Designed to provide the reader with general background information in the area of American Indian child abuse and neglect law and to present a framework in which individual abuse or neglect cases may be analyzed, this report is divided into four sections. The first section describes features of the jurisdictional conflicts encountered in American Indian Law in general and in Indian Law on child abuse and neglect in particular. The next section describes the policy background and some of the provisions of the Indian Child Welfare Act. The third section briefly describes the variety of legal systems in effect on Indian reservations. The final section compares and contrasts child abuse and neglect-related elements of the 51 tribal codes that form the database for this paper. Appendixes supplement the discussion with information on the court systems used by and the code provisions of specific Indian tribes. (Author/CM)