Bureau of Indian Affairs – Page 7

In an appeal from the district court’s orders denying a motion to dissolve a preliminary injunction and denying motions to dismiss in an action concerning a dispute over membership in an Indian tribe, the panel affirmed in part, dismissed in part, and remanded. The San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians’ governing documents vested the United States Department of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, with ultimate authority over membership. The panel held that the district court had jurisdiction to enjoin preliminarily the enforcement of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ order upholding the Band’s decision to disenroll descendants of Marcus Alto, Sr. from the Band, and that the Band was not a required party, because the claims underlying the preliminary injunction concern solely the propriety of final agency action. Accordingly, the panel affirmed the district court’s denial of the Band’s motion to dismiss the claims on which the injunction rests and the district court’s consequent refusal to dissolve the preliminary injunction. The panel remanded to allow the district court to clarify its order. Finally, the panel held that it lacked jurisdiction to review on interlocutory appeal the Band’s motion to dismiss the Altos’ other claims, on which the district court expressly deferred ruling.

Lower court materials here and here.

WaPo: BIA/IHS Fail to Pay Contract Support Costs

December 23, 2013December 23, 2013Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here.

An excerpt:

At issue are contract support costs that are spelled out in the agreements, under which the government pays tribes to run education, public safety and health programs on reservations. The support costs — which include items like travel expenses, legal and accounting fees, insurance costs and worker’s compensation fees — typically account for 20 percent of the value of the contract, according to Lloyd Miller, a lawyer who represented the tribes at the Supreme Court.

Assistant Secretary Assumes Jurisdiction over Appeals of Fee to Trust Acquisitions over 200 Acres

November 22, 2013Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here:

11 12 13-F2TDecisions IBIA-Washburn PDF0NJ

New Empirical Study on Indian Land Fractionation on 12 Reservations

November 22, 2013November 21, 2013Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Jacob W. Russ & Thomas Stratmann have posted “Creeping Normalcy: Fractionation of Indian Land Ownership” on SSRN.

Here is the abstract:

In 1992 the General Accounting Office (GAO) published a quantitative survey of Indian land ownership of twelve reservations, which was the first and still is the only survey of Indian land ownership. In our study we use 2010 data to show how ownership fractionation for these reservations has changed since the original GAO study. We find that, despite the whole of Congressional action regarding land fractionation, and the US Bureau of Indian Affairs’ (BIA’s) land consolidation programs, fractionation has not only continued, but BIA’s complex recordkeeping workload has nearly doubled for the twelve reservations over the eighteen year interval. The GAO estimated that BIA’s annual recordkeeping costs for these twelve reservations was between $40 and $50 million. With the addition of over a million new ownership records, due to fractionation, we estimate yearly recordkeeping costs have increased to $246 million in 2010.