Here, from what promises to be an excellent new blog called Belt Way Indian.
Author: Matthew L.M. Fletcher
NCAI Job Postings for Staff Attorney and Director of Policy–Human Services
White Earth Band Chippewa Tribal Council Awarded Grant for Constitutional Reform
White Earth Tribal Council awarded Bush Foundation grant for constitutional reform process
WHITE EARTH, MINN. – The Bush Foundation has recently approved a grant of $379,771 to the White Earth Tribal Council to help support the White Earth Nation’s constitutional reform process. White Earth’s match of $10,394 brings the total to $390,165.
In 2009, White Earth convened a Constitution Convention and drafted and ratified a new White Earth Nation Constitution. The Bush Foundation funds will be used to inform and prepare White Earth constituents for a referendum on the White Earth Nation Constitution.
“Constitutional reform is imperative to the sovereignty, self-determination, and economic development of the White Earth Nation,” said White Earth Chairwoman Erma J. Vizenor.
“The present Minnesota Chippewa Tribe Constitution that has governed White Earth since 1936 is a boilerplate constitution from the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934,” said Vizenor. “This boilerplate tribal constitution is similar to a business charter, lacking a separation of powers with no provision for an independent judicial system, weak assertion of jurisdiction, and restricting tribal citizenship to eventual extinction.”
The Bush Foundation was established in 1953 by 3M executive Archibald Bush and his wife, Edyth, and today works in communities across Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and the 23 Native nations that share the same geographic area.
New Scholarship on Plenary Power and Indian Affairs and Immigration
Susan Bibler Coutin, Justin B. Richland, and Veronique Fortin have posted Routine Exceptionality: The Plenary Power Doctrine, Immigrants, and the Indigenous Under U.S. Law on SSRN.
Here is the abstract:
Our paper examines how law-making regarding Native and Central Americans in the United States gives rise to documentary forms that challenge binaries that have plagued sociolegal scholarship. In the United States, plenary power gives the federal government what former U.S. attorney general Michael Mukasey termed the “administrative grace” to grant privileges to members of groups, such as immigrants and Native Americans, who are citizens of other nations, and thus whose allegiance is questioned. Matter of Compean 24 I&N Dec. 710 (A.G. 2009). Plenary power is understood by the Supreme Court as having “always been deemed a political one, not subject” to judicial oversight. Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U.S. 553 (1903). This understanding makes plenary power something of a legal black box – analysis typically ends with the determination that the authority in question is a political one beyond legal review. Yet members of these groups experience plenary power precisely in its regulatory form, in the ways in which they are demanded to produce documents to establish juridical and political identities before the state. Such documents, which simultaneously produce and contest accounts of immigrant and indigenous histories, create alternative understandings in which law is characterized neither by gaps nor by gaplessness, but rather by embodiment in material form.
MSU Law Alum Bryan Newland Joins Fletcher Law, PLLC
FLETCHER LAW, PLLC ANNOUNCES ADDITION OF BRYAN NEWLAND
FletcherLaw, PLLC is proud to announce that Bryan Newland has joined the Firm as a Member. Bryan comes to Fletcher Law, PLLC following three years of service in President Obama’s Administration at the Department of the Interior. At the Department, Bryan served as a Policy Advisor to Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk, Acting Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Del Laverdure, and Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn.
In his service, Bryan led the Department’s efforts to reform its Indian leasing regulations, and was instrumental in the passage of the HEARTH Act. Bryan also advised the Assistant Secretary on land-into-trust matters, energy policy, and gaming policy – where he helped bring about a transformation in the Federal Government’s policy relating to tribal-state gaming compacts.
Bryan is a citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community (Ojibwe), and is a 2007 graduate of the Michigan State University College of Law with a certificate from the Indigenous Law and Policy Center. He has extensive legal and policy experience relating to Indian and commercial gaming, Indian land issues, reserved treaty rights, tribal colleges, and energy development. Bryan has also represented clients relating to campaign finance compliance, election law, and other political matters.
FletcherLaw, PLLC is a national Indian-law firm based in Lansing, Michigan, and provides its clients with legal counsel and strategic consulting services. The Firm was founded in 2012 by Zeke Fletcher, a citizen of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School.
