Constitution -making: Law, power, and kinship in Crow country

The central question of my dissertation research is; what role does the 2001 Crow Indian Nation constitution play in the social and political lives of the Crow people? I answer this question using ethnographic methods such as interviewing and participant-observation. Through living on the Crow Indian reservation in south-central Montana from August 2004 - December 2005, I learned that this social process of constitution-making contributes to our understanding of the way power is negotiated and structured in the Crow community. Traditional tribal law, U.S. federal law, and Crow kinship norms affect power distribution with the community. As well, I analyze the relationship between this new government structure and the Crow people. Through the utilization of ethnohistorical methodology, I compare this process to the tribal constitution making process of 1948 and learn how tribal political power has changed over the past 50 years. Constitution-making is crucial to the Crow Nation's political identity and to the government-to-government relationship the nation has to the U.S. government. This constitution process acts as a lens through which one can perceive the political worldview of the Crow Indian nation and this worldview has or has not shifted over the past fifty years. Analyzing the social process contributes to our theoretical understanding of how American Indian nations are negotiating power within their communities, identifying and utilizing symbols of tradition, and using constitutions as resistance mechanisms struggling to retain their sovereignty under an always changing and self-interested U.S. federal system.