect the viewpoints of tribes, museums, federal agencies, attorneys, academics, and others invested in the landmark act.

NAGPRA requires museums and federal agencies to return requested Native American cultural items to lineal descendants, culturally affiliated Indian tribes, and Native Hawai’ian organizations.  Since the 1990 passage of the act, museums and federal agencies have made more than one million cultural items—and the remains of nearly forty thousand Native Americans—available for repatriation.

Drawing on case studies, personal reflections, historical documents, and statistics, the volume examines NAGPRA and its grassroots, practical application throughout the United States.? Accomplishing NAGPRA will appeal to professionals and academics with an interest in cultural resource management, Indian and human rights law, Indigenous studies, social justice movements, and public policy.
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cover of Biopolitics of the More-Than-Human: Forensic Ecologies of Violence

Biopolitics of the More-Than-Human

Forensic Ecologies of Violence

Joseph Pugliese

Duke University Press, 2020

In Biopolitics of the More-Than-Human Joseph Pugliese examines the concept of the biopolitical through a nonanthropocentric lens, arguing that more-than-human entities—from soil and orchards to animals and water—are actors and agents in their own right with legitimate claims to justice. Examining occupied Palestine, Guantánamo, and sites of US drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, Pugliese challenges notions of human exceptionalism by arguing that more-than-human victims of war and colonialism are entangled with and subject to the same violent biopolitical regimes as humans. He also draws on Indigenous epistemologies that invest more-than-human entities with judicial standing to argue for an ethico-legal framework that will enable the realization of ecological justice. Bringing the more-than-human world into the purview of justice, Pugliese makes visible the ecological effects of human war that would otherwise remain outside the domains of biopolitics and law.
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cover of Challenging the Dichotomy: The Licit and the Illicit in Archaeological and Heritage Discourses

Challenging the Dichotomy

The Licit and the Illicit in Archaeological and Heritage Discourses

Edited by Les Field, Cristóbal Gnecco, and Joe Watkins

University of Arizona Press, 2016

Challenging the Dichotomy explores how dichotomies regarding heritage dominate the discourse of ethics, practices, and institutions. Examining issues of cultural heritage law, policy, and implementation, editors Les Field, Cristóbal Gnecco, and Joe Watkins guide the focus to important discussions of the binary oppositions of the licit and the illicit, the scientific and the unscientific, incorporating case studies that challenge those apparent contradictions.

Utilizing both ethnographic and archaeological examples, contributors ask big questions vital to anyone working in cultural heritage. What are the issues surrounding private versus museum collections? What is considered looting? Is archaeology still a form of colonialization? The contributors discuss this vis-à-vis a global variety of contexts and cultures from the United States, South Africa, Argentina, New Zealand, Honduras, Colombia, Palestine, Greece, Canada, and from the Nasa, Choctaw, and Maori nations.

Challenging the Dichotomy underscores how dichotomies—such as licit/illicit, state/nonstate, public/private, scientific/nonscientific—have been constructed and how they are now being challenged by multiple forces. Throughout the eleven chapters, contributors provide examples of hegemonic relationships of power between nations and institutions. Scholars also reflect on exchanges between Western and non-Western epistemologies and ontologies.

The book’s contributions are significant, timely, and inclusive. Challenging the Dichotomy examines the scale and scope of “illicit” forms of excavation, as well as the demands from minority and indigenous subaltern peoples to decolonize anthropological and archaeological research.
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cover of Cooperation without Submission: Indigenous Jurisdictions in Native Nation–US Engagements

Cooperation without Submission

Indigenous Jurisdictions in Native Nation–US Engagements

Justin B. Richland

University of Chicago Press, 2021

A meticulous and thought-provoking look at how Tribes use language to engage in "cooperation without submission."

It is well-known that there is a complicated relationship between Native American Tribes and the US government. Relations between Tribes and the federal government are dominated by the principle that the government is supposed to engage in meaningful consultations with the tribes about issues that affect them.
 
