Diversity, Equity, Inclusion: Indigenous Rights

The Other Movement: Indian Rights and Civil Rights in the Deep South examines the most visible outcome of the Southern Indian Rights Movement: state Indian affairs commissions. In recalling political activism in the post-World War II South, rarely does one consider the political activities of American Indians as they responded to desegregation, the passing of the Civil Rights Acts, and the restructuring of the American political party system. Native leaders and activists across the South created a social and political movement all their own, which drew public attention to the problems of discrimination, poverty, unemployment, low educational attainment, and poor living conditions in tribal communities. While tribal-state relationships have historically been characterized as tense, most southern tribes--particularly non-federally recognized ones--found that Indian affairs commissions offered them a unique position in which to negotiate power. Although individual tribal leaders experienced isolated victories and generated some support through the 1950s and 1960s, the creation of the intertribal state commissions in the 1970s and 1980s elevated the movement to a more prominent political level. Through the formalization of tribal-state relationships, Indian communities forged strong networks with local, state, and national agencies while advocating for cultural preservation and revitalization, economic development, and the implementation of community services. This book looks specifically at Alabama and Louisiana, places of intensive political activity during the civil rights era and increasing Indian visibility and tribal reorganization in the decades that followed. Between 1960 and 1990, U.S. census records show that Alabama's Indian population swelled by a factor of twelve and Louisiana's by a factor of five. Thus, in addition to serving as excellent examples of the national trend of a rising Indian population, the two states make interesting case studies because their Indian commissions brought formerly disconnected groups, each with different goals and needs, together for the first time, creating an assortment of alliances and divisions.

In this wide-ranging and carefully curated anthology, Daniel M. Cobb presents the words of Indigenous people who have shaped Native American rights movements from the late nineteenth century through the present day. Presenting essays, letters, interviews, speeches, government documents, and other testimony, Cobb shows how tribal leaders, intellectuals, and activists deployed a variety of protest methods over more than a century to demand Indigenous sovereignty. As these documents show, Native peoples have adopted a wide range of strategies in this struggle, invoking "American" and global democratic ideas about citizenship, freedom, justice, consent of the governed, representation, and personal and civil liberties while investing them with indigenized meanings. The more than fifty documents gathered here are organized chronologically and thematically for ease in classroom and research use. They address the aspirations of Indigenous nations and individuals within Canada, Hawaii, and Alaska as well as the continental United States, placing their activism in both national and international contexts. The collection's topical breadth, analytical framework, and emphasis on unpublished materials offer students and scholars new sources with which to engage and explore American Indian thought and political action.

Spanning three hundred years and the colonial regimes of Spain, Mexico, and the United States, Maurice S. Crandall's sweeping history of Native American political rights in what is now New Mexico, Arizona, and Sonora demonstrates how Indigenous communities implemented, subverted, rejected, and indigenized colonial ideologies of democracy, both to accommodate and to oppose colonial power. Focusing on four groups--Pueblos in New Mexico, Hopis in northern Arizona, and Tohono O'odhams and Yaquis in Arizona/Sonora--Crandall reveals the ways Indigenous peoples absorbed and adapted colonially imposed forms of politics to exercise sovereignty based on localized political, economic, and social needs. Using sources that include oral histories and multinational archives, this book allows us to compare Spanish, Mexican, and American conceptions of Indian citizenship, and adds to our understanding of the centuries-long struggle of Indigenous groups to assert their sovereignty in the face of settler colonial rule.

Amid the decline of U.S. military campaigns against Native Americans in the late nineteenth century, assimilation policy arose as the new front in the Indian Wars, with its weapons the deployment of culture and law, and its locus the American Indian home and family. In this groundbreaking interdisciplinary work, Piatote tracks the double movement of literature and law in the contest over the aims of settler-national domestication and the defense of tribal-national culture, political rights, and territory.

