David A. Robertson (Norway House Cree Nation) gives us 52 practical suggestions—one for each week of the year—to support and connect with Indigenous people. 52 Ways to Reconcilelists tasks as simple and enjoyable as making Bannock, to as challenging as taking personal action toward reconciliation.
Matthew Fletcher (Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians) has devoted himself to the legal profession, becoming one of the most respected experts in Indian Law. In his spare time he has written and published a collection of fictional short stories, Stick Houses. He draws from his own observations and stories from his family to illustrate the lives of modern Native Americans.
We’ll add Matthew Fletcher’s Stick Houses, and David A. Robertson’s 52 Ways to Reconcile to the Native Bookshelf.
Call for Papers for the South Dakota Law Review’s Access to Justice in Indian Country Symposium
The South Dakota Law Review seeks article proposals, speakers, and panel participants for a symposium on issues related to access to justice in Indian Country. The Access to Justice in Indian Countrysymposium will be held in Vermillion, South Dakota, on September 29th, 2025.
Abstracts of 300-500 words are due June 27, 2025.
The symposium will focus on Indian Country. The editors seek articles and speakers that address one or more of the following topics, or other related topics:
1. Indigent defense in Indian Country
2. Tribal Justice Systems
3. The practice of law in Indian Country, including on rural reservations
4. Incarceration and recidivism
5. The study Federal Indian Law and Tribal Law as an academic discipline
6. Tribal Law Enforcement
7. Legal aspects of the Land Back Movement
8. Land ownership on reservations
9. Licensure policies and impact on reservation areas
The editors actively seek diverse viewpoints and diverse scholarly approaches. Although the symposium is not a historical or comparative project, the editors welcome articles with historical or comparative features.
In your proposal, please indicate whether you would be interested in (1) publishing your topic, (2) speaking at the symposium, or (3) both. Priority will be given to proposals where the contributor expects to both publish and speak at our in-person event, although we will consider other proposals.
The Call for Papers opens today with abstracts due on June 27, 2025. Please send abstracts to tia.vlasman@coyotes.usd.edu. Selected contributors will be notified by July 3, 2025. Finished articles will be due Monday, December 1, 2025. Our editors will work with you over the winter 2023-24 to prepare your work for publication. The symposium volume will be published and released in the summer of 2026.
Starting July 18, 2025, the Yale Law Journal submission portal for Articles & Essays will open. The submission guidelines and portal can be found here. Any questions about the submission process can be referred to YLJ‘s Managing Editors, Ako Ndefo-Haven (ako.ndefo-haven@yale.edu) and Matt Beattie-Callahan (matthew.beattie-callahan@yale.edu).
Katie Kroft, Executive Editor of Articles & Essays for the Yale Law Journal.
While this Court enjoys the power to choose which cases it will hear, its decision to shuffle this case off our docket without a full airing is a grievous mistake—one with consequences that threaten to reverberate for generations. Just imagine if the government sought to demolish a historic cathedral on so questionable a chain of legal reasoning. I have no doubt that we would find that case worth our time. Faced with the government’s plan to destroy an ancient site of tribal worship, we owe the Apaches no less. They may live far from Washington, D. C., and their history and religious practices may be unfamiliar to many. But that should make no difference. “Popular religious views are easy enough to defend. It is in protecting unpopular religious beliefs that we prove this country’s commitment to . . . religious freedom.” Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm’n, 584 U. S. 617, 649 (2018) (GORSUCH, J., concurring).
It is not every day the U.S. Supreme Court adjudicates a case about the water needs and rights of one of the Colorado River Basin’s thirty tribal nations and the trust relationship shared by that sovereign with the United States. Yet just that happened in Arizona v. Navajo Nation in June 2023. As explored in this Article, the Colorado is a relational river relied upon by roughly forty million people, reeling from climate change for nearly a quarter century, and subject to management rules expiring and requiring extensive, politically charged renegotiation by 2027. Along this relational river, Arizona v. Navajo Nation was a milestone, illuminating water colonialism and environmental injustice on the country’s largest Native American reservation, and posing pressing questions about what exactly the trust relationship entails vis-à-vis the essence of life. Placing Arizona v. Navajo Nation in historical context, the Article synthesizes the case with an eye toward the future. Moving forward along the relational river, the trust relationship should be understood and honored for what it is, a sovereign trust, and fulfilled within the policy sphere through a host of measures tied, directly and indirectly, to the post-2026 management rules. Further, if judicial enforcement of the trust relationship is necessary, tribal sovereigns in the basin (and elsewhere) should not view the Court’s 5–4 decision as the death knell for water-related breach of trust claims, but rather as a guide for bringing cognizable future claims and reorienting breach of trust analysis.
Turtle Talk 
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