Indigenous Governance Database
Citizenship/Membership
Constitutional Reform: A Wrap-Up Discussion (Q&A)
NNI "Tribal Constitutions" seminar presenters, panelists and participants Robert Breaker, Julia Coates, Frank Ettawageshik, Miriam Jorgensen, Gwen Phillips, Ian Record, Melissa L. Tatum and Joan Timeche field questions from the audience about separations of powers, citizenship, blood quantum and…
How Can Tribes Relate to Off-Reservation Citizens Better? Study Aims to Help
How do you define “home?” “Home is where one starts from” is one explanation, while another states, “Our feet may leave home, but not our hearts.” Where you call home is especially important to Native Americans who have left the familiarity of where they grew up among fellow tribal members and…
Oglala Sioux Tribe to issue IDs at tournament
For the first time in its history the Oglala Sioux Tribe will bring its enrollment office to the public. During this year’s Lakota Nation Invitational in Rapid City the tribe will have a booth set up to issue tribal IDs to enrolled members who may not have the opportunity to travel to Pine Ridge to…
Disenrollment Is a Tool of the Colonizers
Our elders and spiritual leaders do not teach the practice of disenrollment. In fact, disenrollment is a wholly non-Indian construct. Indeed, when I recently asked Eric Bernando, a Grand Ronde descendant of his tribe’s Treaty Chief and fluent Chinook Wawa speaker, if there was a Chinook Wawa word…
Osage Nation to receive $7.4 million in Cobell Land Buy-Back program
The Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations has come to the Osage and the federal government is proposing $7.4 million to buy back fractionated land interest from individual tribal members. According to tribal development and land acquisition director Bruce Cass, who is working with Osage attorney…
The Unintended Consequences of Disenrollment
For most of the modern tribal self-determination era, American Indian nations have emphasized inclusion. Starting in the early 1970s, higher tribal membership numbers equated to higher federal self-determination dollars. As tribes otherwise redoubled their efforts to reverse the destruction caused…
Indian Country must put more effort in public relations
While sipping my morning coffee I began reading a White House document titled “2014 Native Youth Report.” As with every other tribal member, I am aware of the long-standing socio-economic quagmire we have been enduring. The fact that we are still alive and well is short of miraculous and thought…
Preserving Culture: 6 Early Childhood Language Immersion Programs
Language immersion schools have proved to be enormously beneficial for young learners’ academics. To quote Dr. Janine Pease-Pretty on Top, Crow, founding president of Little Big Horn College, “Solid data from the Navajo, Blackfeet and Assiniboine immersion schools experience indicates that the…
Tribal Rights Legend and Leader Billy Frank Jr. Walks On
In 2004, we celebrated 30 years since the Boldt Decision of 1974, the landmark Indian fishing rights victory, that Billy Frank Jr. fought so hard for. “Frank is widely credited as conscience and soul of the efforts by Indian people in Washington to secure their rights to a fair share of fish on…
Dismembering Natives: The Violence Done by Citizenship Fights
Outside Indian Country most don't realize that over the past 10 years, several thousand people have had their tribal citizenship status terminated. Most were not dismembered for wrongdoing or adopted by other Native nations. They were simply identified by their elected officials as allegedly no…
How Do We Re-Member?
On July 2, the tribal council of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde held a special meeting to allow their citizens an opportunity to testify for or against a proposed emergency enrollment ordinance whereby the Council sought to delegate its constitutional authority to involuntarily…
Tribal Per Capitas and Self-Termination
For many Indian families, tribal per capita payments help meet their most basic needs. They buy food, pay heating bills, make car payments, and open savings accounts. As a Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians leader explains, per capita monies have given historically impoverished Indian…
Tribe looking to increase enrollment
Under the direction of the appointed members of the Tribal Enrollment Committee – Peridot District Representatives Lula T. Dillon and Aurelia Rogers, Gilson Wash District Representatives Geraldine Kitcheyan and Henrietta Henry, Seven Mile Wash District Representatives Marthalene Polk and Lois R.…
Disenrollment Demands Serious Attention by All Sovereign Nations
For most people, their sense of who they are–their identity–is at least partially defined from connection to others and to a community. When individuals are forced to sever those connections, the consequences can be devastating. Unfortunately, all too often in tribal disenrollment conflicts–like…
Authenticity: Ethnic Indians, non-Indians and Reservation Indians
Authenticity is a puzzling feature of contemporary Indian life. Growing up on an Indian reservation, I rarely encountered challenges to one’s identity as an Indian person. People within the reservation community knew most of the families. If they didn’t know the family connections of a specific…
Back to Our Path is not a Trip Backward
Many of us are familiar with our expression Ohnkwe Ohnwe. It is what we use to describe ourselves as the original people of Turtle Island. The approximate translation is “real human being, forever.” There was never any question that we had a future. We were never tied to a spot on a timeline. We…
Empowering Parents Brings Community Change in Wind River
If you are a parent who has ever thought, “What can I do?” or “I am just a parent,” Clarisse Harris, Northern Paiute, has a program that might interest you. On the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, the Parent Leadership Training Institute is arming parents with the tools to bring changes within…
Cheyenne River Youth Project Turns 25, Launches Endowment and Keya Cafe Featuring Homegrown Food
Twenty-five years ago, Julie Garreau (Cheyenne River Lakota) developed the Cheyenne River Youth Project (CRYP) from a converted bar on Main Street in the tribe's capital Eagle Butte, South Dakota. For 12 years she volunteered her time to get an after-school program off the ground...
Pascua Yaqui gain added power to prosecute some non-Indians
Southern Arizona’s Pascua Yaqui Tribe is one of the first Native nations in the country to earn legal standing to prosecute outsiders who attack women on tribal lands. The Pascua Yaquis – along with the Tulalip Tribes of Washington and the Umatilla Tribes of Oregon – have been been awarded special…
Building better homes in Indian Country
There's no other house like it on the Oglala Sioux's 2 million-acre Pine Ridge Reservation: Its walls are insulated by 18-inch strawbales rather than plastic sheeting, and its radiant-floor heating is much cheaper than the typical propane or electric. A frost-protected shallow foundation inhibits…