What is the relationship between environment and tribal sovereignty, and what is the value of tribally-controlled land in the twenty-first century? This dissertation turns to the Meskwaki Nation, the only resident Native American community in Iowa, to provide a long-term perspective on the benefits and pitfalls of tribal land reclamation. Rather than focusing on dispossession, it emphasizes how one tribe reacquired its land base following removal. In the process, it shows how environment and sovereignty are sources of political and economic leverage for Native communities. They are useful categories for organizing Native histories and understanding how environmental, political, and economic interactions have shaped and been shaped by Indigenous struggles for sovereignty and self-determination. This work examines how the unique status of the Meskwaki “settlement,” which is not a “reservation” because the tribe purchased it with tribal money in 1857, has expanded the tribe’s capacity for self-determination. The Meskwaki story confirms that increasing tribal land holdings—as well as tribal control over them—provides an anchor from which tribes can maintain their sovereignty, creates opportunities for self-determination, and offers tribes political and economic leverage. But land reclamation is not a silver bullet that can solve the many problems faced by Native Nations today. Rather, tribal land (and by extension, the environments on it) is a political tool that can be deployed in defense of tribal sovereignty. By recognizing the potential of tribally-controlled land to create leverage within the paradigms of state/tribal and federal/tribal politics, tribes can utilize their land bases as sovereign, political territory and pursue economic and political strategies that can empower their continuing recovery from the processes of colonization.

Powerful norms tend to define the purpose and function of higher education as a means for individual students to improve individual social mobility and to attain occupational status, and oftentimes, we assume this to be the primary intent of any college student (Baum, Ma, & Payea, 2013; Day & Newberger, 2002). For the purpose of this study, the normative framing of college as primarily an individual benefit is scrutinized to understand how this norm engages American Indian students in the college-going process. Indigenous scholars argue that infusing the concept of Native Nation Building into our understandings of higher education challenges such mainstream cultural norms and fills a space between the individual and mainstream society (Brayboy, Fann, Castagno, and Solyom, 2012). This qualitative study proposes the Individual-Independent/Political-Collective Paradox Model to understand how American Indian students navigate and make-meaning of collective values and the role of student tribal status on the college-going process. Through the voices of thirty-seven American Indian college students, the findings demonstrate the critical thinking and navigation of varying realities that American Indian students face when entering higher education institution. I present the three main findings of this study. The first finding presents how the participant's college-going process is not linear in both pathways and meaning making. Through a college-going typology, students reveal how the college-going phases have cyclical aspects, where each phase is built upon each other and influence subsequent meaning- and decision-making. The second finding demonstrates how the college-choice process is instrumental in understanding how students frame the purpose of higher education through collective values that are intricately related to students' reference of tribal enrollment. The third finding shows how collective values and tribal enrollment help inform the meaning of financial aid for students. These meanings reveal that tribal aid is not only relevant to providing access during the college exploration and choice phases, but the aid reinforces students' purpose of higher education and future goals, which both are primarily collective in nature.

In 1987, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians. A landmark decision, the case carried significant ramifications for tribal sovereignty and the creation of the Native American gaming industry. In response to the decision, the United States Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act the following year. Since the Supreme Court ruled in Cabazon, Native American gaming has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry and the most significant source of revenue for many tribes across the country. Given the complexity of Native American law and the controversial nature of casino gaming, the industry has resulted in many contentious legal battles between tribes and parties ranging from state governments to private corporations. As the Cabazon decision was the breakthrough for reservation gaming, this thesis will examine the Supreme Court’s rulings regarding tribal gaming and how they affected the Native American gaming industry and the doctrine of tribal sovereignty.

