Here:
Author: Matthew L.M. Fletcher
Suquamish Tribe Seeks Attorney
The Suquamish Tribe, Suquamish Washington is recruiting for an Attorney II position. They are seeking an Attorney with five to seven years’ legal experience in federal Indian law, tribal land issues, and extensive knowledge/experience working with tribal, state, and federal agencies. The Suquamish Tribe is a progressive, energetic Treaty Tribe located on the west side of Puget Sound just thirty-five minutes by ferry from Seattle.
Here is the Suquamish website with a link to current available job listings. And that is here.
Turtle Talk Poll/Survey: What Should Indian Law Students Be Researching and Writing About? (Now with Results)
Please see below for the write-in answers. Keeping it open but this is probably the end of the meat of the polling.
Every year, American Indian law profs are asked by law students to advise on law school paper topics or law journal note topics. Law profs are well suited to advising students on putting together papers of publishable quality, and perhaps even getting them published. Many people don’t know it, but law students often write about the cutting edge issues long before law profs do.
I am of the view that Indian law practitioners are the people law students should be asking — they’re the ones in the field. A lot of law profs serve as tribal court judges, so we see snippets of the action on the ground but we tend to recommend that a law student write another case note or a case-cruncher. The people who work in-house for tribal governments, federal and state government attorneys, and outside counsel know what the kind of scholarship is actually useful in Indian affairs.
If you think of something else, add it, or post a comment, or both.
Of course, the information could be valuable to law profs as well.
UPDATE (9:17 AM Eastern, Oct. 17, 2014):
The wordpress poll doesn’t work all that well. “Other” answers already include the following:
| outer space law and colonization | 2 |
|---|---|
| Application of federal laws | 1 |
| tribal citizenship/disenrollment remedies | 1 |
| land into trust | 1 |
| educational effect of the misuse of tribal imagery in elementary/high school. | 1 |
| General corporate and business law | 1 |
| Tribal Gaming/IGRA | 1 |
| indian education–history of related laws | 1 |
| Economic Bias in Tribal Law Academic Scholarship | 1 |
| tribal criminal jd (including right to counsel, lack of, habeas, etc) | 1 |
| Tribal preference and Peabody Coal | 1 |
| voting rights, particularly real evidence of barriers | 1 |
| Tribal health care programs | 1 |
| historical conventions | 1 |
| Shared jurisdiction within the boundaries | 1 |
| USDA RD Housing administered by TDHEs | 1 |
| All of the above! | 1 |
| intra-tribal disputes | 1 |
| all topics | 1 |
| Peacemaking courts becoming mainstream! | 1 |
| Native Veterans Tax issue | 1 |
| Public Domain Indian allotments-jurisdiction | 1 |
| State – Tribal Tax Issues | 1 |
| financial regulatory structure of tribal governments and enterprises | 1 |
| Alaska trust lands/criminal jdx | 1 |
| nagpra | 1 |
| BLM oversight of tribal lands and mischaracterization as public lands | 1 |
| $99 Million in Attorney Fees for Harper & Gingold | 1 |
| Indian water negotiations and settlements | 1 |
| environmental law | 1 |
| Indian Civil Rights violations | 1 |
| Practical effect of cross-deputization of tribal law enforcement | 1 |
| tribal election disputes | 1 |
| reciprocal domestication of tribal court orders | 1 |
| 2014 Farm Bill and Tribal Food Sovereignty | 1 |
Updated Materials in California v. Picayune Rancheria
Here are the new pleadings in State of California v. Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians (E.D. Cal.):
More coming.
Prior post on this case here.
Sarah Krakoff on the Neurotic Structure of American Indian Law
Sarah Krakoff has published “Law, Violence, and the Neurotic Structure of American Indian Law” in the Wake Forest Law Review (PDF).
An excerpt:
What I want to explore in this Essay is whether there is something about the persistence of American Indian communities and their ability to make their own laws and meanings—their ability to be “jurisgenerative” in the way that only local communities can, according to Cover—that nags at the federal judiciary, that taunts them to try repeatedly to cabin this ungovernable “other.” After more than two and a half centuries of legal (and legalized) violence, American Indian tribes still persist, and they do so in a way that protects an ineffable and unconquerable indigeneity. I wonder whether the disproportionate number of federal judicial decisions (and in particular Supreme Court decisions) devoted to defining, diminishing, cabining, and parsing tribes and their rights and powers is as much a reflection of law’s impotence (the limits of its violence) to erase tribes as it is of its power to destroy. Does judicial anxiety about these limits drive the Court to try, over and over, to extend its interpretive stance into communities decidedly unlikely to act in concert with the Court’s commands? This Essay will probe that question.
