Research
Project research and policy analysis are available in a variety of forms. Papers and publications may be searched via keyword or by using the filtered search tool in the Research Repository.
Latest Publications
2023
Misconceptions about Native nations and their sovereignty create obstacles for tribal governments and can lead to discrimination against tribal members. But things are changing in Palm Springs, California. In a groundbreaking partnership...
When the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that state and local governments could not collect taxes on non-Indian homes and businesses built on trust lands, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community moved quickly to establish its own tax...
Research Types
Working Paper
- picture_as_pdf WP 26-013
- download Native American and Alaska Native Voting Behavior Across the Electoral Process
Although scholarship on Native American and Alaska Native (NA/AN) political participation has expanded, most studies focus on voter turnout or a single election, leaving limited evidence on how Native citizens navigate the broader electoral process over...
- picture_as_pdf WP 26-003
- download The Inherent Authority of Tribal Nations to Regulate Airspace Within Reservation Boundaries (PDF)
The rise of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), commonly known as drones, has created one of the most significant jurisdictional questions in Federal Indian Law: whether Tribal Nations possess sovereign authority over the airspace above reservation lands...
- picture_as_pdf WP 26-014
- download Beyond the Conventional Narrative: Economic Heterogeneity and Human Capital Among American Indians
There is substantial heterogeneity in economic, educational, and health outcomes among American Indians, shaped by factors such as geographic location, resource endowments, and historical experiences with federal policies. There is clear evidence that...
- picture_as_pdf WP 26-004
- download Fiduciary Sovereignty: How Institutional Risk Matrices Shape Indigenous Economic Self-Determination in Northern Resource Corridors
Conventional political economy treats the state as the principal architect of resource-corridor development, steering capital through permitting regimes, tax incentives and public subsidy. This paper argues that in Canada the operative constraint on...
- picture_as_pdf WP 26-015
- download Ethnic Tourism, Culture and Sustainability: Yi-Nuosu Communities Perspectives, China
This study delves into how crucial it is to weave sustainability into the early phases of tourism development, particularly within the Yi-Nuosu communities in Liangshan Prefecture, located in Southwest China. It conducts an in-depth exploration of the...
- picture_as_pdf WP 26-005
- download Indigenous Data Sovereignty: From Recognition to Enforcement | Datum Nullius, Tribal Jurisdiction, and Operational Methods for Data Governance Gates
Indigenous data sovereignty is often framed as ethical governance or system design. This article reframes it as a problem of public law: legal institutions recognize Indigenous sovereignty while allocating practical authority over data to agencies...
- picture_as_pdf WP 26-006.pdf
- download Statelessness as a Barrier to Self-Determination: The Rohingya Experience, Refugee-Led Governance, and the Politics of Belonging
The Rohingya people of Myanmar represent the most extensively documented case of constructed statelessness in the contemporary world — the deliberate engineering of legal nonpersonhood as an instrument of ethnic persecution. Stripped of citizenship under...
- picture_as_pdf WP 26-007.pdf
- download Who Defines Development? Self-Determination and the Missing Dimension of Development Measurement
This paper argues that communities should have a role not just in implementing development projects, but in deciding what counts as success in the first place. Today, that judgment is usually made elsewhere, by governments, donors, or researchers, using...
- picture_as_pdf WP 26-008.pdf
- download Native-Settler Violence and Weak Institutions on the American Frontier
We have built a comprehensive dataset of settler/Indigenous violent encounters covering more than 200 tribes in 21 western states over the nineteenth century. During this period, Native American and settler deaths were concentrated in the Southwest and...
- picture_as_pdf WP 26-009.pdf
- download New Echoes of Deep Mexico? Indigenous Identity and Its Enduring Imprints
This chapter revisits Guillermo Bonfil Batalla's México Profundo (1987) through the lens of contemporary empirical historical economics. In that work, Bonfil Batalla argued that beneath a Westernized facade of modern Mexico lies a "Deep Mexico": a living...
- picture_as_pdf WP 26-010.pdf
- download Reimagining Tamang Sovereignty: Indigenous Resurgence, the Politics of Recognition, and Plurinational Futures in Nepal
This paper examines Tamang self-determination in Nepal through the interconnected lenses of the politics of recognition, Indigenous resurgence, internal colonialism, decolonial thought, and epistemic justice. It argues that the Tamang struggle is not...
- picture_as_pdf WP 26-011
- description Data Centers and Rural Environmental Disamenities: Issues in Indian Country
Data centers, built rapidly to process artificial-intelligence workloads, impose local costs while their benefits accrue largely elsewhere: higher electricity prices, heavy water use for cooling, and, through fossil-fuel backup power and grid demand...
