Federal Recognition Research Articles

Bridging PrEP access gaps: Mapping geospatial accessibility across the US and leveraging community pharmacies for expansion

BackgroundPre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is key to ending the US HIV epidemic, but uptake remains low. Federal legislation permitting community pharmacists to initiate PrEP nationwide could expand access to PrEP services. ObjectivesThis study aimed to evaluate census tract-level geospatial access to PrEP facilities and community pharmacies across the US and characterize geographic areas and populations where community pharmacies could help bridge the gap in care. MethodsWe identified census tracts with limited or no access (“deserts”) to PrEP facilities and community pharmacies in 2022 using 2 primary definitions: 1) a tract with no PrEP facilities or pharmacies within a 30-minute drive of the tract centroid; and 2) a tract with low income and low access (no PrEP facilities or pharmacies within one mile of the centroid for low vehicle access tracts, 2 miles in urban tracts, 10 miles in suburban tracts, 20 miles in rural tracts). Tracts with access were “oases,” and “PrEP desert, pharmacy oasis” tracts represented areas without PrEP facilities where community pharmacies could expand access. We characterized the social determinants of health associated with desert status and conducted sensitivity analyses exploring additional access definitions. ResultsOf the 82,729 census tracts in our analysis, most were classified as dual PrEP and pharmacy oases. We categorized 13.3% as PrEP deserts under the 30-minute definition, and 94.3% of these tracts were pharmacy oases. Under the low income and low access definition, 17.0% of all tracts were PrEP deserts, 78.2% of which were pharmacy oases. PrEP deserts were predominantly located in the Midwest and South and associated with higher poverty, social vulnerability, and uninsurance. ConclusionOur analysis confirmed inequitable access to PrEP facilities across the US. Federal recognition of pharmacists as health care providers empowered to initiate PrEP nationwide has the potential to substantially bridge access gaps for underserved communities.

Marriage Equality and the Transnational Flow of Skilled Labor: The Impact of Same-Sex Marriage Legalization in the United States on the Inflow of Skilled Labor

This paper examines the impact on skilled labor migration to the United States of same-sex marriage legalization in European countries and US federal recognition of foreign same-sex marriages. Analyzing US Department of Homeland Security data, we find that European legalization decreased skilled labor admissions to the United States by 22 percent, most notably after six years. However, US recognition of foreign same-sex marriages mitigated this effect post-2013, indicating that such legalizations facilitate skilled labor movement between nations.

Mapping Sinking Land for Tribal Resilience in Louisiana

The Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi Chitimacha Choctaw Tribe has been losing land to the sea, which could hamper efforts to gain federal recognition.

"Caregiving Youth" and the Patchwork History of Recognition in the United States.

This article examines the U.S. legislative and policy landscape and its historical and contemporary recognition of young people as caregivers and their importance to public health, both as care providers and as a category of special concern for overall wellbeing. Drawing on feminist geographies of health to situate a historical analysis, we aim to answer two key questions: First, what is the history of recognition of caregiving youth in key moments of federal action to address family caregiving needs? Second, how might we use this history to better understand and analyze the patchwork geography of caregiving youth recognition in the U.S. and other countries that similarly lack formal national policy recognition to improve and enhance public health? We use the term patchwork to describe how federal recognition of caregiving youth in broader debates about public health is uneven across both time and space, and contingent upon civil society, non-profit organizations, and researchers working in and with geographically bound communities. Our results illustrate how a focus on the relationships of recognition, both in the past and the present and at local and national scales, reveals a different perspective on caregiving youth in the U.S. with a much more complex history than previously identified. The article describes how relationships established in the absence of federal policy or legislation are sometimes directed towards building more formal recognition, and other times with the goal of changing practices in a specific location.

