(1) Is the United States’ promise to provide the Winnemucca Indian Colony, a federally recognized Tribe with lands held in trust established by an Executive Order and a separate legislative act, coupled with the government’s nearly exclusive statutory and regulatory control over the water on Indian lands, sufficient to entitle an Indian tribe to money damages when the United States breaches its fiduciary duty to protect the natural resources on those Indian lands?
(2) Did the Federal Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit, err when it affirmed dismissal of the Winnemucca Indian Colony’s third claim for relief – Breach of Trust – Water?
(3) Can the Winnemucca Indian Colony state a cognizable claim for breach of trust against the United States in relation to BIA failure to prevent trespass and theft of natural resources by third parties, under the Winters doctrine and 25 C.F.R. § 152.22?
More importantly, I would like to introduce you to a new website that will hopefully be of interest to you and your network: The Supreme Court Indian Law Database. Recently launched, this resource offers a number of important features.
The pages for each individual case identifies the other cases on the list that it cites and the cases where it has been cited. For example, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia cites three cases and has been cited forty-eight times
In the future, we intend on adding additional search functions to the list. Thus, hopefully before long a researcher will be able to easily identify cases decided between a certain date range, or cases that fall under the same four categories, or find out which three justices participated in the same cases or any combination of all three of these things and more.
In addition, there is room for debate for what counts as an Indian law case or for which category a particular case belongs. While acknowledging this certain subjectivity, quite a bit of thought and care went into curating the list. If you have questions about the list or would like to know how we came up with it I invite you to visit the methodology page.
Finally, while a lot of thought and care has been put into the list and the website, it is still very new and there is always room for improvement. To that end, if you have any constructive feedback you would like to share my email address is at the bottom of the main page.
I am so happy to be able to share this research with you. I, along with a small team (who you will eventually get to meet once we get our “contributor” page running), have been working diligently on this website for the past two years. It is free and available to the public and will be so as long as I have any say about it. My hope is that it will be a valuable resource for practitioners, scholars, students, tribal nations and peoples, and anyone else with an interest in Native America and a desire to see Indigenous peoples thrive. Thank you and happy searching on SCILDB.com!
This Article examines the Supreme Court’s use of history and tradition in federal Indian law. In recent years, the Court has increasingly relied on Founding-era practices and historical traditions to determine constitutional meaning in areas such as firearm regulation, substantive due process, and religious liberty. At the same time, while the Founding-era record contains substantial evidence that Native nations were understood and treated as independent, sovereign political communities, this evidence has not yet been fully incorporated into the Supreme Court’s Indian law jurisprudence. Examining decisions from Oliphant to Castro-Huerta, this Article describes the Court’s approaches to historical analysis in Indian law cases and identifies areas where deeper engagement with the historical record could inform the doctrine. By centering Indian law within the broader history-and-tradition framework, this Article argues that more consistent applications of history support the robust conception of tribal sovereignty contemplated at the Founding.
Whether respondents—Indians charged with felony assault in Indian country under the Major Crimes Act in violation of 18 U.S.C. 113(a)(6) and (8) and 1153(a)— were entitled both to a jury instruction on a lesser included offense not listed in the Major Crimes Act and complete acquittal if the jury found them guilty of that lesser offense.
Turtle Talk 
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