Native American Rights Research Articles

The Case for a Native American 1968 and Its Transnational Legacy

Partly as a result of compartmentalized academic specializations and history teaching, in accounts of the global upheavals of 1968, Native Americans are either not mentioned, or at best are tagged on as an afterthought. “Was there a Native American 1968?” is the central question this article aims to answer. Native American activism in the 1960s was no less flashy, dramatic or confrontational than the protests by the era’s other struggles – it is simply overshadowed by later actions of the movement. Using approaches from Transnational American Studies and the history of social movements, this article argues that American Indians had a “long 1968” that originated in Native America’s responses to the US government’s Termination policy in the 1950s, and stretched from their ‘training’ period in the 1960s, through their dramatic protests from the late 1960s through the 1970s, all the way to their participation at the United Nations from 1977 through the rest of the Cold War. While their radicalism and protest strategies made Native American activism a part of the US domestic social movements of the long 1960s, the nature of American Indian sovereignty rights and transnationalism place the Native American long 1968 on the rights spectrum further away from civil rights, and closer to a national liberation struggle—which links American Indian activism to the decolonization movements of the Cold War.

Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples

Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples

The Cactus and the Anthropologist: The Evolution of Cultural Expertise on the Entheogenic Use of Peyote in the United States

This paper explores the complex evolution of the role anthropologists have played as cultural experts in the regulation of the entheogenic use of the peyote cactus throughout the 20th century. As experts of the “peyote cult”, anthropologists provided testimonies and cultural expertise in the regulatory debates in American legislative and judiciary arenas in order to counterbalance the demonization and prohibition of the medicinal and sacramental use of peyote by Native Americans through state and federal legislations. In the meantime, anthropologists have encouraged Peyotists to form a pan-tribal religious institution as a way to secure legal protection of their practice; in 1918, the Native American Church (NAC) was incorporated in Oklahoma, with its articles explicitly referring to the sacramental use of peyote. Operating as cultural experts, anthropologists have therefore assisted jurists in their understanding of the cultural and religious significance of peyote, and have at the same time counseled Native Americans in their interaction with the legal system and in the formatting of their claims in appropriate legal terms. This complex legal controversy therefore provides ample material for a general exploration of the use, evolution, and impact of cultural expertise in the American legal system, and of the various forms this expertise can take, thereby contributing to the contemporary efforts at surveying and theorizing cultural expertise. Through an historical and descriptive approach, the analysis notably demonstrates that the role of anthropologists as cultural experts has been marked by a practical and substantive evolution throughout the 20th century, and should therefore not be restrictively understood in relation to expert witnessing before courts. Rather, this paper underlines the transformative and multifaceted nature of cultural expertise, and highlights the problematic duality of the position that the two “generations” of anthropologists involved in this controversy have experienced, navigating between a supposedly impartial position as experts, and an arguably biased engagement as advocates for Native American religious rights.

Book Review: Beyond Mechanism: Putting Life Back into Biology edited by Brian Henning and Adam Scarfe

The Paranormal Surrounds Us is a tied-together collection of essays by Richard Reichbart, a practicing psychoanalyst whose several strong interests and lifelong love for the mystery of psi, and sense of adventure and ethical sensibility, give the collection several points of focus. In addition to his current analytic practice of many decades, he has also been a student of literature, a playwright, a Yale-trained attorney, and an activist for Native American and African American rights. The book is as scattered as he has been, but it is so full of insights and pleasing prose, that it doesn’t lose much for that. In this time when we prefer our intellectual material in bite-sized chunks, like sparky TED Talks and internet articles, this may feel especially friendly to many. If there is an implicit, underlying focus to the work, it may be implicitly biographical: one curious man’s study of, to paraphrase Freud, the vicissitudes of psi – its expression in our finest literature, in our private and shared unconscious processes, in our different subcultures, in the deepest privacy of intensive psychotherapy, and in the legal and cultural presumptions that implicitly structure our thinking and behavior.  There are three main sections to the book: Psi Phenomena in Western Literature, Psi Phenomena and Psychoanalysis, and Psi Phenomena and Culture.

