Here is a short article about black Indians called “Shades of Difference,” published in the Dec. 2008 issue of History Today.
Scholarship
May 2009 Indian Law Profs Newsletter
Book Review of “Race and the Cherokee Nation”
From H-Net (h/t to Legal History Blog):
Fay A. Yarbrough. Race and the Cherokee Nation: Sovereignty in the
Nineteenth Century. Philadephia University of Pennsylvania Press,
2008. x + 184 pp. ISBN 978-0-8122-4056-6; $55.00 (cloth), ISBN
978-0-8122-4056-6.
Reviewed by John Gesick
Published on H-Genocide (March, 2009)
Commissioned by Elisa G. von Joeden-Forgey
Nineteenth-Century Practices, Twenty-First Century Decisions
This seminal study of Cherokee race relations during the antebellum
and post-Civil War eras and their consequences in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries has broad applications across many
disciplines–not just to history or sociology or anthropology, but to
the legal and educational fields as well. The author has approached
this subject with sensitivity and pragmatic analysis. She has drawn
thoughtful conclusions based on the empirical analysis of a host of
available documents and of numerical data that she collected from
census records, marriage records, and other demographic sources.
Where the results might be inconclusive, Yarbrough offers avenues for
further investigation and analysis.
Continue reading
Rebecca Tsosie Postings on SSRN
Rebecca Tsosie has posted several of her past articles on SSRN:
Challenges to Sacred Sites Protection
Denver University Law Review, Vol. 83, p. 963, 2006
Rebecca A. Tsosie
Arizona State University – College of Law
Date Posted: May 7, 2009
Last Revised: May 7, 2009
Accepted Paper Series
Cultural Challenges to Biotechnology: Native American Genetic Resources and the Concept of Cultural Harm
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Vol. 35, p. 396, 2007
Rebecca A. Tsosie
Arizona State University – College of Law
Date Posted: May 7, 2009
Last Revised: May 19, 2009
Accepted Paper Series
Indigenous People and Environmental Justice: The Impact of Climate Change
University of Colorado Law Review, Vol. 78, p. 1625, 2007
Rebecca A. Tsosie
Arizona State University – College of Law
Date Posted: May 7, 2009
Last Revised: May 7, 2009
Accepted Paper Series
GLIFWC Report on Efficacy of Walleye Advisories to Great Lakes Tribes
Adam D. DeWeese, Neil E. Kmiecik, Esteban D. Chiriboga, and Jeffery A. Foran have published “Efficacy of Risk-Based, Culturally Sensitive Ogaa (Walleye) Consumption Advice for Anishinaabe Tribal Members in the Great Lakes Region.(Report)” in Risk Analysis, May 2009 (GLIFWC Report on Walleye Advisories). Here is the abstract:
The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC) has produced Ogaa (walleye-Sander vitreus) consumption advisories since 1996 for Anishinaabe from GLIFWC member tribes in the 1837 and 1842 ceded territories of Wisconsin. GLIFWC’s advisory maps were revised in 2005 to address cultural sensitivities (to protect tribal lifeways), to utilize recent mercury exposure information, and to incorporate changes in advisory levels for methyl mercury. Lake-specific, risk-based, culturally sensitive consumption advice was provided on color-coded maps for two groups: children under age 15 years and females of childbearing age, and males 15 years and older and females beyond childbearing age. The maps were distributed to, and a behavioral intervention program developed for, the six GLIFWC member tribes in Wisconsin as well as member tribes in Minnesota and the 1842 ceded territory of Michigan. Tribal fish harvesters, tribal health care providers, women of childbearing age or with young children, tribal leaders, elders, and children were targeted specifically for the behavioral intervention. The efficacy of the behavioral intervention was assessed using surveys of 275 tribal fish harvesters from Wisconsin, 139 tribal harvesters from Michigan and Minnesota, and 156 Wisconsin women of childbearing age. Significant increases in the percentage of survey participants who indicated awareness of advisory maps occurred among Wisconsin harvesters (increase from 60% to 77%), Michigan and Minnesota harvesters (29% to 51%), and women of childbearing age in Wisconsin (40% to 87%). A significant increase in preference for smaller Ogaa occurred among tribal harvesters in Wisconsin (41% to 72%) and tribal harvesters in Michigan and Minnesota (49% to 71%), although not among women of childbearing age. The GLIFWC map-based advisory program did not adversely affect tribal harvest of Ogaa, which increased from 63,000 to 88,000 fish in the three states after the intervention.
Fiander on Tort Claims and American Indian Plaintiffs
From the Washington State Bar News:
Representing My People
by Jack Fiander
This article is intended to be helpful to my fellow attorneys who may find themselves in the position of representing my people in personal-injury or wrongful-death cases. I also hope that the information here is helpful to my fellow tribal members in Washington state who may find themselves the victim of a tort or who have experienced personal injuries or a wrongful death in the family.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, my people live quietly among you in large numbers. Therefore, it is not unlikely that at some point in your legal career you will have the opportunity to represent them. This has been implicitly recognized since 2005, when the Board of Governors of the Washington State Bar Association made testing on the topic of federal Indian law part of the curriculum of the Washington State Bar examination. According to the Washington State Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs, there are no fewer than 29 federally recognized tribes in Washington. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 164,481 residents of the state of Washington identify themselves as Native American or Alaskan Native.