Archives, Decolonization, and the Politics of Tribal Sovereignty: An Examination of Accessibility Barriers to Indigenous Federal Recognition Research in the United States

ABSTRACT While decolonizing accessibility and access to research materials in archives is emerging as an emphasis of scholarship, it is unclear to what extent existing decolonial frameworks operationalize Indigenous sovereignty. The primary goals of tribes and Indigenous communities revolve around sovereignty and self-determination. In the United States, decolonial approaches to archives often prioritize accessibility of collections, rather than contemplating if the accessible changes have tangible positive impacts on Indigenous user needs. In this research, the authors examine whether the intentions underlying decolonial archival work articulated in the literature contribute to a nexus of inaccessibility for Indigenous researchers seeking to assert sovereignty and/or federal acknowledgement. Federal acknowledgment is a socio-anthropological political procedure for recognition as a sovereign nation and a method for tribes to gain access to federal services. This process entangles archives in ongoing settler colonial practices antithetical to professional decolonial ethos. Through an overview of the recognition process, this research centers the politics of sovereignty as a framework to uncover the confluence of colonial logics within accessibility and archival research services. Recognition research elucidates areas of decolonial thinking that continue to remake settler colonial structures rather than enhancing accessibility for Indigenous communities of all statuses.

Chapter 12 Changing Tides: Tribal Engagement in Oregon's Coastal Archaeology

ABSTRACTArchaeology on Oregon's Coast has been largely limited in scope and has lacked the holistic viewpoint of Indigenous coastal history. Investigations began in earnest around 1930 with avocational archaeologists like Marcus Seale interested in expanding their “trophy item” collections. The male dominated field of professional archaeology began to evolve in the 1940s and 1950s with investigators from varying backgrounds, like Luther Cressman who began studying the material culture of the Oregon Tribes as if they were an extinct group. The 1970s push for federal recognition brought increased Tribal involvement and collaboration with archaeologists such as Richard Everett “Dick” Ross. Unfortunately, Tribes remain largely uninterested in archaeology as Indigenous individuals and communities continue to be left out of the narrative. Cultural resource professionals at major institutions continue to curate “cultural material” under the aegis of science and resource protection while arguing against the repatriation of material based on either lack of skeletal components, or a misguided understanding of “affiliation” and of Native views of sacredness. We explore the legacy of our predecessors and how we as archaeologists must take a more comprehensive Tribal perspective approach to understanding Oregon coastal history and more respectfully manage legacy collections.

“It Adds to The Stress of the Body”: Community health needs of a state-recognized Native American tribe in the United States

While many of the health disparities, brought on by the cruelties of settler colonization, that affect Native American and Alaskan Native communities and individuals at high rates have been documented, the health risks impacting non-federally recognized tribes are less explored. In this manuscript, we explore the challenges non-recognized tribes face and how without Tribal sovereignty, autonomy, and resources, it is more difficult for non-recognized tribes to provide care and resources for the members of their communities. This study took place in the Gulf South regions of the United States, where there are environmental factors pertaining to industry, global warming, environmental racism, and rurality that further impact the quality of life and rates of cancer, respiratory illness, and reproductive health issues in the Native American communities that live there. In addition, tribes without federal recognition have increased challenges in addressing the lack of access to health equity and may not have the health resources or programming available to them that exist for federally recognized tribes. To explore these topics, a qualitative description methodology was used to conduct 31 semi-structured interviews with women from a state-recognized Native American tribe in the Gulf South to understand their healthcare experiences and concerns. Participants in this study described: high rates of cancer, vehicle accidents or collisions common, barriers to exercising, physical injuries common, chronic illnesses common in the community, loss of family members, and physical violence. These findings indicate that state-recognized tribal members may need increased, improved, and culturally contextualized healthcare programs within their communities, in addition to full recognition of their tribal sovereignty rights. This study begins to address important gaps in the research exploring the full scope of the health risks and challenges affecting non-federally recognized tribal members, while also highlighting their resilience in the face of settler colonialism.

Antiabortion laws and reproductive health information in nuclear medicine

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) decision on Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization overturned a 49-year-old federal recognition of abortion rights and drastically altered a long-established risk-benefit analysis for pregnant or potentially pregnant patients in nuclear medicine. In this current legal landscape, the collection/documentation of reproductive health information (RHI) must be reduced and, in our brief communication, we outline how to do just that.

