Imagining Sovereignty by
"Sovereignty" is perhaps the most ubiquitous term in American Indian writing today--but its meaning and function are anything but universally understood. This is as it should be, David J. Carlson suggests, for a concept frequently at the center of various--and often competing--claims to authority. In Imagining Sovereignty, Carlson explores sovereignty as a discursive middle ground between tribal communities and the United States as a settler-colonial power. His work reveals the complementary ways in which legal and literary texts have generated politically significant representations of the world, which in turn have produced particular effects on readers and advanced the cause of tribal self-determination. Drawing on western legal historical sources and American Indian texts, Carlson traces a dual genealogy of sovereignty. Imagining Sovereignty identifies the concept as a marker, one that allows both the colonizing power of the United States and the resisting powers of various American Indian nations to organize themselves and their various claims to authority. In the process, sovereignty also functions as a point of exchange where these claims compete with and complicate one another. To this end, Carlson analyzes how several contemporary American Indian writers and critics have sought to fuse literary practices and legal structures into fully formed discourses of self-determination. After charting the development of the concept of sovereignty in natural law and its permutations in federal Indian policy, Carlson maps out the nature and function of sovereignty discourses in the work of contemporary Native scholars such as Russel Barsh, Gerald Taiaiake Alfred, D'Arcy McNickle, and Vine Deloria, and in the work of more expressly literary American Indian writers such as Craig Womack, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Gerald Vizenor, and Francisco Patencio. Often read in opposition, the writings of these indigenous authors emerge in Imagining Sovereignty as a coherent literary and political tradition--one whose varied discourse of sovereignty aptly reflects American Indian people's diverse political contexts.
American Indian Law in a Nutshell, 5th by
. Reliable source on American Indian law. This authoritative text covers the essentials of this complex body of law with emphasis on the governmental policies underlying it. Includes chapters on Indian gaming and Alaska Native law, but does not include specialized problems of Oklahoma and New York Indians, urban Indians, or Native Hawaiians.
American Indian Law Deskbook by
A collaborative effort from Attorney General Offices throughout the country -- faced daily with legal questions involving state and tribal relations -- The American Indian Law Deskbook, Third Edition, is an up-to-date, comprehensive treatise on Indian law. The Deskbook provides readers with the necessary historical and legal framework to understand the complexities faced by states, Indian tribes, and the federal government in Indian country. Included are discussions of: The evolution of federal statutory Indian law and the judicial foundations of federal Indian policy; An extensive compilation and analysis of federal and state court decisions; Reservation and Indian lands ownership and property interests; The parameters of criminal jurisdiction in Indian country; Concepts of tribal sovereignty and jurisdiction relating to a number of specific areas including tribal courts, hunting and fishing, environmental regulation, water rights, gaming, and child welfare; and Cooperative approaches used by the states and tribes for resolving jurisdiction disputes and promoting better relations. Thorough, scholarly, and balanced, The American Indian Law Deskbook, Third Edition, is an invaluable reference for a wide range of people working with Indian tribes, including attorneys and legal scholars, government officials, social workers, state and tribal jurists, and historians. This revised edition includes information from court decisions, federal statutes, and administrative regulations through June 2003 as well as law review articles through the Spring of 2003.
Handbook of Federal Indian Law by 
The single most comprehensive source of treaties and other international agreements to which the United States has become a party. In addition, includes law and law-related periodicals.
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Documents of American Indian Diplomacy by
Reproduced in this two-volume set are hundreds of treaties and agreements made by Indian nations--with, among others, the Continental Congress; England, Spain, and other foreign countries; the Republic of Texas and the Confederate States; railroad companies seeking rights-of-way across Indian land; and other Indian nations. Many were made with the United States but either remained unratified by Congress or were rejected by the Indians themselves after the Senate amended them. Many others are "agreements" made after U.S. treaty making with Indian tribes officially ended in 1871. These documents--augmented by chapter introductions that concisely set each type of treaty in its historical and political context--these documents effectively trace the evolution of American Indian diplomacy in the United States. This volume is the first major accessible compilation since Charles Kappler's 1904 Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties. As a group, these documents highlight American Indians' roles as active agents in international diplomatic affairs.
Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws 1607-1789 by 
Enduring Legacies by
Treaties are so fundamental to the lives of Native Americans and their nations in the United States and Canada that life without them would be difficult to imagine. Most contemporary issues, from land claims to resource ownership to gambling permits, are rooted in laws that derive much of their sustenance from such documents. Treaties are, therefore, vibrant documents that define important issues in our time. This book is an attempt to maintain a "national conversation" on the treaty basis of important contemporary laws and issues. While the texts of such treaties have long been available, discussion and other annotation in a context that gives them contemporary meaning has been scarce. This collection of essays by experts in Native American history examines these historic agreements in light of recent and ongoing controversies. Claims to ancestral land bases are one prime example: the Canandaigua Treaty of 1794 provides a context in which to address the Onondaga's claim to most of the Syracuse urban area. Treaties provide the bases for events such as the modern-day rebirth of the Ponca Nation in Nebraska more than a century after a bureaucratic error resulted in banishment from ancestral land. One chapter explores why the U.S. Army still officially regards tragic events at Wounded Knee in December 1890 as a "battle," rather than a "massacre." Another reveals how treaties and laws have been used to retain and regain gas and oil resource ownership. Still another expert examines why so much energy has been expended over the fate of 9,300- year-old bones that have come to be called "Kennewick Man."
