Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Indian Nation v. United States

ICT Article on Yakama Suit against Feds for Breach of Treaty-Required Consultation in FBI “Invasion”

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the article. An excerpt:

During a visit to Washington this week, the chairman of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation and members of his delegation will go to the National Archives to view the original 1855 Treaty with the Yakama. It will be a poignant experience for the leader of the Yakama people who live along the Columbia River and the central plateau of Washington state.

The Treaty, which was signed at Camp Stevens, Walla-Walla Valley in Washington State on June 9, 1855, is at the heart of a lawsuit the nation filed in federal court at the end of April. The lawsuit states that the nation’s treaty rights and other laws were violated when a horde of dozens of law enforcement officers from local and federal agencies and two states on the other side of the country – without consultation or notification – invaded the Yakama reservation with their weapons drawn at the crack of dawn on a cold winter morning in February to serve a questionable arrest warrant on a Yakama businessman for alleged cigarette tax violations in another state.

The Yakama Treaty says the federal government set aside lands “for the exclusive use and benefit” of the Yakama Indians and promised not to allow “any white man, excepting those in the employment of the Indian Department” to live on the reservation. The Treaty further guarantees the Yakama people that U.S. citizens would not “enter upon” their lands.

One Indian law expert compared the federal government’s apparent lack of trust toward the Yakama Nation to its lack of trust in raiding bin Laden’s house without consultation with the Pakistani government.

Yakama Indian Nation Rents Claims Survives Motion to Dismiss

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Here is the court’s order denying the United States’ motion to dismiss claims by the Yakama Indian Nation under the Indian Long-Term Leasing Act and other statutes — Yakama v US DCT Order

An excerpt:

The following facts are established, for the purpose of ruling on defendant’s motion, by the record submitted to date. The claim over which the United States Court of Federal Claims’ subject matter jurisdiction is contested alleges the Government’s breach of trust and fiduciary duties in collecting rent owed by a lessee to plaintiff lessors, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation (the “Yakama Nation”) and eighteen individual landowners (together with the Yakama Nation “plaintiffs”). The lessee’s debt of unpaid principal arose from 1996 until 2000, during the second quarter of a twenty-year lease approved and administered by the United States Department of the Interior on plaintiffs’ behalf. Implicated by plaintiffs’ complaint are the activities of three entities within the Department of the Interior: the Superintendent of the Yakama Agency (the “Superintendent”) of the BIA; the Northwest Regional Director of the BIA (the “Regional Director”), who oversaw the Superintendent’s activities and received appeals of decisions by the BIA; and the Interior Board of Indian Appeals (the “IBIA”), which reviewed appeals of decisions of the Regional Director.