Newsday article here. The plaintiff is the Connecticut Coalition for Gaming Jobs, partially profiled here.
More details to follow….
News
News Coverage of Indian Demand for Indian Judges on Federal Court
Available here on the U.S. News & WR site:
An excerpt:
The Federal Judicial Center, the education and research agency for the federal courts, lists only two Native American judges as having served in the nation’s history.
“There’s just a lack of representation and that lack of representation leads to no voice, no voice whatsoever in the decisions that are being made about Natives,” said Richard Guest, a senior staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund, one of the Indian groups that have been meeting with White House officials in recent months, urging them to consider an Indian for the Supreme Court vacancy and for other federal judgeships.
Heather Dawn Thompson, the immediate past president of the National Native American Bar Association, calls it a “rather frustrating” situation.
“For over two hundred years, the United States Supreme Court has sat in judgment over us, over our lands, over our treaties and over our families. Not one single day have we ever had a voice in those decisions,” Thompson’s group said in its letter to Obama. [See a slide show of the Supreme Court Justices.]
Activists say they will continue meeting with White House officials, and tribal leaders are recruiting qualified Indian lawyers, professors and judges, such as retired Navajo Nation Supreme Court Justice Raymond Austin, to inspire Native students to pursue law degrees and careers.
Austin said he’s not surprised that the federal bench lacks Indian representation, but that “the time has arrived for President Obama to correct this deficiency.”
The Indian law community believes a combination of factors is to blame for their exclusion, including educational and cultural barriers, the lack of political influence by Indians on the national stage and the federal judicial nominating process itself.
One problem is the pool of Indian applicants qualified for a spot on the federal bench is just beginning to grow.
Update on Carcieri Fix?
From How Appealing:
“Tribal-rights advocates seek ‘fix’ in Congress”: The Providence (R.I.) Journal today contains an article that begins, “Tribal-rights advocates came in force to Capitol Hill Tuesday to ask Congress to undo last year’s Supreme Court ruling that made it harder for Native Americans to set their own rules for the use of certain lands — including the Rhode Island parcel at issue in the decision.”
More at Indianz.
Phil Frickey Obituary
Kansas native Philip P. Frickey, a professor at University of California Berkeley and one of the nation’s foremost experts on public law and federal Indian law and policy, died Sunday, July 11. He was 57.
A law school professor for 27 years, Frickey was the co-author of popular casebooks on legislation, constitutional law, and Indian law. He also volunteered his skills outside the scholastic arena—working with the Native American Rights Fund and National Congress of American Indians—and writing amicus briefs on their behalf in U.S. Supreme Court cases.
“I’ve never known anyone whose judgment was so highly respected by his colleagues,” said Berkeley Law Professor Dan Farber, who co-authored two books and eight articles with Frickey and called him “the nation’s leading authority on Indian Law.”
Frickey, whose career path was influenced by a clerkship with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, started his teaching career at University of Kansas Law School. He came to Berkeley Law in 2000 after 17 years at the University of Minnesota Law School. In addition to his scholastic and teaching achievements, Frickey chaired Berkeley Law’s faculty appointments committee.
A full-day symposium to celebrate Frickey’s scholarship and teaching was held at Berkeley Law on April 24, 2009. The event drew top academics from across the country; papers from the event will soon be published in a special issue of the California Law Review. At that time, two student funds at Berkeley were created in Frickey’s honor, and a fund in his honor also was established with Kansas University Endowment Association to support the Tribal Law and Government Program at University of Kansas Law School.
American Indian Women Most Likely Demographic to be Sexually Abused Outside of Indian Country
From the Crime Report, via Pechanga:
Native American women living off the reservation and in urban areas are more likely to be sexually abused than others, finds a new report, Reproductive Health of Urban American Indian and Alaska Native Women.
Yet, native women are more likely to report abuse than their counterparts finds the first study of on this population. The report which was conducted by Urban Indian Health Institute surveyed 7,643 women.
Read the report here.
Use the crime report for more information on Native women.
NYT Article on Haudosaunee Lacrosse Team’s Passport Dispute
Here.
An excerpt:
Spokesmen for the Department of Homeland Security and the British consulate said that they would not comment on specific cases. A spokeswoman for the State Department would only say that the Iroquois team has been offered expedited United States passports, but they declined that offer.
“It would be like saying the Canadians are having travel difficulties and the U.S. says we’ll make you U.S. passports and you can go over,” Ms. Waterman said.
Only a few Indian nations issue their own passports, said Robert J. Miller, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., who has written extensively about federal Indian law. He said that he had never heard of the United States government objecting to the use of such a document.
Neither has Robert Anderson, who was associate solicitor for Indian affairs in the Interior Department during the Clinton administration and now directs the Native American Law Center at the University of Washington School of Law.
“The tribes will probably say, ‘Hey, we’ve got the authority to do this,’ ” he said.
But the State Department said Monday that federal law does not allow a tribal document to be used in lieu of a United States passport when traveling outside the United States. A spokeswoman said that an October 2008 internal directive emphasized that policy, though it noted that other countries had sometimes recognized such documents.
Longer, Footnoted(!) Version of “The Ute Paradox”
This article, called “The Ute Parallax,” is available on writer Jonathan P. Thompson’s blog here.
