Media contact: Craig Baker, Udall Center Communications Lead | csbaker@arizona.edu 

TUCSON, Ariz. – The Indigenous Governance and Direct Services arm of the University of Arizona’s Native Nations Institute (NNI) brings its Remaking Tribal Constitutions Seminar to the Tohono O’odham Nation on July 15-16, 2026.

The intimate, two-day event invites current and future Native American leaders from across the United States to assess their current structures of Tribal governance and determine the best course for writing, rewriting, encoding, and implementing constitutional documents for their nations. Content is delivered by experienced Tribal leaders and expert scholars of Indigenous governance and Native Nation Building.

Registration for the event recently sold out, with 70 Tribal leaders from 18 Native nations across North America reserving seats. Media personnel are invited to speak with attending leaders about their constitutional reform and other governance efforts. Inquire for details.

Constitutions: An Indigenous Tradition

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Constitutions are documents or agreements that set rules and guidelines for how a nation governs itself. They can include information about how powers are divided, how decisions are made, how a nation relates to and interacts with other nations, how citizens are expected to treat each other, and how a nation should engage with the natural world, among many other things.

Though often thought of as intrinsically western documents, Indigenous Peoples have employed constitutions through a variety of mechanisms for millenia.

“In many ways, constitutions are… an Indigenous tradition,” says Steve Cornell, director emeritus of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and co-founder of the Center’s Native Nations Institute.

• Cornell points out that the Iroquois Confederacy, an allyship of six Indigenous tribes originating in what is today known as the northern United States and southern Canada, organized itself through an agreement that was depicted pictorally in a shell wampum belt that effectively served as a constitution for the Tribal alliance. 
   
• Though it has no set of written laws, the Pueblo of Cochiti operates from a long tradition of oral history that details how leaders are selected, what the responsibilities of those leaders are, and how decisions are made, meaning that their traditional methods of government as passed down from generation to generation function as a working oral constitution.
   
• Though it has yet to adopt a formal written constitution, the largest Native American reservation in the United States by both land and population, the Navajo Nation, operates by a largely unwritten code which they call beehaz’aanii, meaning “higher law.” This code has functioned as a type of constitution for the Nation for generations and has been affirmed by the Nation’s Supreme Court as an “unwritten constitutional law.”

These methods of governance may not align exactly with western conceptions of constitutions, but they and countless other examples demonstrate how Indigenous nations have established order and governed themselves since time immemorial. There are literally hundreds of examples of Indigenous constitutions that predate and, in some cases, may have even informed the drafting of the constitution of the United States.

An Exercise in Sovereignty

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A first step in the direction of self-determination for U.S. Native American tribes following centuries of policies focused on termination, relocation and, later, attempts to force Native Americans to assimilate into western ways of life, the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934 encouraged tribes to establish formal constitutions and democratically elected leadership.

In an effort to ostensibly assist tribes to adopt western-style constitutions, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (then the Office of Indian Affairs) created a template constitution modeled off of the U.S. constitution for Tribal governments to employ in service of expediting the process of ratifying their official foundational documents.

That template became known by the shorthand “IRA constitution,” and though as much as 60 percent of the 575 federally recognized Native American tribes in the U.S. eventually adopted some version of this constitution according to the National Congress of American Indians, that document was not without its criticisms. For instance, one clause in the template IRA constitution required approval by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior for the passage of any Tribal laws.

Dozens of tribes have since revised their constitutions to remove the Secretary of the Interior clause or have rewritten their constitutions entirely, a process which can be logistically exhausting and fraught with political peril.

Today, NNI’s Remaking Tribal Constitutions Seminar brings together dozens of Tribal leaders from across the U.S. to discuss and work through best practices in Indigenous constitution making and remaking among a group of similarly motivated peers and colleagues, all of whom are facing similar challenges despite the vast differences in culture and governing practices between their nations.

“Bringing tribes together in these forums really is so magical,” said Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo Chief Operations Officer Linda Austin at the 2024 Remaking Tribal Constitutions Seminar. “It’s really a blessing to be able to exchange our knowledge, our ideas, our experiences, our journeys to make the path better… for our Tribal members, for our communities, and to set the course for the future,” she added.

The Remaking Tribal Constitutions Seminar takes place every other year in central or southern Arizona.

Learn more about the 2026 Remaking Tribal Constitutions Seminar here.

Contact Craig Baker, Udall Center Communications Lead, for details or to arrange your visit at csbaker@arizona.edu.

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The Native Nations Institute (NNI) is the leading research, education, and outreach organization supporting the nation-rebuilding efforts of Indigenous Peoples worldwide as they seek to strengthen their internal governance capacities and realize their own political, economic, and community development objectives. Located on Tohono O’odham Nation traditional homelands, NNI was founded in 2001 by The University of Arizona and the Morris K. Udall and Stewart L. Udall Foundation as a self-determination, self-governance, and development resource for Native nations. It is a program of the university's Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy.