Webinar
Reading lists about Native American Treaty Rights
- Titles suggested by Tadd Johnson
- Titles suggested by Winona LaDuke
- Titles suggested by Dallin Maybee
Support Native American Rights
Webinar
Cosponsored by the American Indian Library Association (AILA) and SRRT, June 28, 2020
“Native American Treaty Rights in the Time of Covid-19”
with Tadd Johnson, Winona LaDuke, and Dallin Maybee
The struggle to defend the treaty rights of Native Americans has been long and difficult. But the Covid-19 pandemic has presented new challenges to the protection of the voting rights, the environment, and the health and safety of Native American communities. Our panel addressed these issues, and what you can do to help. Recording of this webinar on ALA Youtube.
Program Moderator
 Cindy Hohl Photo source: Kansas City Public Library |
Cindy Hohl is the President of the American Indian Library Association (AILA). She is a member of the Sanatee Sioux Nation of Sanatee, Nebraska. She is an ALA Spectrum Scholar and Director of Branch Operations at the Kansas City Public Library and is also a member of the Steering Committee for the Joint Conference of Librarians of Color (JCLC) 2022. |
Program Speakers
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Tadd Johnson is the University of Minnesota’s first senior director of American Indian Tribal Nations Relations. An enrolled member of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa, Professor Johnson has served as a tribal attorney, as tribal court judge, and tribal administrator. He spent five years with the U.S. House of Representatives, ultimately becoming staff director and counsel to the Subcommittee on Native American Affairs. In 1997, President Clinton appointed Professor Johnson to chair the National Indian Gaming Commission. He is currently on the Board of the Native Governance Center; serves as Director of the Tribal Sovereignty Institute; and is on the Board of Trustees of the Udall Foundation. | |
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Winona LaDuke is an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe), who is internationally known as an activist working on issues of sustainable development, renewable energy, and food systems. She was twice the vice-presidential candidate for the Green Party, is a former board member of Greenpeace USA, and is presently an advisory board member for the Trust for Public Land’s Native Lands Program and board member of the Christensen Fund. Winona LaDuke was also the founder, and is currently Executive Director, of Honor the Earth, whose mission is to create awareness and support for Native environmental issues and to develop needed financial and political resources for the survival of sustainable native communities. | |
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Dallin Maybee is a member of the Arapaho Tribe of the Wind River Reservation, Wyoming, and is also Seneca. He is the Assistant Director of Development for the Native American Rights Fund, which is the oldest, largest nonprofit legal organization defending the rights of Native American tribes, organizations, and people. Dallin Maybee has a Juris Doctor from the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. He is also an award-winning artist, whose works can be found in museum and private collections worldwide, including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian. |
Reading Lists about Native American Treaty Rights
July 2020
Titles suggested by Tadd Johnson for this website.
Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law. [N.p.]: LexisNexis, 2013; and 2017 Supplement.
Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law is an encyclopedic treatise written by experts in the field, and provides general overviews to relevant information as well as in-depth study of specific areas within this complex area of federal law. This is an updated and revised edition of what has been referred to as the “bible” of federal Indian law. This publication focuses on the relationship between tribes, the states and the federal government within the context of civil and criminal jurisdiction, as well as areas of resource management and government structure. [From publisher’s description.]
Echo-Hawk, Walter. In the Courts of the Conqueror: The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided. Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum, 2010.
Echo-Hawk analyzes ten cases that embody or expose the roots of injustice and highlight the use of nefarious legal doctrines. He delves into the dark side of the courts, calling for a paradigm shift in American legal thinking. Each case study includes historical, contemporary, and political context from a Native American perspective, and the case’s legacy on Native America. In the Courts of the Conqueror is a comprehensive history of Indian Country from a new and unique viewpoint. It is a vital contribution to American history. [From Goodreads.]
Goldberg, Carole E., Kevin K. Washburn, and Philip P. Frickey. Indian Law Stories. St. Paul, MN: Foundation Press, 2010.
This book covers the often complex and unfamiliar doctrine of federal Indian law, exposing the raw conflicts over sovereignty and property that have shaped legal rulings. Fifteen distinguished authors describe gripping cases involving Indian nations over more than two centuries, each story emphasizing initiative in tribal communities and lawyering strategies that have determined the fate of nations. [From publisher’s description.]
