by Christine Trudeau
The Native American Rights Fund and the University of Colorado Law School have teamed up and launched a new online legal resource to help Tribal self-determination efforts during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
The new site hosts resources for applying human rights protections through the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, aimed at assisting Tribal leadership, lawyers, judges and council members.
University of Colorado Law School Professor Kristen Carpenter says amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, rights to ensure health protection s of Tribal citizens is at risk.
“We’ve seen for example some tribes set checkpoints or provide food and supplies for their members and sometimes the neighboring or surrounding governments are not entirely supportive of those efforts, to put it mildly. But those are cases where Indigenous people’s rights are really at stake. Tribes have jurisdiction over their land, have sovereignty, and they need those rights to be protected so that they can take care of their members now more than ever.
Carpenter says the site will expand their resource offerings more this summer with interactive webinars and model tribal codes, and more.
This story is a collaboration with National Native News and the Solutions Journalism Network
