The Supreme Court Case That Could Break Native American Sovereignty
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/scotus-native-american-sovereignty-brackeen-v-haaland/672038/In the sprawling federal lawsuit Haaland v. Brackeen, a handful of white foster parents, among other plaintiffs, are asking the Supreme Court to overturn a law called the Indian Child Welfare Act. ICWA was created in 1978 to prevent family separation in Native communities. When the law passed, about a third of Native children had been removed from their families. But in the lawsuit, far more than the future of Native children is at stake.
When a Native child is up for adoption, ICWA prioritizes placing that child first with relatives, then other members of their tribe, and then other Native families. These placement preferences, the non-Native foster parents claim, give them “fourth-tier status.” Their pro bono lawyer Matthew McGill told the Fifth Circuit that this was all because “they are not and cannot be, because of their race, Indian families.” (Notably, in two of the three underlying custody cases, the non-Native foster parents won custody—when blood relatives also wanted to raise the children.) Citing the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the plaintiffs claim that ICWA violates their constitutional rights by discriminating against them.
What makes the case tricky is that many people in the United States think of Native Americans as a racial group. But that is not how American law works. Under federal law, tribes and tribal citizens are not a racial group, but a political one. Accordingly, ICWA applies only to Native children who either are enrolled in a federally recognized tribe or are eligible based on a given tribe’s citizenship requirements. Just as certain laws apply to me because I am a citizen of the United States or a resident of Oklahoma, certain laws apply to me because I’m a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Those laws flow from the treaties signed between my sovereign Indigenous nation and the United States, established through the same constitutional process the U.S. uses to sign treaties with Britain or Japan.
The oral arguments are being heard right now: https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/live.aspx
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Children were abducted, and their Native identities stomped out with brutality and Christianity. This would be just the modern day equivalent.
And the implications for other issues could be enormous. We've already broken enough treaties.
But I had some good materials from my cultural Anthropology classes that were helpful and succinct, I thought.
The one that I can recall at the moment was, The Weiser Indians, author - Corless printed in the 1990s.
I thought it was a quick read and very informative about tribes that you don't hear much about but have a large population in the Rocky Mountain states and were among the first tribes to enter into treaties with the US. I am acquainted with a number of descendants of the people in this book having lived in SE Idaho for some time.
There is quite a bit of literature out there, I wouldn't be the best person to ask regarding which would be better than another at this point. Thirty years ago, maybe, but now, ha!
Especially with Custer Died for Your Sins and God is Red. I think he went a little far afield in later years.
I took NA literature courses in college many years ago and have continued to occasionally read both fiction and non-fiction over the years. My favorite of all-time is N.Scott Momaday, a Kiowa who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his novel House Made of Dawn and is retired after teaching at Stanford and and the University of Arizona. Just a great, lyrical writer. I am currently re-reading The Way to Rainy Mountain, my favorite of his all-time. Just a great, lyrical writer. One of the closest I've read to Faulkner, albeit with shorter sentences. 