Native American reservations in the United States are often located on mineral-rich lands, making them a target for fossil fuel development in already socioeconomically disadvantaged areas. As environmentally damaging as they are, coal and oil industries can bring invaluable jobs and money to isolated reservations, causing tribes to rely on fossil fuels for mere economic survival. In these instances of corporations or the federal government exploiting Native American labor and land, tribes lose the most fundamental principle of tribal governance: tribal sovereignty. Replacing fossil fuels and securing energy independence with a stable, renewable energy source is key to reclaiming that tribal sovereignty. Biomass, a general term for any organic material used as a fuel source, is an often overlooked form of renewable energy to provide for an entire community’s needs. This paper focuses specifically on the 21 tribes in Arizona that can use elements of the local landscape, residues from economic activity like agriculture, or waste from urban areas to power a community-scale biomass plant. The feasibility study for a biomass plant on the Cocopah Reservation, a small and economically poor tribe in southwestern Arizona, determined that the tribe could supply all of its energy needs with a small, 1 MW combustion stoker boiler fed with crop residues from nearby agricultural lands. The levelized cost of electricity for this biomass plant is about $0.2–$0.3/kWh, or one-sixth of electricity rate that the tribe pays from the local utility. The plant would create revenue over its 30-year lifespan that could be fed back into other social service or economic revitalization projects for tribal members. The Cocopah would also benefit from joining with other small and politically isolated tribes to form an intertribal energy consortium that could share administrative and technical expertise in completing feasibility studies or applying for federal assistance.

abstract: Advancements in marine and aerospace technology drive legal reform in admiralty and air law. The increased accessibility and affordability of these technologies demand and motivate lawmakers and federal agencies to anticipate potential threats to peoples’ rights and resources in the seas and skies. Given the recent applications of unmanned aircraft in the public and private sectors, developments in aircraft and air law are rapidly becoming more relevant to American Indian and Alaska Native tribes. In anticipation of legal reform, tribal nations are taking steps to assert, expand, and secure their air rights before agencies or the courts attempt to divest their sovereign authority. An analysis of two case studies through a lens of water and federal Indian law locates spaces in American jurisprudence that have the legal foundation and structural capacity to support a greater presence of Indigeneity in airspace. Research findings from these studies answer the following inquiries about tribal airspace sovereignty: where does Indigeneity reside in the US national airspace system and domestic air law, how are tribal air rights strengthened or weakened by American jurisprudence, what strategies do tribes employ to exercise their sovereignty in airspace, and how are tribes planning for future developments in aircraft and air law? Answers lead to proof of how meaningful consultation through collaborative rulemaking produces far greater mutual benefits than burdens for federal agencies and tribes, and much more. Most importantly, these discoveries celebrate a diverse and accumulative strategic legacy of strengthening and expanding tribal sovereignty in the face of imminent threats and possibilities in tribal airspace. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis American Indian Studies 2019

The ability to decisively benefit from ample sources of freshwater represents a pivotal challenge for American Indian nations and their self-determination in the western United States. Climate change, population growth, and capitalist pressures continue to escalate demand for water in an already dry land. This project set out to listen and add practical perspective to the importance of water as reflected in various forms of stories in the context of American Indian reserved water rights. It explores dynamic confluences and divergences of worldviews that influence American Indian nations' relationships with water in the present sociopolitical context. The integral relationship between literatures, laws, and tribal sovereignty constructs this study's theoretical framework as it broadens scholarship on this connection to include the implications of water rights. This approach leads to a critical, or perhaps "literary critical," background for examining two major water rights struggles in the western United States; the first being court decisions on the Wind River Indian Reservation, home of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes, and secondly, the Klamath-Trinity Basin, where four federally recognized tribes recently partook in water rights settlement negotiations. Litigation and negotiations over vital water are presently limited to the minefield of ambiguous Western narratives on the values and uses of Indian water rights. While each conflict has its unique circumstances and personalities, EuroAmerican stories of control and superiority continue to justify the exploitation of water and subjugation of Indigenous human rights. Alternative forums might make room for restorying and more sustainably managing water.

abstract: In Indian Country, the investigation and prosecution of sexual assault crimes have been described as arduous task. More so, determining whether the federal, state, or tribal government has criminal jurisdiction is perplexing. The various U.S. Supreme Court decisions and Federal Indian policies that influence tribal sovereignty restrict tribal government's authority over violent crimes that occur on tribal lands. In my thesis, I discuss U.S. Supreme Court decisions and federal Indian policies create a framework for colonial management and federal paternalism in Indian Country, which restrict tribal sovereignty and sentencing authority in criminal cases that occur on tribal lands and against their citizens. I introduce the Indigenous Woman's Justice Paradigm as a conceptual framework for Indian nations to develop an alternate system for responding to sexual assault crimes on tribal lands. The purpose of my research is to promote the cultural renewal of Indigenous justice practices to develop sexual assault jurisprudence or reform tribal rape law that are victim-centered and community controlled. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis American Indian Studies 2015

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