The 40 page opinion is available here:
Plains Commerce Bank v. Long Family Land & Cattle
Additional materials regarding the case can be found at here.
Author: Kate E. Fort
Supreme Court reverses lower Plains Commerce Bank decision
We’ll post the opinion as soon as it’s available.
From SCOTUS blog:
The Court has released the opinion in Plains Commerce v. Long Family Land and Cattle (07-411), on whether Indian tribal courts have authority to decide civil lawsuits involving business dealings between companies owned by members of the tribe and banks that own land on a reservation, but are not themselves owned by a tribal member. The ruling below, which found for the tribal members, is reversed.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion. Justice Ginsburg dissented, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter and Breyer. We will provide a link to the decision as soon as it is available.
Congressional Vote Today on BMIC and Sault Tribe Gaming Bills
From The Hill:
Pelosi to grant vote on Indian gaming bill benefiting Rep. Dingell’s district
By Susan Crabtree
Posted: 06/24/08 07:08 PM [ET]
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is giving Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) a full House vote Wednesday on a nettlesome Indian gaming bill he’s been pushing for years as a surefire way to help out his cash-strapped district.
Dingell and his allies tried — albeit unsuccessfully — to insert it into various legislative vehicles despite an onslaught of complaints from high-profile opponents and others, such as convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who were stalwartly against congressional intervention in the issue.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), then the chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs panel investigating Abramoff’s Indian gambling lobbying scandal, was infuriated by an effort to parachute the language into an early version of the 2005 highway bill. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), at Dingell’s urging, had placed the language deep within the massive transportation measure as early as 2003.
Graphic Novel: Trickster
From ICT:
‘Trickster’ – a Native anthology of tales in graphic novel form
Posted: June 25, 2008 by: Robert Schmidt / Pechanga.net
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| Images courtesy Matt Dembicki |
”Trickster” is a graphic novel-style anthology of Native trickster tales created primarily by Native writers and artists. In a Q&A interview conducted by e-mail, writer/artist Matt Dembicki shared the inside story on his project.
Rob Schmidt: Let’s start with a brief description: What is ”Trickster”?
Matt Dembicki: ”Trickster” is a comics anthology, comprising more than 20 Native American trickster stories. Each story is written by a Native American storyteller and illustrated by a comics artist of the writer’s choosing. The stories cover a range of trickster types – from the more well-known creatures, such as the rabbit and coyote, to less-known characters, such as raccoons and personified spirits such as Moshup – as well as types of American Indian tribes and geographic area.
Chairman Payment’s Rejoinder to Rep. Conyers
From the Freep:
Tribal land plan is fair deal for all of state
With Michigan’s unemployment rate continuing to lead the nation, we are disappointed that a congressman from Detroit opposes legislation that would create more than 6,000 good union jobs for his city, county and state (“No special deals for tribal casinos,” June 24).Even more disappointing, U.S. Rep. John Conyers’ letter included inaccurate information about the legislation.
The legislation (HR4115 and HR2176) would create a settlement that compensates the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and Bay Mills Indian Community for lands stolen from our ancestors more than 120 years ago.
Saganing Powwow, June 27-29
From the Bay City Times:
Saganing Members Aim to Teach Indian Culture at Standish Powwow
by Helen Lounsbury
STANDISH – When tribal drummers, singers and dancers take their places this weekend for the Saganing powwow near Standish, don’t think of the event as a first.
It’s a homecoming – a celebration of origins for the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, members say.
“I get so full of emotion when I attend our cultural events,” says Mary Bukowiec, a Standish member of what is now a Mount Pleasant-based tribe. “This event will be especially meaningful… After centering things in Mount Pleasant for so long, this powwow has come home.”
David Archuleta Runs for the Democratic Nod in Senate Primary
No, not that David Archuleta, though it takes some investigating among all of the American Idol flotsam to find news about this David Archuleta, a Shoshone-Bannock tribal citizen who is running for the Democratic nomination in the Idaho Senate race.
FORT HALL, Idaho – David J. Archuleta, Shoshone-Bannock, has entered the race for the U.S. Senate. He is one of two Democrats in Idaho’s May 27 primaries.
Archuleta is a lifelong resident of Idaho, with the exception of a two-year stint with the Comanche Nation as its general manager for gaming. He has an extensive background in both media and law work, having started in radio when he was 16 and returned to the Shoshone-Bannock reservation in his early 20s as a public relations officer. He also worked as news director for a radio station in Chubbuck and later joined the staff of the Sho-Ban News as a reporter, winning the Overall Excellence award for hard news reporting from the Native American Journalists Association. That was followed by being a correspondent for National Native News.
His career switched to law when he began working as a tribal court advocate. Archuleta became chief advocate and a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Bar Association. He served as the tribe’s chief prosecutor from 1998 – 2000 and, later, as associate tribal judge. He now works in private practice. During those years, he also worked in a program that administers low-income home heating assistance.
Registration for 5th Annual Indigenous Law Conference
Registration for the ILPC’s 5th Annual Indigenous Law Conference, Forty Years of the Indian Civil Rights Act, is now available online here.
NPR on Boarding Schools
NPR’s Morning Edition is running a two-part piece on boarding schools.
For the government, it was a possible solution to the so-called Indian problem. For the tens of thousands of Indians who went to boarding schools, it’s largely remembered as a time of abuse and desecration of culture.
The government still operates a handful of off-reservation boarding schools, but funding is in decline. Now many Native Americans are fighting to keep the schools open.
‘Kill the Indian … Save the Man’
The late performer and Indian activist Floyd Red Crow Westerman was haunted by his memories of boarding school. As a child, he left his reservation in South Dakota for the Wahpeton Indian Boarding School in North Dakota. Sixty years later, he still remembers watching his mother through the window as he left.
At first, he thought he was on the bus because his mother didn’t want him anymore. But then he noticed she was crying.
“It was hurting her, too. It was hurting me to see that,” Westerman says. “I’ll never forget. All the mothers were crying.”
Read, or listen, to the rest here.
Fast Cars and Frybread by Gordon Johnson
From BookSlut:
Gordon Johnson’s Fast Cars and Frybread is a slim volume of collected columns from the Press-Enterprise in Riverside County, California spanning 1993 to 2000 — forty-three of them, to be exact. Johnson is a Cahuilla/Cupeño member of the Pala Indian Reservation. In Johnson’s introduction, he mentions his ambition to pen “life moments [he] wanted to rescue from change.” Casinos, from Johnson’s point of view, dramatically altered reservation life and culture, thereby prompting him to detail reservation life before their advent.
Turtle Talk 
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