In Reproductive Justice, sociologist Barbara Gurr provides the first analysis of Native American women's reproductive healthcare and offers a sustained consideration of the movement for reproductive justice in the United States. The book examines the reproductive healthcare experiences on Pine Ridge Reservation, home of the Oglala Lakota Nation in South Dakota--where Gurr herself lived for more than a year. Gurr paints an insightful portrait of the Indian Health Service (IHS)--the federal agency tasked with providing culturally appropriate, adequate healthcare to Native Americans--shedding much-needed light on Native American women's efforts to obtain prenatal care, access to contraception, abortion services, and access to care after sexual assault. Reproductive Justice goes beyond this local story to look more broadly at how race, gender, sex, sexuality, class, and nation inform the ways in which the government understands reproductive healthcare and organizes the delivery of this care. It reveals why the basic experience of reproductive healthcare for most Americans is so different--and better--than for Native American women in general, and women in reservation communities particularly. Finally, Gurr outlines the strengths that these communities can bring to the creation of their own reproductive justice, and considers the role of IHS in fostering these strengths as it moves forward in partnership with Native nations.nbsp; Reproductive Justice offers a respectful and informed analysis of the stories Native American women have to tell about their bodies, their lives, and their communities.nbsp;

Aks's analysis of marrying out cases--when indigenous women marry outside of their tribe--in the United States and Canada examines how indigenous women mobilize the law. By marrying out of their tribes/bands, these women either lose their Indian status or are unable to pass such status on to their children, and they have few legal tools that encompass their unique identities. The book concludes that the impact of indigenous women's legal mobilization should be assessed in terms of the potential for future democratic participation. Legal mobilization helps tame the effects of intersectional power only if it provides indigenous women new opportunities to redefine rights.

Occupying Alcatraz discusses how in 1969, a group of daring Native American activists launched a 19-month takeover of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, seeking to highlight the poor living conditions that persisted in Native American communities throughout the country. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Essential Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

Rights Remembered is a remarkable historical narrative and autobiography written by esteemed Lummi elder and culture bearer Pauline R. Hillaire, Scälla-Of the Killer Whale. A direct descendant of the immediate postcontact generation of Coast Salish in Washington State, Hillaire combines in her narrative life experiences, Lummi oral traditions preserved and passed on to her, and the written record of relationships between the United States and the indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast to tell the story of settlers, government officials, treaties, reservations, and the colonial relationship between Coast Salish and the white newcomers. Hillaire's autobiography, although written out of frustration with the status of Native peoples in America, is not an expression of anger but rather represents, in her own words, her hope "for greater justice for Indian people in America, and for reconciliation between Indian and non-Indian Americans, based on recognition of the truths of history." Addressed to indigenous and non-Native peoples alike, this is a thoughtful call for understanding and mutual respect between cultures.

"International indigenism" may sound like a contradiction in terms, but it is indeed a global phenomenon and a growing form of activism. In his fluent and accessible narrative, Ronald Niezen examines the ways the relatively recent emergence of an internationally recognized identity?"indigenous peoples"?intersects with another relatively recent international movement?the development of universal human rights laws and principles. This movement makes use of human rights instruments and the international organizations of states to resist the political, cultural, and economic incursions of individual states. The concept "indigenous peoples" gained currency in the social reform efforts of the International Labor Organization in the 1950s, was taken up by indigenous nongovernmental organizations, and is now fully integrated into human rights initiatives and international organizations. Those who today call themselves indigenous peoples share significant similarities in their colonial and postcolonial experiences, such as loss of land and subsistence, abrogation of treaties, and the imposition of psychologically and socially destructive assimilation policies. Niezen shows how, from a new position of legitimacy and influence, they are striving for greater recognition of collective rights, in particular their rights to self-determination in international law. These efforts are influencing local politics in turn and encouraging more ambitious goals of autonomy in indigenous communities worldwide.

