Claiming Turtle Mountain's Constitution ─ The History, Legacy, and Future of a Tribal Nation's Founding Documents

"In this work, Keith Richotte explores Native American tribal constitutional history in order to, as he argues, decenter the U.S. federal actors, laws, and policies from the study of tribal constitutionalism and instead refocus attention back onto tribalmembers, underlining their agency and importance. Richotte uses the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians as a case study and follows the tribe's history in forming its own 1932 constitution, detailing every step and decision taken, good and bad, in its creation. He shows that the tribe's dominant political goal was pursuing a claim against the federal government for the damages it suffered during the establishment of its reservation and the negotiations for a treaty. However, political forces in and outside the tribe pushed the decision to a compromise, and the tribe adopted a constitution that limited their own authority while keeping open the possibility of later claims against the U.S. Federal government. Importantly, all of this took place beforethe Indian Reorganization Act - the piece of federal legislation most associated with modern tribal constitutionalism - became law, making Turtle Mountain's path to its own constitution a story of tribal agency, one that disrupts the commonly held idea that IRA lies at the epicenter of tribal constitutionalism"--