I realize that it can raise uncomfortable issues such as discrimination or stereotyping by generalizing about my people. By the same token, I shall undoubtedly receive some opprobrium for sharing information regarding certain cultural beliefs with those outside the tribe. On the whole, however, I have come down on the side that it is important to the welfare of my people that I try to convey the important considerations which you should take into account when calculating damages in cases involving tribal clients, because they are easily overlooked.
Onion: Fifth Grade Science Paper Doesn’t Stand Up to Peer Review
From the Onion:
DECATUR, IL—A three-member panel of 10-year-old Michael Nogroski’s fellow classmates at Nathaniel Macon Elementary School unanimously agreed Tuesday that his 327-word essay “Otters” did not meet the requirements for peer approval.
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Fifth-grade panel members express disapproval of Nogroski’s paper (below).
Fifth-grade panel members express disapproval of Nogroski’s paper (below).Nogroski presented his results before the entire fifth-grade science community Monday, in partial fulfillment of his seventh-period research project. According to the review panel, which convened in the lunchroom Tuesday, “Otters” was fundamentally flawed by Nogroski’s failure to identify a significant research gap.
“When Mike said, ‘Otters,’ I almost puked,” said 11-year-old peer examiner Lacey Swain, taking the lettuce out of her sandwich. “Why would you want to spend a whole page talking about otters?”
“It’s probably only the dumbest topic in the history of the entire world,” 10-year-old Duane LaMott added.
Members of the three-person panel had many concerns about Nogroski’s work, foremost among them their belief that the fifth-grader did not substantiate his thesis. Two panel members even suggested that Nogroski’s thesis was erroneous.
“Otters are not interesting!” 10-year-old peer examiner Jonathan Glass said.
Meister, Rand and Light on Diversifying Tribal Economies
Alan Meister, Kathryn Rand, and Steve Light have published their paper “Indian Gaming and Beyond: Tribal Economic Development and Diversification” in the South Dakota Law Review as part of a symposium on tribal economic development.
Here is the paper — Meister et al. Article on Tribal Econ Development
Scott Taylor on the Taxation of Tribal Bonds
Scott Taylor has posted “The Importance of Being Interest: Why a State Cannot Impose its Income Tax on Tribal Bonds” on SSRN. It is forthcoming in the Akron Tax Journal. Here’s the abstract:
The exercise of a state power in a way that adversely impacts the sovereignty of a federally recognized Indian tribe has been a matter of serious concern to the United States Supreme Court since the early 19th century. The limit of a state’s power to tax tribes is very often the subject of this judicial concern. In this article, I examine the reasons why states cannot impose their income taxes on interest that investors earn on tribal bonds.
Larry Cata Backer on Che and the UN Declaration
Larry Catá Backer has posted “From Hatuey to Che: Indigenous Cuba Without Indians and the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.” It is published in the most recent edition of the American Indian Law Review, Vol. 33, 2009. The abstract:
Indigenous peoples have been quite useful to political elites in Latin America almost since the time of the conquests by Spanish and Portuguese adventurers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, indigenous people supplied the foundations for a trope, both literary and political, essential for the construction of cultural, ethnic, racial, and political identities distinct from the traditional colonial masters of emerging Latin American states, as well as from that great power to the north. This paper looks at one aspect of this rich development by focusing on the noble savage, the construction of Caribbean (and principally Cuban) political identity, and the formation of governance ideals. The focus will be on three people, separated by hundreds of years but all connected by the parallels of their lives and their place within Caribbean literary and political thought. I will start with the great archetypical figure of Cuban history – a Taino Indian from the island of Hispaniola – el indio Hatuey. The heart of the paper examines essays of Jose Marti in the broader context of Latin indigenismo. Marti, like the Spanish before him, confronts the Indian in Cuban life. But unlike the Spanish, Marti deploys the Indian in the service of the construction of Cuban national indigenismo. The last great figure considered in the development of Cuban indigenismo is Fidel Castro Ruz. Castro served as the leader of Cuba from the successful conclusion of the Cuban Revolution of 1959 until early 2008 when illness forced his retirement. The indigenismo of Marti finds rich embellishment in the great speeches of Fidel Castro. With Fidel Castro we witness the maturation of the process of denaturing the Indian from indigenismo. The essay ends with a consideration of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples from the perspective of this constructed Cuban indigenismo without Indians. In a Cuba without Indians, but where the memory of the Indian is revered, Cuba can seek to assert the rights of indigenous peoples everywhere without having to confront the issue of its own Indians. In a construction of a social and ethnic order in which the Indian has disappeared, to assert the right of indigenous people in Cuba is to assert the rights of the Cuban nation as a singular but blended mass.
Turtle Talk 
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