To contact Zeke Fletcher at Fletcher Law, PLLC, email zfletcher@fletcherlawpllc.com or call (517) 755-0776. To contact Bryan Newland, email bnewland@fletcherlawpllc.com or call (517) 862-5570.
Navajo Nation Supreme Court Issues Opinions in Employment and Government Contracting Disputes
Here is the opinion in Meadows v. Navajo Nation Labor Commission.The court’s syllabus:
The Court grants a petition for writ of mandamus, finding that the Labor Commission lacked authority to order the recusal of the panel and all previous members. The Court remands the matter for the Commission to hear the merits of the case. (November 2, 2012).
Here is the opinion in Graven v. Morgan. An excerpt:
This case concerns an appeal of Window Rock District Court’s dismissal of a breach of contract lawsuit. Appellant Will Graven appeals the June 17, 2010 decision of the district court dismissing the suit against Appellees Speaker of the Navajo Nation Council and the Chief of Staff of the legislative branch in their individual capacities on the basis of sovereign immunity.The Court affirms the dismissal but on other grounds.
California Court of Appeals Decides Boundary Dispute Involving Trust Land
Newseum Presents “Waaxe’s Law”
NEWSEUM PRESENTS STAGED READING OF ‘WAAXE’S LAW’
Performance will feature dramatic retelling of the first federal court decision to declare Native Americans to be “persons” under the law
WASHINGTON — The Newseum will host a performance of “Waaxe’s Law” in the museum’s Walter and Leonore Annenberg Theater on Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012, at 7:30 p.m.
In 1879, a Ponca Indian chief stood up, extended his hand, and made one of the greatest arguments for equality under the law in the history of the United States. Chief Standing Bear demanded that a federal court afford him the same rights as whites under the law, despite the fact that his skin was a different color.
Cherokee playwright and attorney Mary Kathryn Nagle wrote “Waaxe’s Law,” a play that tells the story of the forced removal of the Ponca tribe to present-day Oklahoma and Chief Standing Bear’s subsequent journey for justice — a journey that resulted in the first federal court decision declaring Indians to be “persons” under the law. Although Chief Standing Bear won his fight for equality in 1879 — a full 75 years before the Supreme Court issued its decision in Brown v. Board of Education — very few Americans know of his story or the freedoms he won for Native Americans. Continue reading
Alaska SCT Orders State to Reconsider Hunting/Fishing Ruling for Chitina Subdistrict
Here is the opinion in The Alaska Fish & Wildlife Conservation Fund v. State, Dept. of Fish & Game, Board of Fisheries.
An excerpt:
In 1999, the Board of Fisheries (the Board) made a positive customary and traditional use finding in the Chitina subdistrict for the first time, thereby changing it from a “personal use” to a “subsistence” fishery. The Board reversed this decision in 2003, returning Chitina to a personal use fishery. The Alaska Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fund (AFWCF) and the Chitina Dipnetters Association, Inc., after asking the Board to reconsider its 2003 finding in both 2005 and 2008,1 brought this suit to challenge the Board’s negative customary and traditional use finding for Chitina. They claimed that the regulation used by the Board to make such a finding, 5 Alaska Administrative Code (AAC) 99.010(b), was unconstitutional on its face and as applied. The superior court held that the regulation was valid and constitutional, but remanded for the Board to fully articulate the standard being used in its application of 5 AAC 99.010(b)(8). It also instructed the Board not to consider “the per capita consumption of wild food in the home community of various users” upon remand. On remand, the Board codified a definition of “subsistence way of life,” allowed the parties to submit evidence, and upheld its previous classification. Because 5 AAC 99.010(b) is consistent with its authorizing statutes, is reasonable and not arbitrary, does not violate the Alaska Constitution’s equal access provisions, and was constitutionally applied when the Board made its customary and traditional use finding for the Chitina fishery in 2003, we affirm this portion of the superior court’s rulings. Because there is no indication that the Board actually relied on the per capita consumption of wild foods in the users’ home communities when applying 5 AAC 99.010(b) and because that information may be relevant to the subsistence inquiry, we reverse this ruling by the superior court.
The Onion on Supreme Court’s Same-Sex Marriage Cases
Here.
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