Here are the materials in Garcia v. Geisen (D.N.M.):
ILADA Blog [McGill Law]: Seasonal Thematic Contributions by Indigenous Legal Scholars
Here:
Season 1: Â Law Through Language (2018)
Our first season focuses on language as law: within the context of language revitalization, how do Indigenous laws pronounce themselves through language? How can Indigenous laws be strengthened, given the impact of colonialism on Indigenous languages? And can the changes required to revitalize—funds, experts, and the privileging of resources—create additional inequities? This season seeks to answer these questions among others.
This season aims first and foremost to address the crucial relationship between language and law: in particular, the role Indigenous languages play in articulating Indigenous laws. Writing about the Navajo people, Anishinaabe scholar Matthew Fletcher emphasizes, “for many tribal communities, the law is encoded right into the language – and the stories generated from the language.”1 Because most Indigenous communities historically expressed (and continually express) their customs and laws orally, this statement applies to Indigenous groups broadly.2 This season features contributors who explore expressions of law and answer questions about how language deepens and complicates protocols, interpretations and worldviews.
We recognize inherent challenges in this exercise: communities experience “law” in different forms and may not identify practices and behaviours as law in the same way that they are identified in Western legal normativity. What one group claims as “law” may be something entirely different to another; and not everything is translatable into English or French—nor should it be. As John Borrows stated, “context should not be stripped from the practice of Indigenous law.”3 Often, that context is language. Our contributors this season help to tease out how Indigenous languages limit and liberate, stymie and enable, and generally complicate the articulation of Indigenous law.
The State of Canada’s Indigenous Languages by Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel
Indonaakonigewininaan – Toward an Anishinaabe Common Law by Matthew L.M. Fletcher
Language and Anishinaabe Consultation Law by John Borrows
1 Matthew Fletcher, “Rethinking Customary Law in Tribal Court Jurisprudence” (2007) 13 Mich J Race & L 57 at 21.
2 Ibid at 41, “Indian cultures (often) were and are oral cultures.”
3 Borrows, John, “Foreword: Indigenous Law, Lands, and Literature,” (2016) 33 Windsor YB Access to Just v at ix.
The Hill: BIA Director Resigns
Here.
Ninth Circuit Rejects Casino Pauma Effort to Avoid NLRB Jurisdiction
Here is the opinion in Casino Pauma v. NLRB. From the court’s syllabus:
The panel granted the National Labor Relations Board’s petition for enforcement of its order; denied Casino Pauma’s petition for review; and upheld the Board’s conclusions that it may apply the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) to the relationship between employees working in commercial gaming establishments on tribal lands and the tribal governments that own and manage the establishments, and that Casino Pauma committed unfair labor practices in violation of the NLRA by trying to stop union literature distribution.
Briefs here.
News Profile of Native Women Running for Office in 2018
Oklahoma Court of Appeals on Reason to Believe ICWA Case
Here is the opinion.
This case went to trial–a unique aspect of Oklahoma child welfare law–on January 23, 24, and 25, where the Mom testified about her work in getting the children enrolled in the Choctaw Tribe. When Mom appealed the termination of parental rights based on lack of ICWA compliance, the
¶10 State filed an objection and response asserting, inter alia: “At the time of trial, the evidence and record showed the children were not members of an Indian tribe.” It claimed that “the only other way the children could be defined as Indian children implicating the application of ICWA was if the children were ‘eligible for membership [in a tribe] of which the biological parent is a member.’ See BIA Regulations §23.108(a).” State argued that, because Mother testified she is a member of the Cheyenne Arapaho Tribe and the children are not eligible to be members of that tribe, “but that she was trying to enroll the children as Choctaw (of which she could not be a full member given her membership in Cheyenne Arapaho), there was no reason to believe the children met the definition of ‘Indian Child’ at the time of trial given the evidence and testimony in the record.” It argued that the record in the case showed that the children were not tribal members at the time of trial and the record only reflected their membership after Mother filed the motion for new trial.
(emphasis added)
Therefore,
¶28 Although it is clear the trial court and State may not have been affirmatively informed of the children’s membership in the Choctaw Nation until February 3, 2017, this date is not determinative of the date ICWA became applicable. We reiterate that the trial court and State had reason to know at trial that ICWA may very well apply and this warranted further investigation. Despite the Choctaw Nation’s previous communication about the children’s membership status, Mother’s detailed testimony about establishing her own membership and the children’s membership raised red flags that further inquiry at trial was needed despite the Choctaw Nation’s earlier communication.
¶29 We recognize that that does not mean that IWCA applied to the case from the date it was filed in 2011. ICWA became applicable on the date the children became eligible for enrollment3 or the date they enrolled, which was January 20, 2017. At the latest, ICWA applied as of January 20, 2017, a date before trial started. ICWA’s provisions, including the heightened burden and expert witness requirements, were applicable at trial.
The distinction between when a court has reason to know a child might be an Indian child and then when ICWA applies (prospectively, Oklahoma has frustratingly stated in the past, In re M.H.C., 2016 OK 88, 381 P.3d 710) is a question we get a lot.
Kansas Secretary of State Held in Contempt for Failure to Comply with Federal Court’s Voter ID Ruling
Here.
Eighth Circuit Decides Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate v. U.S. Corps of Engineers
Here is the opinion. The court’s syllabus:
Action challenging the issuance of Clean Water Act permits allowing a farm owner to dredge and fill portions of Enemy Swim Lake in furtherance of the owner’s activities in building a road over an inlet of the lake; a 2010 letter from the Corps was not a final agency action for purposes of the permit and exemptions determinations as the letter did not affect the legal rights of the farm owner, the Tribe or the Corps; Tribe’s recapture claim under 33 U.S.C. Sec. 1344(f)(2) was a nonjusticiable enforcement action; Tribe’s claims arising from the Corps’s permit and exemption determinations made from 1998 to 2003 were barred by the statute of limitations and the Tribe was not eligible for equitable tolling because it had not diligently pursued its rights; dismissal of the Tribe’s arbitrary-and-capricious challenge to the Corps’s 2009 permit decision rejected as the Corps did not violate its own regulations in issuing the 2009 nationwide-permit determination; the district court did not make a final decision with respect to the lawfulness of the Corps’s regulations enacted pursuant to the National Historic Preservation Act, and the court lacked jurisdiction to review the lawfulness of the regulations.
Crow Creek Sioux Tribe Sues FCC over Infrastructure
Here is the complaint in Crow Creek Tribe of South Dakota v. FCC (D.S.D.):
Federal Court Dismisses U.S. v. Washington Subproceeding 17-02 [Muckleshoot Request for U&A Determination in Puget Sound Saltwater]
Here are the materials in Muckleshoot Indian Tribe v. Tulalip Tribes (W.D. Wash.):
27 Suquamish Motion to Dismiss
Turtle Talk 
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