The American Civil Liberties of North Dakota seeks to uplift Indigenous people, communities, and tribes through community-focused and integrated legal and advocacy work. We aim to support tribal communities – and follow their lead – as they work to uphold their sovereignty, dignity, and autonomy. We work to dismantle colonial systems of oppression that are found in all of our institutions including schools and prisons.  

North Dakota is home to Indian reservations and federally recognized tribes. Indigenous people are one of the largest minority groups in North Dakota. 

State and federal governments fail to adequately address how the legacy of colonization continues to harm Indigenous people. Since the founding of the United States, Indigenous people have faced systemic injustice and inequality in all aspects of our society. 

The ACLU of North Dakota recognizes that Indigenous Justice is not racial justice alone, but a complexity of political and sovereignty issues. 

Our Indigenous Justice priorities are informed by conversations with Indigenous leaders and community members across the state, with equity in all aspects of life as our top priority. 

Free speech and protest

The ACLU rose to the occasion in 2019 with community partners and defended the rights of every South Dakotan to peacefully protest the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline with this successful lawsuit, Dakota Rural Action v. Noem. Today the ACLU remains vigilant in our effort to preserve people’s First Amendment rights.  The voices of the people must be heard in a meaningful way, and taking that opportunity away from anyone is a subversion of our entire democratic process.

Voting rights

Indigenous people must have political equity and fair access to the ballot box. However, the reality is that far too many people, especially those living in rural parts of Indian reservations, face voter suppression or disenfranchisement.

Treaty Rights

Treaties between Indian tribes and the United States government are contracts between two sovereign nations. Per the U.S. Constitution, treaties are the law of the land. Even with an obligation to uphold all treaties, the federal government’s track record is dismal. We support tribes in their efforts to hold the U.S. government accountable. 

When it comes to Indigenous Justice, the ACLU of North Dakota is proud to have a dedicated Indigenous Justice program and within the national family of ACLU chapters. 

Capital punishment is an intolerable denial of civil liberties and is inconsistent with the fundamental values of our democratic system. The ACLU believes the death penalty inherently violates the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment and the guarantees of due process of law and of equal protection under the law. Furthermore, we believe that the state should not give itself the right to kill human beings – especially when it kills with premeditation and ceremony, in the name of the law or in the name of its people, and when it does so in an arbitrary and discriminatory fashion.

The ACLU’s opposition to capital punishment incorporates the following fundamental concerns:

• The death penalty system in the U.S. is applied in an unfair and unjust manner against people, largely dependent on how much money they have, the skill of their attorneys, race of the victim and where the crime took place.  People of color are far more likely to be executed than white people, especially if the victim is white
• The death penalty is a waste of taxpayer funds and has no public safety benefit. The vast majority of law enforcement professionals surveyed agree that capital punishment does not deter violent crime; a survey of police chiefs nationwide found they rank the death penalty lowest among ways to reduce violent crime.  They ranked increasing the number of police officers, reducing drug abuse, and creating a better economy with more jobs higher than the death penalty as the best ways to reduce violence.  The FBI has found the states with the death penalty have the highest murder rates.
• Innocent people are too often sentenced to death.  Since 1973, more than 156 people have been released from death rows in 26 states because of innocence. Nationally, at least one person is exonerated for every 10 that are executed. 
• Even the administration of executions is utterly flawed: Every method of execution comes with an intolerably high risk of extreme pain and torture. Too often, states have been allowed to conduct executions cloaked in secrecy and free of public and judicial scrutiny, to rely on drugs from unknown and untested sources, and to employ personnel of unknown and unverifiable qualifications—with disastrous results. This pattern should be unacceptable in a civilized society dedicated to transparency and the rule of law.
• The death penalty is uncivilized in theory and unfair and inequitable in practice. The time has come for America to end this failed experiment.