Here is the complaint in Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation v. Durrell (D. Kan.):
Prairie Band Potawatomi Sues to Stop Kansas Lottery on Indian Lands
Author: Matthew L.M. Fletcher
New Scholarship on Wild Horses on Federal and Indian Lands
Elaina Erola has published “Wild and Untamed: The Problem of Wild Horses on Federal and Indian Lands” in the Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation.
Here is the abstract:
The management of wild horses in the American West has long been framed as a question of animal welfare, environmental stewardship, and federal land management. Missing from this discourse, however, is the disproportionate burden that unmanaged wild horse populations impose on Tribal Nations. This Article argues that the United States has failed to fulfill its trust responsibilities to federally recognized Tribes by inadequately addressing wild horse overpopulation on Indian lands, resulting in significant ecological degradation, resource depletion, and economic harm.
Drawing on historical accounts, federal statutes, agency practices, and case studies from the Navajo Nation, Blackfeet Nation, Wind River Reservation, Yakama Nation, Ute Indian Tribe, and others, this Article examines how federal wild horse policies have produced consequences that extend beyond Bureau of Land Management jurisdiction. While federal agencies devote substantial resources to managing wild horses on public lands, Tribal governments are often left to confront similar or greater population pressures with limited funding, uncertain jurisdictional authority, and inadequate federal support.
The Article situates these challenges within the broader framework of the federal trust responsibility, arguing that Indian lands, water resources, forage, wildlife habitat, and culturally significant plant species constitute trust assets deserving protection. Relying on trust doctrine jurisprudence, including United States v. Mitchell (“Mitchell II”), the Article contends that the federal government’s failure to address unmanaged horse populations on Tribal lands may constitute a breach of its fiduciary obligations. Finally, it explores potential legal and policy solutions, including expanded funding through self-determination contracts, enhanced consultation and co-management mechanisms, and greater recognition of Tribal authority to determine the legal status and management of wild horses within their territories.
By reframing wild horse overpopulation as both a tribal sovereignty issue and a trust responsibility issue, this Article highlights an overlooked dimension of federal Indian law and environmental governance and calls for a more equitable allocation of resources and decision-making authority to Tribal Nations.
New Scholarship on Interior’s Foot Dragging on Implementation of the Indian Trust Asset Reform Act of 2016
Thomas Stratmann has posted “Ten Years, Three Tribes” on the Rules and Results substack.
Here is an excerpt:
The Tulalip Tribes have been a fishing people for as long as anyone remembers. Their reservation runs 22,000 acres along the eastern shore of Puget Sound, 35 miles north of Seattle. The waters at the edge of the reservation, where the tide goes out and exposes the mudflats, are where shellfish grow, and salmon come to spawn. In an 1855 treaty, the United States agreed that those waters would always belong to the Tribes. The treaty remains in force today.
Today, 73 private docks and 124 private mooring buoys cover the Tulalip shoreline. Many were built without tribal permission. Tulalip’s own Natural Resources Department documents the consequences: water quality has fallen, salmon populations have fallen, and shellfish beds have closed.
In 2019, Tulalip asked the federal government for the authority to manage their own shoreline. The federal government said no.
In 2023, they asked again. The federal government said no.
It’s a Lazy Saturday
Diné
Pechanga Prevails in Contract Dispute with IHS
Here are the new materials in Pechanga Band of Indians v. Kennedy (C.D. Cal.):
Prior post here.
Benton Paiute Sues to Stop Interior Dept. Culling of Wild Horse Herd
Here is the complaint in Utu Utu Gwaitu Paiute Tribe of the Benton Paiute Reservation v. Dept. of the Interior (E.D. Cal.):
Jason Robison on Tripartite Water Sovereignty
Jason Robison has published “Tripartite Water Sovereignty” in the Yale Law Journal.
Here is the abstract:
Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and former Harvard Law School Dean James M. Landis published in 1925 the seminal work on the U.S. Constitution’s Compact Clause. Their article focused on cosovereignty within the United States, but only in a binary sense. While indelibly shaping interstate and federal-state relations, North America’s original sovereigns—Native nations—were not visible within this influential piece. So, too, with the approximately two dozen compacts later formed to apportion water from rivers running across and along state lines, agreements that acknowledged Native nations and their water rights only at the margins, if at all. Revisiting Frankfurter and Landis’s pivotal piece one century later, this Article urges advocates and scholars to look beyond the binary conception of cosovereignty apparent in that piece and entrenched in the suite of compacts created in its wake. Tracking Native nations’ growing calls for inclusion in transboundary water management, the Article contends that these cosovereigns must be respected as what they are—sovereigns—and afforded opportunities for direct representation on compact commissions beside their state and federal counterparts. The Article outlines several ways to achieve this indigenization and, ultimately, move from binary to tripartite water cosovereignty.
Tenth Circuit Holds Screenshot of Tribal Membership Website is Sufficient Evidence to Show Indian Status
SCOTUS Confirms Constitutional Birthright Citizenship Right over Four Dissenters
Here is the opinion in Trump v. Barbara.
One excerpt, suggesting Indians are like diplomats, what I’ve been saying all along, dammit:
Another, more explicitly, on Indians as diplomats:
Another on the government’s ridiculousness re: Elk v. Wilkins:
From Justice Jackson’s concurrence, the only intellectually honest opinion from this rat’s nest of white supremacy:
On why birthright citizenship is an issue in 2026:
On the Indian Citizenship Act:
The possible seeds for an undoing of the contemptible Elk v. Wilkins decision, which also rested on Dred Scott:
Justice Thomas’ dissent (the principal dissent) waxed on and on about “tribal Indians,” leading (I suggest) to at least two conclusions: (1) the United States does not have the power to tax “tribal Indians”; (2) the right of tribal self-government derives from international customary law (here comes UNDRIP!); and (3) Elk is wrong:
More Elk is wrong fodder:
More on Elk, though in reliance this time:
On the Indian Citizenship Act:
Wha?? China is less or equally alien than the Cherokee Nation?
“Tribal Indians” in same category as diplomats and “hostile alien occupiers” — this is getting weird:
Nothing from me on Kavanaugh or Alito, who don’t merit attention.
Turtle Talk 
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