Excerpt:
Both Lester and off-the-record sources from within the tribal administration blame the lack of openness on what they call bad press in the past. When the outside press covers the Southern Utes, it tends to emphasize the various pitfalls of wealth, including political infighting. The implication is clear: The savages just can’t handle all that money any better than they can handle their liquor. What they fail to take into account is the fact that all the problems they associate with the newfound wealth – crime, drugs, alcohol, greed, loss of culture, corruption and political battles – existed before the money started pouring in, perhaps to a greater extent. Not only that, but all of the recalls, bitter politics, accusations of manipulation and the like mirror that of many a small town, whether it’s wealthy or not[15].
“When a tribe begins to see economic success, its members quickly demand accountability, a democratic institution not seen in today’s business climate (nor, it appears, in today’s democracy), and readily criticized by the business experts…” writes Matthew Fletcher, Director of the Michigan State University Indigenous Law Center, in his In Pursuit of Tribal Economic Development as a Substitute for Reservation Tax Revenue. “Such reportage evidences the focus of business papers on the limitations of tribal governments qua business owners because of their status as tribal governments qua governments.”
High Country News on the Southern Ute Tribe and Natural Resources
Here is the link to this article, “The Ute Paradox.”
A few excerpts:
* * *
Less than a century ago, the Southern Utes were barely hanging on, squeezed onto an unremarkable sliver of reservation land, a new and foreign way of life thrust upon them. Even as late as the 1950s, many had no running water or noticeable income. But today, as the bidding at the Superdome showed, the once-impoverished tribe is a financial powerhouse. With tribal businesses in 14 states, ranging from Gulf crude to upscale San Diego real estate, the 1,400 or so tribal members are, collectively, worth billions.
They didn’t strike it rich on casino gambling. Instead, the Southern Utes built their empire slowly, over decades, primarily by taking control of the vast coalbed methane and natural gas deposits that lie under their land. They’ve achieved cultural, environmental and economic self-determination through energy self-determination — a feat rarely accomplished, whether by Indians or non-Indians.
* * *
From this nerve center, the tribe’s energy arm has reached into at least eight other states. The real estate arm owns or invests in developments and buildings in Denver and its suburbs, the San Diego suburb of Oceanside, as well as Kansas City, Houston and Albuquerque. The tribe’s GF Private Equity portfolio — for which the tribe is reportedly seeking a buyer, so that it can concentrate more on oil and gas — includes biotech ventures and defense contractors. Closer to home, the tribe is developing Three Springs, a “new urban” community between the reservation boundary and Durango. To help launch it, the tribe donated land for a new Durango hospital, to serve as an anchor for as many as 2,200 new residential units. The tribe’s net worth now stands at somewhere between $3.5 billion and $14 billion.
The tribe also has its own environmental standards, which are as strong as or stronger than state or federal regulations, and it is on the brink of getting federal approval for its sovereign air quality code. The first of its kind in the U.S., the code will empower the Southern Utes to tighten air-quality standards and administer permits under the federal Clean Air Act. The tribe has put parts of the reservation off-limits to all drilling, and it’s partnered with Solix Biofuels to create an algae-to-biofuel facility on the reservation. It took control of the tribal medical clinic in order to improve care, built a state-of-the-art recreation center, and has a groundbreaking Ute language program in its school. The Southern Ute Community Action Program runs alcohol and substance abuse treatment centers, a senior center, and job-training programs. Every member has the option of accepting a full college scholarship from the tribe. And the Southern Utes continue to follow older traditions such as the Bear and Sun Dances, which draw huge crowds each summer.
* * *
Matthew Fletcher, director of the Indigenous Law Center at Michigan State University, says the tribal companies remain unique: Their money goes through the government, while a private corporation’s goes to profit-hungry stockholders. “The perception I’m trying to avoid is that the tribes are any old private enterprise and for-profit machine,” says Fletcher. The Southern Ute financial empire is not a corporation; it’s a government.
Photos and Captions from Hearing in Muskegon on LRBOI Compact
From the Muskegon Chronicle. Click through for the slideshow and captions.
Also, live blogging coverage of the event, also from the Chronicle. Not sure why the updates end before the hearing did.
Video excerpt, starting with Rep. Johnson and Ogema Romenelli.
Will the Poor Economy Assist Tribes in Fighting National Labor Relations Board Jurisdiction?
Perhaps, given this information, via Indianz:
Foxwoods and the tribe, in their brief, claim that because only a “fraction” of the revenue from Foxwoods is available to the tribe after lenders are paid, a strike at Foxwoods would severely impact the tribe’s ability “to operate a tribal government and function as a sovereign entity.”
The record, however, does not support the claim, Kreisberg writes:
“In this regard, it is undisputed that the Employer (Foxwoods) has annual gross revenues in excess of $1 billion. … Therefore, even if the employer were to face a protracted strike, there is insufficient evidence to establish that it would lack sufficient revenues and/or capital to provide the Tribe’s 900 members, as well as employees and other visitors to the reservation, with any ‘essential’ public services.”
Didn’t Foxwoods just note concern about being able to pay its creditors? What’s in this record?
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