Pevar, Stephen. The Rights of Indians and Tribes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
The Rights of Indians and Tribes, first published in 1983, has sold over 100,000 copies and is the most popular resource in the field of Federal Indian Law. The book, which explains this complex subject in a clear and easy-to-understand way, is particularly useful for tribal advocates, government officials, students, practitioners of Indian law, and the general public. Numerous tribal leaders highly recommend this book. Incorporating a user-friendly question-and-answer format, The Rights of Indians and Tribes addresses the most significant legal issues facing Indians and Indian tribes today, including tribal sovereignty, the federal trust responsibility, the regulation of non-Indians on reservations, Indian treaties, the Indian Civil Rights Act, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, and the Indian Child Welfare Act. This fully-updated new edition features an introduction by John Echohawk, Executive Director of the Native American Rights Fund. [From publisher’s description.]
Prucha, Francis Paul, ed. Documents in U.S. Indian Policy. 3rd ed. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.
The third edition of this landmark work adds forty new documents, which cover the significant developments in American Indian affairs since 1988. Among the topics dealt with are tribal self-governance, government-to-government relations, religious rights, repatriation of human remains, trust management, health and education, federal recognition of tribes, presidential policies, and Alaska Natives. [From publisher’s description.]
Satz, Ronald N. Chippewa Treaty Rights: The Reserved Rights of Wisconsin’s Chippewa Indians in Historical Perspective. Madison: Wisconsin Academy of Science, 1996.
“Chippewa Treaty Rights . . . is an excellent and highly readable account of the complex political, legal, and social history of the Chippewa’s struggle for justice; appendices provide full texts of pertinent documents.”—Nancy Oestreich Lurie, Ethnohistory.” The detail of Satz’s outline, the broad range of resource materials compiled, and the clarity of the text will make this book invaluable to a wide audience.”—James M. McClurken, American Indian Culture and Research Journal. ”The book deserves a wide audience among the general public and serious scholars. . . . [Satz] knows the record well and he writes with skill and authority built upon years of research and writing about Indians and Indian policy. . . . He has fulfilled important obligations as a scholar and intellectual: he has helped clarify our understanding of the world in which we live.”—Robert Doherty, Wisconsin Magazine of History. ”[A] well-researched and well-documented work. . . . Satz’s study will be useful to students, teachers, and scholars.”—Barbara Leibhardt Wester, Western Historical Quarterly.
Washburn, Wilcomb E. Red Man’s Land/White Man’s Law: Past and Present Status of the American Indian. Second Edition. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.
Red Man’s Land/White Man’s Law is a history of the legal status of the American Indians and their land from the period of first contact with Europeans down to the present day. It begins with the efforts of colonial authoritiesSpanish, British, and Frenchto deal with tribal sovereignty and carries the discussion of U.S.Indian legal relations through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Tribal sovereignty was eroded from the very beginning, but more recently it has emerged as a powerful force in American and Canadian law and touches upon many current legal issues, such as land allotment and land claims; definitions of Indian status; hunting, fishing, and water rights; and tribal relations with Congress, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Canadian government. First published in 1971, this second edition contains a new preface and an extensive afterword discussing important legal events and issues in the last twenty-five years, making this a complete, up-to-date survey of legal relations between the United States and the American Indian. [From publisher’s description.]
Wilkins, David E. and K. Tsianina Lomawaima. Uneven Ground: American Indian Sovereignty and Federal Law. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001.
In the early 1970s, the federal government began recognizing self-determination for American Indian nations. As sovereign entities, Indian nations have been able to establish policies concerning health care, education, religious freedom, law enforcement, gaming, and taxation. Yet these gains have not gone unchallenged. Starting in the late 1980s, states have tried to regulate and profit from casino gambling on Indian lands. Treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather remain hotly contested, and traditional religious practices have been denied protection. Tribal courts struggle with state and federal courts for jurisdiction. David E. Wilkins and K. Tsianina Lomawaima discuss how the political rights and sovereign status of Indian nations have variously been respected, ignored, terminated, and unilaterally modified by federal lawmakers as a result of the ambivalent political and legal status of tribes under western law. [From publisher’s description.]
