Featured Book - Spring 2008
CLOSING THE CIRCLE: ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN INDIAN COUNTRY
by James M. Grijalva
Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2008.
KF8210.N37 G75 2008 First Floor
Shelved in New Books first, then at call number location
From Carolina Academic Press:
This book analyzes how an anomalous confluence of federal environmental, administrative and Indian law exacerbates environmental injustice in Indian country, but also offers its most promising solution. The modern environmental law paradigm of federal-state partnerships falters in Indian country where state regulatory jurisdiction is constrained by federal Indian law. A resulting void of effective environmental regulation threatens the cultural survival of American Indian tribes, who face air and water contamination from a legacy of federally encouraged natural resource development. A potential solution for closing the circle of national environmental protection accords sovereign tribal governments a state-like status. The book examines comprehensively the tribal treatment-as-a-state approach first developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and later codified by Congress in amendments to most of the major environmental laws, as well as federal cases brought by states and non-Indians challenging the EPA’s and tribes’ authority to make binding value judgments about Indian country environmental protection.
James M. Grijalva is Kenneth & Frances Swenson Professor of Law and Director of the Tribal Environmental Law Project at the University of North Dakota School of Law.
