NYU Review of Law & Social Change

Lorinda Riley has published “Shifting Foundation: The Problem with Inconsistent Implementation of Federal Recognition Regulations” (PDF) in the NYU Review of Law & Social Change.

Here is the abstract:

The establishment of federal recognition is the cornerstone of federal Indian law. All rights, including criminal jurisdiction, tax status, gaming rights, and hunting and fishing rights, stem from this initial acknowledgment. Yet prior law review articles have focused only on the overarching process of federal recognition without closely examining the actual administrative findings of the Department of the Interior.

This article will provide an in-depth examination of the regulations governing whether an Indian entity is entitled to the benefits of a government-to-government relationship with the United States. Specifically, this article examines the regulatory process for filing a federal recognition petition and critiques four of the criteria that petitioning Indian entities consistently fail to meet. By reviewing Department of the Interior decisions, this article demonstrates the inconsistencies in regulatory interpretations and guidance documents as well as the inherent biases in the current regulatory framework.
Finally, the article discusses potential solutions to these problems and identifies the first step necessary in order to fully understand the depth of this regulatory issue.

Melina Angelos Healey has published “The School-to-Prison Pipeline Tragedy on Montana’s American Indian Reservations” in the NYU Review of Law & Social Change.

Here is the description:

American Indian adolescents in Montana are caught in a school-to-prison pipeline. They are plagued with low academic achievement, high dropout, suspension and expulsion rates, and disproportionate contact with the juvenile and criminal justice systems. This phenomenon has been well documented in poor, minority communities throughout the country. But it has received little attention with respect to the American Indian population in Montana, for whom the problem is particularly acute. Indeed, the pipeline is uniquely disturbing for American Indian youth in Montana because this same population has been affected by another heartbreaking and related trend: alarming levels of adolescent suicides and self-harm.

The statistical evidence and tragic stories recounted in this report demonstrate beyond doubt that American Indian children on the reservations and elsewhere in Montana are moving into the school-to-prison pipeline at an alarming and tragic rate. The suicides of so many children is cause for despair, and the complicity of the education system in those deaths, whether through deliberate actions or through inattention, is cause for serious self-reflection and remediation. This article has been written in the hope that the people of Montana, government officials at all levels, teachers and school administrators, and public interest lawyers will have some of the information they need to take action. Despair, prison, and untimely death should not and need not be the ending places of public education for our most vulnerable children.