Author: Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Disturbing Events at Lac Courte Oreilles Treaty Rights Camp — Mining Co. Hires Paramilitary Security Firm to Push Off Anishinaabeg

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

News coverage from the Progressive and Wisconsin Public Radio.

From the Prog:

On Tuesday morning the Iron County Forest Committee voted unanimously to recommend that the Iron County Board pursue criminal and civil charges against the Lac Courte Oreilles Treaty Harvest and Education camp for violating county ordinances and provisions of state County Forest Law. The vote took place with no discussion after the committee emerged from closed session with their corporate counsel.

The decision comes two months after the same committee voted unanimously to approve a request by the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa for a waiver to the county’s 14-day camping ordinance to allow the camp to remain established on Moore Park Road for one year.

From WPR:

MainGun
Credit Rob Ganson

An attorney who has been critical of mining company GTAC says the company might have committed a felony when it hired an unlicensed security firm to guard its test drills.

Hurley lawyer Anthony Stella had already asked the Iron County district attorney and state regulators to deny a license to Arizona-based Bulletproof Securities because the company’s paramilitary-style guards operated here without a license. In a new letter sent to the DA and the state, Stella cites another law that says anyone who employs armed people for the protection of persons or property, not being authorized by the laws of the state, is guilty of a felony.

Outstanding New Paper on Federal Trust Land Acquisitions by Frank Pommersheim

Matthew L.M. Fletcher2 Comments

Frank Pommersheim has published an important new paper titled “Land Into Trust: An Inquiry into Law, Policy, and History” in the Idaho Law Review. A PDF is here:

49 Idaho Law Review 519

Here is the introduction:

The land-into-trust policy of the Indian Reorganization Act (“IRA”) is an express legislative attempt to undo, or at least ameliorate, the massive loss of Indian land that resulted from the federal government’s allotment policy of the late nineteenth *520 and early twentieth centuries. The allotment policy occasioned a severe reduction in the national Indian land estate without any benefit to the affected Indians and tribes including the vaunted goals of assimilation and the reduction of poverty in Indian country. The extensive loss of land produced much economic hardship, cultural strain, and erosion of tribal governing authority.

The subsequent attempt of IRA law and policy to reverse this process of severe land loss raises significant questions about the ability of law, and Indian policy in particular, to repair history without creating new conflict that reprises, even deepens, old animosities. This article will survey and analyze this process from both a policy and empirical point of view. In addition, this piece will review the nitty-gritty administrative procedures for putting land into trust, the various procedural challenges to this process, as well as substantive legal challenges to the validity of the land-into-trust portions of the IRA, especially in the state of South Dakota. Finally, the article will tally the empirical results to date, and conclude by examining non-litigation strategies and solutions with an eye on their ability to meet the needs of all concerned.

HIGHLY recommended.

Federal Court Dismisses Stockbridge-Munsee New York Land Claims

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Here are the materials in Stockbridge-Munsee Community v. State of New York (N.D. N.Y.):

7-23-13 ORDER dismissing case

Stockbridge-Munsee Amended Complaint with Maps

Oneida NY Motion to Dismiss

State Defendants Motion to Dismiss

County-Muni Defendants Motion to Dismiss

Response to OIN Motion

Response to State Defendants Motion

Joint State Defendants Reply

OIN Reply

Stockbridge-Munsee press release on 7-24-13 decision

AmLawDaily Coverage of Foxwoods Restructuring Deal

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here.

An excerpt:

Though Yoon won’t say if Weil is handling other Indian casino matters, there is likely be more such work for some work to snap up in the not-too-distant future. Moody’s downgraded its ratings on several Indian-owned casino bonds earlier this year, issuing a “probability of default” rating on $200 million worth of notes tied to a Sacramento  casino operated by the Buena Vista band of the Me-Wuk Indian tribe and a similar warning on $300 million in notes connected to a Washington State casino operated by the Snoqualmie Tribe.

Section 1983 Complaint against Red Cliff Housing Authority Dismissed

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Here are the materials in DePerry v. Deragon (W.D. Wis.):

DCT Dismissing Complaint

DePerry Complaint

Defendants Motion to Dismiss

DePerry Opposition

Defendants Reply

An excerpt:

Asserting a claim pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3), Raymond DePerry alleges in his amended complaint defendants fired him as the Executive Director of the Red Cliff Chippewa Housing Authority (“the Authority”) as a result of their conspiracy to interfere with the civil rights of the Authority’s tenants. Defendants, the Authority’s seven-member Board of Commissioners, responded with the instant motion to dismiss that complaint for failure to state a legally-cognizable claim. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). The court finds that DePerry’s amended complaint contains no allegation or inference of a conspiracy to deprive anyone of civil rights, nor of any class-based animus held by defendants, and will therefore grant defendants’ motion to dismiss.

