NCJFCJ has a cool new publication on ICWA courts, specifically the Duluth ICWA court which is (in my humble opinion) the national model for this work. Here is an older WaPo article on the court (one of the best mainstream press ICWA articles out there), and the publication is below.
Ninth Circuit Restores Navajo Nation’s Water Rights Trust Breach Suit
Here is the opinion in Navajo Nation v. Dept. of the Interior. Briefs here.
An excerpt:
Moreover, neither Morongo nor Gros Ventre nor Jicarilla involved claims to vindicate Winters rights, which provide the foundation of the Nation’s claim here. Unlike the plaintiffs in those cases, the Nation, in pointing to its reserved water rights, has identified specific treaty, statutory, and regulatory provisions that impose fiduciary obligations on Federal Appellees—namely, those provisions of the Nation’s various treaties and related statutes and executive orders that establish the Navajo Reservation and, under the long-established Winters doctrine, give rise to implied water rights to make the reservation viable.
*. * *
We hold in particular that, under Winters, Federal Appellees have a duty to protect the Nation’s water supply that arises, in part, from specific provisions in the 1868 Treaty that contemplated farming by the members of the Reservation.
Marshall Project and NPR on How Alaska OCS Stole Millions from Alaska Native Foster Kids
If you, like me, enjoy starting your day with the clarifying anger of a thousand white hot fires, may I recommend this article on how various state agencies rerouted foster children’s SSI benefits to pay for their own foster care–especially impacting Alaska Native children. A few of those children are highlighted in this article:
The Marshall Project and NPR have found that in at least 36 states and Washington, D.C., state foster care agencies comb through their case files to find kids entitled to these benefits, then apply to Social Security to become each child’s financial representative, a process permitted by federal regulations. Once approved, the agencies take the money, almost always without notifying the children, their loved ones or lawyers.
At least 10 state foster care agencies hire for-profit companies to obtain millions of dollars in Social Security benefits intended for the most vulnerable children in their care each year, according to a review of hundreds of pages of contract documents. A private firm that Alaska used while Hunter was in state care referred to acquiring benefits from people with disabilities as “a major line of business” in company records.
Some states also take veterans’ benefits from children with a parent who died in the military, though this has become less common as casualties have declined since the Iraq War.
Secretarial Order 3400: “Delegation of Authority for Non-Gaming Off-Reservation Fee-to-Trust Acquisitions”
Here.
Arizona COA Holds Federal Law Preempts State Taxes on Trust Land Improvements Regardless of Ownership
Passamaquoddy Indian Township Hosts Violence Against Women Act Training
Pojoaque Pueblo Sues over State Court Assertion of Jurisdiction re: Casino Slip and Fall
Here is the complaint and associated materials in Pueblo of Pojoaque v. Wilson (D.N.M.):
Post-Argument Letter Briefing in Yellen v. Chehalis
NYTs: “10 Queer Indigenous Artists on Where Their Inspirations Have Led Them”
Here.
New Scholarship by Mary Bilder on Native Nations’ Diplomacy and the Framing of the Constitution
Mary Sarah Bilder has posted “Without Doors: Native Nations and the Convention,” just published in the Fordham Law Review.
Here is the abstract:
The Constitution’s apparent textual near silence with respect to Native Nations is misleading. As this Article reveals, four representatives of Native Nations visited Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. Their visit ensured that the Constitution secured the general government’s treaty authority with Native Nations and decisively barred state claims of authority. But, the visits also threatened to disrupt Congress’s passage of the Northwest Ordinance and the vision of nationally sanctioned white settlement. In the process of successfully preventing the representatives from reaching Congress, Secretary at War Henry Knox developed the central tenets of what would become the George Washington administration’s early Indian policy: an acceptance of Native Nation sovereignty, disapproval of unauthorized white encroachment, and an attempt to discourage Native Nations from sending additional representatives. In addition to emphasizing the strong national federal government role and Native Nation sovereignty, this history provides evidence that the Framers’ generation without doors—outside the Convention—critically affected the creation of the Constitution as an instrument and a system of government. Recovering the visits of the deputies to Philadelphia in 1787 and the promises they received, including Washington’s handshake, suggests that the United States today should reaffirm the right and the importance of Native Nations sending deputies to Congress.
Turtle Talk 
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