scholarly journals Data as a Strategic Resource: Self-determination, Governance, and the Data Challenge for Indigenous Nations in the United States

Author(s):  
Stephanie Carroll Rainie ◽  
Jennifer Lee Schultz ◽  
Eileen Briggs ◽  
Patricia Riggs ◽  
Nancy Lynn Palmanteer-Holder

Data about Indigenous populations in the United States are inconsistent and irrelevant. Federal and state governments and researchers direct most collection, analysis, and use of data about U.S. Indigenous populations. Indigenous Peoples’ justified mistrust further complicates the collection and use of these data. Nonetheless, tribal leaders and communities depend on these data to inform decision making. Reliance on data that do not reflect tribal needs, priorities, and self-conceptions threatens tribal self-determination. Tribal data sovereignty through governance of data on Indigenous populations is long overdue. This article provides two case studies of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and their demographic and socioeconomic data initiatives to create locally and culturally relevant data for decision making.

Author(s):  
Stephen Cornell

Over the last three decades, Indigenous peoples in the CANZUS countries (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States) have been reclaiming self-government as an Indigenous right and practice. In the process, they have been asserting various forms of Indigenous nationhood. This article argues that this development involves a common set of activities on the part of Indigenous peoples: (1) identifying as a nation or a people (determining who the appropriate collective “self” is in self-determination and self-government); (2) organizing as a political body (not just as a corporate holder of assets); and (3) acting on behalf of Indigenous goals (asserting and exercising practical decision-making power and responsibility, even in cases where central governments deny recognition). The article compares these activities in the four countries and argues that, while contexts and circumstances differ, the Indigenous politics of self-government show striking commonalities across the four. Among those commonalities: it is a positional as opposed to a distributional politics; while not ignoring individual welfare, it measures success in terms of collective power; and it focuses less on what central governments are willing to do in the way of recognition and rights than on what Indigenous nations or communities can do for themselves.


2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (9) ◽  
pp. 1608-1627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea J. Ray ◽  
Gregg M. Garfin ◽  
Margaret Wilder ◽  
Marcela Vásquez-León ◽  
Melanie Lenart ◽  
...  

Abstract This article presents ongoing efforts to understand interactions between the North American monsoon and society in order to develop applications for monsoon research in a highly complex, multicultural, and binational region. The North American monsoon is an annual precipitation regime that begins in early June in Mexico and progresses northward to the southwestern United States. The region includes stakeholders in large urban complexes, productive agricultural areas, and sparsely populated arid and semiarid ecosystems. The political, cultural, and socioeconomic divisions between the United States and Mexico create a broad range of sensitivities to climate variability as well as capacities to use forecasts and other information to cope with climate. This paper highlights methodologies to link climate science with society and to analyze opportunities for monsoon science to benefit society in four sectors: natural hazards management, agriculture, public health, and water management. A list of stakeholder needs and a calendar of decisions is synthesized to help scientists link user needs to potential forecasts and products. To ensure usability of forecasts and other research products, iterative scientist–stakeholder interactions, through integrated assessments, are recommended. These knowledge-exchange interactions can improve the capacity for stakeholders to use forecasts thoughtfully and inform the development of research, and for the research community to obtain feedback on climate-related products and receive insights to guide research direction. It is expected that integrated assessments can capitalize on the opportunities for monsoon science to inform decision making and, in the best instances, reduce regional climate vulnerabilities and enhance regional sustainability.


2020 ◽  
pp. 003464462096603
Author(s):  
Stephen Cornell ◽  
Miriam Jorgensen

This article presents the concept of social inclusion as a means of addressing problems of poverty and social welfare and reviews the place of social inclusion in U.S. policies toward Indigenous peoples within U.S. boundaries. We argue that there are a number of problems with the present policy application of social inclusion to Indigenous peoples in the United States, including external conceptions of needs, individualization, an orientation to distributional as opposed to positional politics, and the conditionality of inclusion. We review some of the ways that Indigenous peoples are challenging the assumptions that underlie inclusionary policy goals. We then consider how a revised concept of social inclusion that comprehends the distinctiveness of Indigenous aspirations for self-determination, nationhood, and collective self-government might benefit not only Native Americans but the United States itself and how it might contribute to a postracial America. Our argument throughout is not with social inclusion as an ideal but with the particular version of it that has characterized late 20th and early 21st century policy toward Native peoples in the United States.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104420732110285
Author(s):  
Jonathan Martinis ◽  
Jason Harris ◽  
Dean Fox ◽  
Peter Blanck

In the last decade, and especially after the 2013 Virginia court case of Ross and Ross v. Hatch, there has been a dramatic increase in knowledge, use, and legal recognition of supported decision-making (SDM) in the United States. SDM is a methodology in which people work with trusted friends, family members, and professionals who help them understand their situations and choices so they may make their own decisions and direct their lives. After the Hatch case, in which a young woman with Down syndrome defeated a petition for permanent guardianship by demonstrating that she uses SDM, this methodology has increasingly been considered and used as an alternative to guardianship to enable people to retain their legal rights and make life choices to the maximum extent possible. This article reviews the guardianship laws of the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Using criteria we developed, in light of the findings and values expressed in Hatch, we assessed the extent to which those laws recognize or encourage the use of SDM as an alternative to guardianship and as a means to enhance self-determination for people in guardianship. We then offer recommendations for future SDM research, policy, education, and advocacy efforts.


Author(s):  
Steven Hurst

The United States, Iran and the Bomb provides the first comprehensive analysis of the US-Iranian nuclear relationship from its origins through to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. Starting with the Nixon administration in the 1970s, it analyses the policies of successive US administrations toward the Iranian nuclear programme. Emphasizing the centrality of domestic politics to decision-making on both sides, it offers both an explanation of the evolution of the relationship and a critique of successive US administrations' efforts to halt the Iranian nuclear programme, with neither coercive measures nor inducements effectively applied. The book further argues that factional politics inside Iran played a crucial role in Iranian nuclear decision-making and that American policy tended to reinforce the position of Iranian hardliners and undermine that of those who were prepared to compromise on the nuclear issue. In the final chapter it demonstrates how President Obama's alterations to American strategy, accompanied by shifts in Iranian domestic politics, finally brought about the signing of the JCPOA in 2015.


Author(s):  
Richard Gowan

During Ban Ki-moon’s tenure, the Security Council was shaken by P5 divisions over Kosovo, Georgia, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. Yet it also continued to mandate and sustain large-scale peacekeeping operations in Africa, placing major burdens on the UN Secretariat. The chapter will argue that Ban initially took a cautious approach to controversies with the Council, and earned a reputation for excessive passivity in the face of crisis and deference to the United States. The second half of the chapter suggests that Ban shifted to a more activist pressure as his tenure went on, pressing the Council to act in cases including Côte d’Ivoire, Libya, and Syria. The chapter will argue that Ban had only a marginal impact on Council decision-making, even though he made a creditable effort to speak truth to power over cases such as the Central African Republic (CAR), challenging Council members to live up to their responsibilities.


Prospects ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 181-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard P. Segal

“Technology Spurs Decentralization Across the Country.” So reads a 1984 New York Times article on real-estate trends in the United States. The contemporary revolution in information processing and transmittal now allows large businesses and other institutions to disperse their offices and other facilities across the country, even across the world, without loss of the policy- and decision-making abilities formerly requiring regular physical proximity. Thanks to computers, word processors, and the like, decentralization has become a fact of life in America and other highly technological societies.


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