Wilkinson, Charles F. Blood Struggle. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2005.
For generations, Indian people suffered a grinding poverty and political and cultural suppression on the reservations. But tenacious and visionary tribal leaders refused to give in. They knew their rights and insisted that the treaties be honored. Against all odds, beginning shortly after World War II, they began to succeed. Blood Struggle explores how Indian tribes took their hard-earned sovereignty and put it to work for Indian peoples and the perpetuation of Indian culture. This is the story of wrongs righted and noble ideals upheld: the modern tribal sovereignty movement deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as the civil rights, environmental, and women’s movements. [From publisher’s description.]
Williams, Robert A., Jr. Like a Loaded Weapon: The Rehnquist Court, Indian Rights, and the Legal History of Racism in America. Minneapolis: University of of Minnesota Press, 2005.
Beginning with Chief Justice John Marshall’s foundational opinions in the early nineteenth century and continuing today in the judgments of the Rehnquist Court, Williams shows how undeniably racist language and precedent are still used in Indian law to justify the denial of important rights of property, self-government, and cultural survival to Indians. Building on the insights of Malcolm X, Thurgood Marshall, and Frantz Fanon, Williams argues that racist language has been employed by the courts to legalize a uniquely American form of racial dictatorship over Indian tribes by the U.S. government. [From publisher’s description.]
Titles suggested by Winona LaDuke for this website.
Belcourt, Billy-Ray. NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2019.
In the follow-up to his Griffin Poetry Prize–winning collection, This Wound is a World, Billy-Ray Belcourt writes using the modes of accusation and interrogation. He aims an anthropological eye at the realities of everyday life to show how they house the violence that continues to reverberate from the long twentieth century. In a genre-bending constellation of poetry, photography, redaction, and poetics, Belcourt ultimately argues that if signifiers of Indigenous suffering are everywhere, so too is evidence of Indigenous peoples’ rogue possibility, their utopian drive. [From publisher’s description.]
Grossman, Zoltán. Unlikely Alliances: Native Nations and White Communities Join to Defend Rural Lands. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 2017.
Often when Native nations assert their treaty rights and sovereignty, they are confronted with a backlash from their neighbors, who are fearful of losing control of the natural resources. Yet, when both groups are faced with an outside threat to their common environment—such as mines, dams, or an oil pipeline—these communities have unexpectedly joined together to protect the resources. . . . Unlikely Alliances explores this evolution from conflict to cooperation through place-based case studies in the Pacific Northwest, Great Basin, Northern Plains, and Great Lakes regions during the 1970s through the 2010s. These case studies suggest that a deep love of place can begin to overcome even the bitterest divides. [From publisher’s description.]
Joseph, Bob. 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act. Port Coquitlam, BC: Indigenous Relations Press, 2018.
The Indian Act, after over 140 years, continues to shape, control, and constrain the lives and opportunities of Indigenous Peoples, and is at the root of many stereotypes that persist. Bob Joseph’s book comes at a key time in the reconciliation process, when awareness from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities is at a crescendo. Joseph explains how Indigenous Peoples can step out from under the Indian Act and return to self-government, self-determination, and self-reliance—and why doing so would result in a better country for every Canadian. He dissects the complex issues around truth and reconciliation, and clearly demonstrates why learning about the Indian Act’s cruel, enduring legacy is essential for the country to move toward true reconciliation. [From publisher’s description.]
King, Thomas. The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.
In The Inconvenient Indian, Thomas King offers a deeply knowing, darkly funny, unabashedly opinionated, and utterly unconventional account of Indian–White relations in North America since initial contact. Ranging freely across the centuries and the Canada–U.S. border, King debunks fabricated stories of Indian savagery and White heroism, takes an oblique look at Indians (and cowboys) in film and popular culture, wrestles with the history of Native American resistance and his own experiences as a Native rights activist, and articulates a profound, revolutionary understanding of the cumulative effects of ever-shifting laws and treaties on Native peoples and lands. [From publisher’s description.]