Second Circuit Appeal in Wire Fraud Case: Conspirators Claimed Banks Held “Trillions” in Yamasee Tribal Dollars

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the opinion in United States v. Corsey:

US v Corsey

Excerpts:

Over the next few months, Re recorded the defendants as they baited him with an escalating series of lies: Corsey explained that MIBT was the central bank for scores of Native American governments, including the Yamasee Indian tribe, a nation with trillions of dollars in assets.

And:

And in this case, appellants posit, no reasonable investment professional would have bought the conspirators’ absurd story; any broker would have laughed in disbelief the moment he opened an email from a wealthy bank sent from an AOL email address, found doctored copies of T-notes, and learned that a long-disbanded Native American tribe owned them. Thus, the argument goes, because no potential victim of this particular fraud would have ever fallen for it, the appellants’ lies were not “capable of influencing the decision of [any] decisionmaking body.”

Finally:

The twenty-year sentences imposed on appellants are not merely harsh, they are dramatically more severe than can be justified by the crime the appellants committed. This was a clumsy, almost comical, conspiracy to defraud a non-existent investor of three billion dollars. That scheme never came close to fruition. During his first meeting with Thomas Re, Emerson Corsey described Magnolia International Bank and Trust as the central bank for scores of Native American governments, including the Yamasee Indian tribe, which a Wikipedia search would have revealed as a tribal confederation that was broken up and defeated early in the 18th century. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamasee. It took only a brief Google search for Re and his associates to understand that the proposal “smelled”—which is why the appellants were recorded by Re for months before their arrest. At one point, Corsey provided Re with a certificate signed by John Juncal that listed CUSIP numbers for the T-notes; when Re shared the certificate with his colleagues, they responded by bursting into laughter. Even the terms of the proposed deal itself were laughable: the lender of three billion dollars would, according to the appellants, receive fourteen billion dollars in profit over five years. This scheme amounted to a series of absurd lies piled on top of even more absurd lies. Appellants’ conduct was not dangerous because they had absolutely no hope of success.

Federal Court Issues Clarified Order in St. Regis Mohawk Land Claims (Fort Covington Area Claim)

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

In short, no dice. Here are the updated materials:

St. Regis Mohawk Motion for Clarification

US Motion for Clarification

USDC NDNY Canadian St. Regis v. New York – Corrected & Clarified Memorandum Decision & Order 7-23-2013

Prior order here.

Pending Indian Country Payday Lender Case — Brown v. Western Sky

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Here are the materials so far in Brown v. Western Sky Financial (M.D. N.C.):

ws — complaint filed, nc federal court

NC case — amended complaint — Western Sky

brown — brief re amend as filed

Western Sky Motion to Dismiss

brown — brief re dismiss — as filed

Western Sky Motion to Compel Arbitration

brown — brief re arb as filed

Federal Trade Commission Partially Settles Suit against Indian Country Payday Lenders

Matthew L.M. Fletcher2 Comments

The case is Federal Trade Commission v. AMG Services (D. Nev.). Here are the most recent materials from the FTC website:

News coverage here.

Briefs here:

FTC Motion for Partial Summary J

AMG Response

Brady Response

Tucker Defendants Response

FTC Reply

 

Ian Mosby’s Article: “Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942–1952”

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Ian Mosby’s article, the subject of an earlier post here, “Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942–1952“, published in Histoire sociale/Social history, is available for a limited time for free at the MUSE website (PDF here).

An absolute must read.

Here is the abstract:

Between 1942 and 1952, some of Canada’s leading nutrition experts, in cooperation with various federal departments, conducted an unprecedented series of nutritional studies of Aboriginal communities and residential schools. The most ambitious and perhaps best known of these was the 1947–1948 James Bay Survey of the Attawapiskat and Rupert’s House Cree First Nations. Less well known were two separate long-term studies that went so far as to include controlled experiments conducted, apparently without the subjects’ informed consent or knowledge, on malnourished Aboriginal populations in Northern Manitoba and, later, in six Indian residential schools. This article explores these studies and experiments, in part to provide a narrative record of a largely unexamined episode of exploitation and neglect by the Canadian government. At the same time, it situates these studies within the context of broader federal policies governing the lives of Aboriginal peoples, a shifting Canadian consensus concerning the science of nutrition, and changing attitudes towards the ethics of biomedical experimentation on human beings during a period that encompassed, among other things, the establishment of the Nuremberg Code of experimental research ethics.