UNIT 19 • STAGE 5 OF 7
The Nations
Build a broad Indian Country landscape of nation-building signals and learn grid spanning with grid-column: span N
The Nations: A Broad View of Indian Country
This section is not a collection of deep Tribal profiles. It is a landscape view: signals of nation-building happening across Indian Country right now. Seven areas of activity, with concrete examples drawn from nations across the country. Students in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota will recognize names and places. The goal is for learners to see that the nation-building work documented throughout this unit is widespread and specific, not theoretical.
The section uses a 3-column grid. Two signal cards span 2 columns each to create visual hierarchy. The rest fill single columns. At the bottom, a full-width student placeholder card prompts research into the learner's own nation.
The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
The research behind this section comes largely from the Harvard Project, founded in 1987 by Stephen Cornell and Joseph Kalt. Their core finding, documented across hundreds of nations over three decades: Tribal nations that exercise genuine sovereignty, build capable governing institutions, and match those institutions to their own cultural values produce better economic and social outcomes than nations that defer to federal programs or outside actors. Sovereignty is not just a legal concept, it is the practical condition that makes nation-building work.
What "broad view" means in this section
Units 11 through 17 traced federal policy chronologically. This section steps back and shows the results: not a policy timeline but a map of activity. Governance reform. Economic development. Land recovery. Language revitalization. Tribal colleges. Environmental stewardship. Justice and public safety. These seven signals appear across hundreds of nations and every region of the country. The card layout reflects that scope: no single card dominates the view. All of it is happening simultaneously.
New CSS Technique: grid-column: span N
In Stage 4, you used grid-column: 1 / -1 to make the McGirt callout span the full width of the grid. That syntax specifies exact grid lines: start at line 1, end at the last line. It always pins the element to the same position.
span N is different. It does not specify a starting position. It tells the browser how many column tracks to consume from wherever the card is naturally placed. The browser uses the normal grid flow to find the next available position, then counts forward N columns from there.
.mcgirt-callout { grid-column: 1 / -1; }
/* span 2: relative, occupies 2 tracks from wherever it's placed */
.signal-card.span-2 { grid-column: span 2; }
/* span 3: in a 3-column grid, span 3 = full width, like 1/-1 */
.signal-card.span-3 { grid-column: span 3; }
- With
span 2, if a card is placed starting at column 2 in a 3-column grid, it would overflow to column 4, which does not exist. The browser moves it to the next row, column 1, to fit. This is automatic reflow with no extra code. - Use
1 / -1when you always want a card anchored to the full row, regardless of placement. Usespan Nwhen you want a card to be wider than standard but let the browser handle where it goes. - In a 3-column grid,
span 3and1 / -1produce the same result visually, butspan 3is portable, it works at any position in the grid flow.
display: grid;
grid-template-columns: repeat(3, 1fr);
gap: 20px;
margin-top: 56px;
}
.signal-card {
background: var(--bg-card);
border: 1px solid var(--gold-border);
border-radius: 16px;
padding: 36px 32px;
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
gap: 14px;
}
Content: Seven Nation-Building Signals
Signal 1: Governance Renewal (span 2 columns)
Since 1995, dozens of Tribal nations have rewritten or fundamentally restructured their governing documents. The target: replacing BIA-drafted IRA constitutions from the 1930s and 1940s with documents that reflect the nation's own legal traditions, separate political and administrative functions, establish independent judiciaries, and clarify citizenship criteria. The Navajo Nation Council reduced from 88 delegates to 24 in 2009 through a referendum the nation designed and ran. The Osage Nation rebuilt its entire constitutional government from scratch in 2006. The Harvard Project's core empirical finding: governance structures that match the nation's own cultural values produce measurably better economic and social outcomes over time.
Signal 2: Economic Sovereignty (1 column)
Tribal gaming generated over $40 billion annually by the early 2020s across 520+ operations in 30+ states. Gaming is the most visible piece of a larger story. Native Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) have directed hundreds of millions of dollars into Tribal communities since the 1990s. Tribally chartered banks, renewable energy ventures, and wholly owned enterprises have diversified economies across Indian Country. The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community in Minnesota is one of the largest private employers in Scott County. Cherokee Nation Businesses employs over 13,000 people across multiple industry sectors.
