Tribal Constitution Handbook

Tribal Constitution Handbook
Author: Mark C. Tilden
Publisher:
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2007
Genre: Constitutional law
ISBN: 9780979409905

"This Practical Guide is intended to guide the user through a number of considerations when writing or revising a tribal constitution in order to foster and generate ideas on the kinds of mechanisms that may work for the particular tribe's governance structure." - Introduction (p. 2)

On the Drafting of Tribal Constitutions

On the Drafting of Tribal Constitutions
Author: Felix S. Cohen
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780806138060

Felix Cohen (1907–1953) was a leading architect of the Indian New Deal and steadfast champion of American Indian rights. Appointed to the Department of the Interior in 1933, he helped draft the Indian Reorganization Act (1934) and chaired a committee charged with assisting tribes in organizing their governments. His “Basic Memorandum on Drafting of Tribal Constitutions,” submitted in November 1934, provided practical guidelines for that effort.

American Indian Constitutional Reform and the Rebuilding of Native Nations

American Indian Constitutional Reform and the Rebuilding of Native Nations
Author: Eric D. Lemont
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2009-08-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0292778074

Since 1975, when the U.S. government adopted a policy of self-determination for American Indian nations, a large number of the 562 federally recognized nations have seized the opportunity to govern themselves and determine their own economic, political, and cultural futures. As a first and crucial step in this process, many nations are revising constitutions originally developed by the U.S. government to create governmental structures more attuned to native people's unique cultural and political values. These new constitutions and the governing institutions they create are fostering greater governmental stability and accountability, increasing citizen support of government, and providing a firmer foundation for economic and political development. This book brings together for the first time the writings of tribal reform leaders, academics, and legal practitioners to offer a comprehensive overview of American Indian nations' constitutional reform processes and the rebuilding of native nations. The book is organized in three sections. The first part investigates the historical, cultural, economic, and political motivations behind American Indian nations' recent reform efforts. The second part examines the most significant areas of reform, including criteria for tribal membership/citizenship and the reform of governmental institutions. The book concludes with a discussion of how American Indian nations are navigating the process of reform, including overcoming the politics of reform, maximizing citizen participation, and developing short-term and long-term programs of civic education.

Tribal Constitutionalism

Tribal Constitutionalism
Author: Kirsty Gover
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2010
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199587094

Recognized tribes are increasingly prominent players in settler state governance, but in the wide-ranging debates about tribal self-governance, little has been said about tribal self-constitution. Who are the members of tribes, and how are they chosen? Tribes in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States are now obliged to adopt written constitutions as a condition of recognition, and to specify the criteria used to select members. Tribal Constitutionalism presents findings from a comparative study of nearly eight hundred current and historic tribal constitutions, most of which are not in the public domain. Kirsty Gover examines the strategies adopted by tribes and states to deal with the new legal distinction between indigenous people (defined by settler governments) and tribal members (defined by tribal governments). She highlights the important fact that the two categories are imperfectly aligned. Many indigenous persons are not tribal members, and some tribal members are not legally indigenous. Should legal indigenous status be limited to persons enrolled in recognized tribes? What is to be done about the large and growing proportion of indigenous peoples who are not enrolled in a tribe, and do not live near their tribal territories? This book approaches these complex questions head-on. Using tribal membership criteria as a starting point, this book provides a critical analysis of current political and sociolegal theories of tribalism and indigeneity, and draws on legal doctrine, policy, demographic data and tribal practice to provide a comparative evaluation of tribal membership governance in the western settler states.

Claiming Turtle Mountain's Constitution

Claiming Turtle Mountain's Constitution
Author: Keith Richotte Jr.
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2017-08-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 146963452X

In an auditorium in Belcourt, North Dakota, on a chilly October day in 1932, Robert Bruce and his fellow tribal citizens held the political fate of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in their hands. Bruce, and the others, had been asked to adopt a tribal constitution, but he was unhappy with the document, as it limited tribal governmental authority. However, white authorities told the tribal nation that the proposed constitution was a necessary step in bringing a lawsuit against the federal government over a long-standing land dispute. Bruce's choice, and the choice of his fellow citizens, has shaped tribal governance on the reservation ever since that fateful day. In this book, Keith Richotte Jr. offers a critical examination of one tribal nation's decision to adopt a constitution. By asking why the citizens of Turtle Mountain voted to adopt the document despite perceived flaws, he confronts assumptions about how tribal constitutions came to be, reexamines the status of tribal governments in the present, and offers a fresh set of questions as we look to the future of governance in Native America and beyond.

Tribal Constitutions and Native Sovereignty

Tribal Constitutions and Native Sovereignty
Author: Robert J. Miller
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre:
ISBN:

More than 565 Indigenous tribal governments exercise extensive sovereign and political powers within the United States today. Only about 230 of the native communities that created these governments, however, have chosen to adopt written constitutions to define and control the political powers of their governments. Many observers would no doubt ask how a government can function without a written constitution to guide its formation and operation, and how the rights of citizens can be defined and protected without a written constitution. This essay addresses these questions and many more concerning American Indian and Alaska Native tribal constitutions. It is clear that constitutionalism is nothing new to Indigenous peoples in North America. This fact is demonstrated by the Iroquois Confederacy of the Haudenosaunee people who have governed themselves under an unwritten constitution for many hundreds of years, by the Cherokee Nation who apparently created the first written tribal constitution in 1827, by the many dozens of tribal governments who adopted written constitutions from 1837-1930, and by the hundreds of Indigenous governments who adopted constitutions under the federal Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. This essay examines these facts and more, and addresses whether modern day tribal constitutions adequately serve the needs of native communities and help these communities and their political entities to exercise and protect their sovereignty.

Broken Landscape

Broken Landscape
Author: Frank Pommersheim
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2009-09-02
Genre: Law
ISBN: 019970659X

Broken Landscape is a sweeping chronicle of Indian tribal sovereignty under the United States Constitution and the way that legislators have interpreted and misinterpreted tribal sovereignty since the nation's founding. Frank Pommersheim, one of America's leading scholars in Indian tribal law, offers a novel and deeply researched synthesis of this legal history from colonial times to the present, confronting the failures of constitutional analysis in contemporary Indian law jurisprudence. He demonstrates that the federal government has repeatedly failed to respect the Constitution's recognition of tribal sovereignty. Instead, it has favored excessive, unaccountable authority in its dealings with tribes. Pommersheim argues that the Supreme Court has strayed from its Constitutional roots as well, consistently issuing decisions over two centuries that have bolstered federal power over the tribes. Closing with a proposal for a Constitutional amendment that would reaffirm tribal sovereignty, Broken Landscape challenges us to finally accord Indian tribes and Indian people the respect and dignity that are their due.