Michigan Indian

Soo Tribe’s Greektown Troubles

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From Indianz:


A federal bankruptcy judge held a hearing to discuss the future of the commercial casino that is majority owned by the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Michigan.

The tribe plans to sell the Greektown Casino in Detroit but is seeking an extension in order to complete work on the facility. The Michigan Gaming Control Board opposes the extension and wants to affirm that it has the right to force a sale. Judge Walter Shapero did not rule on the matter but called another hearing next Tuesday to review the issue. He previously set a deadline of December 15 for the tribe to finalize the casino’s bankruptcy plans. The hotel at the facility won’t be completed until February 12, 2009.

Get the Story:
State tips hand on Greektown (The Detroit News 11/18)

Meg Noori in the Freep

Kate Fort

Patricia Montemurri at The Freep profiles Meg Noori, a University of Michigan professor who teaches Anishinaabemowin.  Click through for some nice photos and an audio clip of her class.

“Izhaadaa Giizhigowaande!

Catch Margaret (Meg) Noori at any University of Michigan event and that’s how she exhorts fellow Wolverines to “Let’s Go, Blue.”

Meg, 43, is a professor of Ojibwe Language and Literature. In the classroom and at home, she seeks to celebrate and preserve a language of the American Indians who populated the Great Lakes region for several hundred years before European settlers arrived.

Using the language of her ancestors every day, says Meg, “is one of the most meaningful things I can do.”

Ottawa Tribe v. Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources — Sixth Circuit Briefing

Matthew L.M. Fletcher2 Comments

Please see our previous post on this case here (it links to the briefs and other materials in the lower court).

Here is the Ottawa Tribe’s opening brief: appellant-brief

And here is the amicus brief signed by the National Congress of American Indians and several Michigan tribes on the laches question: brief-amici-curiae

And now the State of Ohio’s brief: brief-of-defendant-appellee-director-of-ohio-dept-of-natural

“Inside Tribal Politics” Panel at UM on Monday, Nov. 10

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

I will be sitting on a panel on tribal governments on Monday with Ada Deer and David Cornsilk at the University of Michigan.

Tribal Politics Flyer

Panelist Biographies

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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