American Indian Culture and Research Journal

In California the rapid expansion of the prison-industrial complex has led to the widespread use of incarceration as a solution to complex social problems. Incarceration undermines the sovereignty of California Indian tribes and limits the reproductive capacity of individual Native people by removing them from their lands, children, and ceremonies. This intrusion on Native peoples’ collective ability to determine a future for themselves is an infringement of their reproductive rights. In order to defend Native peoples’ reproductive capacity and the future of Native nations, prison abolition should be understood as essential to tribal sovereignty.