I go to the NACC all the time. The Native community was my first home at Stanford. Karen Beistman was one of the first friendly faces to help anchor me in a sea of trouble my freshman year, so it was incredibly interesting to finally hear her lecture in her own element on American Indian law in that space. My history teachers in secondary school were better at taking time to discuss people of color and their perspectives in U.S. history and government, but I had still never heard of the Supreme Court cases that she went over. The way she talked about Marshall was particularly complex — she seemed to hold a great amount of respect for this old white man who in attempts to compromise and give Native Americans some semblance of land rights essentially created a “big brother” system of native nations within the U.S., but she was also explicitly critical of how these decisions impacted tribes. After knowing about the hundreds of broken treaties between indigenous tribes and the U.S. Federal government, the fact that the conquests of indigenous people, particularly the Unites States’ conquest of North America has been the largest “legal” — in which I refer to the use of laws, judges, and a paper trail — conquest in the world struck me as well.
(I'm sorry I didn't take any pretty pictures!)
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