Laura Evans

2 things to note:

-Tribes are not subsets of states, as press release implies.

-States cannot choose whether tribal rights, including tribal rights, are constricted or not.

Tribes are sovereigns that precede the states.

(Yes, there are tons of nuances here. But remember the fundamentals.)

I’m teaching Vine Deloria, Jr.’s Custer Died for Your Sins this week. It’s a beautiful mix of joy, optimism, and outrage. I’ve now read it about 20 times and it still makes me laugh.

🔥in this case. And it can help instructors avoid the charge that to call out the racism in territorial governance is an edgy woke leftist idea.

Counter China by Making Guam a State More than a partisan move, statehood would be a foreign-policy masterstroke.

Finally, I must unfortunately note Freymann’s 2020 article on Guam as an illustration that imperialism is alive and thrives today.

foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/14/c...

Also, Mariely Lopez-Santana’s scholarship and public commentary on Puerto Rico is great. I’ve drawn lesson plans from them.

Nothing in it authorizes judges to engage in the sordid business of segregating Territories and the people who live in them on the basis of race, ethnicity, or religion.”
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“The flaws in the Insular Cases are as fundamental as they are shameful. Nothing in the Constitution speaks of ‘incorporated’ and ‘unincorporated’ Territories. Nothing in it extends to the latter only certain supposedly ‘fundamental’ constitutional guarantees.
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There, Justice Brown contended, ‘the administration of government and justice, according to Anglo-Saxon principles, may for a time be impossible.’”
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But it would not do for islands ‘inhabited by alien races, differing from US in religion, customs, laws, methods of taxation, and modes of thought.’ Id., at 287.
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“Employing arguments similar to those advanced by Professors Lang dell and Thayer, Justice Brown saw things in the starkest terms. Applying the Constitution made sense in ‘contiguous territor[ies] inhabited only by people of the same race, or by scattered bodies of native Indians.’ Id., at 282.

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The Insular Cases have no foundation in the Constitution and rest instead on racial stereotypes. They deserve no place in our law.”

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“A century ago in the Insular Cases, this Court held that the federal government could rule Puerto Rico and other Territories largely without regard to the Constitution. It is past time to acknowledge the gravity of this error and admit what we know to be true:

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If teaching US modern territorial politics for the first time, may I suggest using US v. Vaello Madero

Gorsuch concurrence details how the entire basis for territorial governance today is racist.

Here are highlight quotes

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If you or someone in your network is interested in working at @brookings.edu on issues affecting Native Americans and Tribal economies, I am hiring for a (paid!) summer intern. You can find more info or apply here:

It says a lot that they’d rather kill the things they love rather than accept change. Boy Scouts had become so outside mainstream values that it was no longer viable financially. Going back = going bankrupt.

The leaders of the Oglala Sioux Tribe have a helluva lot more courage of conviction than a lot of mealy-mouthed politicians out there.

I say yes. Uniforms assert norms and narratives. Here, they model appropriate military-civilian relations.

Precisely. SCLC chose Birmingham based on Bull Connor’s record. They avoided other cities with less monstrous police. This was the lesson learned from the unsuccessful outcome in Albany, GA.

(documented in Aldon Morris’ book and in many others.)

d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/...

Cuddles and coffee. We all need a dose of unconditional love right now. These pups are future Guide Dogs for the blind.

Remember that at this point, the Trump Administration has researched the best arguments they have available to justify Pretti’s murder. Their best wonks and analysts were up all night designing a strategy.

It’s telling that their best arguments are devoid of fact and reason.

If Pretti’s gun accidentally discharged, 💯 guaranteed they would have secured the scene and searched for the bullet and casing.

Genuinely—can someone explain to me Bondi’s request for MN voting records?

In every state I know, it’s already public record whether you’re registered, for which party, and which elections you’ve participated in.

Are Bondi’s staff so incompetent that they don’t know this? Or is MN law unusual?

And I am intrigued by the idea that the US government would transfer billions of dollars to Greenlanders for a sovereign wealth fund, since it’s only fair.

End

Sources:

anthctoday.org/epicenter/publications/Mortality2021/AN_MortalityReport_web.pdf

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti....

www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices...

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Cancer rates in US:

Alaska Natives: 205.9
Overall population: 155.3
(Per 100k)

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These claims are patently false. Here’s the data on Native health

Native Life expectancy
Greenland: 74.0 for women, 69.2 for men
Alaska: 72.8 for women, for 68.1 men

Share of Native women involuntarily sterilized in US in 1970’s: one quarter

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Heart-shaped whale spray, for anyone who needs something good and beautiful to sustain them.

Greenland is a global model for Indigenous self-governance. Trump’s demands for the island threaten that. Historians say underpinning Trump's talk of national security lies a longstanding pattern of American entitlement to Native land.

Helpful explanation of why it’s important to think about US power plays over Greenland through the lens of Native politics.

Too much other news coverage has been built on a lot of presumptions about the people of Greenland and their desires.

grist.org/global-indig...

Former Native American concentration camp lies beneath current immigration detention center - ICT Fort Snelling, the site of a Dakota War era concentration camp, is once again being used to detain Indigenous people

Sometimes we talk about the enduring presence of genocidal institutions in a metaphorical way. But sometimes it’s physical.

ictnews.org/news/former-...

Ah, old familiar speech that non-Christians are monsters who don’t love children.