'How does one make a clear distinction between issues such as tribal sovereignty, indigenous rights, and law and justice? How do these topics differ, and can they be separated from, issues such as identity, health, and environment? The answer, of course, lies in the interconnectedness of all aspects of Native American life, culture, religion, and politics. This format encourages the consideration of Native politics both in terms of unifying themes and contexts and with regard to local situations, needs, and struggles.' --From the Introduction by Troy Johnson Troy Johnson and has assembled a volume of top scholarship from which emerges the complexity and diversity of Native American political life in the 1990's. Each topical section is introduced by the editor's own commentaries, which provide background and integrated analyses of the issues at hand. They are followed by informative, critical case studies and essays that offer experiences and perspectives from a variety of Native American and political settings. Students will gain grounded understandings of key issues as well as a variety of theoretical perspectives from which to understand contemporary American Indian political life. Topics include sovereignty, international indigenous rights, economic development, law, repatriation, and activism.

In 2007, 144 UN member states voted to adopt a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US were the only members to vote against it. Each eventually changed its position. This book explains why and examines what the Declaration could mean for sovereignty, citizenship and democracy in liberal societies such as these. It takes Canadian Chief Justice Lamer’s remark that ‘we are all here to stay’ to mean that indigenous peoples are ‘here to stay’ as indigenous. The book examines indigenous and state critiques of the Declaration but argues that, ultimately, it is an instrument of significant transformative potential showing how state sovereignty need not be a power that is exercised over and above indigenous peoples. Nor is it reasonably a power that displaces indigenous nations’ authority over their own affairs. The Declaration shows how and why, and this book argues that in doing so, it supports more inclusive ways of thinking about how citizenship and democracy may work better. The book draws on the Declaration to imagine what non-colonial political relationships could look like in liberal societies.

HardcoverThis book is the first full-length study of the rights of indigenous peoples, and looks at the historical, cultural, and legal background to the position of indigenous peoples in a range of different cultures, including America, Africa and Australia.The book defines who and what indigenous peoples actually are, and looks at their position in the light of the development of international law. It then looks at their legal position, and their economic, social and cultural rights in respect of various laws and conventions passed on a national and international scale throughout the world.Among the global and regional legal instruments considered in the book are The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Racial Discrimination Convention, The African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, the UN Draft Declaration in Indigenous Peoples and The Proposed American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.The development of human rights legislation and principles as a central tenet of international law has been of considerable benefit to indigenous peoples, although the language of human rights does not always suit indigenous societies, and sets apparent limits to the kind of social practices embraced. This is still a vitally important issue and the emotional subject of reciprocity still needs to be handled sensitively.

There is still much to be done to close the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and the rest of the population in terms of social and economic development, culture, land, education, health, justice and human rights. This book looks at the progress of key rights issues confronting Australia's indigenous peoples, including historical civil rights milestones; land rights and native title; Reconciliation and the apology to the Stolen Generations; indigenous governance and self-determination; and constitutional recognition. Indigenous Rights also examines the government policy aimed at closing the gap in health and life expectancy, and human rights concerns over the ongoing federal intervention in Northern Territory communities. How should this nation right the wrongs visited upon the first Australians?

The impact of neoliberal governance on indigenous peoples in liberal settler states may be both enabling and constraining. This book is distinctive in drawing comparisons between three such states—Australia, Canada and New Zealand. In a series of empirically grounded, interpretive micro-studies, it draws out a shared policy coherence, but also exposes idiosyncrasies in the operational dynamics of neoliberal governance both within each state and between them. Read together as a collection, these studies broaden the debate about and the analysis of contemporary government policy. The individual studies reveal the forms of actually existing neoliberalism that are variegated by historical, geographical and legal contexts and complex state arrangements. At the same time, they present examples of a more nuanced agential, bottom-up indigenous governmentality. Focusing on intense and complex matters of social policy rather than on resource development and land rights, they demonstrate how indigenous actors engage in trying to govern various fields of activity by acting on the conduct and contexts of everyday neoliberal life, and also on the conduct of state and corporate actors.

