Guides
Practical guides for your tribe.
Longer reads that help you evaluate, fund, and plan the law, the funding, and the numbers, in plain language, with every figure cited to the statute or agency behind it.
Plain language · vendor-neutral · every figure cited to a primary source
- How to choose tribal government software Choosing software for any part of a tribal government comes down to five questions: where the data lives, whether it follows your own code, whether records can be proven, what it costs over time, and whether it survives a staff retirement. This guide walks each one.
- Funding a records system with grants Federal justice and public-safety funding, including CTAS and BIA programs, commonly covers records and case-management technology across the government, with courts one of several eligible areas. Because the system is a one-time, on-premises investment, it fits how these grants are structured. This guide outlines the common paths.
- On-premises, explained in plain words On-premises means the software runs on your own computers instead of a company's cloud. This guide explains what that changes for control, cost, offline use, privacy, and IT, without the jargon.
- Preparing for a clerk's retirement When a long-tenured clerk retires, the office's knowledge can walk out the door. The way to protect the office is to put the procedures into a system before that day, so the work does not depend on one person's memory.
- The CTAS grant, decoded The Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation is the single application a tribe files to reach most federal justice funding. This guide maps its purpose areas, shows which ones pay for courts, records, and case management, and walks the two-step application.
- The ICWA deadlines every tribal court tracks The Indian Child Welfare Act runs on the clock. This guide lays out the notice periods, the proof standards, and the four powers a tribe can exercise in a state child-custody case, each with the statute behind it.
- How tribal courts are funded A tribal court's budget is stitched together from at least six federal programs across two departments, plus the tribe's own funds. This guide maps the pipes, separates recurring base support from competitive grants, and notes that Congress itself has found the system underfunded.
- How long a tribal government keeps its records Records retention splits into two tracks: federal grant records run on a hard federal clock, and everything else lives under the tribe's own ordinance. This guide draws the line and gives a retention matrix you can adapt.
- What records software really costs over five years A per-seat monthly price hides the real number. This guide shows the arithmetic that turns a modest seat price into a six-figure five-year bill, and how a one-time purchase compares. Bring your own seat count.
- Sovereign data, and the CJIS rules that apply Tribal justice data answers to two rulebooks at once: the FBI's CJIS Security Policy, a federal security floor, and the tribe's own authority over its data, framed as Indigenous data sovereignty. This guide explains both and where they meet.
- Enrollment, membership, and due process Defining membership is an exclusive attribute of tribal sovereignty. This guide covers what the Supreme Court settled, how enrollment criteria are set, the due process a tribe's own forum owes, and the plan federal law requires before per-capita gaming payments.
- Will your court's orders be honored elsewhere? Tribal court orders do not automatically travel across jurisdictional lines the way state judgments do. Two federal statutes force nationwide recognition for the highest-stakes orders; everything else rests on state-by-state comity. This guide draws the line.
- The Single Audit, and the new $1M threshold A tribe that expends enough federal money in a year must have a Single Audit. In 2024 the threshold rose. This guide gives the new number, the effective date, the readiness checklist, and the deadline that trips people up.