Alabama-Coushatta Tribe Cert Petition in Gaming Matter

Here is the petition in Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas v. Texas:

alabama-coushatta-tribe-of-texas-cert-petition.pdf

Questions presented:

Whether IGRA authorizes gaming on tribal lands previously governed by trust statutes that prohibited gaming, as the National Indian Gaming Commission, the Department of the Interior, and the First Circuit have concluded, or not, as the Fifth Circuit has held.

Lower court materials here.

UPDATE:

ncai-amicus-brief.pdf

ysleta-amicus-curiae-brief.pdf

texas-bio.pdf

ILPC/TICA Panel – Diversifying the Legal Profession

2019Panel4Promos

Register for the ILPC/TICA 16th Annual Indigenous Law Conference at the MSU College of Law

For information about the agenda, sponsorships, and registration visit the event page.

The Diversifying the Legal Profession panel will fulfill Elimination of Bias credits and is sponsored by Kogovsek & Associates.

Logo Kogovsek and Associates

National Indian Law Library Bulletin (9/25/2019)

Here:

The National Indian Law Library added new content to the Indian Law Bulletins on 9/25/19.

Federal Courts Bulletin
https://www.narf.org/nill/bulletins/federal/2019.html
Pit River Tribe v. Bureau of Land Management (Fiduciary Trust; Geothermal Steam Act)
Dakota Rural Action v. Noem (Keystone XL Pipeline)

U.S. Legislation – 116th Congress Bulletin
https://narf.org/nill/bulletins/legislation/116_uslegislation.html
The following bills were recently proposed in the House and the Senate:
H.R.4449 – To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to add access to telecommunications and information services in Indian country
S.2534 – A bill to amend the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act
S.2541 – A bill to amend the Indian Health Care Improvement Act

Law Review & Bar Journal Bulletin (contact us if you need help finding a copy of an article)
https://www.narf.org/nill/bulletins/lawreviews/2019.html

  • ICWA and the unwed father.
  • Native American religious freedom as a collective right.
  • Judge Murphy’s Indian law legacy.
  • Not all Agua is Caliente: Proposing the Winters groundwater test.

 

News Bulletin
https://www.narf.org/nill/bulletins/news/currentnews.html
This week, in brief:

  • ‘It has been a long time coming’: Minnesota MMIW Task Force to hold first meeting
  • Tribal Coastal Resiliency Act inches forward on Capitol Hill
  • United Methodist Church gives historic mission site and land back to Wyandotte Nation
  • Grant-funded Native American treatment court produces first graduates in Great Falls
  • Ponca Chief Standing Bear completes one last journey of triumph
  • New Mexico delegation announces funding for Native libraries

HCN: “The Klamath River now has the legal rights of a person”

Here.

Call for Proposals for Promotion of Anishinaabemowin

The Big Ten Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL) Partnership at Michigan State University (funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation) is inviting proposals for activities and projects related to Anishinaabemowin. Over the next four years, the grant will work in partnership with Indigenous communities to help run activities and projects focused on the promotion of Anishinaabemowin in communities around Michigan and the Great Lakes. For more detailed information, click here.

  • Short proposals due Friday, October 4, 2019, by 10pm Eastern (details below)
  • The Wewaawiindamojig (Advisory Circle) of the LCTL Partnership will review the short proposals and invite some full proposals. These invitations will be sent by Friday, October 18th.
  • Full proposals from invited parties will be due Sunday, December 1st.

Questions?

The Project Manager will hold three open Q&A sessions on Zoom for interested parties who wish to discuss the grant or their project proposals.

