Here for details.
And here for the petition:
legal history
UNM Symposium on United States v. Sandoval
Here is the notice:
UNM symposium on United States v Sandoval
The description:
On October 20, 1913, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Sandoval, a case that addressed whether Congress could prohibit the introduction of intoxicating liquor into Santa Clara Pueblo lands notwithstanding the admission of New Mexico to statehood. The Court validated Congress’s power by virtue of the “Indian” status of the Pueblo people and their homelands, establishing an immensely important precedent asserting broad federal authority in Indian affairs generally. This symposium highlights three themes tied to Sandoval ’s legacy: Federal Authority in Indian Country, Indian Identity and Status, and the Rights of Defendants in Tribal Court. An additional related theme, Liquor in Indian Country, will be explored in the associated conference for tribal public defenders and Indian law clinicians, which will interweave with the symposium. This symposium is the third in a series of anniversary symposia commemorating landmark Indian law cases and legislation.
1894 Hopi Petition to US: “Let Us Keep Our Communal Land”
Here, from Slate’s history vault.
Judge Richard G. Kopf – Deconstructing the Mythology of the Standing Bear Case
Here.
I agree with Judge Kopf that there is a mythology surrounding Standing Bear v. Crook case and believe it was perpetuated by those who were “bent on publicizing the Indian cause.” I am particularly interested in how this mythology played into Elk v. Wilkins. While there is little written or known about John Elk, there was sentiment that the legal team involved in Standing Bear sought out Elk to continue the pursuit of this cause. A couple years ago, I found an article written in “Seen & Heard” (1904) and think about it whenever I hear about either of these cases. The whole piece on both cases starts at page 4753, but the excerpt starts on page 4762 and describes what happened after Standing Bear.
After Judge Dundy’s decision, Bishop Clarkson, of Nebraska, and James Cook urged Mr. Tibbles to continue the fight. He did so with vigor, and for the next five years lectured on Indian reforms all over the United States. To push the matter still further, one Presidential election day Mr. Tibbles went to Omaha and induced John Elk, a full blooded Indian, to go to the polls and vote.
NYTs on California’s “Forced Apprenticeship” of Indians (Civil War History Series)
Here.
An excerpt:
On April 27, 1863, nearly five months after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, California abolished its system of forced apprenticeship for American Indians. Under the apprenticeship provisions of the state’s Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, several thousand California Indians, mostly children, had suffered kidnapping, sale and involuntary servitude for over a decade.
Also:
Sources: “An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, April 22, 1850”; Michael Magliari, “Free Soil, Unfree Labor,” Pacific Historical Review 73 (August 2004); “Minority Report of the Special Joint Committee on the Mendocino War,” in Appendix to the Journals of the California Senate (1860); “An Act Amendatory of an Act entitled ‘An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians,’ April 16, 1860”; Mendocino Herald, April 10, 1863; George Hanson to William P. Dole, July 15, 1861, Office of Indian Affairs, Letters Received; Sacramento Union, May 5 – 12, 1862; Brendan C. Lindsay, “Murder State: California’s Native American Genocide, 1846 – 1873”; Elijah Steele to William P. Dole, Oct. 30, 1863, Office of Indian Affairs, Letters Received; Report of the Commissioner for Indian Affairs, 1867; Alta California, June 8, 1874.
MSNBC: Contextualizing the Indian Child Welfare Act
Here.
Featuring NCAI Executive Director, Jacqueline Pata.
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn on “Unjustifiable Expectations”
I’m honored that historian and Professor Emerita Elizabeth Cook-Lynn has reviewed one of my law review articles in Native Sun News.
A Book Review: ‘Unjustifiable Expectations’ by Ann E. Tweedy
Blast from the Past: 1939 Oberlin College Master’s Thesis: “Decline of Indian Tribal Sovereignty in the Nineteenth Century”
Interesting read, in that it comes right as World War II began and reads like it could have been written in the modern era. Also includes the text of the letter from President Jackson to Georgia Gov. Lampkin strongly implying he ought to let Samuel Worcester et al. go home:
Decline of Indian Tribal Sovereignty in the Nineteenth Century
Kate Fort: “The Vanishing Indian Returns: Tribes, Popular Originalism, and the Supreme Court”
Our own Kathryn E. Fort has posted her paper, “The Vanishing Indian Returns: Tribes, Popular Originalism, and the Supreme Court,” on SSRN. It was published in the St. Louis Law Journal.
Here is the abstract:
As the nation faces cultural divides over the meaning of the “Founding,” the Constitution, and who owns these meanings, the Court’s embrace of originalism is one strand that feeds the divide. The Court’s valuing of the original interpretation of the Constitution has reinforced the Founder fetishism also found in popular culture, specifically within the politics of those identified as the Tea Party. As addressed elsewhere, their strict worship of the Founders has historical implications for both women and African Americans, groups both marginalized and viewed as property in the Constitution. No one, however, has written about how the Court’s cobbled historical narrative and their veneration for the Founders have affected American Indian tribes. Tribes barely exist in the Constitution, and the Founders’ “original” understanding of tribes was that they would inevitably disappear.
The “vanishing Indian” stereotype, promulgated in the early Republic, and reaching an apex in the 1820’s, continues to influence fundamentally how the Court views tribes. Compressing history from the Founding through the Jacksonian era undermines tribal authority and sovereignty within the Court. In its federal Indian law cases, the Court relies on racial stereotypes and popular conceptions of American history. As a result of these shortcuts, the Court folds all tribes into one large group, empties the American landscape of tribal peoples, and forces tribes into a past where they only exist to disappear.
New Scholarship: “Property Law and American Empire”
Michael Burger and Paul Frymer have posted their paper, “Property Law and American Empire,” forthcoming in the University of Hawai’i Law Review.
Here is the abstract:
Current scholarship by legal commentators and political scientists recognizes that the weapons of American empire have involved non-militaristic activities as much as militaristic ones. Such non-militaristic activities include the hegemonic influence of trade agreements, the imposition of legal and procedural norms, and the dissemination of ideological and cultural predispositions through corporations and diverse medias. In this paper, we examine an under-explored area on the “soft” belly of the American leviathan, focusing specifically on how property and intellectual property law have operated on physical and ideological frontiers to comprehend, participate in, and legitimate the expansion of American empire. We offer new accounts of two historical instances of empire-building: the acquisition and seizure of property from Native Americans in the early- and mid-19th century, and the expropriation of intellectual property rights to plant genetic resources from indigenous communities in the global South in the late 20th century. These two stories, taken together, offer unique insights into both the process and the substance of law’s operation on the frontier of empire. They illuminate how the authority of law has fused with private power and legal legitimacy to enable the nation to expand swiftly, energetically, and powerfully. These insights, in turn, lead toward the more general conclusion that the rhetoric of property has functioned to subjugate peoples and places, cultures and natures, to an imperial regime.
Turtle Talk 
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