"I Think [Western] Healthcare Fails Them": Qualitative Perspectives of State-recognized Women Tribal Members on Elders' Healthcare Access Experiences.

Elder tribal members are important cultural and spiritual leaders and experts among many American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) cultures. AI/AN Elders play a key role in the maintenance and transmission of traditional cultural knowledge and practices and are highly valued members of AI/AN communities. AI/AN populations face disparities in healthcare outcomes, and the healthcare needs of AI/AN Elders remain an understudied area of research, particularly among tribes in the South and for tribes who do not have federal recognition. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews among 31 women, all of whom are members of a state-recognized Tribe in the Southern United States. While the interview questions were specific to their own reproductive healthcare experiences, repeated concerns were voiced by the women regarding the health of the Elders in their community. Key findings captured several concerns/barriers regarding Elders' healthcare experiences including: (a) Language and communication barriers between Elders and healthcare workers; (b) Prior negative experiences with Western medicine; (c) Lasting impacts of educational discrimination; (d) Concerns over self-invalidation; (e) Transportation barriers; and (f) Need for community programs. Issues related to these barriers have resulted in a concern that Elders are not receiving the full benefit of and access to Western healthcare systems. The purpose of this analysis was to highlight the concerns voiced by women tribal members on the health and wellbeing of Elders in their community. Opportunities related to the importance of prioritizing and improving AI/AN Elders' healthcare experiences and access are also described.

Chapter 7. The Limits of Control: Anthropology, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and Federal Recognition in the United States

Chapter 7. The Limits of Control: Anthropology, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and Federal Recognition in the United States

William Apess's Indian Nullification : Narrating Mashpee Wampanoag Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century America and Beyond

Abstract: William Apess's Indian Nullification (1835) engages various forms of nullification, drawn from contemporary politics, secular history, and Judeo-Christian tradition, as part of a collective expression of sovereignty meant to gain ground (literally and figuratively) for the Mashpee Wampanoags. This essay argues that, for Apess, nullification emerges as a transformative practice that can be used in the absence of treaties to articulate the Mashpees' political and religious claims and leverage new political possibilities for them, in part through its invocation of the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution. References to nullification also allow him to transform and elevate the Mashpees' situation from one of local concern to national and even eschatological importance. Nullification provides an avenue to respond to characterizations of Mashpees that circulated in the New England press in which their situation was used as an occasion, or even a vehicle, for working through issues of concern for many white Americans, such as miscegenation (to use a term common in the era) and growing sectional tensions. The essay concludes by briefly connecting Apess's arguments with the Mashpee Wampanoags' more recent efforts to gain federal recognition and assert their territorial claims.

“We Live in a Very Toxic World”: Changing Environmental Landscapes and Indigenous Food Sovereignty

The purpose of this article is to understand how historical oppression has undermined health through environmental injustices that have given rise to food insecurity. Specifically, the article examines ways in which settler colonialism has transformed and contaminated the land itself, impacting the availability and quality of food and the overall health of Indigenous peoples. Food security and environmental justice for Gulf Coast, state-recognized tribes has been infrequently explored. These tribes lack federal recognition and have limited access to recourse and supplemental resources as a result. This research fills an important gap in the literature through exploring the intersection of environmental justice and food insecurity issues for this population. Partnering with a community-advisory board and using a qualitative descriptive methodology, 31 Gulf Coast Indigenous women participated in semi-structured interviews about their healthcare experiences and concerns. Through these interviews, participants expressed concerns about (a) the environmental impacts of pollution on the contamination of food and on the health of tribal members; and (b) the impact of these changes on the land, such as negatively impacting gardening practices. The authors of this study document how environmental changes have compounded these concerns and contribute to the overall pollution of food and water sources and unviability of subsistence practices, severely effecting tribal members’ health. In conclusion, we show how social and environmental justice issues such as pollution, industry exploitation, and climate change perpetuate the goals of settler colonialism through undermining cultural practices and the overall health of Indigenous peoples.

