Indigenous Culture in Contemporary Indigenous Government: Some Examples from Native Nations in the United States
Stephen Cornell and Miriam Jorgensen
This paper is less concerned with the right to govern than with the how of governing. Its focus is on the Indigenous experience in the United States: How are Native nations in the U.S. incorporating aspects of culture—including their own governmental traditions—in building effective governments today? It is organized around six topics or tools of governing: constitutions, citizenship, dispute resolution and the provision of justice, law-making, the selection of leaders, and child welfare. Within each section the authors offer examples of Indigenous nations considering—and usually drawing on—their own cultural resources to address contemporary governmental tasks.
The choice of topics and examples is not meant to be exhaustive. The purpose is to illustrate and capture at least some of the diversity of Indigenous nations’ efforts to draw on their own rich governmental principles and traditions in addressing the challenge of governing effectively on behalf of their own purposes.
The full article can be accessed here: Cornell & Jorgensen – Indigenous Culture in Contemporary Indigenous Government: Some Examples from Native Nations in the United States
Cornell is Faculty Chair of the Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona where he is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Emeritus Director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy. He also is co-founder and Emeritus Director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development (today the Harvard Kennedy School Project on Indigenous Governance and Development).
Jorgensen is Research Director of both the Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona and the Harvard Project on Indigenous Governance and Development.