The focus of this paper will be the starkly divergent views between indigenous populations, specifically American Indians,  and other  populations  regarding fairness, justice, family and community and property rights.  The paper will include a discussion of  the theoretical and practical intersections of indigenous traditions and other cultures’s concepts of civil and criminal law. The paper  also will touch on the critical importance of traditional values  in determining equitable resolution of legal conflicts within American Indian communities. The paper will  discuss  indigenous populations attitudes toward the ownership and management of knowledge, and how these attitudes may be at times  be in conflict with those of other segments of society, including government entities and court systems.  The paper will open with a review of the historical underpinnings of American Indian law and then move on to a  discussion of intellectual property rights,  protection of and appropriate dissemination of indigenous  knowledge, and sovereignty concerns.  Issues associated with the   dissemination of indigenous knowledge within a culture based on oral, rather than written, traditions will also be discussed.