Many Tongues, One Faith: A History of Franciscan Parish Life in the United States by David J. Endres

Reviewed by: Many Tongues, One Faith: A History of Franciscan Parish Life in the United States by David J. Endres Kyle Haden OFM Many Tongues, One Faith: A History of Franciscan Parish Life in the United States. By David J. Endres. Oceanside, CA: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2018. 210 pp. $25.00. A common trope in immigration histories of the United States is the profound effect U.S. culture has had on the many different ethnic and religious groups settling in America. While many coming to the United States had intentions of maintaining cultural and religious traditions as practiced in the Old World, the desire to fit into the American cultural majority was, in many cases, too strong a temptation. For many Catholics, a means for holding onto Old World devotions and practices [End Page 86] was through the local parish. The parish became an oasis among a majority Protestant culture, a means of maintaining Catholic practice and identity. The centrality of the parish in American Catholic life would profoundly reshape Franciscan life and ministry. In his study of Franciscan ministry in the United States, David J. Endres offers an intriguing and well narrated story of 16 representative parishes in which Franciscan priests, brothers, and sisters ministered to the needs of a variety of ethnic communities, from the early nineteenth century to the present. Endres primarily focuses on the three first-order male Franciscan communities: the Order of Friars Minor, Capuchins, and Conventuals. He also notes the important contributions offered by various Franciscan sisters working alongside their Franciscan brothers. In conjunction with Franciscan parish ministry, Endres narrates the creation of several Franciscan provinces formed due to ministerial needs in an expanding national and ethnic demography. From the acquisition of established parishes to the founding and building of new structures, parish ministry became a central ministerial reality for the majority of American friars. As a major theme running through his study, Endres demonstrates how traditional Franciscan life as practiced in the Old World was transformed by the centrality of the parish in American Catholic life. In the Old World, friars did not have a tradition of parish ministry. Franciscan life was much more centered on the monastery, with a defined regiment of daily prayer. Such a commitment to the horarium was not practical for life in America, especially when dealing with the demands of parish ministry. While early Franciscan immigrants resisted change to their traditional religious lifestyle, many bishops put pressure on Franciscan superiors to encourage friars to accept parish assignments. In doing so, Franciscan life was noticeably changed. While narrating Franciscan ministry in the United States, Endres also examines the changing reality of American life and how Franciscan parish ministry kept apace of these social and cultural changes. In many cases friars had to deal with the negative social realities of [End Page 87] American life, especially in terms of racial and ethnic bigotry, as well as economic disparities. Advocacy for the rights of minorities is highlighted in the lives of such friars as Bonaventure Oblasser, OFM, who advocated for the rights of Native Americans in Arizona; Stephen Eckert, OFM Cap, who championed the rights of African Americans in Milwaukee; and Oliver Lynch, OFM, who sought economic and social equity for farm workers and Latinos in California. The establishment of parish schools, especially for the needs of minorities, highlights the dedication of Franciscan sisters who labored alongside their male counterparts, in some cases under difficult and challenging circumstances. Many Tongues, One Faith is the first in the projected series United States Franciscan History Project by the Academy of American Franciscan History. It is an excellent study to begin such a series of historical research. Endres offers a well-written, well-researched history of Franciscan life and ministry in the United States. It is highly recommended to historians, and others, interested in American Catholic history. [End Page 88] Kyle Haden OFM St. Bonaventure University Copyright © 2019 American Catholic Historical Society

Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds by Nancy A. Hewitt

Reviewed by: Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds by Nancy A. Hewitt Chelsea Gibson (bio) Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds By Nancy A. Hewitt. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2018. 440 pages, 11 halftones, 1 map, 6⅛” x 9¼.” $39.95 cloth, $29.99 e-book. Nancy A. Hewitt is a scholar who surely needs no introduction. Since her first book, Women’s Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822–1872 (1984), she has fundamentally shaped our understanding of women’s activism in the nineteenth century and beyond. Hewitt has published articles and edited collections that have encouraged scholars to rethink the origins of the women’s rights movement, to link American activists with their global counterparts, and to critically examine the relationship between race, class, and gender in women’s activism. Her latest, and final, monograph, a masterfully researched biography of the Quaker activist Amy Kirby Post, is the culmination of more than four decades’ worth of historical inquiry; in fact, Hewitt first discovered Post as a graduate student. Hewitt argues that Post’s remarkable life, one that spanned the entire nineteenth century, “illuminates a more radical world of activism” in which Americans gathered together in sex- and race-integrated social movements to work for a more just society (3). Hewitt’s examination of Post immediately calls to mind Carol Faulker’s recent biography of Lucretia Mott, which set out with a similar goal—to rescue the story of a dynamic woman whose radicalism we have generally forgotten. While both women left behind frustratingly few personal sources, Mott at least was a national figure. Post, in contrast, preferred in most cases to work behind the scenes. While Post left only a few dozen outgoing letters, Hewitt evocatively reconstructs her “activist worlds” through family letters, the manuscript collections of Post’s coworkers, abolitionist and women’s rights pamphlets, Quaker meeting records, and articles in abolitionist journals like The North Star and The Liberator. She even cites the credit reports of her husband Isaac Post’s successful apothecary business. Hewitt notes in the introduction that she set out to write a book that would reflect Post’s lived experience. That is, rather than compartmentalize the social justice movements Post championed, Hewitt demonstrates how they “intersect[ed], converge[d], and continually reshape[d] one another” (9). The chronological structure of the book reinforces this goal. At times, it is difficult to keep track of her many social networks (the book includes a six-page list of historical characters), but Hewitt successfully illuminates “the ways that ordinary people advanced a radical vision of social change” (9). However she might have avoided the limelight, though, Hewitt’s biography reveals that Post was in almost every regard extraordinary. Raised as a Quaker, a religion where women did not pledge to “obey” their husbands in marriage, she sought friendships and [End Page 300] partnerships that respected women’s rights. Her marriage to Isaac Post was so egalitarian that Hewitt declares Post “barely” encountered the “concept of separate spheres” (8). Despite the reluctance among most Quakers in this period to engage in “worldly associations,” Post became involved early on in movements for Native American rights and the abolition of slavery, eventually forming significant personal relations with black leaders including Frederick Douglass, William Nell, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Jacobs. Hewitt notes that Post was “unusual, even among white abolitionists, in the deep connections she forged with black activists” (122). Her criticism of hierarchies in religion led her to eventually join the small, radical group of Quakers called the Progressive Friends; she and her husband Isaac also turned toward Spiritualism. She played a major role in the women’s rights movement, signing the Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls before returning to her home in Rochester, New York, to organize a more radical Woman’s Rights Convention. By the mid-1850s, Hewitt argues that “social activism had become a form of worship” for the Posts (193). Their universalist vision continued to sustain Isaac and Amy until their deaths in 1872 and 1889, respectively, even as the national mood shifted in the wake of the Civil War toward a...

Witness Tree Records for the Early Colonial Period (1623-1700) of Eastern Virginia

The composition and dominance of 1256 witness (land survey) trees were compiled for the early Colonial era (pre-1700) in two locations in eastern Virginia, a region where studies of such information are lacking. The study locations are the Marine Corps Base Quantico and the Cheatham Annex Naval Supply Center, both along major rivers of Tidewater Virginia. At Quantico, a total of 754 witness trees comprising 22 species were recorded. Oak (Quercus) species made up 67% of these trees, followed by hickory (Carya; 15%), poplar (Liriodendron), gum (Nyssa), and pine (Pinus) each representing 4% of the forest composition. At Cheatham Annex a total of 502 witness trees from 24 species were recorded. Oaks made up 57% of the total composition followed by hickory (13%), pine (10%), poplar (5%), and gum (5%). There was a dearth of late successional, fire sensitive species at both locations, despite the presence of many mesic locations that should support such species. This suggests Native American activity (e.g., burning and land clearing) was an important factor affecting forests in eastern Virginia. This research provides a better understanding of the original forests of eastern Virginia and can serve as a baseline for making comparisons with present day forests to assess forest change since the Colonial era.

Decolonizing vision: Native Americans, film and video activism

This article provides a critical reflection on, and some key examples of Native American media activism, in particular film and video making. The aim of the article is to discuss the reasons why such activism is important, consider its strength and challenges, as underpinned by the work of critical media scholars, such as Stuart Hall and other prominent scholars. To do so, it provides relevant examples and cases which point at the role of and issues surrounding image, representation, (in) visibility, access, recognition, dissemination, censorship and identity, in relation to video activism. The main findings are that video activism can be a helpful tool in the frame of Native Americans’ struggles for self-making and sovereignty, reversing the trend established historically first by the European settlers, and then by the American ‘mainstream’ population, whose aim was to erase and assimilate Indigenous peoples. However, although we pinpoint the fact that indigenous media, such as Fourth Cinema or video productions broadcast on platforms like Youtube, are used as political tools by Native Americans, the essay also means to highlight the limits of such tools, whether the latter are theoretical, or practical. In summary, this article considers traditional indigenous media in self-making processes, mainly through the importance of filmmaking. Furthermore, it emphasizes how resistance, resurgence and sovereignty are pursued with the utilization of digital Indigenous media. It also tries to underline the limits of those methods which should be taken into account to strengthen Indigenous activism. Finally, even if these points are related here to Native American activism, they seem relevant to any kind of activism. It is hence key to highlight that the critical arguments and example provided here can support teachers’ work related to social justice. Teachers can use the examples and points made here as a reflection trigger with students in higher education across disciplines and high school, within and beyond the fields that tackle media, culture, sociology, and history.

