994, 6). While it may take as much as a month for a Hopi carver to ? make one k

Given histories of disposses- sion, assimilation, and genocide, it was unconscionable to those on the board that non-Indians were appropriating and expropriating indige- nous cultures, identities, and artifacts for their own economic benefit and without any direct legal consequence

"It's all a matter of dollars and cents;

al lands, and evict or otherwise dispossess their wives and children from access to those lands (Hogan 1998).

). Thus, U.S. federal and state law facilitated a legal means for nontribal men to marry into the tribes, gain title to trib-

Such laws meant that a part-Indian of one- eighth American ancestry and seven-eighth European ancestry would not have acquired sufficient European "blood" to be accorded the legal privileges of whiteness

All of this pressure to give up the ways of life that had produced these objects came up against the desires of collectors to preserve them.

However, Native fishing actually accounted for a fraction of what white fisheries claimed.

Have you abandoned tribal life and adopted the habits and customs of the white community?

All other persons of one-half or more Indian blood

The IRA aimed to protect Native people’s religions and lifestyles in a radical shift away from assimilation policies, and represented an open admission that the Dawes Act was a mistake.

Commissioners sought to subdivide and organize Cherokee households into nuclear family units rather than organizing the rolls around extended families. Adult males were designated as heads of household, while wives and biological children, and occasionally grandparents and stepchildren were beneath them.

Commissioners assumed that relationships between spouses were the most important relationships for the Cherokees.

“one drop” of African blood meant that person was black, even that concept of race was not dominant in Indian Territory

Thus, in the process of allotment, government agents also attempted to officially define and designate who tribal members were.

Nor will they make war on any other tribe except in self-defence, but will submit all matters of difference between them and other Indians to the Government of the United States, or its agent, for decision, and abide thereby.

And he may further, at his discretion, cause the whole or any portion of the lands hereby reserved, or of such other land as may be selected in lieu thereof, to be surveyed into lots, and assign the same to such individuals or families as are willing to avail themselves of the privilege, and will locate on the same as a permanent home, on the same terms and subject to the same regulations as are provided in the sixth article of the treaty with the Omahas, so far as the same may be applicable.

The President may hereafter, when in his opinion the interests of the Territory may require, and the welfare of the said Indians be promoted, remove them from either or all of said reservations to such other suitable place or places within said Territory as he may deem fit, on remunerating them for their improvements and the expenses of their removal, or may consolidate them with other friendly tribes or bands.

For the first year after the ratification hereof, three thousand two hundred and fifty dollars; for the next two years, three thousand dollars each year; for the next three years, two thousand dollars each year; for the next four years fifteen hundred dollars each year; for the next five years twelve hundred dollars each year; and for the next five years one thousand dollars each year;

If necessary for the public convenience, roads may be run through their reserves

The federal criminal justice system is not going to be the savior of Native women. In fact, the federal criminal justice system is largely respon-sible for the high rates of crime in Indian Country.

BBC in England did an exposé on the U.S.’s failure to protect Indig-enous women from sexual violence

men definitely have a role to play here in holding their brothers accountable and their fathers accountable for their behavior

rape has become so common and such an everyday occurrence in the community that, in a sense, women— young women and teens and girls— don’t know that it’s wrong be-cause it’s happened to everyone that they know. It’s happened to their mothers and their sisters and their friends and their aunties and their grandmothers, and nothing was ever done in those cases.

Didn’t the majority of states still say there was no such thing as a husband raping the woman he’s married to?

and that more than one in three Native women experience rape in their lifetime

The State of Oklahoma was formed from two territories: the Oklahoma Territory in the west and Indian Territory in the east

Now, it contends, Congress never established a reservation in the first place.

A number of the federal officials charged with implementing the laws of Congress were apparently openly conflicted, holding shares or board positions in the very oil companies who sought to deprive Indians of their lands.

the loss of Creek land ownership was accelerated by the discovery of oil in the region during the period at issue here.

But all that only underscores further the danger of relying on state practices to determine the meaning of the federal MCA.

Oklahoma state courts erroneously entertained prosecutions for major crimes by Indians on Indian allotments for decades, until state courts finally disavowed the practice in 1989

Maybe some of these changes happened for altruistic reasons, maybe some for other reasons.