In Cooperation without Submission, Justin B. Richland, an associate justice of the Hopi Appellate Court and ethnographer, closely examines the language employed by both Tribes and government agencies in over eighty hours of meetings between the two. Richland shows how Tribes conduct these meetings using language that demonstrates their commitment to nation-to-nation interdependency, while federal agents appear to approach these consultations with the assumption that federal law is supreme and ultimately authoritative. In other words, Native American Tribes see themselves as nations with some degree of independence, entitled to recognition of their sovereignty over Tribal lands, while the federal government acts to limit that authority. In this vital book, Richland sheds light on the ways the Tribes use their language to engage in “cooperation without submission.”
 
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cover of Faith in Paper: The Ethnohistory and Litigation of Upper Great Lakes Indian Treaties

Faith in Paper

The Ethnohistory and Litigation of Upper Great Lakes Indian Treaties

Charles E. Cleland

University of Michigan Press, 2011

Faith in Paper is about the reinstitution of Indian treaty rights in the Upper Great Lakes region during the last quarter of the 20th century. The book focuses on the treaties and legal cases that together
have awakened a new day in Native American sovereignty and established the place of Indian tribes on the modern political landscape.
 
In addition to discussing the historic development of Indian treaties and their social and legal context, Charles E. Cleland outlines specific treaties litigated in modern courts as well as the impact of treaty litigation on the modern Indian and non-Indian communities of the region. Faith in Paper is both an important contribution to the scholarship of Indian legal matters and a rich resource for Indians
themselves as they strive to retain or regain rights that have eroded over the years.
 
Charles E. Cleland is Michigan State University Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Curator of Anthropology and Ethnology. He has been an expert witness in numerous Native American land claims and fishing rights cases and written a number of other books on the subject, including Rites of Conquest: The History and Culture of Michigan's Native Americans; The Place of the Pike (Gnoozhekaaning): A History of the Bay Mills Indian Community; and (as a contributor) Fish in the Lakes, Wild Rice, and Game in Abundance: Testimony on Behalf of Mille Lacs Ojibwe Hunting and Fishing Rights.
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cover of Fish in the Lakes, Wild Rice, and Game in Abundance: Testimony on Behalf of Mille Lacs Ojibwe Hunting and Fishing Rights

Fish in the Lakes, Wild Rice, and Game in Abundance

Testimony on Behalf of Mille Lacs Ojibwe Hunting and Fishing Rights

Edited by James M. McClurken

Michigan State University Press, 2000

On 13 August 1990 members of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe filed a lawsuit against the State of Minnesota for interfering with the hunting, fishing, and gathering rights that had been guaranteed to them in an 1837 treaty with the United States. In order to interpret the treaty the courts had to consider historical circumstances, the intentions of the parties, and the treaty's implementation. The Mille Lacs Band faced a mammoth challenge. How does one argue the Native side of the case when all historical documentation was written by non- Natives? The Mille Lacs selected six scholars to testify for them. Published here for the first time, Charles Cleland, James McClurken, Helen Tanner, John Nichols, Thomas Lund, and Bruce White discuss the circumstances under which the treaty was written, the personalities involved in the negotiations and the legal rhetoric of the times, as well as analyze related legal conflicts between Natives and non- Natives. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor delivered the 1999 Opinion of the [United States Supreme] Court.

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cover of Grounded Authority: The Algonquins of Barriere Lake against the State

Grounded Authority

The Algonquins of Barriere Lake against the State

Shiri Pasternak

University of Minnesota Press, 2017

Western Political Science Association's Clay Morgan Award for Best Book in Environmental Political Theory
Canadian Studies Network Prize for the Best Book in Canadian Studies
Nominated for Best First Book Award at NAISA
Honorable Mention: Association for Political and Legal Anthropology Book Prize

Since Justin Trudeau’s election in 2015, Canada has been hailed internationally as embarking on a truly progressive, post-postcolonial era—including an improved relationship between the state and its Indigenous peoples. Shiri Pasternak corrects this misconception, showing that colonialism is very much alive in Canada. From the perspective of Indigenous law and jurisdiction, she tells the story of the Algonquins of Barriere Lake, in western Quebec, and their tireless resistance to federal land claims policy. 