Using Paleolandscape Modeling to Investigate the Impact of Native American–Set Fires on Pre-Columbian Forests in the Southern Sierra Nevada, California, USA

Ethnographic accounts document widespread use of low-intensity surface fires by California's Native Americans to manage terrestrial resources, yet the effects of such practices on forest composition and structure remain largely unknown. Although numerous paleoenvironmental studies debate whether proxy interpretations indicate climatic or anthropogenic drivers of landscape change, available data sources (e.g., pollen, charcoal) are generally insufficient to resolve anthropogenic impacts and do not allow for hypothesis testing. We use a modeling approach with LANDIS-II, a spatially explicit forest succession and disturbance model, to test whether the addition of Native American–set surface fires was necessary to approximate vegetation change as reconstructed from fossil pollen. We use an existing 1,600-year pollen and charcoal record from Holey Meadow, Sequoia National Forest, California, as the empirical data set to which we compared modeled results of climatic and anthropogenic fire regimes. We found that the addition of anthropogenic burning best approximated fossil pollen–reconstructed vegetation change, particularly during periods of prolonged cooler, wetter periods coinciding with greater regional Native American activity (1550–1050 and 750–100 cal yr BP). For lightning-caused wildfires to statistically approximate the pollen record required at least twenty times more ignitions and 870 percent more area burned annually during the Little Ice Age (750–100 cal yr BP) than observed during the modern period (AD 1985–2006), a level of natural fire increase we consider highly improbable. These results demonstrate that (1) anthropogenic burning was likely an important cause of pre-Columbian forest structure at the site and (2) dynamic landscape models provide a valuable method for testing hypotheses of paleoenvironmental change.

“Justice and Fair Play for the American Indian”

Between 1913 and 1916, two insurgent politicians successfully blocked repeated efforts to sell the so-called surplus lands of the Blackfeet Nation. Harry Lane, a U.S. Senator from Oregon and a radical progressive, broke with other Euro-American reformers by fighting for Native sovereignty as a guarantor of Native rights. Robert Hamilton, a Carlisle-educated Blackfeet rancher crusading against the wealthy elite of the Blackfeet Nation, used his facility with the Euro-American world to convince first Senator Lane and then the U.S. government to support some measure of justice for his people. This article explores the paradoxical origins of Lane and Hamilton’s activism and the careful tactics they used in their fights for Native American rights. The two men shared a vision of Native American modernity that combined an embrace of modern economic practice with a respect for cultural traditions; they selectively obscured the latter to pursue their political goals.

The Indian's Cause: Abolitionists and Native American Rights

The Indian's Cause: Abolitionists and Native American Rights

Native Americans in the Movies: Portrayals from Silent Films to the Present MichaelHilger. Rowman and Littlefield, 2016.

