Federal recognition can be obtained through acts of Congress, court decisions, or a seven-pronged petition process, which involves a byzantine bureaucratic procedure that has been criticized by scholars and Indigenous rights activists as representing yet another colonial tool to deprive tribes of key resources. … “The evidence component is just impossible to fulfill,” says Maria Montenegro, assistant professor of [global and international studies and] Indigenous and Native American studies at the University of California, Irvine, who’s worked with several tribal nations to file their petition for federal recognition.

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