Grounded Authority chronicles the band’s ongoing attempts to restore full governance over its lands and natural resources through an agreement signed by settler governments almost three decades ago—an agreement the state refuses to fully implement. Pasternak argues that the state’s aversion to recognizing Algonquin jurisdiction stems from its goal of perfecting its sovereignty by replacing the inherent jurisdiction of Indigenous peoples with its own, delegated authority. From police brutality and fabricated sexual abuse cases to an intervention into and overthrow of a customary government, Pasternak provides a compelling, richly detailed account of rarely documented coercive mechanisms employed to force Indigenous communities into compliance with federal policy.

A rigorous account of the incredible struggle fought by the Algonquins to maintain responsibility over their territory, Grounded Authority provides a powerful alternative model to one nation’s land claims policy and a vital contribution to current debates in the study of colonialism and Indigenous peoples in North America and globally.

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cover of Imprints: The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the City of Chicago

Imprints

The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the City of Chicago

John N. Low

Michigan State University Press, 2016

The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians has been a part of Chicago since its founding. In very public expressions of indigeneity, they have refused to hide in plain sight or assimilate. Instead, throughout the city’s history, the Pokagon Potawatomi Indians have openly and aggressively expressed their refusal to be marginalized or forgotten—and in doing so, they have contributed to the fabric and history of the city.
Imprints: The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the City of Chicago examines the ways some Pokagon Potawatomi tribal members have maintained a distinct Native identity, their rejection of assimilation into the mainstream, and their desire for inclusion in the larger contemporary society without forfeiting their “Indianness.” Mindful that contact is never a one-way street, Low also examines the ways in which experiences in Chicago have influenced the Pokagon Potawatomi. Imprints continues the recent scholarship on the urban Indian experience before as well as after World War II.
 
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cover of Pathways to Indigenous Nation Sovereignty: A Chronicle of Federal Policy Developments

Pathways to Indigenous Nation Sovereignty

A Chronicle of Federal Policy Developments

Alan R Parker

Michigan State University Press, 2018

In a story that could only be told by someone who was an insider, this book reveals the background behind major legislative achievements of U.S. Tribal Nations leaders in the 1970s and beyond. American Indian attorney and proud Chippewa Cree Nation citizen Alan R. Parker gives insight into the design and development of the public policy initiatives that led to major changes in the U.S. government’s relationships with Tribal Nations. Here he relates the history of the federal government’s attempts, beginning in 1953 and lasting through 1965, to “terminate” its obligations to tribes that had been written into over 370 Indian treaties in the nineteenth century. When Indian leaders gathered in Chicago in 1961, they developed a common strategy in response to termination that led to a new era of “Indian Self-Determination, not Termination,” as promised by President Nixon in his 1970 message to Congress. Congressional leaders took up Nixon’s challenge and created a new Committee on Indian Affairs. Parker was hired as Chief Counsel to the committee, where he began his work by designing legislation to stop the theft of Indian children from their communities and writing laws to settle long-standing Indian water and land claims based on principles of informed consent to negotiated agreements. A decade later, Parker was called back to the senate to work as staff director to the Committee on Indian Affairs, taking up legislation designed by tribal leaders to wrest control from the Bureau of Indian Affairs over governance on the nation’s 250 Indian reservations and negotiating agreements between the tribes that led to the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. A valuable educational tool, this text weaves together the ideas and goals of many different American Indian leaders from different tribes and professional backgrounds, and shows how those ideas worked to become the law of the land and transform Indian Country.
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cover of Red Eagle's Children: Weatherford vs. Weatherford et al.

Red Eagle's Children

Weatherford vs. Weatherford et al.

Edited by J. Anthony Paredes and Judith Knight

University of Alabama Press, 2012

Tracing identity, law, and legacy in an inheritance dispute that reveals the intersection of two cultural and legal systems: Creek Indian and Euro-American.

In 1846, in the Chancery Court of Mobile, Alabama, William “Red Eagle” Weatherford’s son, by the Indian woman Supalamy, sued his half siblings fathered by Weatherford with two other Creek women, Polly Moniac and Mary Stiggins, for a greater share of Weatherford’s estate. While the court recognized William Jr. as the son of William Sr., he nevertheless lost his petition for inheritance due to the lack of legal evidence concerning the marriage of his biological mother to William Sr. The case, which went to the Alabama Supreme Court in 1851, provides a record of an attempt to interrelate and, perhaps, manipulate differences in cultures as they played out within the ritualized, arcane world of antebellum Alabama jurisprudence.

