The Best Indigenous Peoples Law Books 2025

1. Pre-Owned Breathing Life Into the Stone Fort Treaty: An Anishnabe Understanding of Treaty One (Paperback) 1895830648 9781895830644

In order to interpret and implement a treaty between the Crown and Canada's First Nations, we must look to its spirit and intent, and consider what was contemplated by the parties at the time the treaty was negotiated, argues Aim?e Craft. Using a detailed analysis of Treaty One - today covering what is southern Manitoba - she illustrates how negotiations were defined by Anishinabe laws (inaakonigewin), which included the relationship to the land, the attendance of all jurisdictions' participants, and the rooting of the treaty relationship in kinship. While the focus of this book is on Treaty One, Anishinabe laws (inaakonigewin) defined the settler-Anishinabe relationship well before this, and the principles of interpretation apply equally to all treaties with First Nations.

Title: Breathing Life Into the Stone Fort Treaty: An Anishnabe Understanding of Treaty One Book Format: Paperback ISBN10: 1895830648 EAN: 9781895830644 Genre: LAW / Indigenous Peoples Author: Craft, Aimée CONDITION - GOOD - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include 'From the library of' labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included.

2. Oklahoma's Indian New Deal (Paperback)

The Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act (OIWA), passed by Congress in 1936, brought Oklahoma Indians under all of the IRA’s provisions, but included other measures that applied only to Oklahoma’s tribal population. This first book-length history of the OIWA explains the law’s origins, enactment, implementation, and impact, and shows how the act played a unique role in the Indian New Deal.

Among the New Deal programs that transformed American life in the 1930s was legislation known as the Indian New Deal, whose centerpiece was the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934. Oddly, much of that law did not apply to Native residents of Oklahoma, even though a large percentage of the country’s Native American population resided there in the 1930s and no other state was home to so many different tribes. The Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act (OIWA), passed by Congress in 1936, brought Oklahoma Indians under all of the IRA’s provisions, but included other measures that applied only to Oklahoma’s tribal population. This first book-length history of the OIWA explains the law’s origins, enactment, implementation, and impact, and shows how the act played a unique role in the Indian New Deal. In the early decades of the twentieth century, white farmers, entrepreneurs, and lawyers used allotment policies and other legal means to gain control of thousands of acres of Indian land in Oklahoma. To counter the accumulated effects of this history, the OIWA specified how tribes could strengthen government by adopting new constitutions, and it enabled both tribes and individual Indians to obtain financial credit and land. Virulent opposition to the bill came from oil, timber, mining, farming, and ranching interests. Jon S. Blackman’s narrative of the legislative battle reveals the roles of bureaucrats, politicians, and tribal members in drafting and enacting the law. Although the OIWA encouraged tribes to organize for political and economic purposes, it yielded mixed results. It did not produce a significant increase in Indian land ownership in Oklahoma, and only a small percentage of Indian households applied for OIWA loans. Yet the act increased member participation in tribal affairs, enhanced Indian relations with non-Indian businesses and government, promoted greater Indian influence in government programs—and, as Blackman shows, became a springboard to the self-determination movements of the 1950s and 1960s.