Issues

Ending Violence Against Native Women

In the United States, violence against indigenous women has reached unprecedented levels on tribal lands and in Alaska Native villages. More than 4 in 5 American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence, and more than 1 in 2 have experienced sexual violence. Alaska Native women continue to suffer the highest rate of forcible sexual assault and have reported rates of domestic violence up to 10 times higher than in the rest of the United States. Though available data is limited, the number of missing and murdered American Indian and Alaska Native women and the lack of a...
Environmental Protection

Our work with Indian peoples has for years drawn connections between indigenous land rights, environmental protection and human rights.  In most indigenous cultures, separating these issues makes no sense.  Our Purpose Statement points out the intersection of these threats to indigenous peoples:

"Indian nations and tribes and other indigenous communities throughout the world are afflicted by poverty, poor health and discrimination. ... When indigenous peoples are deprived of their ways of life and their ties to the earth, they suffer. Many have disappeared completely."
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Human Rights

For too long, indigenous peoples around the world have been marginalized and subject to unjust and discriminatory legal systems of states. Large disparities in economic and political power make indigenous peoples especially vulnerable to wrong-doing. For more than 30 years, we have worked to build a legal framework to help indigenous peoples win recognition of their human rights, including: right to exist as distinct peoples and cultures; right to be free from discrimination and forced assimilation; and right of self-determination and other essential rights.

We invite you to review...
Land Rights

Our work with Native and indigenous peoples has always drawn the connection between indigenous land rights, environmental protection and human rights. When indigenous peoples are deprived of their ties to the earth and their ways of life, they suffer. The effects of poverty, poor health, discrimination, and grave human rights abuses have many Native peoples and cultures at risk of disappearing completely.

The most important thing we can do to help them is to help them protect and hold on to their lands – lands they need to survive physically, culturally, and economically. ...
Law Reform

Changing the unjust and unworkable legal framework applied to Native tribes is the core of our work in the United States. Indian and Alaska Native nations live under a system of federal law that is unconstitutional, obsolete, and so deeply flawed that it makes it all but impossible for Native nations to improve their economic and social conditions.

Clarifying and improving current federal Indian law is absolutely necessary for Indian nations to gain meaningful control of their lands and improve their economic and social well-being. Tribes could solve their own problems if they had a...
Native Sovereignty and Self-Governance

The existence of Native cultures and Native nations and the ability of these nations to deal with problems and increase social well-being are all dependent on the existence and effectiveness of Native governments often called tribal governments.  This is particularly true in the United States and Canada, but it is also true elsewhere in the Americas where Indian governments or social mechanisms receive little legal recognition.  Thus, we defend and assist Native or indigenous governments when their powers are attacked or threatened.  In 2007, we succeeded in winning UN General Assembly...
Protecting Sacred Sites

Almost by definition, Native American religions and spirituality are rooted in the land.  Sacred sites often provide the physical foundation for a tribe’s creation stories, the thread that connects each new generation to their ancestors and knits them into the fabric of tribal culture and identity.  The protection of Native sacred sites, and defending the ability to conduct rituals and ceremonies at these sites in privacy and without disruption, are therefore vital to maintaining and passing from generation to generation the distinct identities, traditions, and histories of Native peoples...