Although the case has value in the classic mold of salvage ethnography of Creek Indian culture, Red Eagle’s Children, edited by J. Anthony Paredes and Judith Knight, shows that its more enduring value lies in being a source for historical ethnography—that is, for anthropological analyses of cultural dynamics of the past events that complement the narratives of professional historians.
 

CONTRIBUTORS: David I. Durham / Robbie Ethridge / Judith Knight / J. Anthony Paredes / Paul M. Pruitt Jr. / Nina Gail Thrower / Robert Thrower / Gregory A. Waselkov
 

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cover of Seeds of Tomorrow: Nurturing Roots of Oneida Governance

Seeds of Tomorrow

Nurturing Roots of Oneida Governance

Edited by Rebecca M. Webster and Lois Stevens

University of Wisconsin Press, 2026

This indispensable and unique volume is at once a history of and a pathfinder for the future of the Great Law, the governing principles behind the long-standing Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Focused on the Duck Creek Oneida people of Wisconsin, Seeds of Tomorrow draws together a wide range of tribal voices, from elders and community members to young people and academic experts. This collection chronicles the history of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s revolutionary governing principles, outlines the current state of tribal government, and proposes a vision for a political future that draws on traditional Indigenous practices and knowledge. This guide toward stronger sovereignty, revitalized community ties, and a healthier and more self-determined future based on traditional structures of governance is indigenization in practice: a model not just for Duck Creek Oneida but for Indigenous nations everywhere.

Contributors: Kenzie Allen, Marley Atkinson, Marena Bridges, Robert “Bob” Brown, Breann Clark, Julie Clark, Carol Cornelius, Margaret Cornelius, Randy Cornelius, Michele Doxtater, Richard “Lotni” Elm-Hill, Jennifer “Jen” Falck, William Gollnick, Joie Guiterrez, Gerald L. Hill, Jo Anne House, Toni M. House, Nicholas Metoxen, Paul Ninham, Saniya Ninham, John III Powless, Mark Powless, Nina Powless, Artley Skenandore, Lois Stevens, Vernon Stevens, Amelia “Mia” Webster, Grace Webster, Hunter D. Webster, Rebecca M. Webster, Arthur Wilbur, Jameson Wilson

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cover of Sovereign Selves: American Indian Autobiography and the Law

Sovereign Selves

American Indian Autobiography and the Law

David J. Carlson

University of Illinois Press, 2005

This book is an exploration of how American Indian autobiographers' approaches to writing about their own lives have been impacted by American legal systems from the Revolutionary War until the 1920s. Historically, Native American autobiographers have written in the shadow of "Indian law," a nuanced form of natural law discourse with its own set of related institutions and forms (the reservation, the treaty, etc.). In Sovereign Selves, David J. Carlson develops a rigorously historicized argument about the relationship between the specific colonial model of "Indian" identity that was developed and disseminated through U.S. legal institutions, and the acts of autobiographical self-definition by the "colonized" Indians expected to fit that model.

Carlson argues that by drawing on the conventions of early colonial treaty-making, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Indian autobiographers sought to adapt and redefine the terms of Indian law as a way to assert specific property-based and civil rights. Focusing primarily on the autobiographical careers of two major writers (William Apess and Charles Eastman), Sovereign Selves traces the way that their sustained engagement with colonial legal institutions gradually enabled them to produce a new rhetoric of "Indianness."

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cover of Sovereignty, Indigeneity, and the Law, Volume 110

Sovereignty, Indigeneity, and the Law, Volume 110

Eric Cheyfitz

Duke University Press, 0

Although Indigenous groups include diverse cultures and colonial experiences, Indigenous communities around the globe are united by a common struggle: to achieve self-determination and land rights as original occupants of the land prior to colonization. Historically, Western law has served both as an instrument of colonial control and as a means for Indigenous peoples to assert their claims to sovereignty and territory against those of nation-states. The essays in this issue of SAQ consider historical and contemporary colonial conflicts and explore key topics in Indigenous studies, including land rights, human rights, legal jurisdiction, Indigenous governance, and questions of language, culture, and the environment.