LaDuke, Winona. The Winona LaDuke Chronicles: Stories from the Front Lines in the Battle for Environmental Justice. Ponsford, MN: Spotted Horse Press; Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2016.
Chronicles is a major work, a collection of current, pressing and inspirational stories of Indigenous communities from the Canadian subarctic to the heart of Dine Bii Kaya, Navajo Nation. Chronicles is a book literally risen from the ashes—beginning in 2008 after her home burned to the ground—and collectively is an accounting of Winona’s personal path of recovery, finding strength and resilience in the writing itself as well as in her work. Long awaited, Chronicles is a labour of love, a tribute to those who have passed on and those yet to arrive. [From publisher’s description.]
Manuel, Arthur and Grand Chief M. Derrickson. Unsettling Canada: A National Wake-Up Call. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2015.
Unsettling Canada, a Canadian bestseller, is built on a unique collaboration between two First Nations leaders, Arthur Manuel and Grand Chief Ron Derrickson. . . . Together the Secwepemc activist intellectual and the Syilx (Okanagan) businessman bring a fresh perspective and new ideas to Canada’s most glaring piece of unfinished business: the place of Indigenous peoples within the country’s political and economic space. The story is told through Manuel’s voice but he traces both of their individual struggles against the colonialist and often racist structures that have been erected to keep Indigenous peoples in their place in Canada. [From publisher’s description.]
Maracle, Lee, Columpa Bobb, and Tania Carter. Hope Matters. Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2019.
The wide-ranging poems in Hope Matters focus on the journey of Indigenous peoples from colonial beginnings to reconciliation. But they also document a very personal journey—that of a mother and her two daughters. Written collaboratively, Hope Matters offers a blend of three distinct and exciting voices that come together in a shared song of hope and reconciliation. [From publisher’s description.]
Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 3rd edition, 2017.
Indigenous resistance is a radical rejection of contemporary colonialism focused around the refusal of the dispossession of both Indigenous bodies and land. Simpson makes clear that its goal can no longer be cultural resurgence as a mechanism for inclusion in a multicultural mosaic. Instead, she calls for unapologetic, place-based Indigenous alternatives to the destructive logics of the settler colonial state, including heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalist exploitation. [From publisher’s description.]
Talaga, Tanya. Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2017.
The shocking true story covered by the Guardian and the New York Times of the seven young Indigenous students who were found dead in a northern Ontario city. . . . Using a sweeping narrative focusing on the lives of the students, award-winning investigative journalist Tanya Talaga delves into the history of this small northern city that has come to manifest Canada’s long struggle with human rights violations against Indigenous communities. [From publisher’s description.]
Thistle, Jesse. From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way. Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2019.
In this heartwarming and heart-wrenching memoir, Jesse Thistle writes honestly and fearlessly about his painful past, the abuse he endured, and how he uncovered the truth about his parents. Through sheer perseverance and education—and newfound love—he found his way back into the circle of his Indigenous culture and family. An eloquent exploration of the impact of prejudice and racism, From the Ashes is, in the end, about how love and support can help us find happiness despite the odds. [From publisher’s description.]
Wagamese, Richard. One Drum: Stories and Ceremonies for a Planet. Madeira Park, BC: Douglas & Macintyre, 2019.
One Drum draws from the foundational teachings of Ojibway tradition, the Grandfather Teachings. Focusing specifically on the lessons of humility, respect and courage, the volume contains simple ceremonies that anyone anywhere can do, alone or in a group, to foster harmony and connection. Wagamese believed that there is a shaman in each of us, and we are all teachers and in the world of the spirit there is no right way or wrong way. [From publisher’s description.]
Wemigwans, Jennifer. A Digital Bundle: Protecting and Promoting Indigenous Knowledge Online. Regina, SK: University of Regina Press, 2018.
An essential contribution to Internet activism and a must read for Indigenous educators, A Digital Bundle frames digital technology as an important tool for self-determination and idea sharing, ultimately contributing to Indigenous resurgence and nation building. By defining Indigenous Knowledge online in terms of “digital bundles,” Jennifer Wemigwans elevates both cultural protocol and cultural responsibilities, grounds online projects within Indigenous philosophical paradigms, and highlights new possibilities for both the Internet and Indigenous communities. [From publisher’s description.]
