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The Native American Rights Fund (NARF),
based in Boulder, Colorado, is the oldest and
largest nonprofit national Indian rights organization
in the country. Since its establishment
in 1970, NARF has grown from a three-lawyer
staff to a firm of forty full-time staff members,
with fourteen attorneys. Most of the attorneys
and nearly all support staff personnel are Native
American. NARF has represented more
than 200 Indian tribes located in thirty-one
states, including many Native people who are
Indigenous to the Great Plains. The hundreds
of cases it has handled have involved every
major problem and issue in the field of Native
American law. The Native American Rights
Fund is governed by a thirteen-member board
of directors composed entirely of Native people.
This board charts the direction of NARF's activities
by setting priorities and policies. Board
members are chosen on the basis of their involvement
in Native affairs, their knowledge
of the legal problems facing Native Americans
throughout the country, and, most importantly,
their dedication to the well-being and survival
of Native Americans.
Today, more than fifty-five Indian tribes are an important and integral part of the economic, political, and cultural life of the Great Plains. Most have treaties with the United States that set forth property, political, and legal rights. Each Great Plains state contains Indian reservations that were established by treaties or other federal action and are governed by tribal governments. From legal and political standpoints, each reservation in the United States is a nation within a nation. The power of tribal governments and the jurisdiction over reservation lands among tribal, state, and federal governments are integral aspects of Great Plains governance and are continually being refined by litigation or legislation. At the same time, the protection of and control over the natural resources located on Indian reservations such as water, oil, and natural gas are vitally important to Indian owners. Tribal people are citizens of their respective Indian tribes, the United States, and their respective states, and they aspire to rights of self-determination, tribal sovereignty, cultural rights, and human rights similar to those sought by other Indigenous peoples throughout the world.
NARF attorneys work to tear down barriers
to the fulfillment of these rights in Great
Plains courtrooms and legislatures. For example,
NARF has worked to restore land and federal
recognition to the Alabama-Coushatta
Tribe, the Kickapoo Tribe, and the Ysleta del
Sur Pueblo in Texas and to restore tribal jurisdiction
to the Winnebago Tribe in Nebraska.
In Oklahoma, NARF has worked to recognize
the reservation status of Pawnee lands, to clarify
Osage tribal government status, and to
confirm Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal oil and
gas taxation authority. In the area of human
rights, NARF has represented Native American
inmates in jails and prisons in North and
South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
It provided legal representation to
tribes located in Oklahoma and North Dakota
to protect tribal burial grounds from desecration
and to repatriate human remains that
had been removed from tribal graves and carried
away to museums, historical societies,
and other institutions. NARF has also represented
tribes and students in South Dakota,
North Dakota, Oklahoma, and eastern Colorado
on education issues relating to public,
tribal, and Bureau of Indian Affairs schools.
NARF has represented traditional religious
practitioners in protecting their freedom of
worship at sacred sites in eastern Wyoming, in
prisons, and during the worship ceremonies
of the Native American Church. These issues
illustrate the problems that confront Great
Plains Indian tribes in the United States today
as Native peoples strive to live according to
their traditional ways of life and the aspirations
of their forefathers.
See also NATIVE AMERICANS: Reservations.