This wide-ranging collection addresses the political possibilities of Western law and the international meanings of sovereignty and Indigeneity. One essay analyzes the autonomous government through which local citizens in Indigenous Zapatista communities in Mexico hope to dissolve systems of top-down sovereignty altogether. Another explores narratives of Native American law and the treatment of sovereignty in contemporary Mohawk visual culture. Several essays discuss the legal and political implications of the field’s pivotal public documents, including the 2007 U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Eric Cheyfitz is the Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies and Humane Letters in the Department of English at Cornell University. N. Bruce Duthu is the Samson Occom Professor of Native American Studies and Chair of the Native American Studies Program at Dartmouth College. Shari M. Huhndorf is Associate Professor of English at the University of Oregon.

Contributors: Christine Black, Eric Cheyfitz, Gordon Christie, Chris Cunneen, Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller, Lorie M. Graham, Roy M. Huhndorf, Shari M. Huhndorf, Forrest Hylton, Mara Kaufman, Alvaro Reyes, Jolene Rickard, Carlos Salinas, Noenoe K. Silva, Cheryl Suzack, Siegfried Wiessner

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cover of The Colonial Construction of Indian Country: Native American Literatures and Federal Indian Law

The Colonial Construction of Indian Country

Native American Literatures and Federal Indian Law

Eric Cheyfitz

University of Minnesota Press, 2024

A guide to the colonization and projected decolonization of Native America

In The Colonial Construction of Indian Country, Eric Cheyfitz mounts a pointed historical critique of colonialism through careful analysis of the dialogue between Native American literatures and federal Indian law. Illuminating how these literatures indict colonial practices, he argues that if the decolonization of Indian country is to be achieved, then federal Indian law must be erased and replaced with independent Native nation sovereignty—because subordinate sovereignty, the historical regime, is not sovereignty at all.

 

At the same time, Cheyfitz argues that Native American literatures, specifically U.S. American Indian literatures, cannot be fully understood without a knowledge of U.S. federal Indian law: the matrix of colonialism in Indian country. Providing intersectional readings of a range of literary and legal texts, he discusses such authors as Louise Erdrich, Frances Washburn, James Welch, Gerald Vizenor, Simon Ortiz, Leslie Marmon Silko, and others. Cheyfitz examines how American Indian writers and critics have responded to the impact of law on Native life, revealing recent trends in Native writing that build upon traditional modes of storytelling and governance. 

 

With a focus on resistance to the colonial regime of federal Indian law, The Colonial Construction of Indian Country not only elucidates how Native American literatures and federal Indian law are each crucial to any reading of the other, it also guides readers to better understand the genocidal assault on Indigenous peoples by Western structures of literacy, politics, and law.

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cover of The Murder of Joe White: Ojibwe Leadership and Colonialism in Wisconsin

The Murder of Joe White

Ojibwe Leadership and Colonialism in Wisconsin

Erik M. Redix

Michigan State University Press, 2014

In 1894 Wisconsin game wardens Horace Martin and Josiah Hicks were dispatched to arrest Joe White, an Ojibwe ogimaa (chief), for hunting deer out of season and off-reservation. Martin and Hicks found White and made an effort to arrest him. When White showed reluctance to go with the wardens, they started beating him; he attempted to flee, and the wardens shot him in the back, fatally wounding him. Both Martin and Hicks were charged with manslaughter in local county court, and they were tried by an all-white jury. A gripping historical study, The Murder of Joe White contextualizes this event within decades of struggle of White’s community at Rice Lake to resist removal to the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation, created in 1854 at the Treaty of La Pointe. While many studies portray American colonialism as defined by federal policy, The Murder of Joe White seeks a much broader understanding of colonialism, including the complex role of state and local governments as well as corporations. All of these facets of American colonialism shaped the events that led to the death of Joe White and the struggle of the Ojibwe to resist removal to the reservation.
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cover of Those Who Belong: Identity, Family, Blood, and Citizenship among the White Earth Anishinaabeg