Other books by Winona LaDuke.
LaDuke, Winona. All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life. 2nd ed. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016.
A beautiful and daring vision of political, spiritual, and ecological transformation. . . . This thoughtful, in-depth account of Native struggles against environmental and cultural degradation features chapters on the Seminoles, the Anishinaabeg, the Innu, the Northern Cheyenne, and the Mohawks, among others. Filled with inspiring testimonies of struggles for survival, each page of this volume speaks forcefully for self-determination and community. [From publisher’s description.]
LaDuke, Winona. Last Standing Woman. Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press, 1997.
Rooted in LaDuke’s own Anishinaabe heritage, the novel skillfully intertwines social history, oral myth and character study in ways reminiscent of Leslie Marmon Silko and Louise Erdrich. Stretching from 1800 into the near future but set mostly in this century, the narrative focuses on events at LaDuke’s own White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. [Publishers Weekly.]
LaDuke, Winona. Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming, Reprint ed. Chicago: Haymarket Press, 2016.
The indigenous imperative to honor nature is undermined by federal laws approving resource extraction through mining and drilling. Formal protections exist for Native American religious expression, but not for the places and natural resources integral to ceremonies. Under what conditions can traditional beliefs be best practiced? Recovering the Sacred features a wealth of native research and hundreds of interviews with indigenous scholars and activists. [From publisher’s description.]
LaDuke, Winona. The Winona LaDuke Reader: A Collection of Essential Writings. Penticton, BC: Theytus Books, 2002.
This comprehensive book covers such topics as Native American affairs, women’s and children’s issues, environmental issues and mainstream politics. It’s LaDuke’s first complete collection of speeches, fictional writing and environmental/political pieces. As an advocate for Native American rights, champion of women’s and children’s issues, protector of the environment, LaDuke possesses a stirring passion that comes through in the forty speeches, articles and fictional excerpts in this book. [From publisher’s description.]
Beasley, Doug; Winona LaDuke, and George Slade. Earth Meets Spirit: A Photographic Journey Through the Sacred Landscape. Milan: 5 Continents, 2011.
Douglas Beasley travels as a seeker, not as a tourist. He makes photographs not as a rection to the otherness of people, places and cultures, but because of a feeling that exists deep within himself. His destinations in the world are connected by his photographs which give visible form to invisible maps of the eternal. And these images are often of ordinary unnoticed aspects of reality—miraculous imaginings of beauty, suffering and longing of the human body, mind and soul. They become maps pointing to our original mind and various incarnations of earth spirits. [From back cover.]
LaDuke, Winona with Sean Aaron Cruz. The Militarization of Indian Country. 2nd ed. Callaway, MN: Honor the Earth, 2017.
It is 2016, and the weight of American corporate interests has come to the Missouri River, the Mother River. This time, instead of the Seventh Cavalry, or the Indian police dispatched to assassinate Sitting Bull, it is Enbridge Corporation and Dakota Access Pipeline, emboldened by a new militarization of Indian Country. At their beck and call have been 1300 highly militarized police, private security forces of the mercenary variety and the National Guard. It is a time not unknown to Native people, a time when the interests of corporations—whether the Hearst Empire, or a pipeline company—are able to deploy the military for their benefit. This book tells that larger story. This new preface speaks to the carrying out of the militarization of Indian Country in Lakota territory. [Winona LaDuke.]
LaDuke, Winona and Waseyabin Kapashesit. The Sugar Bush (Greetings! Blue Level). Crystal Lake, IL: Rigby, 1999.
Waseyabin and her mother show young readers how they collect and process maple syrup from the sugar bush (maple trees), a tradition that has been carried through their family for several generations. [From description on Oyate website.]
Titles suggested by Dallin Maybee for this website.
Canby, William C., Jr. American Indian Law in a Nutshell. 7th ed. St. Paul, MN: West Academic Publishing, 2020.
