Here:
Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta: Oklahoma’s Latest Power Grab and Its Implications for Native Women in a Post-Roe World
Camryn A. Conroy
A Note on Navajo Nation v. Urban Outfitters, Inc.
Brantly J. Stockton
Removing the Stain Without Undermining Military Awards: Revoking Medals Earned at Wounded Knee Creek in 1890
Dwight S. Mears
John Beaty has published “The Impact of the Inflation Reduction Act on Energy Justice and Green Energy Development in Indian Country” in the LSU Journal of Energy Law and Resources. PDF
Here is the abstract:
In the past two decades, many American Indian Tribes have been experimenting with generating power from renewable sources on reservations. The growth of tribal green energy is a positive step towards energy justice, but current projects are hampered by insufficient funding, jurisdictional confusion, lack of needed infrastructure, and a baroque permitting process that leaves necessary projects languishing. The recent omnibus spending bill, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was trumped by Congress as the largest investment into tribal green energy ever. This Article critically analyzes the impact of the IRA on tribal energy. While the IRA represents a necessary move towards a more effective funding structure for tribal energy projects, it failed to address other barriers to tribal green energy development. The Article concludes by proposing steps Congress, States, and Tribes can take to improve upon the IRA.
Daniel Cornelius and Steph Tai have published “Can We Save Our Foodways? The Inflation Reduction Act, Climate Change, and Food Justice” in the Yale Law Journal Forum.
Here is the abstract:
This Essay examines USDA programs supported by the Inflation Reduction Act and its approach towards addressing climate change and historical funding inequities for Indigenous and Black Farmers. It also argues for how the next Farm Bill can expand upon these efforts to further address inequities and promote climate resilience.
Grant Christensen has posted “Article IV and Indian Tribes,” forthcoming in the Iowa Law Review, on SSRN.
Here is the abstract:
Unlike the first three articles of the Constitution which create the three branches of the federal government, Article IV establishes a set of rules to police the actions of states and knit them together into a single union. Notably absent from Article IV is any mention of the tribal sovereign. Concomitantly, there has been no comprehensive academic discussion thinking about how the tribal sovereign complicates the purposes of Article IV. This piece advances a completely new understanding of Article IV and its implications in federal Indian law. It suggests that where Article IV advances rights to individual citizens (i.e. a citizen’s right to enforce a court judgment or their claim to the protection of the Privileges and Immunities Clause) then states may not use their connection to any tribal sovereign as an excise to deny them the protections of those rights. In contrast, where Articles IV speaks to rules designed to ensure states treat each other respectfully (i.e. requests for extradition, claims under the Equal Footing Doctrine, or any attempt to enforce the Guarantee Clause) then Article IV’s rules do not permit states to abridge, abrogate, modify, or erode the inherent rights of tribal nations. As the Court has recently opined, tribal governments themselves were absent from the Constitutional Convention and so constitutional limitations on the inherent powers of sovereigns do not extend to tribal governments.
Today, Katherine Johnson and Jalen Rose (of MJLR) and Caleb Hawpetoss (UM NALSA) convened a panel discussion about two Indian law articles recently published by the Journal. I brought donuts.
Ezra Rosser has published “Progress and the Taking of Indigenous Land” in the Ohio State Law Journal.
Here is the abstract and some images supplied by Ezra:
The taking of Indigenous land in furtherance of other societal goals is so ubiquitous and so fundamental to the American project that sometimes acts of dispossession are not even recognized as such. This Article argues that the generally accepted understanding of Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff, a key case of the American takings law canon, is wrong because it overlooks Native Hawaiian claims to the land taken. Hawai‘i’s Land Reform Act allowed tenants a right to purchase land over the objections of the owner of the underlying property and in Midkiff the U.S. Supreme Court said that states had the right to use their eminent domain authority in such a way. The common understanding of the case is that it is a progressive victory, an example of how government can fight back against inequality and the power of large landowners. But beneath the surface, this Article argues, the case is really about dispossession. By showing how land reform predictably worked to transfer Indigenous land to upper class, relatively wealthy tenants, the Article situates Midkiff within a long history of taking Native land in order to accomplish progressive ends. By seeing Midkiff for what it is—a judicially authorized taking of Indigenous land—the significance of the case within the Property and Indian Law cannons can be more fully appreciated. Indigenous peoples are often forced to pay—in the form of diminishment of their property rights—for progressive victories, with their losses swept under the rug by courts and scholars alike. The Midkiff decision is part of a pattern of treating the property rights of Indigenous peoples as impediments to progress.
Alexis Studler has published “Reviving Indian Country: Expanding Alaska Native Villages’ Tribal Land Bases Through Fee-to-Trust Acquisitions” in the Michigan Journal of Race & Law.
Here is the abstract:
For the last fifty years, the possibility of fee-to-trust acquisitions in Alaska has been precarious at best. This is largely due to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA), which eschewed the traditional reservation system in favor of corporate land ownership and management. Despite its silence on trust acquisitions, ANCSA was and still is cited as the primary prohibition to trust acquisitions in Alaska. Essentially, ANCSA both reduced Indian Country in Alaska and prohibited any opportunities to create it, leaving Alaska Native Villages without the significant territorial jurisdiction afforded to Lower 48 tribes. However, recent policy changes from the Department of Interior reaffirmed the eligibility of trust acquisitions post-ANCSA and a proposed rule from the Bureau of Indian Affairs signals a favorable presumption of approval for Alaska Native fee-to-trust applications. This Note reviews the history and controversy of trust acquisitions in Alaska, and more importantly, it demonstrates the methods in which Alaska Native Villages may still acquire fee land for trust acquisitions after ANCSA.
M. Henry Ishtani and Alexandra Fay have published “Revising the Indian Plenary Power Doctrine” in the Michigan Journal of Race & Law.
Here is the abstract:
The federal Indian law doctrine of Congressional plenary power is long overdue for an overhaul. Since its troubling nineteenth-century origins in Kagama v. United States (1886), plenary power has justified invasive Congressional interventions and undermined Tribal sovereignty. The doctrine’s legal basis remains a constitutional conundrum. This Article considers the Court’s recent engagement with plenary power in Haaland v. Brackeen (2023). It argues that the Brackeen opinions may signal judidal readiness to reevaluate the doctrine. The Article takes ahold of Justice Gorsuch’s critical assessment and runs with it, ultimately proposing a method for cleaning up this destructive and constitutionally dubious line of caselaw.
Bethany R. Berger has published “Intertribal: The Unheralded Element in Indigenous Wildlife Sovereignty” in the Harvard Environmental Law Review.
Here is the abstract:
Intertribal organizations are a powerful and unheralded element behind recent gains in Indigenous wildlife sovereignty. Key to winning and implementing judicial and political victories, they have also helped tribal nations become powerful voices in wildlife and habitat conservation. Through case studies of these organizations and their impact, this Article shows why intertribal wildlife organizations are necessary and influential, and how the intertribal form reflects a distinct relational approach to wildlife governance. As the first article focused on the intertribal form, moreover, the Article also identifies an unexamined actor in tribal sovereignty and legal change.
Highly recommended!
Turtle Talk 
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