Beginning in the 1920s, the federal outlook toward Native Americans shifted “away from assimilation policies and toward more tolerance and respect for traditional aspects of Indian culture.”

So the Creek were promised not only a “permanent home” that would be “forever set apart”; they were also assured a right to self-government on lands that would lie outside both the legal jurisdiction and geographic boundaries of any State.

Congress has since broken more than a few promises to the Tribe.

“no portion” of Creek lands [p. 2]“would ever be embraced or included within, or annexed to, any Territory or State,”

unjust

education for extinction

Friends of the Indian will note a pristine natural beauty. Indian haters will note the litter strewn in the ditches, the diapers and bottles and Styrofoam cups: tragic contradic-tions.

Being a woman, she was never asked for her x-mark by American treaty commissioners

Third, “the ‘person’ is seen as predominant over the ‘individual,’ considered (it is added) ‘a strictly Western creation.’

This idea attributes to traditional societies the osten-sible habit of always using myth and fable “in contrast to reason in the West” to denote order and the passage of time

Their troubled state was the result of the Americans dishonoring treaties they had previously made and the confinement of Ojibwe to a tiny parcel of land that prohibited effec-tive hunting and gathering.

required Indian people to abandon communal lands for the adoption of new individual allotments: “private property.”

If anything can be considered an enduring value for Ojibwe people, it has got to be migration.

Before the ar-rival of the whites, communities dealt respectfully with each other in a way that encouraged different peoples to retain their ways of life, while at the same time establishing territorial boundaries, conditions of trade, and what

loss of land and political autonomy, assent to assimilation polices, the creation of quasi-private property on com-munal lands, and much else

An x-mark also signified coercion. As everyone knows, treaties were made under conditions that were generally unfavorable to Indians

On an Indian reservation, [a jury is] going to be made up of Indians, right? So the non-Indian doesn’t get a fair trial

The Tribal Law and Order Act (TLOA) had three main purposes. First, it was intended to make the federal government more accountable for serving Native people. Second, it was designed to provide tribes with more freedom to design and run their own justice systems. This included those communities subject to full or partial jurisdiction under PL-280. Third, the act sought to enhance cooperation among tribal, federal, and state officials in key areas such as law enforcement training and access to criminal justice information.The TLOA restored authority of tribes to sentence offenders for more than a maximum of one year per crime. Under the TLOA, tribal courts can now punish a rapist by sentencing him to jail for a maximum of three to nine years and fining up to $15,000.

The Oliphant decision created a jurisdictional loophole for non-Native perpetrators of violence against Native women living on tribal lands, because tribal governments cannot hold them criminally accountable.

The National Institute of Justice has found that more than half of American Indian/Alaska Native women (56.1 percent) have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime. More than half (55.5 percent) have experienced physical violence by intimate partners in their lifetime. The vast majority (96%) of American Indian/Alaska Native victims of sexual violence experience violence at the hands of a non-Native perpetrator

The Court, in a 6-to-2 decision, held that the Suquamish Indian Tribe could not criminally prosecute the non-Natives for crimes committed on the reservation.

Indian boys were sentenced fourteen years for stealing sheep

Again, these occurred where white men, not Indian tribal councils, were responsible for justice and order in society.

We would like to go back to what has happened to Indians at the hands of the states.

particularly in view of the fact that the lands of the Omaha and Winnebagos have been taxed all along

His attorney argued that Alabama had no jurisdiction over Caldwell because the crime occurred in the Creek Nation.

“John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”

Although the crime was committed by a Cherokee against another Cherokee within Cherokee country, Corn Tassel was tried in 1830 in Georgia courts, found guilty, and sentenced to hang.

the transport agents failed to supply enough food

Some took possession of occupied land, evicted Creek families, and burned Creek homes. In violation of the treaty, which promised the removal of white intruders, whites continued to squat illegally on Creek land

Alas, our “modern” Interior department has time and again demonstrated that it is a dinosaur—the morally and culturally oblivious hand-me-down of a disgracefully racist and imperialist government that should have been buried a century ago, the last pathetic outpost of the indifference and anglocentrism we thought we had left behind.

