Message from the Executive Director THE FEDERAL LAW CONCERNING
INDIAN AND ALASKA NATIVE LANDS has long been unworkable and
extremely unfair by American standards of justice. We are
working with Indian and Alaska Native nations in our Native Land
Law Project to spell out what a fair framework of law would be.
For Example, it is often incorrectly said that the “doctrine of
discovery” gave ownership of all the land in this country,
particularly all Native lands, to the European nation that
“discovered” the area. The unfairness of this concept is
obvious, and this “doctrine” has never, in fact, been the law.
Nevertheless, courts and government officials routinely apply
this mistaken and unfair rule. Another example is the Supreme
Court’s ruling that the federal government may take aboriginal
Native lands without compensation or due process of law.
Congress frequently deals with Native property by enacting
legislation that would be forbidden by the U.S. Constitution if
it affected anyone else’s property. This lega