book review – Turtle Talk

Fletcher Review of David Grann’s “Killers of the Flower Moon”

April 5, 2018April 5, 2018Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is “Failed Protectors: The Indian Trust and Killers of the Flower Moon,” forthcoming in the Michigan Law Review.

Abstract:

This Review uses Killers of the Flower Moon as a jumping off point for highlighting for readers how so many Indian people in Indian country can be so easily victimized by criminals. And yet, for however horrible the Osage Reign of Terror, the reality for too many Indian people today is much much worse. The federal government is absolutely to blame for these conditions. This Review shows how policy choices made by all three branches of the federal government have failed Indian people. Part I establishes the federal-tribal trust relationship that originated with a duty of protection. Part II establishes how the United States failure to fulfill its duties to the Osage Nation and its citizens allowed and even indirectly encouraged the Osage Reign of Terror. Part III offers thoughts on the future of the trust relationship in light of the rise of tribal self-determination. Part IV concludes the Review with a warning about how modern crime rates against Indian women and children are outrageously high in large part because of the continuing failures of the United States.

Troy Eid Review of Case & Voluck’s “Alaska Natives and American Laws, 3rd Ed.”

December 16, 2013Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Troy A Eid has published a book review (PDF) of Alaska Natives and American Laws, by David S. Case and David A. Voluck, published in the Alaska Law Review.

An excerpt:

Alaska Natives and American Laws—”Case-Voluck,” for short—has been called the Alaskan equivalent of the late Felix Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law (“Cohen’s Handbook”), the Bible of the profession. Cohen’s Handbook, a massive work first published in 1941 and revised in recent years by more than three dozen Indian law scholars, itself describes Case-Voluck as a “comprehensive treatise on Alaska Native legal issues.” It is much more than that.