in the Movies: Portrayals from Silent Films to the Present Michael Hilger. Rowman and Littlefield, 2016.It has been frustrating over the past thirty-five years, answering and re-answering the same questions regarding American Indians and the American Indian experience from students ranging in age from six to forty-five. Do Indians live in tipis? Why are Indians so mystical? What is in that 'peacepipe' they smoke? What's so bad about the 'Redskins' and other Indian mascots? And so on, ad nauseam. The age group really does not matter; I get the same litany of questions. Mindful of my promise to myself and to my American Indian friends to remain patient and to avoid overly sarcastic responses, I answer the mind-numbing questions with measured language delivered in sincerity-dipped tones. When I have asked non-Indian students what they think of American Indians, the sixyear-olds respond, They are mean! and the older students say, They love nature. So, through all we have been through as pluralistic and multicultural nation, it is not stretch to conclude that with regard to American Indians and their American experience, non-Indians remain, as group, pretty clueless. To what can we attribute this condition? We can blame school curricula that omit and distort the American Indian experience, and we can blame schoolteachers, prekindergartenthrough graduate school levels, who seldom speak of American Indians in the present tense. We can blame museum curators and scientists whose fascination with American Indian bones (just the bones) seems boundless. We can blame governmental policymakers who patronize in repetitive cycles, deciding whether to American Indians or to allow American Indians to help themselves. To the extent that the Bureau of Indian Affairs and tribal governments are run by American Indians, we can blame American Indians themselves. Throughout my academic career, I have focused my attention on television and movie portrayals of American Indians for their complicit roles. As father, I grew frustrated during my kids' most impressionable years with having to explain Disney's (and other cartoonists') racist portrayals of American Indians. And I am not alone in this frustration with Hollywood. Over the years, researchers have detailed how films, television shows, and images in popular culture propagate and perpetuate this collective ignorance. From Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr.'s seminal 1978 The White Man's Indian to Michael Ray FitzGerald's 2014 on Network TV, steady stream of studies analyzes this phenomenon from multiple angles-photographic images, images in popular culture (TV, film, advertisements, etc.), and school textbook treatment of the American Indian experience.To this flood of evidence, we can now add Michael Hilger's in the Movies: Portrayals from Silent Films to the Present. Hilger divides this very enlightening and useful study into two parts-a ninety-one-page critical examination of film portrayals of American Indians/First peoples and 337page encyclopedic listing, arranged alphabetically, a new canon of most sound films [and television films] and solid representation of silent films (and the rare animated short) in which and First characters play significant role (93). This listing is subdivided further in three appendices -Films by Nation (seventy-one different Nations/ Tribes listed), Image Portrayals of Americans (e.g., attack on fort, homosexuality, Native American activist, romance between mixed-blood American man and white woman, vengeance, etc.), and television films.The essence of Hilger's critical examination of cinematic portrayals of is reiteration of the well-documented dichotomous depiction of American Indians in films as either the Savage Savages or the Noble Savages. As Hilger succinctly states, With only minor variations. …

Indigenous Water Justice

Indigenous Peoples are struggling for water justice across the globe. These struggles stem from centuries-long, ongoing colonial legacies and hold profound significance for Indigenous Peoples’ socioeconomic development, cultural identity, and political autonomy and external relations within nation-states. Ultimately, Indigenous Peoples’ right to self-determination is implicated. Growing out of a symposium hosted by the University of Colorado Law School and the Native American Rights Fund in June 2016, this Article expounds the concept of “indigenous water justice” and advocates for its realization in three major transboundary river basins: the Colorado (U.S./Mexico), Columbia (Canada/U.S.), and Murray-Darling (Australia). The Article begins with a novel conceptualization of indigenous water justice rooted in the historic United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)—specifically, UNDRIP’s foundational principle of self-determination. In turn, the Article offers overviews of the basins and narrative accounts of enduring water-justice struggles experienced by Indigenous Peoples therein. Finally, the Article synthesizes commonalities evident from the indigenous water justice struggles by introducing and deconstructing the concept of “water colonialism.” Against this backdrop, the Article revisits UNDRIP to articulate principles and prescriptions aimed at prospectively realizing indigenous water justice in the basins and around the world.

Rosalyn R. LaPier and David R. M. Beck , City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893–1934 (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2015, $40.00). Pp. 296. isbn 978 0 8032 4839 7.

Rosalyn R. LaPier and David R. M. Beck , City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893–1934 (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2015, $40.00). Pp. 296. isbn 978 0 8032 4839 7. - Volume 51 Issue 3

The Impact of Native American Activity on Vegetation and Soil Charcoal in the Eastern US

The Impact of Native American Activity on Vegetation and Soil Charcoal in the Eastern US

