For the better part of the last quarter century, legal academia has sat silent in the face of obscene Indigenous human rights abuse in Indian Country, specifically disenrollment. Why? Because a great many Indigenous legal programs depend on gaming money, if not disenrollment chiefs’ blood money.
But there are signs that the taboo is breaking.
Certain Indigenous legal programs have shattered their institution’s silence regarding domestic Indigenous human rights abuse and citizenship deprivation.
In 2017, the University of Arizona College of Law’s Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program (IPLP) shattered barriers when it hosted the “Who Belongs?” conference. For its part, the Michigan State University College of Law does not shy away from publicizing disenrollment controversies and thereby shaming disenrollment chiefs and domestic Indigenous human rights abusers. Better yet, the Yale and Cornell Law Schools now co-convene the Saginaw-Chippewa Disenrollment Clinic.
More work, however, must be done to eradicate the taboo. Last fall, when assembling a coalition of supporters for NCAI’s Tribal Citizenship Protection Task Force Resolution, I was surprised that more Indigenous legal programs did not join the effort. UC Boulder's First Peoples Worldwide and Arizona’s IPLP were the only two programs that signed on (although several professors did individually). The bottom line is Indian gaming still has a powerful grip on the Indigenous legal education establishment.
So while there is reason for hope, there is still more reason to break the silence.
Gabriel S. Galanda is the Managing Lawyer of Galanda Broadman, PLLC, an Indigenous rights law firm. He belongs to the Round Valley Indian Tribes, descending from the Nomlaki and Concow Peoples.