“We have to learn how to balance all of that”: Community health needs of a state-recognized Gulf Coast Indigenous tribe

ABSTRACT The community and health programmatic needs of state-recognized tribes vary in comparison to tribes who are federally recognized. Federal recognition provides tribes with access to federal programs through Indian Health Services (IHS) and ensures a certain level of sovereignty. Little research explores the gaps in community programs experienced by state-recognized tribes as a result of their non-federal status or explores their resilience as a community in filling these gaps through other supports. Through collaboration with a community advisory board (CAB), a qualitative descriptive methodology was used to conduct 31 semi-structured interviews with adult women that self-identify as members of a state-recognized Gulf Coast Indigenous tribe. Using conventional content analysis, the following themes were identified: (a) Wellness Programs and the Power of Connection (b) Transmission of Traditional Knowledge (c) The Need for Women’s Support Groups; (d) Gaps in Programs; and (e) Barriers to Participating in Community and Tribal Programs. These results demonstrate the immense importance of community events as opportunities for transmission of cultural knowledge for tribal members, an integral aspect of securing tribal holistic wellbeing. Although social support and enculturation activities contribute to Indigenous groups’ overall health, this topic has been less studied for state-recognized tribes, particularly for those in the Gulf Coast tribe. Key implications of this study include the need for federal recognition and increased access to programmatic resources and highlights the importance of increased support and sovereignty for state-recognized tribes.

A Struggle for Heritage: Archaeology and Civil Rights in a Long Island Community by Christopher N. Matthews (review)

Reviewed by: A Struggle for Heritage: Archaeology and Civil Rights in a Long Island Community by Christopher N. Matthews Katherine Hayes (bio) A Struggle for Heritage: Archaeology and Civil Rights in a Long Island Community by Christopher N. Matthews University Press of Florida, 2020 A STRUGGLE FOR HERITAGE recounts a community-academic partnership grounded in building the case for preservation of a remarkable historic presence for the Native and African American community in Setauket (Long Island, New York). Matthews frames the archaeological work in the project as "archaeology as political action," identifying the preservation legislative system as state-sanctioned recognition and power. Although the community carries a strong sense of their history, elder members are concerned with the literal loss of grounds as younger generations choose not to remain in Setauket. Thus the recognition in preservation is aimed both inward (community persistence) and outward (state power). The prevalent white settler narrative that Matthews refers to as the "authorized heritage discourse" conflicts with the community-preserved history (37). Settler history focuses on the Revolutionary War, and Matthews describes a wide variety of its manifestations: written into local histories, promoted by historical organizations, celebrated in representational artwork, and embedded in landscapes, an ever-familiar story of white settlers' successful struggles for survival while others quietly disappear. In contradistinction to the assertions of disappearance, the next chapter provides a "Counter-map of Setauket" where the same landscape is marked by and mapped with places that Native and African American community members remember as their own deep history. Matthews frames the major inquiry of the book in terms of a shift from "creole synthesis"—in the early New York postemancipation years of greater racial integration—to "racial modernity," a midcentury rising tide of anti-Black racism and antiabolitionist sentiment that transitioned into Jim Crow segregation (105). He uses an eclectic mix of evidence, including an extended analysis of genre paintings by William Sidney Mount, historical newspaper writing, and censuses. Censuses provide neighborhood demographics and demonstrate an initial period of relatively greater integration followed by pronounced racial segregation that concentrated the Native and African American community into one or two areas of Setauket. Census [End Page 200] data guided the selection of the two sites for archaeological excavation and interpretation by the community collaborative partnership. Both were home sites associated with known families and individuals, well contextualized through archival records, photos, oral histories, and personal memories. The goal was to compare the experiences of the historical community over time in the context of changing structures of racism. The following two chapters detail the findings of the excavations and material analyses. The two sites reveal distinct differences, particularly in access to resources and environmental conditions. The nineteenth-century site was home to a multigenerational family who sustained themselves on an independent farm while also drawing on the abundant wild plants and fauna around them. The early twentieth-century site was home to a family pressed into low-wage labor and dependent upon the market for staple foods and materials. Generations beyond emancipation, we see the material evidence of declining opportunities: a strong argument against the tone of a progressive pluralistic society often championed by heritage organizations. While the book impressively outlines a rich history, Matthews closes with a rather pessimistic note about the value of political action via preservation, stating that despite a successful nomination of a historic district to the National Register of Historic Places, little change in the social and racial context of Setauket has occurred. While sympathizing greatly with the community members, this comes as little surprise; and the author's conclusion highlights my concern with the book. Despite the emphasis on the community's diversity and the refusal to essentialize its members, the study and interpretation is grounded in critical Black studies and an analysis of structural racism. What of settler colonialism? Where is the discussion of Indigenous sovereignty and the efforts of the Setalcott Nation in seeking federal recognition? Referencing Native scholars such as Audra Simpson or Glen Coulthard could reframe the recourse to the politics of preservation, showing that preservation practice is fundamentally shaped by settler and white supremacist values and epistemologies. Why would a community, steeped in its own...

