There's a man who I know, and I was privileged enough to call him friend during the time I knew him well, who lives in two worlds. In one he carries a brief case and holds a college degree in business. He has standing in court rooms across the country even though he's not a lawyer, and can argue law and cite precedents that date back to the 18th century. He has to because of the other world he inhabits, that of being a Native American man living in the twenty-first century.

He has carried the flag of his nation in Grand Entries at Pow Wows and into battle on the carpets of the court rooms where words are what he pulls from his quiver to fight the never-ending battle for survival his people have fought for more then 500 years. He's not alone in this battle, there are numerous men and women across North America who are on this War Path these days. Briefcase warriors who refuse to roll over and be good Indians and accept the indignities that continue to be heaped on the heads of their people.

In the 1970s the burgeoning Native American rights movement was centred around the very public and flamboyant activities of the American Indian Movement (AIM). While AIM may have garnered the majority of the public's and media's attention, that also brought them to the attention of the FBI. If J. Edgar Hoover decided you were a threat to America, you could pretty much count on never having a moment's peace, and being hounded relentlessly until you were dead or in jail. By the end of the '70s AIM's effectiveness as a force for Native rights was depleted, but they hadn't been alone, and other groups aside from them had formed around the same time.

The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) was formed in 1970 through a grant from the Ford Foundation by the California Indian Legal Services. NARF is a non-profit law firm that represents the needs of Natives in court who otherwise would not have access to legal representation. Their brief is simple - to protect the rights of Native people everywhere, and see that justice is done in the courts as much and whenever possible.

While you won't see them in courts over casinos, rightly believing they have enough money to take care of themselves, they are the voice for all the tribes across America who don't have that new cash crop. For instance, they have been in litigation for ten years with the Bureau Of Indian Affairs (BIA) over the possible mismanagement of over 500,000 Native American's trust funds by the Bureau and its agents. But it's not just the law they see as their responsibility; they, like the other groups who came of age during the 1970s fighting for a Native Renaissance, knew how important it was to not only preserve their rights, but also their culture.