Thanksgiving is also a time to remember the deprivations and atrocities that occurred to Indians

This Thanksgiving week, Stephen L. Pevar reminds us that while we commemorate the Pilgrim’s feast in 1620 to thank Indians for their friendship, we also need to remember that the following three centuries were marked by increasingly punitive policies by governments towards them. He argues that while conditions for many tribes have improved in recent decades, conditions on most reservations are substandard and impoverished. He gives several ways that non-Indians can commemorate Thanksgiving in this light; by lobbying public schools and Congress, and donating to organizations that give economic assistance to Indians

Reconsidering the Tribal-State Compact Process

This essay evaluates the tribal‐state compact process, as one of several alternative, nonadversarial processes, warranting attention. It argues that, because of its binding character and relatively low cost (in contrast to litigation), and because it is based in the idea of tribes and states exhibiting mutual respect, the compact process is an advanced version of negotiation and bargaining that tribes and states should consider where appropriate

The Last Ice Age

A collection of five short stories that examine ideas of loss and transformation from a series of highly skewed and idiosyncratic points of view

Lawyering in the Field of Civil Liberties (2014-11-07)

STEPHEN PEVAR is a graduate of Princeton University (1968) and the University of Virginia School of Law (1971). From 1971 through 1974, Mr. Pevar was a staff attorney with South Dakota Legal Services on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation. From 1976 to the present, he has been a National Staff Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. Mr. Pevar has litigated some 200 federal cases involving constitutional rights, including cases in more than ten different Federal District Courts, three different U.S. Courts of Appeals, and one case in the U.S. Supreme Court. The areas of his specialty include Indian and tribal rights, prisoners’ rights, free speech of public employees, and the separation of church and state.LAWYERING IN THE FIELD OF CIVIL LIBERTIES A PRESENTATION BY STEPHEN L. PEVAR AN ATTORNEY WHO HAS FILED 200 CIVIL RIGHTS CASES IN FEDERAL COURT AUTHOR and NATIONAL STAFF COUNSEL FOR THE ACLUMaster of Tribal Administration and Governance Program UMD American Indian Studie