Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Justice: The Impact of Climate Change

Presenter: Rebecca Tsosie, Professor of Law, Arizona State University 1 page

Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Justice: The Impact of Climate Change

Presenter: Rebecca Tsosie, Professor of Law, Arizona State University 1 page

The Challenge of Differentiated Citizenship : Can State Constitutions Protect Tribal Rights?

The Challenge of Differentiated Citizenshi

Indigenous Peoples and Epistemic Injustice: Science, Ethics, and Human Rights

This Article explores the use of science as a tool of public policy and examines how science policy impacts indigenous peoples in the areas of environmental protection, public health, and repatriation. Professor Tsosie draws on Miranda Fricker’s account of “epistemic injustice” to show how indigenous peoples have been harmed by the domestic legal system and the policies that guide the implementation of the law in those three arenas. Professor Tsosie argues that the theme of “discovery,” which is pivotal to scientific inquiry, has governed the violation of indigenous peoples’ human rights since the colonial era. Today, science policy is overtly “neutral,” but it may still be utilized to the disadvantage of indigenous peoples. Drawing on international human rights law, Professor Tsosie demonstrates how public policy could shift from treating indigenous peoples as “objects” of scientific discovery to working respectfully with indigenous governments as equal participants in the creation of public policy. By incorporating human rights standards and honoring indigenous self-determination, domestic public policy can more equitably respond to indigenous peoples’ distinctive experience. Similarly, scientists and scientific organizations can incorporate human rights standards into their disciplinary methods and professional codes of ethics as they respond to the ethical and legal implications of their work

A Philosophy of Hope and a Landscape of Principle: the Legacy of David Getches\u27s Federal Indian Law Scholarship

In this essay, Professor Tsosie documents two important aspects of David Getches\u27s work in the field of federal Indian law. First, Professor Tsosie observes that David Getches was a strong proponent of guiding principles and a consistent structure in the law. Consequently, he was one of the first scholars to observe the ways in which the contemporary Supreme Court was remapping the field of federal Indian law, apparently in service of the Court\u27s commitment to states\u27 rights and the protection of mainstream values. David noted the dangers of this subjectivist approach and urged a return to the foundational principles of federal Indian law, which recognize the historic political relationship between Indian nations and the United States and the continuing sovereignty of Indian nations. Secondly, David Getches had a great deal of love for the lands and peoples of the West, including the landscape of the Colorado Plateau, which inspired Professor Tsosie\u27s remarks at the Symposium. David understood the relationship between indigenous peoples and the land as encompassing an ethics of permanence, and he believed that traditional indigenous * land ethics could provide the necessary counterweight to the dominant society\u27s exploitive ethic of opportunity and foster a more sustainable framework for the management of public lands. In these ways, David\u27s federal Indian law scholarship offered a philosophy of hope and a landscape of principle, and both features mark his important and enduring legacy in the field

The New Challenge to Native Identity: An Essay on “Indigeneity” and “Whiteness”

This Essay builds upon Cheryl Harris’s claim that “whiteness” is a form of “property” and suggests that the current challenges to Native “indigeneity” to the racial and cultural identity of Native peoples in recent years through various “special” legal rights. This Essay suggests that, with respect to indigenous peoples, the discourse of “whiteness” requires analysis within a global, as well as national context. This Essay examines four areas within which there is an active debate over “indigenous status”: political rights under international human rights law; cultural rights under international human rights law; rights to land and to ancestral human remains under domestic law; and rights to genetic resources. The root issue within each of these areas is who “owns” Native identity—political, cultural, ancestral, genetic—and what role does the concept of “indigeneity” play in these assertions of “ownership”? The Essay concludes by suggesting that Native cultural sovereignty, including tribal law and tribal epistemologies, will have an important role in asserting and maintaining Native rights to tangible and intangible tribal resources

Native Nations and Museums: Developing an Institutional Framework for Cultural Sovereignty

This paper was presented at the 2009 Native American Law Symposium

Tribal Data Governance and Informational Privacy: Constructing Indigenous Data Sovereignty

This essay discusses tribal claims to data sovereignty and informational privacy, examining the nature of the respective claims, as well as how tribal governments can exercise effective authority over the collection and use of data about the community and its members. Part I of the essay explores the issue of data sovereignty comparatively, framing the concept within its global and national contexts, and then discussing the rights of tribal governments and other Indigenous peoples. Part II of the essay examines the various claims that are comprised within the movement toward Indigenous data sovereignty, as well as the current context of data governance by tribal governments. Part III of the essay discusses three substantive areas of research that test out the reach of these principles. The essay concludes with recommendations for actions that tribal governments can take to enhance their ability to exercise governance authority over their data