Here are the materials in Lexington Insurance Co. v. Mueller (C.D. Cal.):
tribal courts
Fletcher on Due Process and Equal Protection in Michigan Anishinaabe Courts
The Michigan State Law Review Forum has published my short article, “Due Process and Equal Protection in Michigan Anishinaabe Courts.” Check it out.
Litigation in North Dakota Federal Court over Turtle Mountain TERO Power to Assess Nonmember Business on Trust Lands
Here are the materials so far in Hanson v. Parisien (D.N.D.):
MSU Indian Law Clinic Funding Announcement and Job Opportunity
It is with great pleasure to announce the Indian Law Clinic at MSU received an initial $200,000 to fund a Tribal Appellate Clerk Project from the Luce Foundation for the next 18 months. The funding allows us to assign students to tribal appellate courts to assist with research, memo writing, bench briefs and draft opinions. The Clinic is officially now seeking for tribal clients, so please reach out to fort@msu.edu if you or your tribe might be interested in receiving these pro bono services from the Clinic.
IN ADDITION, the funding allows us to hire a Fellow/Coordinator for this project! Please apply here:
While this is a soft funded position with a time limit, we have an opportunity to reapply for the funding. In addition, prior ILC/ILPC fellows (including me!) have gone on to great job opportunities after working with us. The job includes working with students, coordinating with tribes and tribal courts, and (most exciting) taking students on site visits to the tribes we work with! We are looking to hire as soon as possible.
Thank you very much to the Luce Foundation and MSU’s own Foundation office for working with the Clinic to get us this funding.
Navajo Prevails in D.C. Circuit over Interior in Judicial Funding Dispute
Here is the opinion in Navajo Nation v. Dept. of the Interior.
An excerpt:
We conclude that the ISDEAA does not require the DOI to approve Navajo Nation’s funding requests for the years 2017 through 2020 but its regulations do. The 2017 proposal requested “the renewal of a term contract” with “no material [or] substantial change to the scope or funding” of the previous contract, see 25 C.F.R. § 900.33, and the 2018 through 2020 proposals are “successor[s]” to and “substantially the same as” the 2017 proposal, see id. § 900.32. The DOI therefore violated 25 C.F.R. §§ 900.32 and 900.33 when it considered the section 5321(a)(2) declination criteria and partially declined the Tribe’s proposed AFAs. Accordingly, we reverse the district court.
Briefs here.
Lower court materials here.
New York Federal Court Dismisses Third Party Claims against Cayuga and Clint Halftown [except for recoupment] in Smoke Shop Dispute
Navajo Sues Interior over Judicial Funding (again)
Here is the complaint in Navajo Nation v. Dept. of the Interior (D.D.C.):
Nevada Federal Court Declines to Enjoin Winnemucca Housing Eviction Action
Greg Bigler on Euchee Legal Traditions
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.
Turtle Talk 
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