But the reasons for the loans were sometime more exotic—according to Cobell, they included the New York City’s 1975fiscal crisis, a Chrysler bailout, and writing down part of the national debt

there is no evidence that either the Bureau or the Department of the Interior has undertaken any sustained or comprehensive effort to resolve glaring deficiencies.

After 1820, rather than distribute payment to the tribes directly, the U.S. held the money for the tribes. If a tribe won a money award for illegal taking of their property, the United States held that money as well. The U.S. made the decisions about investing the money, and if a tribe wanted to use it themselves, it had to get federal permission first.

In 1976, the Blackfeet Nation asked Cobellto become treasurer for the tribe.

“If it be true that the Cherokee nation have rights, this is not the tribunal in which those rights are to be asserted.

left them incapable of defending themselves before the Supreme Court from these state- sponsored acts of what Rennard Strickland has called “genocide- at- law.

Marshall, characteristically,38fi rst addressed the jurisdictional question presented by the case. Could the Cherokees and other Indian tribes be regarded as “foreign states” under Article III of the Constitu-tion, and therefore able to bring suit against Georgia under the Court’soriginal jurisdiction?

Today, such ethnic- cleansing activities on the part of any government in the world would be deemed a crime of genocide, punishable by international law

The “Cherokee codes” were designed as the fi rst strike in an ethnic- cleansing campaign that would enable the state to take control over the immensely valuable Indian lands within its borders and make them available to Georgia’swhite citizen farmers and plantation owners.

Furthermore, under the evolving norms of the international human rights system in the twenty- fi rst century, states have a clear duty to meaning-fully consult with the indigenous communities affected before taking any legal actions interfering with their human rights, most particularly with respect to the lands and natural resources that sustain their cul-tural integrity and survival as indigenous peoples.

If Johnson v. McIntosh were to be issued today as a binding legal precedent by the Court, the justices’ decision would be regarded as not only being in bad racial taste but as grossly violative of a host of contemporary international human rights standards relative to indige-nous tribal peoples.

Conquest gives a title which the courts of the conqueror cannot deny

The fact that there were Indians already living upon these newly dis-covered lands didn’t matter much as far as the fi rst European discov-erer’s superior rights under the discovery doctrine were concerned.

oracular

sacred texts

these three seminal opinions of the Marshall model were written by the person whom generations of American law students have been taught to regard as the greatest chief justice of all time

defi ning part of our nation’s history

the Indian became the symbol “for all that over which civilization must tri-umph” in the Founders’ colonial imagination.4 Denied the right to exist as “truly other, something capable of being not merely an im perfect state of oneself,”5 the Indian’s doomed fate was inextricably tied to white America’s ascendant destiny on the continent. The rise of a superior form of civilization would necessarily entail the destruction of the sav-age race.

That the Indians may have full confidence in the justice of the United Statesrespecting their interests

provided that the punishment shall notbe greater than if the robbery or murder, or other capital crime, had been committed by acitizen on a citizen

The Commissioners of the United States in Congress assembled, shall restore allthe prisoners taken from the Indians, during the late war, to the Head-Men and Warriors ofthe Cherokees, as early as is practicable

Because the Dawes Act led Natives to citizenship, it was referred to by many politicians as the “Indian Emancipation Act.”

The Dawes Act set into place a policy of allotting reservation land into individual plots, to be held in trust by the federal government for a period of 25 years, after which the trust restriction would be lifted and individual Native allottees would assume ownership of the plot. Any “surplus” reservation land could be sold to white settlers after allotment was complete. By the policy’s official end in 1934, two-thirds of all Indian lands held in 1887 were lost to white settlers.

Those who wanted to extend the federal government’s reach over tribes employed wardship to do so. As lawyer and activist Felix Cohen argued in 1953, wardship was deployed as a “magic word,” used to justify “any order or command or sale or lease for which no justification could be found in any treaty or act of Congress.”