James Obergefell Honored at John Fryer Anniversary Event

James Obergefell Honored at John Fryer Anniversary Event

Introduction toVisual Arts ResearchSpecial Issue, Body Cam: The Visual Regimes of Policing

Introduction to<i>Visual Arts Research</i>Special Issue, Body Cam: The Visual Regimes of Policing

Review: Mass Murder in California’s Empty Quarter: A Tale of Tribal Treachery at the Cedarville Rancheria, by Ray A. March

Review: <i>Mass Murder in California’s Empty Quarter: A Tale of Tribal Treachery at the Cedarville Rancheria</i>, by Ray A. March

Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity

Darryl Leroux’s Distorted Descent provides a fascinating glimpse into the broader colonial structural issues at play in what he calls the “race-shifting” or “self-Indigenization” phenomenon that has taken hold over the last decade or so in the United States and Canada. Leroux spends the majority of the book focused on white settlers of French descent in various communities across eastern Canada and the United States, breaking down the methods and justifications they use to craft a contemporary Indigenous identity. For the most part, Leroux’s focus is on white people who either claim Métis identity using genealogical methods that connect them to an Indigenous (usually First Nations) relative as far back as twelve generations or claim Indigeneity for a distant non-Indigenous relative. It is important that Leroux distinguishes between white settlers claiming Indigenous heritage when there is none to be found and Indigenous people struggling to reconnect to communities after US and Canadian assimilationist policies and institutions, such as the “sixties scoop” and residential/boarding schools, severed ties.Leroux’s intensive research into online French genealogy message boards yields a series of patterns through which white settlers make fraudulent claims to Indigeneity. Distorted Descent offers names for these patterns; for example, settlers using an Indigenous relative three hundred years in the past are manufacturing Indigeneity through “lineal” descent. Settlers attempting to claim Indigeneity by rewriting a distant settler relative as Indigenous do so through “aspirational” descent.Much of the book serves as a well-researched and astutely historical critique of settler focus on blood quantum and generational cut-offs as sole indicators of Indigeneity. It traces the ways in which settler concepts of genetics have been used to erase Indigeneity and claims to territory in both Canada and the United States. Importantly, blood quantum models of determining Indigeneity have served to undermine Indigenous systems of kinship, and this trend continues in the recent upswing in white claims to Indigenous identity. Leroux draws on the work of esteemed Métis scholars Chris Andersen and Brenda Macdougall, for example, to outline how settler ideas of Indigeneity have ignored structures of kinship and claiming in the Métis nation, actively threatening Métis sovereignty as a result.The crucial part of Leroux’s argument is not in his study and description of the phenomenon itself but in his framing of race shifting and the self-Indigenization movement as part of broader patriarchal white supremacist structures of colonial dispossession, even beyond Leroux’s identification of the roots of many of these so-called Indigenous groups in white supremacist organizations. In claiming a false Indigenous identity, many settlers have used their invented status to actively undermine and dispossess living Indigenous groups. Leroux brilliantly frames this as “[facilitating] white futurity in response to conventional reconciliation frameworks” (219). Leroux places this “new” phenomenon in context, thus presenting it as a continuation of centuries of colonial oppression—just with a different face.It is important to note that Leroux is not a historian—his roots in sociology and anthropology are clear in this book—but it is precisely the importance of a historical framing of many of the topics in Distorted Descent to which I would like to turn. While most of the book is dedicated to white settlers claiming Métis identity, there are sections where Leroux discusses settler claims to First Nations/Native American identities for similar purposes. The quick shift between two very different groups of Indigenous peoples at points throughout the book—the individuality of single nations aside—risks conflation of unique circumstances and historical and contemporary relationships with colonial power. Various nations and Indigenous groups have different practices of kinship and claiming that get lost in Leroux’s contemporary analysis of the issue and heavier focus on fake Métis claims without making the book solely about claims to Métis identity.While the book does talk about some differences between assimilation policies in the United States and Canada, it misses an opportunity to look at how historical differences between Indigenous relationships with US and Canadian settler states in place impact the kinds of rhetoric used to dispossess Indigenous peoples and how settler recognition—and de-recognition—are shaped by these contexts. These factors need to be considered when discussing issues of fake claims to Indigeneity, particularly in the northeastern United States, where there is a much longer history of colonial dispossession than in western regions. Indigenous nations like the Mashpee Wampanoag, for example, have continued to struggle for federal recognition in the face of a centuries-long attack on their sovereignty and claim to their home territory. While there are indeed white settlers taking advantage of this, the conversation is a great deal more nuanced than the scope of this book could address.Overall, Distorted Descent joins the ranks of important works, such as those of Kim Tallbear, about colonial attempts to control Indigeneity, and it will inform what will no doubt remain a robust and crucial conversation in this contemporary moment.

