Announcements
CIC-AIS Graduate Conference Prize Winners
Dear Colleagues:
Please spread the news that all three of the submitted prize winners at the recent graduate conference were women!!! FIRST PRIZE went to Nicole Marie Keway for her remarkable paper on Emerson: “The Piquancy of Particularity: Emersonian Savages and Speaking Beyond the Woods.” The SECOND PRIZE winner was Sandra Garner for “Rhetorics of Traditions: Troubling Tradition in the Lakota Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality” – Sandra is completing her degree at Ohio State University and will be at Miami University as a post-doc this fall. Finally, a law student, Adrea Korthase, received THIRD PRIZE for her work on the “Kennecott Eagle Mineral Project and the Need for a Michigan Religious Protection Act.”
To see these outstanding women, please go to our website — http://www.msu.edu/~cicaisc/ – you can see their pictures as well as many of the other participants. Conference planning, spearheaded by Susan Krouse, the director of the MSU AISP and her able assistant, Sakina Hughes, made this another memorable event. The University of Wisconsin, University of Chicago, Ohio State, and the University of Michigan added a tremendous variety of new scholarly approaches to the program – be sure to look at the program, which is on-line at our website.
Susan Sleeper-Smith
Director, CIC-AIS Consortium
4th Annual Indian Law Clinics Symposium — June 20-21, 2010
Michigan Indian Day SAVE THE DATE — Sept. 24, 2010
The Ingham County Health Department and Michigan State University ask you to SAVE THE DATE (flyer here: save the date michigan indian day) and invite you to attend the 2010 Michigan Indian Day event. The event will be taking place Friday September 24, 2010 at the Hannah Community Center in East Lansing, Michigan. The conference theme this year is Strengthening Health, Strengthening Families: Empowering Indigenous Communities.
The Michigan Indian Day Committee is currently taking requests for workshop proposals (application here: MID Workshop Proposal Request Letter). The workshop proposals are due Monday June 21 by 5p.m. and notification of accepted workshops will be announced on Monday July 12 by 5 p.m.
The SAVE THE DATE flier and Workshop Proposal Application are attached with this email. More information will be added to the Native American Outreach Program website. Please go to the this website for more current information and materials as the Michigan Indian Day Event approaches.
Minnesota American Indian Bar Association 2010 Annual CLE — June 17-18 @ Leech Lake
Brochure here (updated): MAIBA Brochure(4)
Keynotes:
Hon. Korey Wahwassuck, Associate Judge of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe Tribal Court
Matthew L.M. Fletcher, Associate Professor of Law & Director of the Indigenous Law & Policy Center, Michigan State University College of Law
Other speakers include:
Colette Routel, Assistant Professor of Law, William Mitchell College of Law
Chris Strandlie, Assistant Cass County Attorney
Frank Bibeau, Legal Director, Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe
Poetry Reading with Gordon Henry, Matthew Fletcher, and Paul Stebleton THURSDAY
I will be doing a reading of poetry (?!?!?) with my good friends Gordon Henry, author of The Failure of Certain Charms and The Light People, and Paul Stebleton, the author of Bus Station Meditations. My poetry is as yet unpublished. 😦
Our reading is in the Green Room of the MSU Union, this Thursday at 4Pm.
Our reading is a part of the annual conference of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature. Here is the full agenda.
Laughlin McDonald’s New Book on Voting Rights in Indian Country Now Available
Just in my mailbox….
American Indians and the Fight for Equal Voting Rights
By Laughlin McDonald
Recounting Indians’ progress in the voting booth
The struggle for voting rights was not limited to African Americans in the South. American Indians also faced discrimination at the polls and still do today. This book explores their fight for equal voting rights and carefully documents how non-Indian officials have tried to maintain dominance over Native peoples despite the rights they are guaranteed as American citizens.
Laughlin McDonald has participated in numerous lawsuits brought on behalf of Native Americans in Montana, Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming. This litigation challenged discriminatory election practices such as at-large elections, redistricting plans crafted to dilute voting strength, unfounded allegations of election fraud on reservations, burdensome identification and registration requirements, lack of language assistance, and noncompliance with the Voting Rights Act. McDonald devotes special attention to the VRA and its amendments, whose protections are central to realizing the goal of equal political participation.
McDonald describes past and present-day discrimination against Indians, including land seizures, destruction of bison herds, attempts to eradicate Native language and culture, and efforts to remove and in some cases even exterminate tribes. Because of such treatment, he argues, Indians suffer a severely depressed socioeconomic status, voting is sharply polarized along racial lines, and tribes are isolated and lack meaningful interaction with non-Indians in communities bordering reservations.
CONGRATS to Dr. Nick Reo!!!!!
It’s belated by a few days, but our own Nick Reo is now Dr. Nick! Here’s a pic:
Dr. Nick’s dissertation defense was last Friday, and he rocked! And passed.
DOJ Adds 33 New AUSAs, 21 in Indian Country Districts
From PR Newswire (with additional local coverage):
Department of Justice Announces Allocation of 33 New Prosecutors, Launches 3 Community Prosecution Pilot Teams in Indian Country
WASHINGTON, May 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Attorney General Eric Holder today announced the allocation of 33 new Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) positions to 21 judicial districts that contain Indian Country. The department has also launched three Indian Country Community Prosecution Teams. These new resources will enable the Justice Department to work with tribal and state law enforcement partners to improve public safety in tribal communities.
“Violent crimes, and particularly crimes against women and girls, continue to devastate tribal communities across the country, and the U.S. Attorney community is crucial to the Department of Justice’s response,” Attorney General Holder said. “With 33 more federal prosecutors headed to Indian Country, and the launch of three new Community Prosecution Pilot Projects, we have made significant progress finding and implementing solutions to the public safety challenges confronting tribal communities. This Administration is committed to reducing the level of violent crime in tribal communities.”
The new AUSA allocation is the result of $6 million provided in the department’s FY2010 budget for the hiring of prosecutors in Indian Country. Districts were asked to submit requests for additional prosecutors, which were reviewed with relevant statistical data by a team of U.S. Attorneys and staff from the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys. Thirty AUSAs will be distributed to districts as follows:
Jim McClurken Book Talks in May
Not often we promote Cooley Law programs, but it is an MSU Press book. 🙂
From here:
Please join us for a 2010 Michigan Notable Books program featuring Dr. James M. McClurken, author ofOur People, Our Journey: The Little River Band of Ottawa Indians.
This important and well-researched history of the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians traces the tribe’s migration into Michigan’s Grand River Valley, its later settlement on reservations in Mason, Muskegon and Oceana counties, the difficult relationship between the tribe and the U.S. government and successful efforts to maintain the tribe’s unique cultural identity through the present day.
The book is available for purchase and signing the day of the event and at Cooley’s Lansing campus bookstore.
The events are free and open to the public. For more information, visit Cooley’s website at cooley.edu. Join us at any one of our four campuses on:
WEDNESDAY, MAY 12
Grand Rapids, Noon
111 Commerce Avenue, SW
Lansing, 5 p.m.
Brennan Law Library
330 S. Washington Sq.
THURSDAY, MAY 13
Auburn Hills, Noon
2630 Featherstone
Ann Arbor, 5 p.m.
3475 Plymouth Rd.
Turtle Talk 
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