tribal courts

GTB Chairman Election Re-Run

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the court order referenced in the Record-Eagle article — Bailey v. GTB Election Board

PESHAWBESTOWN — A new election will be held for the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians’ chairman’s post after a tribal court ruled the band’s election board improperly censured candidate Derek Bailey just before the initial vote.

A 23-page order issued by the band’s appellate court last week threw out the results of the May 21 tribal chairman’s election and ordered a new vote for the four-year post.

Bailey lost by 23 votes to two-term incumbent Robert Kewaygoshkum. But he challenged the results because the band’s Election Board held an emergency meeting two days before the election and subsequently issued an e-mail censuring him for allegedly using his tribal computer to visit his campaign Web site.

No date for the new election has been scheduled, tribal officials said.

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Beltran v. Harrah’s Arizona Corp. — Tort Claim Against Casino

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

The Arizona Court of Appeals, Division 2, affirmed the dismissal of a tort complaint against the management company for the Ak-Chin Indian Community. The plaintiffs had filed a tribal court claim that had been dismissed for procedural reasons (failure to identify the proper party).

Opinion

beltran-v-harrahs-appellee-brief

[appellant’s briefs unavailable]

Wisconsin Supreme Court’s New Rule on Discretionary Transfer to Tribal Courts

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Interesting development. Wisconsin, being a PL280 state, has issues with concurrent jurisdiction. Now a state court has discretion to stay a state court proceeding if a tribal court has concurrent jurisdiction, and transfer the case to tribal court, if other factors are met.

There were three dissenters, focusing on Plains Commerce Bank. Not sure why, given that the state court has to find concurrent jurisdiction before transferring anyway. What’s the harm if the state court finds jurisdiction consistent with federal common law?

wisconsin-sct-tribal-court-transfer-rule

Tribal Judge Korey Wahwassuck on Tribal Court Jurisdiction

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Leech Lake Band of Chippewa Indians Chief Judge Korey Wahwassuck has published “The New Face of Justice: Joint Tribal-State Jurisdiction” in the Washburn Law Journal.

This piece covers the watershed agreement between the Leech Lake Band and the Cass County District Court.

Christine Zuni Cruz on Indigenous Law Scholarship and the Tribal Law Journal

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Christine Zuni Cruz, EIC of the Tribal Law Journal, has published “Shadow War Scholarship, Indigenous Legal Tradition, and Modern Law in Indian Country” in the Washburn Law Journal.

Here is an excerpt from the introduction:

This essay comments on the multi-layered experience of establishing an electronic law journal for the serious, scholarly treatment of the Indigenous (Chthonic) Legal Tradition and the law “of” Indigenous Peoples, as opposed to the nation-state law “concerning,” “about,” or “for” Indian tribes. It addresses the challenges to both the enterprise of seeking to write and publish about an oral legal tradition and its emerging modern, and written, offshoot in an electronic format, and of doing so in an academic and technological setting that contradicts and opposes the enterprise. It lays out the thought, the vision, the obstacles, and the concerns of the endeavor.

Written Testimony in Senate Hearing on Tribal Courts

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

From the Senate Indian Affairs Committee site:

Panel 1
MR. W. PATRICK RAGSDALE
Director, Office of Justice Services
Washington, DC

Accompanied by: MR. JOE LITTLE, Associate Deputy Director, Office of Justice Services-Division of Tribal Justice Support, U.S. Department of the Interior.

THE HONORABLE ROMAN DURAN
First Vice President, National American Indian Court Judges Association (NAICJA), Albuquerque, NM

THE HONORABLE JOSEPH FLIES AWAY
Chief Judge, Hualapai Indian Tribe of Arizona

MS DORMA SAHNEYAH
Trbal Prosecutor, Hopi Tribe of Arizona

THE HONORABLE TERESA POULEY
President, Northwest Tribal Court Judges Association, Washington

THE HONORABLE JOHN ST. CLAIR
Chief Justice, Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribal Court, Wind River Reservation, Wyoming

NPR on Tribal Law and Order Act

Matthew L.M. Fletcher2 Comments

From NPR:

Native American women are far more likely to be raped than other women — and tribal officials say many incidents on reservations across the country go unreported and uninvestigated, NPR’s Laura Sullivan reported a year ago on All Things Considered.

