custom and tradition
Professor Robert A. Williams, Jr. discusses how an effective, independent justice system can play a pivotal role in a Native nation's efforts to exercise its sovereignty and strengthen its communities.
Canadians recently discovered the crushing poverty in Attawapiskat. This is not the first time Attawapiskat has struggled; and Attawapiskat is not alone. Every three years or so, these problems are discovered and agonized over. There is often a quick fix – new homes, an emergency relocation, a...
Chief Awasis of ThunderChild First Nation talks about traditional governance from before contact, Indian Act governance and how some nations are beginning to combine them into a third type of governance.
As the Ojibwe reclaimed their rights to hunt, fish, and gather on the ceded territories, they needed a system of laws, checks, and balances in order to both protect their resources and enforce the law. Soon other tribes followed suit, and soon co-equal systems of justice existed side by side with...
In the fall of 2008 the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community started work on a landmark two-year Climate Change Initiative to study the impacts of climate change on the resources, assets, and community of the Swinomish Indian Reservation and to develop recommendations on actions to adapt to projected...
This article explores the varied ways in which the Anishinaabeg of White Earth defined themselves during the early twentieth century. It consists of two primary parts. In part 1 I go beyond the “facts” in order to enliven the (hi)story, to offer an alternative way of remembering the past. In this...
We are Tsawwassen People — ‘People facing the sea’, descendants of our ancestors who exercised sovereign authority over our land for thousands of years. Tsawwassen People were governed under the sÉ™niw (advice) and guidance of siË€em (leaders), sciË€eÉ« (highborn women) hiwaqÊ· (headmen), and sqÊ·...
The interaction between American Indian activism and changes in federal Indian policy since the 1960s has transformed American Indian tribes from largely powerless and impoverished kinshipâ€based communities into neocolonial statelike entities (Wilkinson 2005).1 Representing themselves as distinct...
American Indian identity in the twenty-ï¬rst century has become an engaging topic. Recently, discussions on Ward Churchill’s racial background became a “hotbed” issue on the national scene. A few Native nations, such as the Pechanga and Isleta Pueblo, have disenrolled members. Scholars such as...
Kaupapa MÄori sets the theoretical framework within which ideas and research about governance were explored. This review incorporated both indigenous and non-indigenous governance literature. This set the scene for interviews with six key informants with MÄori who are knowledgeable about...
