Turtle Talk

Joe Hillman and Clayton Fulton have published “Tribal Infrastructure as a Road to Reclaiming Sovereignty” in the Washburn Law Journal.

Here is the abstract:

The ability to shape one’s built environment has always been tied to the idea of sovereignty, both at the levels of individual people and units of communal self-governance. Modern tribal infrastructure is overwhelmingly influenced by a top-down approach where money comes from the federal government and credit for infrastructure projects in tribal communities is a source of pride for distant politicians. This Essay explores the history between infrastructure and sovereignty and proposes that tribes aremore than capable of planning for their communities, and are likely better at it than the U.S. government.