This guide provides a reliable resource on American Indian law. Its authoritative text covers the essentials of this complex body of law, with attention to the governmental policies underlying it. The work emphasizes both the historical development of Federal Indian Law and recent matters such as the evolution of Indian gaming, issues arising under the Indian Child Welfare Act, and the present enforcement of treaty rights. It addresses the policy and law applicable to Alaska Natives, but does not deal with Native Hawai’ians. [From publisher’s description.] Note that Dallin Maybee writes: “I always start with the nutshell—it’s a great primer on all things Federal Indian Law.”
Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law. [N.p.]: LexisNexis, 2013.
See annotation in Tadd Johnson’s list above.
Deloria, Vine, Jr. Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1985.
Originally published in 1974, just as the Wounded Knee occupation was coming to an end, Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties raises disturbing questions about the status of American Indians within the American and international political landscapes. Analyzing the history of Indian treaty relations with the United States, Vine Deloria presents population and land ownership information to support his argument that many Indian tribes have more impressive landholdings than some small members of the United Nations. Yet American Indians are not even accorded status within the UN’s trust territories recognition process. [From publisher’s description.]
Harjo, Suzan Shown, ed. Nation to Nation: Treaties between the US and American Indian Nations. Washington DC: Smithsonian Books, 2014.
From a young age, most Americans learn about the Founding Fathers, but are told very little about equally important and influential Native diplomats and leaders of Indian Nations. Treaties lie at the heart of the relationship between Indian Nations and the United States, and Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations is the story of that relationship, including the history and legacy of U.S.–American Indian diplomacy from the colonial period through the present. [From publisher’s description.]
Prucha, Francis Paul. American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political Anomaly. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997.
Francis Paul Prucha, a leading authority on the history of American Indian affairs, argues that the treaties were a political anomaly from the very beginning. The term “treaty” implies a contract between sovereign independent nations, yet Indians were always in a position of inequality and as negotiators, a fact that complicates their current attempts to regain their rights and tribal sovereignty. Prucha’s impeccably researched book, based on a close analysis of every treaty, makes possible a thorough understanding of a legal dilemma whose legacy is so palpably felt today. [From publisher’s description.]
U.S. Dept of Interior. Native American Treaties and Broken Promises: 1851-1877. [N.p.]: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014.
The history of the Black Hills between 1851 and 1877 is written from two very different, and at times antagonistic perspectives. On one side are the writings of Americans who were attempting to “civilize” local tribes, confine them to reservations and take possession of their lands. These records, which include the writings of soldiers, scientists, government agents, and early settlers, depict a history that ultimately favors and defends American expansionism and the taking of the Black Hills. On the other side are accounts by Indians as well as non-Indians, including traders and federal agents, who viewed the Black Hills in a light more sympathetic to tribal interests and traditions. Today, this divide persists in the various ways the history of the Hills is depicted and interpreted in the writings of contemporary scholars. While all history gets written from different, and at times contested, vantage points, the story of the Black Hills stands out be-cause it continues to be told in a context where questions of their “ownership” on historical, legal, political, cultural, and even religious grounds are still being challenged. [Overview from book.]
Support Native American Rights
Honor the Earth. “In our Anishinaabe prophecies, this is called the time of the Seventh Fire. This is a time when our people will have two roads ahead of us—one miikina, or path, which is well-worn—but scorched—and another path which is green. It will be our choice upon which path to embark. That is where we are. Honor the Earth uses indigenous wisdom, music, art, and the media to raise awareness and support for Indigenous Environmental Issues. We leverage this awareness and support to develop financial and political capital for Indigenous struggles for land and life.”
Native American Rights Fund. “Since 1970, the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) has provided legal assistance to Indian tribes, organizations, and individuals nationwide who might otherwise have gone without adequate representation. NARF has successfully asserted and defended the most important rights of Indians and tribes in hundreds of major cases, and has achieved significant results in such critical areas as tribal sovereignty, treaty rights, natural resource protection, and Indian education. NARF is a non-profit 501c(3) organization that focuses on applying existing laws and treaties to guarantee that national and state governments live up to their legal obligations.”
SRRT Resolution Related to Native American Rights
| Year | SRRT Resolutions and Statements | Outcome |
| 1990 | Columbus Quincentennial Resolution, SRRT Newsletter, Sept. 1990, no. 97, p. 2. | Passed by ALA Membership Meeting; accepted by ALA Council as a reaffirmation of ALA policy. |