The economic reforms imposed by Augusto Pinochet's regime (1973-1990) are often credited with transforming Chile into a global economy and setting the stage for a peaceful transition to democracy, individual liberty, and the recognition of cultural diversity. The famed economist Milton Friedman would later describe the transition as the "Miracle of Chile." Yet, as Patricia Richards reveals, beneath this veneer of progress lies a reality of social conflict and inequity that has been perpetuated by many of the same neoliberal programs. In Race and the Chilean Miracle, Richards examines conflicts between Mapuche indigenous people and state and private actors over natural resources, territorial claims, and collective rights in the Araucanía region. Through ground-level fieldwork, extensive interviews with local Mapuche and Chileans, and analysis of contemporary race and governance theory, Richards exposes the ways that local, regional, and transnational realities are shaped by systemic racism in the context of neoliberal multiculturalism.. Richards demonstrates how state programs and policies run counter to Mapuche claims for autonomy and cultural recognition. The Mapuche, whose ancestral lands have been appropriated for timber and farming, have been branded as terrorists for their activism and sometimes-violent responses to state and private sector interventions. Through their interviews, many Mapuche cite the perpetuation of colonialism under the guise of development projects, multicultural policies, and assimilationist narratives. Many Chilean locals and political elites see the continued defiance of the Mapuche in their tenacious connection to the land, resistance to integration, and insistence on their rights as a people. These diametrically opposed worldviews form the basis of the racial dichotomy that continues to pervade Chilean society. In her study, Richards traces systemic racism that follows both a top-down path (global, state, and regional) as well as a bottom-up one (local agencies and actors), detailing their historic roots. Richards also describes potential positive outcomes in the form of intercultural coalitions or indigenous autonomy. Her compelling analysis offers new perspectives on indigenous rights, race, and neoliberal multiculturalism in Latin America and globally.

The Invasion of Indian Country in the Twentieth Century, Second Edition is updated through the first decade of the twenty-first century and contains a new chapter challenging Americans--Indian and non-Indian--to begin healing the earth. This analysis of the struggle to protect not only natural resources but also a way of life serves as an indispensable tool for students or anyone interested in Native American history and current government policy with regard to Indian lands or the environment.

In Beyond Intellectual Property, authors Darrell A. Posey and Graham Dutfield listen and respond to this voice. They offer sound and reasonable advice on how indigenous peoples and local communities worldwide should approach and deal with the myriad of issues surrounding intellectual property and traditional resource rights. For indigenous peoples' groups, activists and policymakers in intellectual property, and all those concerned with the preservation of our planet's biological and cultural diversity, Beyond Intellectual Property provides an invaluable and eye-opening look into one of the most provocative and explosive issues of this century and likely the next: the patenting of life.

Aboriginal policy and claims negotiation in Canada is seen to be a murky and perplexing world that has become an important public issue and has significant policy implications for government spending. Aboriginal land policy in Canada began as an Aboriginal initiative. In No Place for Fairness, David McNab - a long time advisor on land and treaty rights for both government and First Nations groups - looks at the Bear Island Indigenous rights case, initiated by the Teme-Augama Anishinabe, to explore why governments fail to deal effectively with Aboriginal land claims. The book, divided into two sections, includes a survey of the historical background of the Bear Island claim followed by a more personal series of reflections about what happened as the claim encountered decades of policy hurdles, court cases, public protests, and above all resistance by the Temagami First Nation. McNab provides details of how ministers and their senior officials resisted real efforts to resolve problems as well as examples of field staff resisting government attempts at resolution. He also shows that government entities such as the Indian Commission of Ontario and the Native Affairs Directorate were largely used as "mailboxes" where successive federal and provincial governments sent things they wanted to bury. No Place for Fairness is the story of what happens when Aboriginal peoples' political rights are crammed into the Euro-Canadian legal system. McNab makes a clear case that a legalistic approach to these problems is wholly inadequate and that more important things - like fairness - must be recognized as paramount if a just and lasting Aboriginal land policy is to be created.