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  • Protecting Native Americans: The Tribe as Parens Patriae

    This Note argues that Tribes have parens patriae standing to protect their citizens through litigation on their behalf, even if not all of their citizens are engaged in the litigation. Part I examines the current requirements of parens patriae standing, as articulated by the Supreme Court. Part II briefly examines the nature of tribal sovereignty within American jurisprudence and concludes that parens patriae standing is a retained right of the Tribes. Part III examines the way in which the Federal District Courts have incorrectly handled tribal parens patriae standing. This section argues for a reexamination of Supreme Court doctrine when applying parens patriae standing to Tribes. Part IV briefly examines permissible defendants under Tribal parens patriae standing.

  • Listen

    In a traditional law school setting, experiences of students of color, especially Native Americans, are often buried by the discourse of the dominant culture. This piece, a non-traditional work using elements of prose, lyric, monologue, and poetry, weaves strands of legal discourse, commentary, and autobiography into a critical narrative of the experience of legal education from an outsider law student's perspective. The author, a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, recounts these vignettes in a voice infused with the history and traditions of Native American oral storytelling.

  • A Country Within a Country: Redrawing Borders on the Post-Colonial Sovereign State

    This Essay seeks to identify the conflict that exists between the demands for self-governance by Canada's First Nations and the interests of the Canadian state. The author elucidates this conflict by identifying two major differences between the perspectives of Canada's First Nations' demands for self-governance and the interests of the Canadian state: the privileging of the collective versus the privileging of the individual, and the two very different notions of "territory." The author concludes that the doctrine of sovereign statehood as developed out of European Nationalism stands as an obstacle to the self-determination of non-western peoples such as the First Nations because it requires the people within the territory of the state to have no allegiance apart from the state. Yet the author concludes that it is precisely this doctrine of sovereignty that may lead to some possibility for reconciliation. International organizations, created in the post-war era in response to the realization that global problems need global administration, offer a model, in that they have international administrative jurisdictions directly in contravention of the territorial sovereignty of states. The author argues that territory is no longer necessarily the characteristic of a political entity in the international arena, and therefore it is possible to imagine the recognition of stateless nations as subjects of international law.