Navajo Courts and Navajo Common Law: A Tradition of Tribal Self-Governance (review)

In Navajo Courts and Navajo Common Law: A Tradition of Tribal Self-Governance, Raymond D. Austin uses history to explain how the Navajo Nation courts apply foundational Navajo doctrines to contemporary legal issues. He explains important Navajo foundational principles— (beauty and harmony), k'é (unity), and k'éí (clanship)—within a cultural context and in legal analysis. Austin discusses how Navajo court judges apply these foundational principles in every important area of legal life in the Navajo Nation. In addition to detailed case studies, Austin provides a broad view of tribal law, documenting the development of Navajo tribal courts. He calls for Indigenous peoples to draw on foundational concepts and principles to achieve self-determination, solve community problems, and live as distinct entities in control of their direction.

For the past five hundred years, Indigenous peoples in the Americas have had to cope with trauma and oppression; today we see in all Indigenous communities how they are continuing as distinct peoples. In the Navajo Nation, the court system that was developed is one example of how the Navajo people have worked to ensure that important foundational principles are still at the heart of their laws and way of life. Austin has contributed an insightful and thought-provoking testament to the Indigenous fight for continuation and self-determination. Without these types of stories in all Indigenous communities, the hope for decolonization and self-determination is less bright. Few texts describe and analyze how Indigenous peoples use their foundational pillars of philosophy to interpret laws impacting their peoples in the twenty-first century. This text accomplishes it extremely well.

The book is divided into five chapters, including an introduction, a conclusion, and a foreword written by Robert A. Williams Jr. The introductory and concluding chapters emphasize that the Navajo court system today is "built upon transcendent legal principles that seek to foster harmony, peacefulness, solidarity, and kinship between all living beings and nature in the world" (xiii). The introduction and conclusion provide the necessary reflections on the meaning of these Navajo principles in the legal system. Navajo common law is the heart of Navajo jurisprudence, and these two chapters demonstrate the tools of Navajo restorative justice. These chapters also provide the reader with key thoughts on what the Navajo people have developed and how they, not the United States or the Western world, are directing this court system.

Chapters 1 and 2 provide the contextual background to the Navajo Nation court system and the foundational Navajo law principles. The information on Navajo history, the historical formation of the Navajo Nation court system, and the functionality of the court today is insightful, although the experiences of Navajo people in dealing with the court system in the past are missing. How did the Navajo people view the foreign court system put in place prior to the nation creating its own court system in the 1950s and 1960s? How the court uses the various foundational elements to interpret and analyze legal issues is important, yet the impacts it has had on Navajo society are equally integral to knowing how the Navajo Nation has shaped its way of life and dealt with the consequences of oppression. These foundational elements and the way judges ensure Navajo doctrines live up to their essence are both instrumental and interesting; however, the impact these doctrines have on the people themselves is lacking in the text.

Chapters 3 through 5 explain the foundational elements of , k'é, and k'éí and how the Navajo court system interprets these principles in all legal matters. Austin's explanation of what these foundational elements mean in Navajo thought and his detailed case studies illustrating how the court system has utilized these elements provide the reader with a basic overview of occurrences in the Navajo court system. Although the case studies are needed to understand how the courts use , k'é, and k'éí in their legal analysis, an appendix of all the cases discussed in the book is...