The NARF Legal Review is published semi-annually and provides updates on NARF’s cases and information on other timely Indian law topics. The most recent edition examines some of NARF’s cases from the winter of 2023 through spring of 2024. NARF’s cases featured in this edition of the Legal Review include:
The Indian Citizenship Act at 100 Years Old—One hundred years ago, on June 2, 1924, the United States government conferred citizenship on Native American people by passing the Snyder Act, also known as the Indian Citizenship Act. Prior to that time, Native Americans had been explicitly denied citizenship—first in the United States Constitution and, later, through the 14th Amendment. However, while the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 ensured that all Native Americans born within the United States had citizenship, the Act failed to fulfill the promise of citizenship because Native Americans were not also granted voting rights. It would be decades before all 50 states granted Native American citizens the right to vote. And even today, due to the inequities that Native Americans endure when accessing registration, early voting, and Election Day polling places, the promise of full citizenship remains broken.
Featured Excerpt: Treaty Justice: The Northwest Tribes, the Boldt Decision, and the Recognition of Fishing Rights—The late 1960s and early ’70s marked the beginnings of the upswelling of jobs in several areas of public interest law. I had gone to law school to practice civil rights law but when I graduated in 1966, there were almost no public interest jobs. When that changed, just a few years later, I was in private practice and began to think about the new civil rights, environmental, and other public law programs. Read this featured excerpt by Charles Wilkinson.
The Tribal Water Institute at the Native American Rights Fund—The Native American Rights Fund is a long-time defender of tribal water rights and has stood at the center of seminal water victories such as the Boldt Decision (stemming from the U.S. v Washington litigation) and representing tribes in 9 of the 35 tribal water rights settlements approved by Congress since 1978. As a dogged defender of tribal water interests, NARF stands strong on behalf of Tribes in legal fights that can last decades. However, with the impacts of climate change stressing water supplies—and the legal frameworks used to manage them—tribal needs are growing and require the commitment of more and diverse resources. Learn more here: https://narf.org/cases/tribal-water-institute/
You can learn more about NARF’s work, current and past, in the Legal Review archive.
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