U.S. Family Law Along the Slippery Slope: the limits of a sexual rights strategy for polyamorous parents

Families in the United States are rapidly changing, and the normative familial model of two married, monogamous, heterosexual parents with children no longer reflects the majority of U.S. families. Nonetheless, state incentive-based policies and discriminatory family laws continue to enforce heteronormative monogamy. Recent changes to the U.S. legal landscape have produced limited formal recognition and protections for same-sex couples and LGBTQ parents, and even these narrow rights are withheld from other diverse familial configurations including families with polyamorous parents. This article uses the concept of sexual citizenship to frame the analysis of U.S. family courts’ normative construction of family, identifying striking parallels between family courts’ historical and contemporary prejudicial treatment of LGBTQ parents and the institution’s similar delegitimization and denigration of polyamorous parents today. This paper reviews polyamorous parents’ efforts towards achieving legal and societal legitimatization, finding significant parallels with legal strategies LGBTQ parents utilized to seek legal recognition and protection prior to federal recognition of same-sex marriage. This paper highlights the inadequacies of such a formal sexual citizenship approach, finding that a limited strategy of accumulating specific sexual rights fails to address non-monogamy’s more radical cultural presence as well as the (non-legal) informal aspects of belonging needed to improve the livability of polyamorous parents’ and their children’s lives. This paper concludes with recommendations for improving the treatment of non-traditional families including LGBTQ, polyamorous, and other blended families, both within and outside the legal institution.

Federalism as Fairness in Ethiopia

Abstract In this contribution I apply the normative political theory of multinational federalism to the case of Ethiopia. Can the political philosophy of multinational federalism ground Ethiopian federalism, and does Ethiopia satisfy its moral demands? To do so, I examine the Ethiopian federal system from the perspective of four desiderata of multinational federalism: (1) national-cultural self-government, (2) solidarity, (3) central government, and (4) linguistic justice. While Ethiopia’s federal structure has scored well with respect to (1) national-cultural self-government and (2) solidarity, it does face problems of (3) federal togetherness and (4) recognition of internal linguistic minorities. In the article several ways to overcome the two last-mentioned problems are suggested, although the article places these problems in perspective, as they trouble many multinational federal states.