Those Who Belong

Identity, Family, Blood, and Citizenship among the White Earth Anishinaabeg

Jill Doerfler

Michigan State University Press, 2015

Despite the central role blood quantum played in political formations of American Indian identity in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there are few studies that explore how tribal nations have contended with this transformation of tribal citizenship. Those Who Belong explores how White Earth Anishinaabeg understood identity and blood quantum in the early twentieth century, how it was employed and manipulated by the U.S. government, how it came to be the sole requirement for tribal citizenship in 1961, and how a contemporary effort for constitutional reform sought a return to citizenship criteria rooted in Anishinaabe kinship, replacing the blood quantum criteria with lineal descent. Those Who Belong illustrates the ways in which Anishinaabeg of White Earth negotiated multifaceted identities, both before and after the introduction of blood quantum as a marker of identity and as the sole requirement for tribal citizenship. Doerfler’s research reveals that Anishinaabe leaders resisted blood quantum as a tribal citizenship requirement for decades before acquiescing to federal pressure. Constitutional reform efforts in the twenty-first century brought new life to this longstanding debate and led to the adoption of a new constitution, which requires lineal descent for citizenship.
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cover of Traditional, National, and International Law and Indigenous Communities

Traditional, National, and International Law and Indigenous Communities

Edited by Marianne O. Nielsen and Karen Jarratt-Snider

University of Arizona Press, 2020

This volume of the Indigenous Justice series explores the global effects of marginalizing Indigenous law. The essays in this book argue that European-based law has been used to force Indigenous peoples to assimilate, has politically disenfranchised Indigenous communities, and has destroyed traditional Indigenous social institutions. European-based law not only has been used as a tool to infringe upon Indigenous human rights, it also has been used throughout global history to justify environmental injustices, treaty breaking, and massacres. The research in this volume focuses on the resurgence of traditional law, tribal–state relations in the United States, laws that have impacted Native American women, laws that have failed to protect Indigenous sacred sites, the effect of international conventions on domestic laws, and the role of community justice organizations in operationalizing international law.

While all of these issues are rooted in colonization, Indigenous peoples are using their own solutions to demonstrate the resilience, persistence, and innovation of their communities. With chapters focusing on the use and misuse of law as it pertains to Indigenous peoples in North America, Latin America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, this book offers a wide scope of global injustice. Despite proof of oppressive legal practices concerning Indigenous peoples worldwide, this book also provides hope for amelioration of colonial consequences.
 
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cover of Tribal Administration Handbook: A Guide for Native Nations in the United States

Tribal Administration Handbook

A Guide for Native Nations in the United States

Rebecca M. Webster

Michigan State University Press, 2022

A direct response to the needs and ambitions articulated by tribal administrators and leaders, this handbook seeks to serve practitioners, students, researchers, and community members alike. It grew out of an ongoing collaboration among scholars and practitioners from tribal nations, universities, tribal colleges, and nonprofit organizations who are developing practical and teaching resources in the field of tribal administration and governance. Designed as a readable, accessible volume, it focuses on three key areas: tribal management, funding and delivering core services, and sovereign tribes engaging settler governments. While the chapters complement one another by presenting a coherent and unified constellation of voices that illuminates a shared terrain of practical Indigenous governance, each chapter ultimately stands alone to accommodate a variety of needs and interests with specific best practices, quick-reference executive summaries, and practitioner notes to aid lesson applications. This humble collection of remarkable voices initiates a conversation about tribal administration that will hopefully continue to grow in service to Native nations.
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cover of Understanding Tribal Sovereignty: Federal Indian Law and Self-Governance

Understanding Tribal Sovereignty

Federal Indian Law and Self-Governance

Donald L. Fixico

University of Arizona Press, 2026

What does tribal sovereignty really mean—and why does it matter today?

Accessibly written for the nonspecialist, acclaimed historian Donald L. Fixico unpacks the complex history and legal foundations of tribal sovereignty in the United States. From traditional Native governance to landmark treaties, federal laws, and court cases, Fixico guides readers through the evolution of tribal self-rule and its modern expressions—from tribal constitutions to license plates and casinos. Designed for students, educators, tribal members, and professionals alike, this book offers a clear, compelling introduction to one of the most important—and often misunderstood—concepts in American Indian affairs.

This book is a go-to source for understanding the federal Indian laws, treaties, and court cases simplified to explain tribal sovereignty.

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