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Blog on indian affairs

Indigeneity and Disability: The Teachings of our Ancestors and Being in Relation Towards Harmonious Outcomes

7/14/2025

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By: Dr. Sandra Yellowhorse*
This article was originally published by the Disability Visibility Project on June 18, 2023 and we have reprinted it with the permission of the author and the Project.

Disability is often categorized by two Western models: the medical model and the social model. The medical model views disability as a deficiency or abnormality that resides in the person, and the remedy is a “cure” or “normalization” of the person. The social model views disability as a result of barriers that prevent a person from fully participating in society, and the remedy is a change in the interaction between a person and society. But neither model considers the wholeness of a person and their experiences and both tend to frame people with disabilities as the “other.” What about an Indigenous view of disability?
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Reclaiming Culture: Auction Monitoring and Advocacy Today

6/16/2025

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Native cultural heritage items and Ancestors have long been the target of theft and looting by collectors seeking to line their shelves or their pockets. These sensitive items are often referred to by collectors and dealers as “antiquities,” “artifacts,” or “art.” However, Native cultural heritage items are held communally by Native Nations and cannot be removed without consent at the time the item was originally taken. Those who claim rightful possession must be able to prove it under federal, state or Native Nation laws.

Domestic and international legal frameworks affirm that Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples have civil and human rights to manifest and practice their cultures without interference. The right to protect sacred cultural items is no different than the right to prevent someone from walking into a church or cemetery and looting it for personal gain. 
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Why Native Nation Museums Funding Matters—And What’s at Risk

5/14/2025

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By: CC Hovie 

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Tribal Museums are the primary experts of cultural heritage for their Nations. Moreover, these Native Nation-controlled institutions are vital expressions of cultural sovereignty: having control of the things that make us who we are as Native Peoples. They protect the unique cultures, histories, and lifeways of Native Nations through Native leadership, knowledge systems, and self-determination. The Association on American Indian Affairs uplifts this work annually through its celebration of Tribal Museums Day, a national event each December that promotes and raises awareness of these Native-led cultural institutions. ​
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President Signs Law Protecting Ceremonial Use of Peyote by Native Church Practitioners

4/11/2025

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This article was published in Indian Affairs, Volume 132, Spring 1995. Minor edits have been made to correct certain terms.
 
Title I of the Native American Free Exercise of Religion Act is the 1994 amendments to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978. The amendments explicitly protect the traditional ceremonial use of peyote by Native Peoples. It remains in force today. However, some entities seek to exploit peyote as a medicinal and commercial product for the general public—even though peyote is classified as a Schedule I controlled substance, with the only exemption granted to Native practitioners. 
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A victory for the Religious Freedom Coalition
On October 6, 1994 President Clinton signed into law Title I of the Native American Free Exercise of Religion Act. This title deals with the right of Native American religious practitioners to use the divine sacrament peyote in their religious ceremonies. The Association has served as the coordinator of the American Religious Freedom Coalition, a group of more than 100 Native Nations, Native and non-Native organizations, politicians, etc. seeking to educate the public about the need to protect the rights of Native Peoples to freely practice their religions.

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Safeguarding Indigenous Culture from Appropriation: How Copyright Law Fails to Protect Indigenous Cultural Expressions

3/11/2025

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This article was published in Indian Affairs, Volume 195, Fall/Winter 2025 Journal. By: Kailash Muthukumar and Sky Ravenscroft

Today, Native Nations and their citizens face unique challenges in safeguarding their cultural heritage from exploitation and appropriation. Native Peoples hold distinct traditions and cultural expressions that are both rich and deeply significant. However, existing U.S. copyright laws, rooted in Western notions of individual ownership and originality, fail to adequately protect these cultural expressions. The result is a persistent and damaging pattern of cultural appropriation, where sacred designs, symbols, and knowledge are commercialized without consent, diminishing Indigenous rights and eroding cultural identity. Examining the legal gaps that leave Indigenous heritage vulnerable to exploitation, this article explores the urgent need for reform that upholds Indigenous sovereignty and preserves diverse Native cultural heritage.
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We Need to Talk About Adoption

2/12/2025

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This article was published in Indian Affairs, Volume 194, Spring/Summer 2024 Journal. By: Kim Mettler

