Supreme Court

Greg Bigler on Euchee Legal Traditions

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Gregory Bigler has posted “7000 Dzo-Gaw-law (Ancestors)” on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

I read Stories from the Euchee Reservation on a plane. I read it cover to cover, I was as if emerging from a dream in which animals and humans understand one another and spirits come to visit over a cup of coffee.

Judge Bigler is a Euchee tribal citizen and a member of Polecat Ceremonial Grounds, a Harvard Law School graduate, longtime district court judge at the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. He co-counselled Indian law cases to the U.S. Supreme Court, mentored generations of Indian law attorneys, published law review articles.

Yet as Judge Bigler’s stories make clear, Indian people are keeping their traditions alive, listening to their chiefs, speaking Indigenous languages, and navigating contemporary circumstances: sending gossipy texts at the stomp grounds, wolf eating tofu in the forest, or teasing academics about their decolonizing methodologies. Shaw-jane, Mr. Rabbit, remains popular even after many years on the Indian story circuit.

This is a world, real life, for the people who keep the fire, the towns, the ballgames, and dances alive day in and day out, carrying out the ways of their people. These are cultural traditions handed down from generation to generation, suppressed for hundreds of years, still surviving today. Even if only with maybe a few hundred traditional practitioners.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided in the 2020 case of Jimcy McGirt v. State of Oklahoma that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation remains a reservation, “Indian Country” for purposes of federal criminal jurisdiction. The McGirt decision, means the Muscogee (Creek) Nation government has jurisdiction over a significant portion of northeast Oklahoma.

What law now applies in the reservation? Federal and tribal law, perhaps state law by agreement or statute? What is tribal law exactly? The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognizes the right of tribes to exist as distinct peoples with their own “laws, customs, and traditions.” It recognizes their rights to maintain their religious sites, indigenous languages, sacred plants, traditional medicines – or as Natives put it, the Declaration recognizes the rights of Indigenous Peoples to maintain their “ways.”

The ways of the Muscogee and Euchee people are carried on at the stomp grounds. These ways can be understood as the laws, customs, and traditions of the Muscogee and Euchee people, are highly complex, deeply embedded, and alive. Following the directions of their chiefs, carrying out ceremonial rules, honoring the spirit world, maintaining peace and order, caring for children while teaching them proper ways of behavior, and so on. These laws, customs, and traditions, structure Euchee society in Stories from the Euchee Reservation. These laws are challenged by many things – the history of conquest and colonization, generations of social and economic deprivation, and the temptations of contemporary society – yet they remain alive to this day.

SCOTUS Denies Cert in Tribal Jurisdiction Case

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is today’s order list.

The denied petition is Big Horn County Electric Cooperative Inc. v. Big Man.

Big Horn v. Big Man. Winner? Big Man.

Fletcher on the Dark Matter of Federal Indian Law

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Please check out “The Dark Matter of Federal Indian Law: The Duty of Protection,” a draft of which is now available on SSRN.

Here is the abstract:

The United States and every federally recognized tribal nation originally entered into a sovereign-to-sovereign relationship highlighted by the duty of protection, a doctrine under international customary law in which a larger, stronger sovereign agrees to “protect” the small, weaker sovereign. The larger sovereign agrees to this duty of protection, in the American case anyway, in exchange for massive, occasionally unquantifiable amounts of land and resources, as well as the power to control the external sovereign relations of the protected sovereign. The smaller sovereigns, in this case, tribal nations, typically received protected reservation lands, hunting and fishing rights, small cash infusions, and the vague promise of protection.
What tribal nations have received so far in exchange for their lands and resources and sovereignty is a pittance compared to the value of that consideration. Justice Gorsuch noted in a recent case that tribal nations in Washington gave up millions of acres in exchange for “promises.” Those promises must mean something.
I call those promises the dark matter of federal Indian law.
The duty of protection owed by the United States to tribal nations is much like dark matter. The duty of protection was left undefined in Indian treaties. Yes, the treaties and other agreements that established a sovereign-to-sovereign relationship did provide for specific details about that relationship, most famously hunting and fishing rights or criminal jurisdiction. But most treaties and agreements are sparse, leaving open most of the details about that relationship. That’s the dark matter of Indian law.
This essay argues that the duty of protection between tribal nations and the federal government is law and that the judiciary has an obligation to enforce aspects of the duty of protection as understood by both tribal nations and Congress. The essay begins by describing the duty of protection as understood by tribal nations at the time of the origination of the duty and now. The essay then turns to how Congress and the Department of the Interior understands the duty of protection, at least since the start of the tribal self-determination era in the 1970s, and how the Department of Justice often undermines that understanding. Then, the essay explains that the dark matter of federal Indian law is the duty of protection, that the federal obligations to tribal nations and individual Indians is real, and that the duty of protection is enforceable. Finally, the essay shows how the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a useful tool judges can use in adjudicating the scope of the unstated parts of the duty of protection.
This essay is an invited submission to the Maine Law Review Indian law symposium.

This paper was also the subject of the 2022 Rennard Strickland lecture at the University of Oregon Law School:

Penn Law and Field Center Panel on ICWA [more post-argument discussion]

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

This was Part II, Part I was here.

Harvard Law Review Profiles of Denezpi and Ysleta del Sur Cases

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the profile of Denezpi v. United States.

Here is the profile of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo v. Texas.

Justice Story’s finger in the Harvard law school library.

Fletcher and Khalil on ICWA and Preemption

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Posted an earlier draft of this before, but here is the all-but-final version, now available on SSRN here.

Here is “Preemption, Commandeering, and the Indian Child Welfare Act,” published in the Wisconsin Law Review.

Texas better do what it’s told.

SCTOUS Grants United States and Arizona Petitions in Navajo Water Case

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here was yesterday’s order.

Prior post here.

Thinking if SCOTUS had some good frybread, they’d let Indian country have the nice things we deserve, like an enforceable duty of protection.

Four White Men to Argue Brackeen

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

It’s now been 21+ years since the last Indigenous person argued a Supreme Court; 39 tribal or individual Indian parties since that time.

SCOTUS Denies Cert in Oklahoma Indian Status Case

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is yesterday’s order list.

The Oklahoma case was Oklahoma v. Wadkins. Lower court materials here.

The Court also denied cert in the Clarkson case.