"In the beginning of the fall semester, you can usually spot the first-year law students in the hallway — bright and optimistic, true believers in the U.S. legal system. If you look closely, it is often just as easy to identify the American Indian students. Not by the stereotypical images portrayed by popular culture, but by looking into their eyes. They know the truth about the U.S. legal system — that the doors of justice are closed to Indian nations.

The recent U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of the Oneida Indian Nation land claims appeal is a case in point. The federal courts acknowledged that New York took Indian land in violation of federal law. But rather than dispensing justice, the courts focus on the “disruptive nature” of Indian land claims. The jurists cringe, contemplating an imagined disruption that towns and counties might suffer if Indian nations were to win their case — despite the fact that the only remedy considered was financial damages from the state and federal government to compensate for the illegal taking of land.

Why is there no weighing of the disruption to the Indian nations, such as the loss of millions of acres? What about the disruption caused by the Thomas Indian Boarding School, run by the state from 1875 to 1957, where Indian children, sometimes forcibly removed from their homes and separated from their siblings and parents, suffered abuse and a regimented, military-type lifestyle?"

Get the Story:
Carrie E. Garrow: Indians shut out of the courts of the colonizers (The Syracuse Post-Standard 11/17)