  1. Thursday, September 26th from 1-3pm (Eastern)
  2. Monday, September 30th from 2-3pm (Eastern)

Briefs in Cayuga Nation Internal Conflicts

Here are the materials in Cayuga Nation v. Campbell (N.Y. A.D.):

Appellants Brief

Reply Brief

Respondent Brief

Amicus Brief

Briefs in Short Term Loan/Sovereign Immunity Matter involving Lac Du Flambeau Ojibwe President

Here are the materials so far in Jones v. Wildcat (E.D. Pa.):

2019.06.07-docket-1-complaint-with-exhibits.pdf

2019.08.30-docket-9-wildcat-mtd.pdf

2019.09.23-22-jones-response-mtd.pdf

2019.09.23-22-1-jones-aff.pdf

Danielle Delaney on Environmental Law, Indigenous Identity, and #NoDAPL

Danielle Delaney has published “Under Coyote’s Mask: Environmental Law, Indigenous Identity, and #NoDAPL” in the Michigan Journal of Race & Law.

The abstract:

This Article studies the relationship between the three main lawsuits filed by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and the Yankton Sioux Tribe against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DaPL) and the mass protests launched from the Sacred Stone and Oceti Sakowin protest camps. The use of environmental law as the primary legal mechanism to challenge the construction of the pipeline distorted the indigenous demand for justice as U.S. federal law is incapable of seeing the full depth of the indigenous worldview supporting their challenge. Indigenous activists constantly re-centered the direct actions and protests within indigenous culture to remind non-indigenous activists and the wider media audience that the protests were an indigenous protest, rather than a purely environmental protest, a distinction that was obscured as the litigation progressed. The NoDAPL protests, the litigation to prevent the completion and later operation of the pipeline, and the social movement that the protests engendered, were an explosive expression of indigenous resistance—resistance to systems that silence and ignore indigenous voices while attempting to extract resources from their lands and communities. As a case study, the protests demonstrate how the use of litigation, while often critical to achieving the goals of political protest, distorts the expression of politics not already recognized within the legal discourse.

Improper Removal Case out of Washington Court of Appeals [ICWA]

Today I received a call that went something approximately like this:

Caller: “So with [25 U.S.C.] 1920 …”

Me: “Right, 1922, go on.”

Caller: “Um, ok, so with 1920 . . .”

Me: “I think you mean 1922?”

Caller: “I think I mean 1920?”

Reader, she absolutely meant 25 U.S.C. 1920, and also had the patience to hang in there with me and tell me about the following case:

Here is an opinion from the Washington Court of Appeals decided in January and published in April that I completely missed and is also the only and first case I’ve encountered in five years of reading (nearly) every ICWA case where the court used 25 U.S.C. 1920:

¶30 Both ICWA and WICWA have provisions for the appropriate remedy when an Indian child is improperly removed by the State from his or her home or the State improperly maintains custody. Under ICWA,

[w]here any petitioner in an Indian child custody proceeding before a State court has improperly removed the child from custody of the parent or Indian custodian or has improperly retained custody after a visit or other temporary relinquishment of custody, the court shall decline jurisdiction over such petition and shall forthwith return the child to his parent or Indian custodian unless returning the child to his parent or custodian would subject the child to a substantial and immediate danger or threat of such danger.

25 U.S.C. § 1920. Similarly, under WICWA,
[i]f a petitioner in a child custody proceeding under this chapter has improperly removed the child from the custody of the parent or Indian custodian or has improperly retained custody after a visit or other temporary relinquishment of custody, the court shall decline jurisdiction over the petition and shall immediately return the child to the child’s parent or Indian custodian unless returning the child to the parent or Indian custodian would subject the child to substantial and immediate danger or threat of such danger.

RCW 13.38.160.

¶31 Here, the Department has improperly maintained A.L.C’s placement in out-of-home care because the Department has failed to provide active efforts to prevent the breakup of the Indian family. The appropriate remedy is the remedy prescribed by statute. Thus, we remand to the juvenile court to either immediately return A.L.C. or make the statutorily required finding that returning A.L.C. will subject her to substantial and immediate danger or threat of such danger.

Emphasis added.

Domestic Violence and Indian Child Welfare Training

The training is November 1st, 2019 in Livingston, TX and will focus on Domestic Violence and its effects on Indian Children and Indian Child Welfare. Save the Date flyer here. You can register here.