The Justice Department estimates that 1 in 3 Native American women will be raped in her lifetime, and most victims who do report their assaults describe their attackers as non-Native. Legally, tribal authorities can do little to stop them. Chickasaw Tribal Police Chief Jason O’Neal told NPR in 2007 that “many of the criminals know Indian lands are almost a lawless community that they can do whatever they want.”

For the past year, the Senate has held hearings on reservations nationwide on how to stop the assaults. The resulting legislation, called the Tribal Law and Order Act, was introduced in the Senate on Wednesday by Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, who is chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

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Senate Indian Affairs Hearing on Tribal Courts

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From Indianz:

The Senate Indian Affairs Committee is holding a hearing this morning on tribal courts.

The hearing starts at 9:30am and will be broadcast online at http://indian.senate.gov/public/webcast.ram. The witness list follows:

Panel 1
MR. W. PATRICK RAGSDALE
Director, Office of Justice Services
Accompanied by: MR. JOE LITTLE, Associate Deputy Director, Office of Justice Services-Division of Tribal Justice Support, U.S. Department of the Interior.

THE HONORABLE ROMAN DURAN
First Vice President, National American Indian Court Judges Association (NAICJA), Albuquerque, NM

THE HONORABLE JOSEPH FLIES AWAY
Chief Judge, Hualapai Indian Tribe of Arizona MS DORMA SAHNEYAH
Trbal Prosecutor, Hopi Tribe of Arizona

THE HONORABLE TERESA POULEY
President, Northwest Tribal Court Judges Association, Washington

THE HONORABLE JOHN ST. CLAIR Chief Justice, Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribal Court, Wind River Reservation, Wyoming

Committee Notice:
OVERSIGHT HEARING on Tribal Courts and the Administration of Justice in Indian Country (July 24, 2008 )

U.S. Senate Hearing on Tribal Courts

ilpc

From Indianz:

The Senate Indian Affairs Committee will hold a hearing next Thursday, July 24, on tribal courts and the administration of justice in Indian Country.

The hearing takes place at 9:30am in Room 562 of the Senate Dirksen Office Building. A witness list hasn’t been made public. The committee has been examining law and order issues in Indian Country since 2007. A comprehensive bill addressing tribal courts and other justice matters is being introduced next week.

Hearing Information

Justin Richland on Hopi Inheritance Law

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Justin Richland has published “The State of Hopi Exception: When Inheritance is What You Have” in Law & Literature. Here is the abstract:

This essay asks after the potentialities and desires generated by the epistemological limits that animate Hopi tradition as a mode of inheritance. Every effort by Euro-Americans to give “order” to Hopis via two dominant modalities of modern intervention–law and science–have regularly and repeatedly confronted their exceptions among aspects of Hopi life. It will be argued that the obdurate qualities that Hopi culture, society, and language present to Euro-American ways of knowing resonate with tropes of tradition and its inheritance generated by and between Hopis themselves, revealing that Hopis operate in something like a state of exception where their negotiation of epistemological limits animate potentialities that exceed their own moments of authoritative prescription, generating a largely dispersed sovereignty. Moreover, as the lines and limits by which this Hopi exceptionalism is generated and dispersed come to give Hopi traditional knowledge the form of property, and its transmission the character of inheritance, they produce a nostalgic, possessory desire among Euro-Americans to “know” Hopis, even as (and arguably because) these limits result in a Hopi sociality that defies the techno-rational modes of production that reside at the heart of contemporary Euro-American state orders.