Signal 3: Land Recovery (1 column)
The Cobell v. Salazar class action settlement (2012) resulted in a $3.4 billion resolution, including the Indian Land Buy-Back Program funded at $1.9 billion. The program purchases fractionated ownership interests in allotted trust lands, ownership stakes so small from generations of inheritance that individual parcels may have hundreds of legal owners, and consolidates them back into Tribal ownership. In Minnesota, the White Earth Land Recovery Project has been purchasing private parcels within the original reservation boundary since the late 1980s. For many nations, land recovery is not primarily economic, it is cultural and spiritual continuity with territory that carries the nation's history.
Signal 4: Language Revitalization (span 2 columns)
More than 150 Indigenous languages are spoken in the United States today. Nearly all are critically endangered, with most speakers elderly. Since the 1990s, Tribal nations across the country have built language immersion schools, language nests for young children, master-apprentice programs pairing elders with adult learners, and digital archives. The Cherokee Nation set a target of producing two new Cherokee language speakers per day. The Navajo Nation's Diné Language Institute oversees language programs across schools and communities. In Minnesota, Niigaan Ojibwe language immersion serves learners from birth through high school. In North and South Dakota, the Lakota Language Consortium has produced curricula, dictionaries, and assessments used across Tribal schools. Language is sovereignty: it carries legal, cultural, and spiritual concepts that exist in no other form. Nations sustaining their languages have done so through deliberate, funded, sovereign decision-making, not through federal programs.
Signal 5: Tribal Colleges and Education (1 column)
The American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) represents 35 Tribal colleges and universities serving over 30,000 students across some of the most geographically isolated communities in the country. Diné College in Arizona. Sitting Bull College in Fort Yates, North Dakota. Leech Lake Tribal College in Cass Lake, Minnesota. Red Lake Nation College, also in Minnesota. These institutions are Tribally controlled and designed to meet communities where they are: offering culturally grounded curricula, two- and four-year degrees, workforce training, and community research. They were built because mainstream institutions were not serving Tribal communities. They continue because Tribes sustain them as sovereign educational institutions.
Signal 6: Environmental Stewardship and Treaty Rights (1 column)
Dozens of Tribal nations have obtained Treatment as State status under the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, gaining authority to set environmental standards on Tribal lands. In the Pacific Northwest, treaty fishing rights have driven decades of salmon restoration co-management between Tribes and state and federal agencies. In the Great Lakes, Ojibwe nations' 1837 ceded territory rights to fish, hunt, and gather, reaffirmed in Mille Lacs Band v. Minnesota (1999), have shaped regional resource management policy. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's 2016 opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline brought international attention to Tribal consultation rights, water protection, and the ongoing relevance of treaty obligations.
Signal 7: Justice and Public Safety (1 column)
Tribal courts have expanded in jurisdiction, capacity, and institutional sophistication throughout this era. VAWA 2013's Special Domestic Violence Criminal Jurisdiction extended Tribal court authority over non-Indian domestic violence perpetrators, directly addressing the jurisdictional gap left by Oliphant v. Suquamish (1978). The Navajo Nation Peacemaking Program, rooted in traditional Navajo legal philosophy of hozho (balance and harmony), has become an internationally studied model of Indigenous restorative justice. The Tribal Law and Order Act (2010) increased sentencing authority and required federal agencies to report declination data. Over 175 Tribal law enforcement agencies now operate across Indian Country.
Build the Nations Section
The nations section background is --bg-main (same as The Laws, alternating with The Courts' --bg-section). The nations grid is 3 columns. Signal cards 1 and 4 get the span-2 class, making them wider and visually prominent. The My Nation card at the bottom gets span-3 for full width.
Note that The Building section (5 scroll-snap pillar panels) has been abbreviated in this stage's starter code to keep the file manageable. A comment marks where the full content lives. Laws and Courts remain in full so you can see the complete site taking shape.
Stage 5 Complete!
Stage 6 adds the My Research section with CSS counters, the same prompt-numbering pattern used in Unit 17 Stage 6. Stage 7 completes the site with the Today section, introduces scroll-driven animation as a pre-built feature, and ends with the Unit 19 teaser: assembling all eight era websites into one multi-page site.
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