Title: Native Americans and the Law : Native Americans Under Current United States Law
Headings: 
Native Americans and the Law: Native Americans Under Current United States Law
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Content: The Indian Civil Rights Act provides statutory, but not constitutional, limitations. Individuals who feel their Indian Civil Rights Act rights have been violated by a tribal government cannot bring a federal civil rights suit to challenge the allegedly violating act. Instead, as the Supreme Court made clear in Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U.S. 49 (1978), persons wishing to bring Indian Civil Rights Act claims may do so only in tribal court, and then only if the tribe has accorded that court jurisdiction. Congress has also limited the power of tribes by making tribal governments subject to certain laws of general application, for example, environmental protection laws. Where these laws fail to mention tribes and their application impinges on treaty  rights, courts must make individual deterrninations to assess whether a given law applies to a tribe. Congress has the power to abrogate Indian treaty rights, but when it does so it is liable to pay the tribe compensation under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Before a court will find a Fifth Amendment taking to have occurred it will look to Congress' intent. Current federal circuit court splits include tribal accountability under the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the federal collective bargaining laws. Since the late 1970s, the Supreme Court has also been an active participant in placing limits on the scope of tribal sovereign power. The Supreme Court is the architect and custodian of a federal common law doctrine called the "discovery doctrine."