Here is the complaint in Reno-Sparks Indian Colony v. Haaland (N. Nev.):
2023 Maine Law School Indian Law Conference
KEYNOTE: MICHAEL-COREY HINTON, LEADER OF THE TRIBAL NATIONS PRACTICE GROUP AT DRUMMOND WOODSUM AND CITIZEN OF THE PASSAMAQUODDY TRIBE (SIPAYIK).
This is a significant moment in history for the Wabanaki People, the United States, and the State of Maine. The Maine State Legislature recently revisited the Implementing Act to the Maine Indian Claims Settlement of 1980—the state law which purported to resolve land disputes between the Tribes and the State dating back to Maine’s pre-history. There is growing public interest in—and momentum to recognize—tribal sovereignty.
Attorneys, students, and tribal leaders will gather in Portland on March 3, 2023, to highlight these current events in light of the fact that the history of tribal law in Maine has been one of isolation and restraint. The Symposium is presented by the Maine Law Review in partnership with Norman, Hanson & DeTroy, LLC, and the Maine State Bar Association.
Symposium participants will welcome five expert authors to discuss the importance of Federal Indian Law as it applies to the four federally recognized tribes located in Maine. A keynote address will be presented by Michael-Corey Hinton, Leader of the Tribal Nations Practice Group at Drummond Woodsum and citizen of the Passamaquoddy Tribe (Sipayik).
We invite you to share this registration form with those in your network who may be interested in attending the Symposium.
The Symposium will feature the following speakers:
Professor Nicole Friederichs, Practitioner in Residence at Suffolk University Law School
Professor Matthew Fletcher, Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School and Chief Justice of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the Poarch Band of Creek Indians
Hon. Donna Loring, elder and former council member of the Penobscot Indian Nation
Hon. Eric M. Mehnert, Chief Justice of the Penobscot Tribal Court and partner for Hawkes & Mehnert, LLP.
Joseph E. Gousse, Esq., attorney at Berman & Simmons
Friday, March 3, 2023
9:00 AM to 1:30 PM
300 Fore Street
Massachusetts Appellate Court Holds Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Immune from Suit
Here are the materials in Haney v. Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council (Mass. Ct. App.):
Tamera Begay: A Day in the Life of a Tribal Prosecutor [Federal Lawyer]
Tamera Begay has published “A Day in the Life of a Tribal Prosecutor” in the January/February issue of the Federal Lawyer [starts on page 14].
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Gabe Galanda on Indigenous Kinship Renewal and Relational Sovereignty
Gabriel Galanda has posted “In the Spirit of Vine Deloria, Jr.: Indigenous Kinship Renewal and Relational Sovereignty” on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This essay heeds Vine Deloria, Jr.’s inspiring call for the renewal of Indigenous kinship tradition and counsels for the development of relational sovereignty. The first part deconstructs the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1978 landmark decision in Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez to expose its distinctly economic underpinnings. That case exemplifies a steady erosion of Indigenous reciprocity, and concurrent rise of tribal per-capitalism and neocolonialism. The second part suggests five actions that Native nations could take to restore inclusionary, duty-based kinship systems and rules. First, Native nations should replace blood quantum with alternative citizenship criteria rooted in traditional kinship principles. Second, Native nations should renew kinship terminology to eliminate neocolonial identifiers. Third, Native nations should outlaw disenrollment and bring their relatives home. Fourth, Native nations should lift enrollment moratoria and welcome their lost generations. Lastly, Native nations should—after pausing to understand the colonial legacy of federally sanctioned monetary distributions to tribal individuals—cease per capita payments and reinvest in community revitalization. By drawing on Indigenous traditions of reciprocity and shared destiny, Native nations should reconcile their peoples’ modern individual rights with their customary obligations and duties to one another. Through these strategies, Native nations can engage in a new paradigm of relational sovereignty, whereby Indigenous human existence is exalted and protected over individual power and profit.
Kristen Carpenter on Human Rights and Cultural Property
Kristen A. Carpenter has posted “A Human Rights Approach to Cultural Property: Repatriating the Yaqui Maaso Kova,” forthcoming in the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Claims for repatriation of cultural property are emerging across the international community, with increasing attention to the inequities of acquisitions made during colonial periods. Yet the State-centric nature of legal instruments, such as the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property of 1970, remains a stumbling block to advancing meaningful remedies for past harms, especially in the Indigenous Peoples’ context. States often pursue repatriation to advance national identity or replenish museum collections, but for Indigenous Peoples, repatriation often has to do with restoring dignity to ancestors through reburial, returning ceremonial objects to religious use, and healing the community from cultural assimilation and oppression. Against this backdrop, the essay reviews the recent case of the Yaqui People, an Indigenous nation spanning the U.S.-Mexico border, who negotiated a pathbreaking agreement to repatriate a sacred deer head, the Maaso Kova, from the national museums of Sweden. Working with the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the parties expressly invoked the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, along with Yaqui and Swedish law, as bases for repatriation. The Yaqui-Sweden matter advances a human rights approach to repatriation that begins to transcend the hegemony of States in cultural property claims, while recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ equality and self-determination, along with religious and cultural freedoms.
Idaho Indian Law Conference February 17, 2023
Update in Cherokee Trust Accounting Suit against Interior
Here are new materials in Cherokee Nation v. Dept. of the Interior (D.D.C.):
Prior post here.
Greg Ablavsky and Tanner Allread on How Indigenous Peoples Debated the U.S. Constitution
Gregory Ablavsky and W. Tanner Allread have posted “We the (Native) People?: How Indigenous Peoples Debated the U.S. Constitution,” forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, on SSRN.
Here is the abstract:
The Constitution was written in the name of the “People of the United States.” And yet, many of the nation’s actual people were excluded from the document’s drafting and ratification based on race, gender, and class. But these groups were far from silent. A more inclusive constitutional history might capture marginalized communities’ roles as actors, not just subjects, in constitutional debates.
This Article uses the tools of legal and Native history to examine how one such group, Indigenous peoples, argued about and with the U.S. Constitution. It analogizes Native engagement to some of the foundational frames of the “Founding” to underscore its significance for current constitutional discourse. Like their Anglo-American neighbors, Native peoples, too, had a prerevolutionary constitutional order—what we here dub the “diplomatic constitution”—that experienced a crisis during and after the Revolution. After the Constitution’s drafting, Native peoples engaged in their own version of the ratification debates. And then, in the early republic, Native peoples both invoked and critiqued the document as they faced Removal.
This Article’s most important contribution is proof of concept, illustrating what a more inclusive constitutional history might look like. Still, some of the payoffs are doctrinal: broadening the “public” in original public meaning, for instance. But the more significant stakes are theoretical. As this Article contends, by recognizing Indigenous law and constitutional interpretations as part of “our law”—in other words, the pre- and post-constitutional legal heritage of the United States—Native peoples can claim their role as co-creators of constitutional law.
Massachusetts Federal Court Decides Littlefield v. Dept. of the Interior [Mashpee Wampanoag]
Here are the materials in Littlefield v. Dept. of the Interior (D. Mass.):
Turtle Talk 
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