Coquille Indian Tribe

Coquille Indian Tribe Constitution

Year

Location: Oregon

Population: 968

Date of Constitution: 1991, as amended 2008

Preamble: Our ancestors since the beginning of time have lived and died on the Coquille aboriginal lands and waters.  The Coquille Indian Tribe is and has always been a sovereign self-governing power dedicated to:  

1. Preservation of Coquille Indian Culture and Tribal Identity.

2. Promotion of social and economic welfare of Coquille Indians.  

3. Enhancement of our common resources.  

4. Maintenance of peace and order.  

5. Safeguard individual rights of tribal members.  

Our ancestors have passed on to us a sacred trust and obligation to maintain and safeguard these goals.  In recognition of this sacred responsibility, we, the members of the Coquille Indian Tribe, being a federally recognized Indian tribe pursuant to the Coquille Indian Restoration Act of June 28, 1989, 103 Stat. 91, hereby adopt this constitution in order to re-affirm our tribal government and to secure the rights and powers inherent in our sovereign status as guaranteed to us by federal and tribal laws.

Native Nations
Topics
Citation

Coquille Indian Tribe. 1991. "Constitution of Coquille Indian Tribe." North Bend, OR.

Coquille Indian Tribe: Preamble Excerpt

Year

Preamble:

Our ancestors since the beginning of time have lived and died on the Coquille aboriginal lands and waters.

The Coquille Indian Tribe is and has always been a sovereign selfgoverning power dedicated to:
 1. Preservation of Coquille Indian Culture and Tribal Identity.
 2. Promotion of social and economic welfare of Coquille Indians.
 3. Enhancement of our common resources.
 4. Maintenance of peace and order.
 5. Safeguard individual rights of tribal members.

Our ancestors have passed on to us a sacred trust and obligation to maintain and safeguard these goals.
 
In recognition of this sacred responsibility, we, the members of the Coquille Indian Tribe, being a federally recognized Indian tribe pursuant to the Coquille Indian Restoration Act of June 28, 1989, 103 Stat. 91, hereby adopt this constitution in order to re-affirm our tribal government and to secure the rights and powers inherent in our sovereign status as guaranteed to us by federal and tribal laws. 

Native Nations
Topics
Citation

Coquille Indian Tribe. 1991. "Constitution of Coquille Indian Tribe." North Bend, OR.

Coquille: Southwest Oregon Research Project (SWORP)

Year

Driven by the belief that possessing historical documents and archival collections is essential for cultural self-determination, the Coquille Indian Tribe partnered with the University of Oregon and the Smithsonian Institution to launch the Southwest Oregon Research Project (SWORP) in 1995. Through SWORP, over 110,000 pages of cultural, linguistic, and historical documents have been collected and placed in a central archive. In 1997 and again in 2001, SWORP held potlatches in which 44 tribes were given copies of the collection. Today, these documents help tribal scholars develop and present a culturally sensitive and historically accurate body of knowledge about northwest tribes.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

"Southwest Oregon Research Project (SWORP)". Honoring Nations: 2002 Honoree. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2003. Report. 

Permissions

This Honoring Nations report is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. 

Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board

Year

Serving tribes in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board (NPAIHB) was created in 1972 to increase tribes’ ability to exercise control over the design and development of tribal health care delivery systems. Governed by tribal government delegates, NPAIHB facilitates intertribal coordination and promotes intergovernmental consultation. A leader in data collection and advocacy, NPAIHB also administers the first and largest tribal epidemiology center.

Resource Type
Citation

"Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board". Honoring Nations: 2003 Honoree. The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2004. Report.

Permissions

This Honoring Nations report is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development.

Miriam Jorgensen: Considering People-Made Law in Your Constitution (Presentation Highlight)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

In this highlight from the presentation "Key Things a Constitution Should Address: 'How Do We Make Law?'," Miriam Jorgensen lays out some of the different ways that Native nations can provide mechanisms for citizens of those nations to make laws or change laws governing those nations.

Resource Type
Citation

Jorgensen, Miriam. "Considering People-Made Law in Your Constitution (Presentation Highlight)." Tribal Constitutions seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 2, 2014. Presentation highlight.

"So what if a representative council isn't the only place you want that law made? Here critically I'm going to point out that there might be lots of decisions that you decide are perfectly appropriate to depute to a legislative council, to a representative council of some sort. But there may be certain kinds of decisions that you don't want to give over to them, that as a community, as a people you think there are certain kinds of decisions that you want to have broader agreement on and that's where a general council decision or a decision of the entire body of the nation, of all the voting age citizens or whatever, might be something that you want to make a provision for in your constitution.