National Intertribal Tax Alliance Amicus Materials in Agua Caliente v. Riverside County (Part 162 Leasing Regs)
From NITA:
Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians v. Riverside County, et al, 5:14-cv-00007-DMG-DBT (United States District Court, Central District of California). The Aqua Caliente Tribe filed this civil action against Riverside County to stop the collection of taxes on Indian land leaseholders. The Desert Water Agency intervened in this action. Riverside County collects possessory interest taxes from Indian land leaseholders and then redistributes much of the money to cities, schools and other local governments. The Tribe has long viewed as this tax as illegal and views these possessory interest taxes as an unlawful infringement on Tribal sovereignty rights. The action was filed January 2, 2014 and is set for trial on June 16, 2015.
Here are the materials in Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians v. Riverside County (C.D. Cal.):
NITA_Request_to_File_Amicus_and_Brief
Opposition_to_File_Amicus_Desert_Water
Federal Court Rebuffs Feds’ Effort to Modify Phase 1 Judgment in Jicarilla Trust Breach Case
Here are the materials in Jicarilla Apache Nation v. United States (Fed. Cl.):
405 Govt Motion to Modify Phase 1 Ruling
408 DCT Order Denying Govt Motion
An excerpt:
In the guise of a motion under RCFC 54(b) and 59(a)(1), defendant would have the court consider issues that were not raised during the trial in this case – issues that defendant could have raised, but did not. As plaintiff makes perfectly clear, defendant is seeking to litigate in this tranche issues involving intra-pooling of funds, when the issues before this first stage of the case involved the inter-pooling of funds. Compare Jicarilla Apache Nation, 112 Fed. Cl at 301-02. Defendant could have raised these issues in discovery or even during the pretrial filings in this case, but did not. Nor does defendant rely upon any newly-discovered evidence. The court will not allow defendant to raise these issues at this late stage.
And:
Because of the complexity of this case, the court dealt with this case in stages – and plaintiff and defendant clearly understood this. The court will not allow defendant to alter the stages in this case, as defendant deems fit. Therefore, defendant’s motion is DENIED. Further violations by defendant of this court’s orders, both for discovery and pretrial filings purposes, may lead to the imposition of sanctions.
A technical ruling to be sure. Here is a quick primer:
The boldface reference to “inter-pooling of funds” concerns pooling of trust accounts among tribes for better investment returns, as has been done with IIM accounts since their inception. On cross-motions for summary judgment before trial, the Court held that the intertribal pooling claim fell within Indian Tucker Act jurisdiction even though there was no statutory reference to such a duty, and notwithstanding the then-recent Supreme Court decision in the same case, but that fact issues precluded summary judgment as to whether there was such a duty here. Jicarilla Apache Nation v. United States, 100 Fed. Cl. 726, 739-40 (2011). After trial, the Court held that Jicarilla did not prove such a duty. See the reference in today’s order to the post-trial decision.
In the motion for modification, the US sought to have the phase 1 trial ruling also preclude intra-tribal pooling of trust accounts, when concerns pooling of Jicarilla’s multiple trust accounts (as above, to obtain better returns). At trial, Jicarilla basically presented its damage calculations based on that, without objection by the US. Not surprisingly, the Court rejected the recent motion as seeking to challenge something that the US had failed to address in discovery or before (or during) trial.
We posted on the Phase 1 judgment here.
Cherokee Nation Allowed to Proceed with Avandia Suit against GlaxoSmithKline in Cherokee Courts
Here are the materials in GlaxoSmithKline LLC v. Cherokee Nation (D. Mass.):
An excerpt:
The dispute in this case centers on a 2012 settlement agreement entered into by Plaintiff GlaxoSmithKline LLC (“GlaxoSmithKline” or “GSK”) in connection with its plea in a criminal proceeding, United States of America v. GlaxoSmithKline, LLC, Criminal Action No. 12-10206-RWZ (D. Mass). GlaxoSmithKline now seeks a declaratory judgment that claims brought by the Cherokee Nation in the District Court of the Cherokee Nation were released by the settlement agreement. Presently at issue are GlaxoSmithKline’s Renewed Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment [#61] and the Cherokee Nation’s Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment [#64]. For the following reasons, GlaxoSmithKline’s motion is DENIED and the Cherokee Nation’s motion is ALLOWED.
We posted the complaint here.
Spokane Tribe Lead Probation Officer Job Posting
Associate Attorney opening with Earthjustice – Northern Rockies
From Earthjustice (2015 Associate Attorney Northern Rockies):
We are currently seeking an associate attorney to join our public interest environmental litigation practice next fall and we are eager to reach candidates with an interest in and knowledge of Indian law and Native American issues. More information about the position and our organization is available online at http://earthjustice.org/about/jobs/31967/associate-attorney.
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