Alan Parker Walks On

Obit here. PLSI Class of 1969.

Alan Parker was a big deal — his footprint on Indian affairs is massive. Before I get into his interesting career, I’m going to paste here the nice profile UCLA did of him last year:

A citizen of the Chippewa Cree Tribal Nation, Alan R. Parker attended St Thomas Seminary where he earned a B.A. in Classical Philosophy in 1965. He subsequently attended UCLA School of Law, in Los Angeles, California, where he received a Juris Doctor degree in 1972. Prior to attending Law School, he served as 1st Lt. in the Signal Corp in the US Army from 1965 1968. He was awarded a Bronze Star medal for Out-standing Leadership Service under combat conditions in Vietnam.

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Sherally Munshi on Dispossession and American Property

Sherally Munshi has published “Dispossession: An American Property Law Tradition” in the Georgetown Law Journal.

The abstract:

Universities and law schools have begun to purge the symbols of conquest and slavery from their crests and campuses, but they have yet to come to terms with their role in reproducing the material and ideological conditions of settler colonialism and racial capitalism. This Article considers the role the property law tradition has played in shaping and legitimizing regimes of racialized dispossession past and present. It intervenes in the traditional presentation of property law by arguing that dis-possession describes an ongoing but disavowed function of property law. As a counter-narrative and critique of property, dispossession is a useful concept for challenging existing property arrangements, often rationalized within liberal and legal discourse.

Interesting. Looks to be expanding on K-Sue Park’s work.

Bobby Wilson

“Re-Indigenizing Yellowstone” in the Wyoming Law Review

Kekek Jason Stark, Autumn L. Bernhardt, Monte Mills, and Jason A. Robison have published “Re-Indigenizing Yellowstone” in the Wyoming Law Review. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

New Student Scholarship on the Involuntary Sterilization of Native Women

Genesis M. Agosto has published “Involuntary Sterilization of Native American Women in the United States: A Legal Approach” in the Nebraska Law Review.

New Scholarship on the Persistence of Tribal Sovereignty

Seth Davis, Eric Biber & Elena Kempf have published “Persistent Sovereignties” in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Here is the abstract:

From the first days of the United States, the story of sovereignty has not been one of a simple division between the federal government and the states of the Union. Then, as today, American Indian tribes persisted as self-governing peoples with ongoing and important political relationships with the United States. And then, as today, there was debate about the proper legal characterization of those relationships.
The United States Supreme Court confronted that debate in McGirt v. Oklahoma when, in an opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch, it held that the reservation of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation “persists today.” The Court’s recognition of the persistence of Tribal sovereignty triggered a flurry of critical commentary, including from federal lawmakers who share Justice Gorsuch’s commitment to originalism. But the early history of federal Indian law supports the persistence of tribal sovereignty.

Fletcher on American Legal History Podcast

Here is “Episode Sixteen: Federal Indian Law Part 1.

Thanks to Tim Innes for including me.

Another irrelevant image

A Little More Hype for the Castro-Huerta Argument Today—Greg Ablavsky’s “Oklahoma’s Bizarro Nineteenth Century in Castro-Huerta”

Here.

Yeah, I doubt Greg was thinking of this Bizarro, but the reverse-Superman Bizarro is too creepy.

Blast from the Past: California Indian Self-Determination Act of 1969

In 1969, after a meeting of the California Indian Legal Services board, a group “democratically-selected Indians,” CILS drafted a bill to transfer Bureau of Indian Affairs control over to “democratically-selected Indians.”

Hupa fisher on the Trinity River

“When are We Going to Get Our Indian Money?” — The Saga of the Michigan Ottawa Indian Claims Commission Judgment Told in the Pages of Turtle Talk

The Michigan Indian Land Claims Settlement Act of 1997 took some time to get past Congress after the Indian Claims Commission judgment came out in 1972. Here is some of that history told in the pages of the original Turtle Talk newsletter and its precursor, Indian Talk of Southern Michigan.

Indian Talk, April 1975
Turtle Talk, Dec. 1979
Reprinted in February 1980 issue of Turtle Talk, published by the Grand Rapids Inter-Tribal Council.
Turtle Talk, April 1982
Letter to the Editor, Turtle Talk, Feb. 1980 [I know, I know, this is about the Potawatomi Indian money, but it’s too rich to leave out. . . .]
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