Michigan Indian

AP Report on Carcieri v. Kempthorne

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From the AP:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The Narragansett Indian Tribe bought a 31-acre lot in 1991, saying it would be used for “economic development” and housing for the elderly and poor.

However, the state of Rhode Island, fearing the tribe really wants to create a tax-free zone or build a casino, sued to block the Narragansetts from putting the land into federal trust, which would essentially free it from state and local law.

On Monday, their fight reaches the U.S. Supreme Court in a case being closely watched across the country because it could determine how tribes recognized after the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act are allowed to buy, govern and use land.

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Short Fiction: “Truck Stop” Now Available

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is my short story (available in final form at BEPRESS), published in the UMKC Law Review as part of their Law Stories series, with the following abstract:

Every American Indian person — repeat, every American Indian person — is related to or knows someone or is someone who has been adopted out of or removed from their reservation family. A significant percentage of each recent generation of American Indian people has grown up among strangers, either adopted by non-reservation families or force-fed through a state foster care system. This is, of course, one of the fundamental issues Congress hoped to address when it enacted the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978. This fictional narrative is my take on what it means for an Indian person to lose their family — and to regain it much, much later.

LTBB News

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From Indianz:

The Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians of Michigan is taking steps to reign in spending and cut costs amid the downturn in the economy.

Chairman Frank Ettawageshik issued an executive directive to implement several cost-saving measures. The tribe has initiated a hiring freeze and has eliminated temporary staff. Employees are being encouraged to work 32-hour weeks without a loss of benefits. “We’re trying to be prudent in dealing with the economic crisis that the rest of the nation is dealing with right now — we don’t exist in a vacuum, we exist in the greater economy,” Ettawageshik told The Petoskey News-Review. “We’re trying to take prudent management steps to deal with these issues.” In August, the tribe cut as many as 100 full-time and part-time employees at its casino.

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Spring Speakers Series Finalized

Kate Fort

The final dates and speakers for our Spring Speakers Series has been finalized.  The Indigenous Law and Policy Center at MSU College of Law will be hosting four events this spring, and all of the details can be found at our Spring Speakers Series, 2009 page.

Federal Court Rejects Michigan’s Laches Defenses in Saginaw Chippewa v. Graholm

Matthew L.M. Fletcher3 Comments

Here is the opinion.

An excerpt:

These principles persuade the Court that, as a matter of law, the time-based equitable defenses Defendants wish to advance are inapplicable to the issues here presented and may not otherwise be advanced against the United States’s enforcement of its treaties. Consequently, Defendants may not rely on the time-based equitable defenses of laches, estoppel, acquiescence, or impossibility. In addition, testimony and proofs offered in support of these affirmative defenses are irrelevant. Thus, the United States’s and the Saginaw Chippewa’s motions should be granted.

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Michigan Tribal Voter Initiative

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From Indianz:

Michigan tribes are hoping more of their members turn up to the polls on November 4.

The Saginaw Chippewa Tribe is part of the Native Vote initiative of the National Congress of American Indians. The tribe has been helping its members get registered and informing them of their rights — including the right to vote with a tribal identification card. “I look at this as a federal identification, like a passport when you go across to Canada,” spokesperson Joe Sowmick told The Mt. Pleasant Morning Sun. “This is considered a valid ID that is recognized by the state and the federal government.

Su Lantz, a member of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, is the NCAI Native voter coordinator for the state. “In Indian country, we’ve done a lot to get the vote out,” she told the paper.

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An Open Letter to Margaret Wente: Modern Racial Segregation Talk

Matthew L.M. Fletcher3 Comments

As Nick Reo mentioned, Margaret Wente’s column in the Toronto Globe and Mail last weekend cannot go unanswered by the North American Native community. In this column, Ms. Wente offers a theory/proposal that Canadian First Nations be segregated, usuing the American/Jim Crow-style “separate-but-equal” rhetoric.

I offer a few preliminary comments based on some truly amazing things she asserted. I leave the “Disrobing” book by Widdowson and Howard for a later date.

Let’s start with this quote:

  • Instead, our policies are based on the belief that aboriginal culture is equal but separate, and that the answer to aboriginal social problems is to revive and preserve indigenous culture on a “separate but equal” parallel track.

Ok, first, “separate-but-equal” was discredited in Brown v. Board of Education, decided by the United States Supreme Court 54 years ago. “Separate-but-equal” is code for racism, for Jim Crow, and for racial segregation. And a person with an American education like Ms. Wente knows that full well. This use of racist code words is intolerable.

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Saginaw Chippewa Tribe’s Stop the Violence Campaign

Kate Fort1 Comment

From The Morning Sun:

Purple Painted for a Cause
Friday, October 24, 2008 5:44 AM EDT
BY PATRICIA ECKER
Sun Staff Writer

In the same spirit that the color pink is used as to signify breast cancer awareness, the color purple has been the catalyst for education, discussion and unity on the Isabella Reservation.

“Paint the Rez purple” was simply an idea thrown out to the community by the members of the Domestic Violence Awareness program of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe’s Domestic as a way to show support for October’s Domestic Violence Awareness month.

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MichGO v. Kempthorne Cert Petition

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Here is is: michgo-cert-pet-10-23-08

The questions presented are two-fold. First, the petitioners raise the nondelegation doctrine argument that caused Judge Rogers Brown in the D.C. Circuit to dissent below. And second, the petitioners make the same argument about recently recognized tribes that the Supreme Court will decide in Carcieri v. Kempthorne.

See our earlier posts here and here and here and here and a link to an Indian Country Today article about MichGO.

The interesting question here will be whether the government will file a response at all, given that there’s no circuit split (by MichGO’s admission), that the SCT already denied cert on the first issue in the Carcieri litigation, and that the second issue will be decided by Carcieri.

“American Indian Education” Reading and Signing — Saturday 1-3 PM

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

On October 25, I will be reading from and discussing my book, “American Indian Education: Counternarratives in Racism, Struggle, and the Law,” at Everybody Reads bookstore, located at 2019 Michigan Avenue, Lansing, Michigan.

The website for the reading is here. And the link to the my book page is here.