Volume 43, Issue 4

The relationship between Native people and animals has a rich, complex history.  For tens of thousands of years, Native people have cultivated their symbiotic relationship with the animal world, and these relationships demonstrate a unique centralized status that animals have for many tribal cultures. Beginning with early contact with Europeans, however, the relationship between Native…

In theory, if not reality, each tribal judiciary attempts to conscientiously serve the community that created it. This simple proposition likely binds jurists from across the globe regardless of race, ethnicity, or nationality. Beyond that similarity, tribal court systems differ in structure and substance, sometimes significantly and sometimes dramatically. A tribal judiciary may emerge through…

In another time he would have been honored. Instead he was murdered. The above statement is from the PBS documentary Two Spirits, a film examining the life and tragic death of Fred Martinez, a sixteen- year-old Navajo Indian, born physically male, who identified as female. The documentary explores the circumstances that led to Martinez’s death…

[I]s there at all a threshold before you can call, under the statute, a child an “Indian child”? 3/256ths? . . . I’m just wondering is 3/256ths close—close to zero? —Chief Justice Roberts, Oral Argument in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl (April 16, 2013) [An “Indian” under federal law] should be one-half. . . .…

Dan Baker was a healthy, athletic, young man when he first enrolled at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Instead of drinking or partying, Dan spent his time playing baseball and hockey. While enrolled, he suffered a minor back injury and was prescribed opioid painkillers. At that time, he had no idea…

Impaired driving accidents are responsible for thousands of deaths each year—on average one every fifty-three minutes. In addition to the toll on human life, impaired driving arrests place an enormous burden on our criminal justice system: law enforcement carried out more than 1.1 million arrests for driving-while-impaired (DWI) in 2014. To help enforce DWI laws,…