I will say this one caveat, which is the first point above there. If general councils are the only way you're making law, that every time you want to make a new decision and you take it to the entire voting public, most research evidence proves...suggests...I shouldn't say proves because all that research do is sort of say, "˜Here's the general trend that we see out there.' Most research suggests that if you take most decisions to a general council, all decisions to the general council, that's a recipe for instability. There's just in a sense too much authority given over to kind of who showed up in the high school gym on any given night. But very successful Indigenous constitutions or other kinds of non-Indigenous constitutions too do have certain kinds of decisions that they say, "˜Yeah, this needs to go to a wider public.'

Now for a lot of native nations, one of the decisions that almost always goes to a broader public are decisions about land. So when you look across Native nation constitutions, Indigenous constitutions, and you see, okay, here's the powers of the tribal council or whatever the representative legislative body is, the congress, again, a council or a legislature, whatever it's going to be termed, there's still almost always when there are decisions to be made about purchasing land, selling land, changing the use of land, those go to a broader body, to a general council of some sort. So that's one way.

Another newer kind of provision we see in some of the very modern tribal constitutions might be called referendum or initiative and these are not quite the same as a general council meeting, but it comes from sort of the, I guess, the progressive and reform movement where basically even in non-Indigenous nations people said, "˜Well, individuals should have a voice. Individuals should be able to challenge their governments not just at election time but should be able to challenge and say, 'Hey, my representatives on the council didn't carry forth a piece of legislation that I would have liked to have seen'.' And initiative and referendum provide an opportunity for people to get enough signatures and then push a piece of legislation forward themselves as a population. So some constitutions provide for that kind of effort as well. And I've provided some examples in the handout first of limited general council power.

So here from the Coquille Indian Nation, where they've given the opportunity to the general council to make certain kinds of decisions, they're going to elect the tribal council, they can amend the constitution and they can make advisory recommendations. There isn't a listing here about land but again that shows you providing a general council with some limited legislative authority."

Here's an example from Skokomish [Tribal Nation], where they have an initiative provision and I love this initiative provision because it basically says, "˜Yeah, yeah, we know that people may still want to come forward and make law and not just have the council do all of that for us,' but look at this, they say, "˜An initiative can't just be a way to destabilize government. You can't just use an initiative to go out there and say, 'Oh, hey, that council, they didn't do what I wanted. There, I'm just going to bring an initiative forward and make law without them'.' Skokomish says, "˜I recognize that I want people to be or we was a nation recognize we want people to be able to make law and to put it out there, but they need to have 60 percent of the number of people who cast ballots in the last election sign a petition for this initiative and then it has to pass by two-thirds of all persons who voted in that election.' So it's a pretty high bar, right? It says, "˜This is going to...you can pass people-made law, but it has to meet a pretty high standard before it...otherwise it's going to be too de-stabilizing to government.'

Just a little aside, a lot of political scientists...I do economics and political science is my sort of academic degrees...a lot of political scientists look at California and say, "˜California doesn't do this well enough.' What do we know about California? Constantly they're having these referenda and initiatives and a lot of people said that California has too low of a bar, it allows too much of that disruption of the day to day flow of political business to go on by setting the bar too low. So it's too easy in a sense for the populace to kind of disrupt the government business by forcing these things forward.

So as a tribal nation with an even smaller population, I think it's really important to consider, yeah, it might be nice to have people-made law and to have provisions for that in your constitution, but really take seriously this notion of which kinds of things are you going to depute to a representative council, which kinds of things are you going to depute to a regularly convened general council and which opportunities do you really want to give to initiative and referendum. So that's a set of allocational decisions you need to be making in your constitution."

Ore. tribal courts deliver 'restorative justice'

Year

For years, Judge Donald Costello sentenced offenders to jail and prison terms, only to see them back in his courtroom with nothing to show for their time served. Costello doesn't work that way anymore. Instead, he practices an innovative spin on the judicial system that has become an effective restorative-justice program...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Richardson, Tyler. "Ore. tribal courts deliver 'restorative justice'." Associated Press, February 16, 2012. Article. (http://www.bendbulletin.com/news/1355312-151/tribal-courts..., accessed February 17, 2012)

Two Spirit/LGBT Rights Toolkit for Tribal Governments Introduced

Year

A first-of-its-kind guide complete with sample legal language is now available for tribal governments to adopt or amend their laws to recognize the rights of all their citizens, including Two Spirit and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people...

Resource Type
Citation

Toensing, Gale Courey. "Two Spirit/LGBT Rights Toolkit for Tribal Governments Introduced." Indian Country Today, September 26, 2012. Article. (https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/two-spiritlgbt-rights-toolkit..., accessed October 31, 2012)