Here is the complaint in Fort Belknap Indian Community of the Fort Belknap Reservation of Montana v. United States (D. Mont.):
Fort Belknap Suit against US re Milk River Allocation
Indian country water rights
Jason Robison on Tripartite Water Sovereignty
Jason Robison has published “Tripartite Water Sovereignty” in the Yale Law Journal.
Here is the abstract:
Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and former Harvard Law School Dean James M. Landis published in 1925 the seminal work on the U.S. Constitution’s Compact Clause. Their article focused on cosovereignty within the United States, but only in a binary sense. While indelibly shaping interstate and federal-state relations, North America’s original sovereigns—Native nations—were not visible within this influential piece. So, too, with the approximately two dozen compacts later formed to apportion water from rivers running across and along state lines, agreements that acknowledged Native nations and their water rights only at the margins, if at all. Revisiting Frankfurter and Landis’s pivotal piece one century later, this Article urges advocates and scholars to look beyond the binary conception of cosovereignty apparent in that piece and entrenched in the suite of compacts created in its wake. Tracking Native nations’ growing calls for inclusion in transboundary water management, the Article contends that these cosovereigns must be respected as what they are—sovereigns—and afforded opportunities for direct representation on compact commissions beside their state and federal counterparts. The Article outlines several ways to achieve this indigenization and, ultimately, move from binary to tripartite water cosovereignty.
Tenth Circuit Rejects Ute Tribe’s Effort to Force Water Rights Case to be Adjudicated in Tribal Court
DC Bar Indian Country Water Panel on 9/10
Folks can register here:
WEBCAST: Water Is Life: Inside the Struggle over Access to Water in Indian Country
Date(s):September 10, 2020
Event start time: 12:00 PM
Event end time: 2:00 PM
Credit: 0 Credit Hours
The coronavirus pandemic has focused public attention on water insecurity in Native American communities. On the Navajo Nation, for example, recent studies show that at least 15% of the population lacks access to running water. This event will feature elected officials, lawyers, and members of civil society who are working to protect and realize the right to safe, clean drinking water across Indian Country through litigation, advocacy, and infrastructure development.
Pre-registration for this program is required. As always, please feel free to share this invitation with colleagues. D.C. Bar membership is not required to attend.
Are you a current law student and looking to register for one of our programs? Learn about the D.C. Bar Law Student Community and attend most individual programs at a discounted rate. Find out more here.
Webinar registrants will receive access information by logging into the D.C. Bar website. You will need a headset or working computer speakers to hear the audio portion of the presentation.
Sponsored by: Indian Law Committee of the D.C. Bar Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Community
Related Community of Interest: D.C. Bar Law Student Community
Program Partner: American Bar Association, Section of Environment, Energy and Resources (ABA-SEER); Environmental Law Institute (ELI); Native American Bar Association D.C. (NABA-DC)
Speakers:
- Bryan Newland, Chairman, Bay Mills Indian Community
- Katie Brossy, Senior Counsel, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP
- Emma Robbins, Navajo Water Project Director, DigDeep
- Rose Petoskey, President, Native American Bar Association of DC (Moderator)
Federal Court Refuses to Enforce Ute Tribal Court Order over Water Rights
Here are the materials in Ute Indian Tribe v. McKee (D. Utah):
55 Tribe Motion for Summary Judgment
Prior post here.
Turtle Talk 
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