In 2021, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative. This initiative, which includes gathering records from the boarding school era, and compiling an official list of boarding school sites, makes visible on a national scale the intergenerational impact federal Indian board schools have had on tribal communities. Currently, there are five schools in the state of Michigan that were identified from the federal investigation process (Holy Childhood Boarding School, Baraga Chippewa Boarding and Day School (Holy Name), Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School, Mackinac Mission School, and Catholic Otchippewa Boarding School). This is not an extensive list of all the other entities, schools, and programs that operated in Michigan through the Indian Civilization Act of 1819.
The Native Justice Coalition’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was launched in July 2022. It seeks to expand its reach to strengthen relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in an effort to seek the truth behind the Indian boarding school policies and corresponding actions taken by the government and church. Through this work, the NJC provides safe, supportive, and culturally competent spaces that offer opportunities for healing and uniting our Native communities on this journey. Our goals are to create an Indigenous-led process that is grounded in mutual respect, culturally sensitive, and focused on meeting clearly defined, jointly agreed upon metrics. Our key four priorities are truth and reconciliation, healing our people and our communities, strengthening ICWA and ensuring a cultural identity for our children, and building a strong ecosystem through investment in the Native Justice Coalition.
Without support from community partners such as the Indigenous Law & Policy Center, Native American Institute, and American Indian and Indigenous Studies at Michigan State University, this work would not be possible. This one-day symposium honors that work on a local scale, providing Michigan State University, and the greater Lansing community an opportunity to learn about the intergenerational trauma caused by federal Indian boarding school policies. Attendees will hear first-hand accounts from boarding school survivors and others who can provide the legal, social, and historical context of the Indian boarding schools. By joining together in community to share stories and voices, the symposium provides a space for knowledge and healing.
An excerpt: “The tribes in states with vendor-based sales taxes should be alert to this impending problem should the Court deny a review of the case. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.”
From global challenges such as climate change and mass extinction, to local challenges such as toxic spills and undrinkable water, environmental degradation and the impairment of Earth systems are well documented. Yet, despite this reality, the U.S. federal government has done little in the last thirty years to provide a comprehensive solution to these profound environmental challenges; likewise, significant state action is lacking. In this vacuum, environmental legal advocates are looking for innovative environmental solutions to these challenges. Against this backdrop, rights of nature have increasingly gained traction as a possible legal tool to help protect the natural environment from the harms perpetrated by humans. Rights of nature laws generally have two elements: (1) legal personhood for natural entities, such that nature has standing in court, and (2) substantive rights for natural entities. This Article explores the scope and origins of rights of nature and examines how they are being implemented both within the United States and abroad. It highlights the work being done by Tribes and Indigenous Peoples in this space and argues that, particularly in the United States, state and local governments should learn from this work. Specifically, the work of Tribes in this space can serve as alternative ethical paradigms and laws for non-Native communities looking for an alternative to the status quo. In the United States, Tribes can serve as “laboratories” for environmental change given their tribal sovereignty and environmental ethics. In addition, Tribes exist within a different legal framework from U.S. states and municipalities. By comparing rights of nature-related litigation in Florida and in the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe, it becomes clear that rights of nature provisions adopted by Tribes stand a greater chance of withstanding legal challenge than provisions adopted by municipalities. Accordingly, environmental reform can benefit from the collaboration and experimentation of Tribes.
In addition to its stunning internal flaws, the United States Supreme Court’s opinion in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta exemplifies Indian law’s broader flaws as a jurisprudence. Castro-Huerta holds that states have concurrent criminal jurisdiction with federal and tribal governments over crimes by non-Indians against Indians on reservation lands. Justice Gorsuch deftly addresses many of the glaring internal flaws in Kavanaugh’s majority opinion, but not all. He does not dissect the hollow assertion that reservations are part of the surrounding state both geographically and politically. This cannot go unaddressed, particularly given its weak analysis, misguided use of precedent, and broader consequences.
Castro-Huerta’s holding affects the precise kind of “jurisdictional overlap” at the root of the slow erosion of tribal sovereignty over time, as first explained in a prior article. The Founders believed two governments generally cannot co-exist, i.e. overlap. They had a firm idea of what happens when jurisdictional overlap occurs: one government slowly subsumes the other over time until nothing meaningful is left, here labeled “competitive sovereign erosion.” The Founding Fathers believed this proposition so much and feared it so deeply that it played a central role in how the Constitution was written, specifically the categorical division of authority between the federal and state governments. Tribal sovereignty will continue to be vulnerable to competitive sovereign erosion until a solution is reached that results in either a respect for tribal borders, or a qualitative division of governmental authority between tribal governments, the federal government, and the states. Anything less will continue the long-term war of sovereign attrition historically experienced by tribes.
Analyzing Indian law as a competitive sovereign erosion problem of the sort contemplated by the Framers and discussing it in terms of United States federalism has additional jurisprudential and advocacy advantages. Doing so disconnects Indian law from the tortured logic exemplified by Castro used to reach anti-Indian results, and reconnects it to the intuitively fair, commonly accepted, and historically effective answers used when White cultures have had the same kinds of problems. From an advocacy perspective, competitive erosion adopts a conceptual framework and lexicon that resonates with conservatives commonly opposed to tribal sovereignty. Using competitive erosion can present tribal sovereignty in a way that persuadable conservatives can embrace.
Tribes wanting to maintain their separate existence need to overturn the assertion that reservations are part of the state, oppose practices that give the appearance of being part of state government, and push congress for legislation that will eliminate jurisdictional overlap between tribes, states, and the federal government.
While we wait for Brackeen, I wanted to highlight this story from Colorado, where the Office of Respondent Parents’ Counsel has been doing great work on ICWA cases. In this case, they have collected incredibly useful data on what happens to a child protection case when foster parents intervene. This article is not ICWA specific, but the last two cases the MSU Indian Law Clinic has had on appeal are a direct result of the attempt at foster parents to intervene. In both cases, the court and agency agreed with the tribes and followed ICWA. In both cases, the foster parents sought to intervene and appealed the case. As we look past Brackeen, addressing this issue of foster parent intervention generally is vital.
According to data provided by the ORPC foster parent intervention has increased in Colorado in the past decade. In 2020, 10% of Dependency and Neglect cases had Intervenors. When foster parents intervene, the chance of reunification decreases from 62% to 22% for the birth parents.
emphasis added
According to the ORPC, the average Dependency and Neglect Case costs $3,500 to litigate, but when foster parents intervene the average court cost goes up to $7,500.
Turtle Talk 
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