Indigenous Sovereignty

Tribes Defend Themselves Against A Pandemic

October 4, 2020 Kalen Goodluck, High Country News. Resist! COVID-19, Indigenous Sovereignty, Public Health, State Government

As COVID-19 numbers soared across the country this spring, tribal nations began closing their reservation boundaries to non-residents. The Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux erected checkpoints on roads entering their reservations in order to protect their citizens, even as the state of South Dakota refused to require masks or mandate social distance. By early May, South Dakota Gov. Kirsti Noem, R, explicitly told the tribes to remove their checkpoints or face the consequences. Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Chairman Harold Frazier declined, saying that doing so would “seriously undermine our ability to protect everyone on the reservation.”

Tribes Sue Over Border Wall

September 26, 2020 Native News Online. Resist! Border Wall, Indigenous culture, Indigenous Sovereignty, Sacred sites

Washington - A group of federally recognized tribes sued the Trump Administration on Wednesday over construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, saying the controversial barrier impinges on tribal members’ ability to practice their religious beliefs and cultural traditions. A group of five Kumeyaay Nation tribes filed the lawsuit in federal D.C. court against three government agencies — the Department of Homeland Security, U.S Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — and their top executives.

DNC Featured Native Speakers But Their Issues Remain Under-addressed

August 23, 2020 Jen Deerinwater, Truthout. Educate! Democratic Party, DNC, Indigenous Sovereignty, No DAPL

The various caucus meeting speakers repeatedly stated that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be good for Indian Country. Some Native people are skeptical, though. Harris has a record of going against the sovereign interests of California tribal nations. Many Native people haven’t forgotten the broken promises made by the Obama-Biden administration. Not only did the administration advance the Keystone XL Pipeline, but it also sat silently for months as Native people, accomplices and media were arrested, brutalized, and physically and sexually assaulted while trying to defeat the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).

First Nations Leaders Speak Out Against Canada’s Trans Mountain Pipeline Approval

July 27, 2020 Last Real Indians. Resist! Canada, First Nations, Indigenous Sovereignty, Trans Mountain Pipeline

Kinder-Morgan’s application for approval of the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion (TMX) has been bouncing around in Canada’s federal courts like a pinball since 2013. First Nations tribes and environmental groups have valiantly worked the flippers of the judicial pinball machine for years, filing lawsuits and appeals, to keep that shiny ball from rolling down the drain of approval. But on July 2, down it went when the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) denied three First Nations leave to appeal the decision of a lower court.

Oklahoma Is – Always Has Been – Native Land

July 22, 2020 By Dwanna L. McKay, The Conversation. Educate! Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Indigenous Sovereignty, Oklahoma

Any shock that tribal nations have sovereignty over their own land reflects a serious misunderstanding of American history. For Oklahoma – indeed, all of North America – has always been, for lack of a better term, Indian Country. North America was not a vast, unpopulated wilderness when white colonizers arrived in 1620. Up to 100 million people of more than 1,000 sovereign indigenous nations occupied the area that would become the United States. At the time, fewer than 80 million people lived in Europe. America’s indigenous nations were incredibly advanced, with extensive trade networks and economic centers, superior agricultural cultivation, well-developed metalwork, pottery, and weaving practices, as historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has comprehensively detailed. Unlike Europe, with its periodic epidemics, North America had little disease, Dunbar-Ortiz says. People used herbal medicines, dentistry, surgery, and daily hygienic bathing to salubrious effects. Historically, indigenous nations emphasized equity, consensus and community. Though individualism would come to define the United States, my research finds that Native Americans retain these values today, along with our guiding principles of respect, responsibility and reciprocity.

The Supreme Court Ruling On Oklahoma Was Welcome, But…

July 14, 2020 Nick Estes, NBC News. Create! Indigenous Sovereignty, Oklahoma, Sacred sites, Treaties

The U.S. legal system from the Supreme Court on down delivered a suite of rulings over the past week that have reaffirmed Indigenous land rights and environmental protections. From the Virginias to the Dakotas, they pushed back on the industrial development that would have further imperiled tribal lands and the environment. On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that 3 million acres of eastern Oklahoma — including most of Tulsa — remain American Indian reservation land. Last Monday, the court also denied a Trump administration request to allow the construction of the long-delayed northern leg of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would carry slurry crude from the Alberta tar sands to Nebraska.

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