Fletcher to Speak at Penn State Law School Today

From PSU College of Education website:

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – American Indian law and policy expertMatthew Fletcher will visit Penn State Law on September 19 to present “American Indian Education: Counternarratives in Racism, Struggle, and the Law.” Fletcher is the chief editor of Turtle Talk, the leading law blog on American Indian law and policy.

“Professor Fletcher’s talk will help people understand the challenges inherent in Indian education and will appeal especially to those with an interest in educational leadership and issues related to the education of American Indian and Alaska Native students,” said Susan Faircloth, associate professor of education at Penn State.

Faircloth is the director of Penn State’s American Indian Leadership Program, the nation’s oldest continuously operating education leadership program for American Indians and Alaska Natives. Her research focuses on the overrepresentation of American Indian and Alaska Native students in special education programs and services.

“This event will challenge participants to think about the importance of tribal sovereignty to American Indian education,” said Penn State Law Professor Carla Pratt, who studies both Indian law and the experience of minorities in law school and the legal profession.

Matthew L.M. Fletcher is professor of law at Michigan State University College of Law and director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center. He is the chief justice of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians Supreme Court and also sits as an appellate judge for the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, the Hoopa Valley Tribe, and the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Indians. He is a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, located in Peshawbestown, Mich. In 2010, Fletcher was elected to the American Law Institute.

Fletcher recently published the sixth edition of Cases and Materials on Federal Indian Law with David Getches, Charles Wilkinson, and Robert Williams, and American Indian Tribal Law, the first casebook for law students on tribal law. His book, The Return of the Eagle: The Legal History of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, will be published later this year by Michigan State University Press. He is also the author of American Indian Education: Counternarratives in Racism, Struggle, and the Law (Routledge, 2008).

Fletcher’s talk is sponsored by the American Indian Leadership Program, the College of Education, and Penn State Law. His presentation begins at noon on September 19 in the auditorium of the Lewis Katz Building. The public is welcome.

MSU Lecture on Cobell Settlement (Edward Valandra)

In These Times, In this Land: Objections to the Settlement in Cobell v. Salazar

Lecture/Discussion

With

Lakota Scholar

Edward Valandra

 Friday August 19th 213 Morrill Hall

12 Noon

 In December 2009 the U.S. departments of the Interior and Justice reached a settlement on the long-running Cobell class-action lawsuit regarding the federal government’s mismanagement of more than 300,000 individual American Indian and Alaska Native trust accounts.

Edward Valandra, a Lakota scholar and the founder and research Fellow of the Community for the advancement of Native Studies (CANS), will be giving a luncheon talk in the English Department Conference Room, 213 Morrill Hall at 12:00 noon on Friday August 19. He will be critiquing recent developments in Cobell v. Salazar and how they affect the rights of Native peoples in this long standing case.

Sponsored by the Native American Institute and Michigan State University

Justice Breyer and “The Yale Lectures”

Available here, drawing from his book Making Democracy Work.

Here is an excerpt:

After the decision [in Worcester], Justice Joseph Story wrote to his wife: “Thanks be to God, the Court can wash their hands clean of the iniquity of oppressing the Indians and disregarding their rights.” A few days later, he wrote to another
correspondent: “The Court has done its duty. Let the Nation now do theirs.” Story added: “Georgia is full of anger and violence. . . . Probably she will resist . . . , and if she does, I do not believe the President will interfere . . . .”

And that is just what happened. Georgia said it would resist the decision as a “usurpation” of power. And this is the case about which President Andrew Jackson supposedly said, “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”
The President considered he had as good a right as the Court to decide what the Constitution meant and how it should be enforced. Worcester stayed in jail. John Marshall wrote to Story: “I yield slowly and reluctantly to the conviction that our Constitution cannot last.”

What was wrong with Jackson’s position? The President soon found out. South Carolina, noticing what Georgia could do, decided it would follow suit— but in respect to federal taxes. It passed a law prohibiting the payment of federal customs duties. And Jackson then began to realize the threat to the Union inherent in the principle. He quickly obtained a “force bill” from Congress, authorizing him to send troops to South Carolina. And South Carolina withdrew its law. The press began to write about Georgia and the Cherokees: how did Georgia and Worcester differ from South Carolina and taxes? And Georgia began to back down. It reached an agreement with Worcester, releasing him from jail. And so the Court’s order was ultimately enforced. Or was it?

There is no happy ending here. Jackson sent troops to Georgia, but not to enforce the Court’s decision or to secure the Indians their lands. To the contrary, he sent federal troops to evict the Indians. He found a handful of Cherokees willing to sign a treaty requiring departure; he ignored 17,000 other Cherokees who protested that they would die rather than agree to go; and he forced the tribe to move to Oklahoma, walking there along the Trail of Tears, so-called because so many Cherokees died along the way. Their descendants live in Oklahoma to this day.

This episode suggests a negative answer to Hotspur’s question. The Court may follow the law—even in an unpopular matter. But that does not matter very much. Force, not law, will prevail. The summoned “spirits” will not come.

Winona LaDuke Talk at MSU on April 28

Gordon Henry Presentation — “Reel Injun” — TONIGHT!!!!

MSU NAISO Talk — Prof. Fletcher on Michigan Indian Treaty Rights — TONIGHT 7:00 PM

MSU NAISO will host a talk on Michigan Anishinaabek treaty rights tonight at 7 PM. The talk will be held at the MSU College of Law in Room 325.

Dennis Banks Master’s Tea at Yale and Film Showing

This was put together by Ned Blackhawk. My part is the discussion on the second day.

Walter Echo-Hawk book Talk at OKC Oklahoma Heritage Museum: Sept. 21

Oklahoma City, OK – Acclaimed Pawnee attorney, activist, and author Walter R. Echo-Hawk will present his book In the Courts of the Conqueror:  The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided, at a book talk on Tuesday, September 21, 6:00 pm, at the Oklahoma Heritage Association Museum, 1400 Classen Boulevard, Oklahoma City.  The program is co-sponsored by the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums, Crowe & Dunlevy, the Oklahoma Department of Libraries, the Oklahoma Museums Association, and the Oklahoma Heritage Association.

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2010 Bellwood Lecture @ Idaho Law

Here is the webcast of Idaho’s Bellwood Lecture featuring Larry Echohawk, Lawrence Baca, and Rebecca Tsosie.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

MSU Indigenous Law and Policy Center Alumni Reunion Event — April 21 @ 3PM