Surviving Wounded Knee: The Lakotas and the Politics of Memory

This book offers a new perspective on a familiar, tragic event. We “know” about the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. The event has been seared into our consciousness by nineteenth-century photographs of frozen bodies lying in the snow and by twentieth-century rituals of mourning and regret. We also “know” that the story of the massacre has shifted over time. Initially considered a “victory” over “crazed” ghost dancers—earning twenty soldiers the Medal of Honor—the massacre is now a symbol of cruelty and a rallying point for Native American activists. How did this transformation occur? David W. Grua explains. The protagonists of Grua's tale are the people who were left behind after the Seventh Cavalry returned to its barracks: wounded survivors, orphaned children, and grieving relatives. Beginning from the moment the shooting stopped, and led by two fearless Lakota men—Joseph Horn Cloud (who lost his parents and two siblings on the killing fields) and his brother Dewey Beard, a survivor—hundreds of people at the Pine Ridge Reservation (where the massacre occurred) and Cheyenne River Reservation (the home of most victims) pressed their version of events on government officials and the American public. The survivors swore out affidavits, filed petitions, lobbied the Indian Office, and enlisted the help of sympathetic journalists and scholars. In 1903 the group erected their own monument at Wounded Knee, an obelisk covered with the names of those killed. (After Horn Cloud's father's name was inscribed, “the peacemaker died here innocent.”) The survivors ultimately won a congressional hearing on a proposed compensation bill, but their effort fell short in Congress and the courts. The military's stone wall of opposition and the public's indifference could not be overcome. Nevertheless, the survivors changed the nation's mind.

LaPier, Rosalyn R., and David R. M. Beck: City Indian - Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893–1934

Anthropos , Seite 329 - 330

From Federal Indian Law to Indigenous Rights: Legal Discourse and the Contemporary Native American Novel on the Indian Removal

My contrapuntal readings of the indigenous rights debates that took place in the United Nations in the 1990s and two Native American historical novels on the Indian Removal published in the United States around the same time reveal that Native American literary production has been deeply inflected by the law. Robert Conley's Mountain Windsong: A Novel of the Trail of Tears (1992) needs to be read as a critique of the idea that Native American rights can be secured from within the United States’ legal order. Through the jarring juxtaposition of historical legal documents and a romantic plot, the novel deconstructs the idea of domestic law as an agent of change and introduces the language of human rights as an alternative normative framework for Native resistance. Diane Glancy's Pushing the Bear: A Novel of the Trail of Tears (1996) engages with a question that figured prominently in the debates about indigenous rights, namely whether these rights can be realized within the context of a human rights regime that puts the individual center stage. On closer scrutiny, the novel opens up an alternative way of thinking about the relationship between individual and group rights. It thereby contributes to closing the theoretical gap between individual and group rights, which stymied indigenous rights debates considerably.

The Great Sioux Nation V. The 'Black Snake': Native American Rights and the Keystone Xl Pipeline

The Keystone XL Pipeline has been shrouded in controversy almost since its conception. As a structure intending to cross the Canadian border into the United States, the pipeline must receive presidential approval before construction can commence. Since 2008, TransCanada has attempted to obtain this approval unsuccessfully. Criticism against the pipeline has focused largely on the negative environmental impacts that will likely accompany its construction and utilization, and it is precisely these environmental concerns that have ultimately stymied presidential approval and made international headlines. In November 2015, the U.S. government denied TransCanada’s application, effectively killing the Keystone XL project. While the Keystone XL project no longer poses a physical threat to the environment, an overview of the U.S. government’s consideration of the project reveals drastic flaws in process, specifically in regards to the human rights of a substantial portion of individuals who would be negatively affected by the Keystone XL Pipeline — the Sioux Nation.The pipeline is set to run through a substantial portion of the Black Hills of South Dakota — the sovereign and treaty lands of the Great Sioux Nation. This “black snake” threatens not only the environment of the Sioux lands, but also sites sacred to the tribes. The Sioux Nation has risen up in defense of their lands, and their right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) before the state can undertake projects on their indigenous lands. While the U.S. government maintains it has complied with domestic standards regarding Indian consultation and with its perverse interpretation of the right to FPIC protected under the U.N. Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, its actions have fallen drastically short of those expected by the United Nations and required by the inter-American system. This paper argues that under the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, the United States is obligated to obtain the fully informed consent of the Sioux Nation before approving the Keystone XL pipeline.

Informing Red Power and Transforming the Second Wave: Native American women and the struggle against coerced sterilization in the 1970s

ABSTRACTIt is argued that despite formidable foes—including powerful feminist organizations and Native American rights groups—Indigenous women's activism had an important influence on the larger movement for the termination of sterilization abuse in 1970s USA. Their work highlighted coerced sterilization as a most agonizing example of compromised tribal sovereignty—and demanded that political leaders address it. The article describes the tangible achievements of these women in effecting federal regulations as well as their influence on mainstream American feminist ideology and Indian Country's interpretation of women's rights as sovereign ones.