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Indigenous Governance Database

customary law

Wolves Have A Constitution:” Continuities in Indigenous Self-Government

Wolves Have A Constitution:” Continuities in Indigenous Self-Government
Wolves Have A Constitution: Continuities in Indigenous Self-Government
This article is about constitutionalism as an Indigenous tradition. The political idea of constitutionalism is the idea that the process of governing is itself governed by a set of foundational laws or rules. There is ample evidence that Indigenous nations in North America–and in Australia and New...
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Robert Innes: Elder Brother and the Law of the People: Maintaining Sovereignty Through Identity and Culture

Robert Innes: Elder Brother and the Law of the People: Maintaining Sovereignty Through Identity and Culture
Robert Innes: Elder Brother and the Law of the People: Maintaining Sovereignty Through Identity and Culture
Robert Innes, a citizen of the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan, discusses how traditional Cowessess kinship systems and practices continue to structure and inform the individual and collective identities of Cowessess people today, and how those traditional systems and practices are serving...
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Joseph Flies-Away: "How Do We Resolve Disputes?"

Joseph Flies-Away: "How Do We Resolve Disputes?"
Joseph Flies-Away: Knowing, Living and Defending the Rule of Law
Joseph Flies-Away (Hualapai), Associate Justice of the Hualapai Nation Court of Appeals, discusses the importance of Native nations building and living a sound, culturally sensible rule of law -- through constitutions, codes, common law and in other ways -- that everyone in those nations knows,...
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Sharon Day: Disenrollment

Sharon Day: Disenrollment
Sharon Day: Disenrollment: Contemplating A More Inclusive Approach
Sharon Day (Bois Forte Band of Chippewa) makes a compelling case for Native nations to abandon externally imposed criteria for citizenship that continue to cause internal divisions within Native nations and communities and instead return to Indigenous cultural values and teachings predicated on...
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Rae Nell Vaughn: So What's So Important About Tribal Courts?

Rae Nell Vaughn: So What's So Important About Tribal Courts?
Rae Nell Vaughn: So What's So Important About Tribal Courts?
Rae Nell Vaughn, former Chief Justice of the Mississippi Choctaw Supreme Court, discusses how justice systems are critical to Native nations' exercise of sovereignty, and sets out some key things that those systems need to have in place in order to administer justice fairly and effectively on...
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John Borrows: Citizenship: Culture, Language and Law

John Borrows: Citizenship: Culture, Language and Law
John Borrows: Anishinaabe Principles of Citizenship and Identity
University of Minnesota Law Professor John Borrows (Anishinaabe) provides an overview of how Anishinaabe people defined citizenship and identity traditionally, and how the cultural principles embedded in that traditional definition possess great power to inform laws defining tribal citizenship...
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Indigenous languages crucial to cultural flourishing

Indigenous languages crucial to cultural flourishing
Indigenous languages crucial to cultural flourishing
I believe our languages to be so central to who we are as Indigenous peoples, that I cannot discuss our present or our future without reference to languages. The oppression we have faced, and continue to face, does not define us in the way our languages do. Our resilience, and the fact that we have...
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Returning to Our Indigenous Core Values: Our Challenge? Striking a Balance

Returning to Our Indigenous Core Values:  Our Challenge? Striking a Balance
Returning to Our Indigenous Core Values: Our Challenge? Striking a Balance
Regis Pecos is the Chief of Staff, House Majority Office; Co-Director, Leadership Institute; Former Governor, Cochiti Pueblo Regis Pecos is from Cochiti Pueblo, New Mexico. He received his undergraduate degree in Political Science from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy at Princeton...
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Rebuilding Native Nations: "What Strong, Independent and Legitimate Justice Systems Require"

Rebuilding Native Nations:  "What Strong, Independent and Legitimate Justice Systems Require"
From the Rebuilding Native Nations Course Series: "What Strong, Independent and Legitimate Justice Systems Require"
Native leaders and scholars discuss what Native nations need to do to create strong, independent and culturally legimate justice systems.
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Rebuilding Native Nations: "Justice Systems and Cultural Match"

Rebuilding Native Nations:  "Justice Systems and Cultural Match"
From the Rebuilding Native Nations Course Series: "Justice Systems and Cultural Match"
Professor Robert A. Williams, Jr. argues that Native nations can reintegrate their unique cultures and common law into their governance systems, specifically their systems for resolving disputes and providing justice to their citizens and others.
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