The Chief Justice’s words were quite vague. He defined neither “ward” nor “guardian,” and did not describe the relationship between Natives and the United States in concrete language—it only “resembled” that of a ward to his guardian.

significant

with the full support of Jackson

surely

White settlers would forge promissory notes signed by Native people, pledging certain property (usually portable property like livestock or slaves) in return for a “loan” made by the settler. With that note, the swindler could get a court order foreclosing on Native property—then accompanied by the sheriff, the white settler could come and take the listed goods and the victim would have no recourse.

declared Cherokee laws null and void, and extended Georgia jurisdiction into the Cherokee Nation. Other legislation enacted in 1828 and 1830 also imposed penalties on Cherokees who attempted to serve in a governmental capacity, and appointed a special police force to enforce Georgia law in Cherokee country

“a race not admitted to be equal to the rest of the community…not yet entitled, and probably never will be entitled, to equal civil and political rights.”

substitute of humanity and benevolence, and has been resorted to in preference to the sword

“inevitable”

the idea that Natives were “naturally” removed from their homelands because they “followed” their game into the forests is just so completely wrong!

Utilizing a lot of racist presumptions and false historical narratives, Chief Justice John Marshall established that Native people could not be seen as having the same property rights as Americans.

We’ll start off this week by unpacking a set of three cases decided in the 1820s and 1830s which became the foundation of federal Indian law. The opinions were all written by Chief Justice John Marshall, and are known as the “Marshall Trilogy.”

ur rations have been delayed, always •'coming,'' but never reaching us

loosing many of our number by small pox.

The Indians en-gaged in the fight, destroyed it because we would not assist them against the United States.

although we were told repeatedly they were coming, they never came

This trouble and suffering was caused by the Kiowas and Comanches camping near our village, and by their bad conduct involving themselves in a war with the United States troops

farms,and schools

e could then if we deemed the lawunjust to us, protest as we are now doing, but thatwould be all.

the Sequoyah Constitution, by its ownterms, leaves no room for on-going tribal existence, within the new state

the Five Tribes today continue to operate within their owndistinct territorial boundaries that have never been relinquished or disestablished. Eachof these successes would have been foreclosed, had the tribal leaders been successful intheir Sequoyah statehood advocacy

convenient luxury of 103 years of hindsight

Congress intervened prior tothat date by passing legislation that continued the tribes' existence in perpetuity

There are rare occasions, however, when a story of American Indian law andpolicy has an unforeseeable positive outcome for tribes.

history will judge the federal treaty abrogation as the catalyst for a chain offoreseeable events that renders modem tribal governments weaker than their historicalpredecessors

why

promise

Choctaws and Chickasaws were not

Each nation had to set aside land for resettlement of Native people in Kansas

Native tribes must nevertheless be treated as nations capable of entering into diplomatic negotiations and making war

“The Chiefs and all the other Indians present, were presented to the assembled army; the army was informed, that the Delaware Nation should be looked upon as Allies of the Colonies of North America from hence on; this event was celebrated and marked by great solemnity.”

White Eyes had a “grand vision of a Delaware Nation as mediator between Indian and White society.”

prevent Virginians from occupying the highly desired land in Kentucky

Tribes who joined Neolin’s movement: Potawatomis, Wyandots, Shawnees, Delawares, Miamis, Senecas, Ottawas, Chippewas, and beyond.

Teachers can mitigate considerable harm by replacing grades with authentic assessments; moreover, as we’ve seen, any feedback they may already offer becomes much more useful in the absence of letter or number ratings

Replacing letter and number grades with narrative assessments or conferences — qualitative summaries of student progress offered in writing or as part of a conversation — is not a utopian fantasy.

We may come to see grading as a huge, noisy, fuel-guzzling, smoke-belching machine that constantly requires repairs and new parts, when what we should be doing is pulling the plug.

But grading for learning is, to paraphrase a 1960’s-era slogan, rather like bombing for peace.

the more students are led to focus on how well they’re doing, the less engaged they tend to be with what they’re doing.

Extrinsic motivation, which includes a desire to get better grades, is not only different from, but often undermines, intrinsic motivation, a desire to learn for its own sake

I never ask you to pay for textbooks

add

with the environment

I received my PhD in US History from the History Department here at UC San Diego in 2017. I also have an MA in Women’s History from Sarah Lawrence College (Bronxville, NY), and a BA in Psychology from Willamette University (Salem, OR).