{"id":21829,"date":"2022-03-07T13:31:15","date_gmt":"2022-03-07T18:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indianz.com\/News\/?p=21829"},"modified":"2022-03-07T19:38:44","modified_gmt":"2022-03-08T00:38:44","slug":"gabe-galanda-addressing-civil-rights-in-indian-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/2022\/03\/07\/gabe-galanda-addressing-civil-rights-in-indian-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Gabe Galanda: Addressing civil rights in Indian Country"},"content":{"rendered":" \"Gabe<\/a>
Gabe Galanda. Photo courtesy Galanda Broadman<\/a><\/figcaption>\r\n
Tribal Nationhood Requires Citizen Civil Rights Protection<\/div>\r\n
Monday, March 7, 2022<\/div>\r\n
By Gabe Galanda<\/div>\r\n

<\/p>\r\nThe United Nations\u2019 intercession in a human rights calamity on Nooksack tribal lands in northern Washington state spotlights an unacceptable truth: Tribal citizens are the only United States citizens not universally guaranteed civil rights protection. \r\n

<\/p>\r\nBefore 1776, Indigenous kinship societies did not honor individual rights. Reciprocal obligation and duty were normative among Indigenous groups, who commonly self-identified as \u201cthe People.\u201d According to Vine Deloria, Jr. and Clifford Lytle in The Nations Within<\/em><\/a>, there was \u201cno concept of civil rights because every member of the society was related, by blood or clan responsibilities, to every other member.\u201d \r\n

<\/p>\r\nRights were unnecessary. As Ella Deloria explained in Speaking of Indians<\/em><\/a>: \u201cThe dictates of kinship demanded of relatives that they not harm each other.\u201d\r\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Evictions\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t
\n\t\t\n\t\t\tEvictions from Nooksack Tribe housing draw international rebuke\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t
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Human rights experts from the United Nations are calling on the United States to prevent the evictions of former citizens of the Nooksack Tribe.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t

\n\t\t\"Indianz.Com\"\t\tIndianz.Com\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\r\n

<\/P>\r\nFederal law superimposed an individual rights regime upon Indigenous societies beginning with early nineteenth century treaties, which conferred personal rights in lands and annuities as modes of assimilation. For example, the 1817 Treaty with the Wyandot promised a 640-acre allotment to the \u201cquarter-blood\u201d children of a deceased settler, while an early Cherokee Treaty pledged the \u201cper capita\u201d and \u201cpersonal\u201d apportionment of federal monies to Cherokees.\r\n

<\/p>\r\nWithin decades, tribal nations began to mirror settler governments that violated individual rights. According to Stephen Cornell in Return of the Native<\/em><\/a>: \u201cReservation containment raised the stakes and narrowed the means of dispute resolution. Now there were central positions of limited power to be won or lost and diminishing resources to be controlled.\u201d\r\n

<\/p>\r\nExacerbating those internecine dynamics, late nineteenth century U.S. Supreme Court decisions held that tribal citizens were neither American citizens nor entitled to federal Bill of Rights protection on tribal lands. Although tribal citizens became U.S. citizens in 1924, Stephen Pevar explains in The Rights of Indians and Tribes<\/em><\/a> how, in ensuing decades, a great number of \u201ctribal officials were tyrannical\u201d towards tribal citizens, \u201cden[ying] their rights under tribal law.\u201d \r\n

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