A Rosebud Sioux tribal member will sing the opening National Anthem, and the Navajo Code Talkers will present the colors on the opening night. The convention is in Denver this year, and runs most of next week.
Both articles from Indianz.com
ETA: Also from Indianz, David Gipp, the president of United Tribes Technical College in North Dakota, will speak at the Democratic National Convention.
Sherman Alexie’s column about his testimony in the Sonics trial, and his feelings about the Sonics leaving Seattle, from The Stranger, in Seattle:
These are the last 61 things that I will say about the Seattle Sonics. No, that’s a lie. These are the last 61 things that I will say until I think of some other things a few months down the road.
We’ve posted a new Occasional Paper on our Occasional Paper website. The paper, Criminal Jurisdiction in Indian Country: The Solution of Cross Deputization, was primarily written by second and third year law students in our Indigenous Law and Policy Center class. They researched and analyzed both issues of criminal jurisdiction and cross deputization agreements with a focus on Michigan and Michigan tribes.
From WKAR:
Authors With MSU Roots Return To East Lansing
This week, three literary giants…all Michigan State University graduates…will appear together on campus. Thomas McGuane, Jim Harrison and Richard Ford will speak at what’s being called a Michigan Author Homecoming Thursday evening. Presented by the Michigan Humanities Council, the event is the culmination of The Great Michigan Read. For a year, the Council has encouraged the people of Michigan to read Ernest Hemingway’s “Nick Adams Stories”. All three authors have lengthy lists of published works, with too many awards and film adaptations to mention. WKAR’S Scott Pohl recently spoke with McGuane and Harrison, both on the phone from their homes in Montana…about their current projects and their motivation for agreeing to appear in public together. The Michigan Author Homecoming is Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in the Pasant Theatre in the Wharton Center at Michigan State University. A book-signing will follow the program.
aired Jul. 8, 2008 | length: 11:43 Extended Version
You can hear the whole interview at the WKAR link.
A memorandum acknowledging all of the issues federal courts have created regarding tribal jurisdiction on tribal lands, and tribal jurisdiction over non-members. However, in the court’s opinion, the judge demonstrates the fundamental problem with arguing for tribal jurisdiction over non-members in federal courts at this point:
As this court previously explained, at least where tribal authority over non-Indians is concerned, the Supreme Court discarded the elegant simplicity of Cohen’s analysis in favor of an amorphous legal standard that finds its source not in treaty or statute, but in abstract notions of intergovernmental dependency and subservience.
. . .
That plaintiffs counsel fundamentally disagrees with the Supreme Court’s reading of the pertinent treaties and statutes does not deprive the Court’s case law of its binding precedential effect upon the lower federal courts, including the Tenth Circuit and this court. Nor may we overrule or simply ignore what the Supreme Court has said.
. . .
The plaintiffs may well dispute the rule and reasoning of the Supreme Court’s “pathmarking case, Montana v. United States, 450 U.S. 544, 564-65, 101 S. Ct. 1245, 67 L. Ed. 2d 493 (1981),” and the later cases that follow Montana, such as Nevada v. Hicks, 533 U.S. 353, 121 S. Ct. 2304, 150 L. Ed. 2d 398 (2001), and most recently, Plains Commerce Bank. 7 A number of scholars have penned incisive critiques of the Court’s implied diminishment of tribal civil and criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians. 8 In this case, plaintiffs’ counsel has made a credible showing that members of Congress and the Supreme Court may not be on the same page as far as the role and powers of Indian tribal courts are concerned, 9 and counsel appears entirely correct in asserting that “nothing Congress or the Executive have done [has] limited Navajo Court authority over anyone, Indian or non-Indian, [*32] for injurious acts occurring within the Navajo Nation[‘s] exterior borders.” (Pltfs’ Obj. at 22.) Nor have the plaintiffs strayed far afield in arguing the importance of giving effect to Navajo tort law as a vital aspect of tribal self-government. See, e.g., Smith v. Salish Kootenai College, 434 F.3d 1127, 1140 (9th Cir. 2006) (en banc) (“The Tribes’ system of tort is an important means by which the Tribes regulate the domestic and commercial relations of its members.”). And an argument may well be made that whatever its merits in its own context, Montana‘s rule and reasoning should find no application at all to the differing historical and legal context of the Navajo Nation and its reservation. 10
But [emphasis added] having made the strategic choice to pursue enforcement of the Navajo court orders in federal court before the tribal court proceedings had been fully concluded, plaintiffs Singer, Riggs and Dickson raised the “federal question” of the extent of tribal jurisdiction over the non-Indian defendants in a federal forum, short-circuiting the usual exhaustion of Navajo tribal remedies, including review by the Navajo Supreme Court. 11 Having been raised in this forum, the jurisdictional question was ultimately decided by the court of appeals, with an outcome that was adverse to the plaintiffs.
The rest of our MacArthur v. San Juan County materials can be found here. The opinion here indicates some of the frustration on both sides regarding the Supreme Court’s recent legacy of federal Indian law cases. MacArthur v. San Juan County, U.S. District Court
In this short order, the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court reads the tribal waiver of sovereign immunity closely, holding that while the portion of the contract that reads
defendant “hereby expressly, unequivocally, and irrevocably waives its sovereign immunity from suit solely for the limited purpose of enforcement of the terms of this Agreement”
does indeed waive the Nation’s sovereign immunity in this matter, the portion that reads
[defendant] hereby consents to submit to personal jurisdiction of those courts of the State of New York and of the United States with competent subject matter jurisdiction located in the City of Syracuse, New York and the parties agree that all actions related to this Agreement shall be brought or defended in such courts ” (emphasis added).
means that the suit can only be brought in the City of Syracuse, not in Oneida County. This order overturns the lower court ruling which denied dismissal.
From The Morning Sun:
Tribe strives to preserve Ojibwe language
By PATRICIA ECKER
Sun Staff Writer
Many Native American communities are realizing that the languages of their ancestors and the unique dialect of their regions are disappearing.
In 2005, the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe did an assessment of the Ojibwe language use within its community and discovered that the number of fluent speakers was very low.
“There’s still hope,” Ojibwe language immersion specialist Bonnie Ekdahl said. “There are still ways we can preserve the language.”
Washington State Appellate Court rules the State had no jurisdiction on a road in the Quinault Tribe Reservation.
We hold that the Quinault Tribe’s grant of a highway easement to the State did not terminate the Quinault Tribe’s interest in the land over which the highway runs and that the State did not have jurisdiction to prosecute Pink for unlawfully possessing a firearm on the road running through the tribal land. Accordingly, we affirm.
Lay advocates in tribal court do not trigger Sixth amendment rights, since they are not a “licensed professional attorney[s]”:
Thus, the issue before the court is whether a tribal public defender, who is not a licensed professional attorney but who appears in tribal court, is “counsel” within the meaning of the Sixth Amendment.
The court found that s/he was not.
In this long running case, the Federal Court of Claims found that IHS funding and TPS allocations do not create jurisdiction. Samish Indian Nation is trying to recover money it would have received if the Department of the Interior had not omitted the tribe from the list of federal recognized tribes from 1969-1996.
Turtle Talk 
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