Native Country has had a devastating history with adoption. For almost ten years between 1958 and 1967, the Child Welfare League of America contracted with the federal government to operate the Indian Adoption Project, which was described as a program to “stimulate on a nation-wide basis the adoption of homeless American Indian children by Caucasian families.”(1) By 1967, more than five thousand families had been referred by the Project to adoption agencies across the United States.(2) By 1977, the year the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs held legislative hearings on the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), the Indian Adoption Project and its successor, the Adoption Resource Exchange of North America, had placed almost 800 Native American children for adoption.(3)
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Chi’chil Biłdagoteel

1/14/2025

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Why Protecting Native Peoples Religious Freedom Matters

This article was published in Indian Affairs, Volume 194, Spring/Summer 2024 Journal. By: Sky Ravenscroft

U.S. citizens enjoy a high degree of religious freedom protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution. This protected right to religious freedom has given room for a wealth of beliefs that have added to the diversity defining our country - or at least that is how it theoretically works. In practice, however, persistent racism and prejudice have created a hierarchy of what constitutes a "valid" religion or religious practice under the First Amendment. Native Peoples' diverse beliefs, lifeways, and cultural practices have remained outside what Americans consider to be valid religious practices. In fact, U.S. policies of genocide and assimilation were developed to eliminate Native Peoples' beliefs and practices - especially those that are tied to the land. 
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Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, Oak Flat

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The Association is a Defender of Native Lands, 1922 to the Present

1/10/2024

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​This article was published in Indian Affairs, Volume 183, Fall/Winter 2018 Journal. Minor edits have been made to correct certain terms. We have further updated the article to include additional stories of sacred site protection after 2018!

Established in 1922, the Association on American Indian Affairs has a long history defending Native land rights and sacred sites of Native Peoples; in fact, that is how the Association on American Indian Affairs came into being.
 
In the summer of 1922, after Senator Holm O. Bursum of New Mexico introduced a bill that threatened an estimated 60,000 acres of Pueblo lands and water rights, the founders of the Association began the first successful Native rights campaign of the twentieth century:  the battle to stop the Bursum Bill. 
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John Collier and All Pueblo Council (Photo by Cathy Porter-Maynard)

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No Peace for Indigenous Burial Grounds

12/18/2023

 
This article was published by the Association on American Indian Affairs in Volume 116 of the Association’s Indian Affairs Journal, in the Summer of 1988. We have adjusted some terminology to align with current language. Though this article was written 35 years ago, these issues continue because of the checker-boarded laws that only protect federal or Native Nation lands; state and private lands are often completely unregulated – even when Native bodies are discovered. 

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Thousands of years ago, Native Peoples laid their dead to rest in above- ground ossuaries or in graves, often surrounding them with pottery vessels, necklaces, baskets or other sacred goods. The mourners never worried that the graves would be deliberately disturbed. 
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Indian Self-Government

11/14/2023

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Author: Felix S. Cohen
The Association on American Indian Affairs, The American Indian: Volume 2, Number 2, 1949

Not all who speak of self-government mean the same thing by the term. Therefore let me say at the outset that by self-government I mean that form of government in which decisions are made not by the people who are wisest, or ablest, or closest to some throne in Washington or in Heaven, but, rather by the people who are most directly affected by the decisions. I think that if we conceive of self-government in these matter-of-fact terms, we may avoid some confusion.

Let us admit that self-government includes graft, corruption, and the making of decisions by inexpert minds. Certainly these are features of self-government in white cities and counties, and so we ought not to be scared out of our wits if somebody jumps up in the middle of a discussion of Indian self-government and shouts “graft” or “corruption.”

Self-government is not a new or radical idea. Rather, it is one of the oldest staple ingredients of the American way of life. Many Indians in this country enjoyed self-government long before European immigrants who came to these shores did. It took the white colonists north of the Rio Grande about 170 years to rid themselves of the traditional European pattern of the divine right of kings or what we call today, the long arm of bureaucracy, and to substitute the less efficient but more satisfying Indian pattern of self-government. South of the Rio Grande the process took more than three centuries, and there are some who are still skeptical as to the completeness of the shift.


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