Notably, this is an all-woman category semifinal. Damn right.
#1 Hon. Diane Humetewa v. #4 Sarah Deer
Judge Humetewa knocks off Bill Wood with 74 percent of the vote. Bill.I.Am’s Backers made it closer than I predicted. Sarah Deer keeps rolling, taking down the assistant secretary with 62 percent of the vote.
#2 Justice Sonia Sotomayor v. #11 Structuring Sovereignty
Justice Sotomayor wins the battle of New York City with 69 percent of the vote. The Structuring Sovereignty team keeps rolling with 58 percent of the vote.
Category 4 — Other
#1 1491s v. #5 Cohen Handbook
It appears the number of people who reject NFL racism outnumbers the Cobell class pool; I’d say we have a victory of humor over angst. And it wasn’t close, as the 1491s win 61 percent of the vote.
In the other matchup, Cohen outran Ma’iingan, which is saying something.
This semifinal reminds me of the theme song to Pinky and the Brain — one is a genius, the other’s insane. But which is which?
#10 Tribal In-House Counsel Assn. v. #6 Carcieri Challengers
In a massive upset, upstart TICA knocks of the Supreme Court project with 65 percent of the vote. No, I’m serious.
This sets up a huge round-of-16 matchup between TICA and the Carcieri beneficiaries In other words, will principle defeat market share?
Now we move on to the quarterfinals of Category 3, People and Parties.
#1 Hon. Diane Humetewa v. #8 Bill Wood
Hun, Judge Humetewa only won 89 percent of votes. Has she already presided over the criminal cases of 11 percent of TT readers and their friends and families? 🙂
I think Professor Wood’s in for a rough quarterfinal. Sorry brother. But you beat Dollar General, getting nearly two-thirds of the vote!
#4 Sarah Deer v. #5 Hon. Kevin Washburn
In a battle of two geniuses, Prof. Deer prevails with 70 percent of the vote. In the battle of two feds, the assistant secretary prevails with 71 percent. This next round is going to be a clash of titans.
#2 Justice Sonia Sotomayor v. #10 Frank Pommersheim
We believe that, based on the fact that Justice Sotomayor only won 90 percent of the vote, our alum J.S. voted at least five times. 🙂
Justice Sotomayor will face Frank Pommersheim, who narrowly defeated Judge Canby, who did not, as far as I know, get much of the haiku vote, with 55 percent of the vote.
This sets up my favorite match-up — a tale of two New Yorkers! Erin Lane, where are you?
#3 Hon. Keith Harper v. #11 Structuring Sovereignty
Ambassador Harper won easily over Chris Deschene, with 69 percent of the vote. The win of the authors of Structuring Sovereignty by a 71 percent to 29 percent vote was somewhat surprising (to me anyway). I guess it’s too late to Bear Down, Arizona.
In case you weren’t around yesterday, we’ve been playing a little game based on a game Grantland has been playing for a few years — Who Won 2014? Yesterday’s four posts (here, here, here, and here) ask you to vote in the first two categories, Indian nations and Doctrines, Laws, and Issues. Today, we move on to the next two categories.
Yes, the people fighting the jurisdiction of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. They lost over a downright angry dissent in the Fifth Circuit, but hired Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSBlog fame and have attracted the Supreme Court’s attention with a CVSG. Now their next hurdle is the OSG. Ah the privilege of opposing tribal interests. Think the tribe would have had the same luck?
Ok, let’s see how many feds I can make uncomfortable. How can the Assistant Secretary be seeded so low? It’s like Navajo — there’s an enormous amount of volume, but there’s a lot of bad with the good. This “person and party”, more so than any of the others on this list, is the job more than the person. But this is a great guy, famously self-effacing, humorous (it helps to steal Sam Deloria’s jokes once in a while), kind, generous with his time (UCLA, MSU, Colorado, Fed Bar, Harvard), and individually personable.
But he’s the assistant secretary and a fair percentage of the people reading this blog envision him as sporting devil horns like Tim Curry in Legend.
v.
# 12 Hon. Eric Holder
Fed v. Fed. Another person enveloped by the position. Announced the new ICWA initiative. But also resigned (pending the Senate’s confirmation of his successor).
Sarah Deer, 41, St. Paul, Minn.
Legal scholar and advocate
Deer is a professor of law at the William Mitchell College of Law, where she focuses on violent crimes on Indian reservations. She has written books on the matter, and the MacArthur Foundation says her work has leveraged a deeper “understanding of tribal and federal law to develop policies and legislation that empower tribal nations to protect Native American women from the pervasive and intractable problem of sexual and domestic violence.”
In 1974, a group of Mvskoke citizens from Oklahoma sued the federal government in federal court. Hanging in the balance was the future of Mvskoke self-determination. The plaintiffs insisted that their 1867 Constitution remained in full effect, and that they still governed themselves pursuant to it. The United States argued that the constitution had been nullified by federal law passed in the early 1900s.
To find in favor of the plaintiffs, the court would have to rule that the United States had been ignoring the most basic civil rights of Mvskoke citizens and flouting the law for over seventy years. It would also have to find that a tribal government had been operating legitimately in the shadows—that the Mvskoke people had continued to operate under their constitution for most of the twentieth century despite official federal antagonism. It was definitely a long shot, but they won.
This article explores factors that have helped the Mvskoke people create, nurture, and sustain a constitutional government under hostile circumstances for centuries. We focus on the history and structure of the constitutional government of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma. We consider several aspects of Creek conceptions of government structure and balance, which are also evidenced in the constitutional jurisprudence of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Supreme Court. At first glance, the contemporary Mvskoke government today bears little resemblance to the ancient etvlwv town-based system of governance, but a more penetrating analysis reveals common threads of political theory and cosmogony, or world view, that have continued unabated.
When most Americans think of tribes in this country, they don’t think of modern Indians who may live next door and may look and act much like them, at least from a first glance. Yet the growing technological and physical mobility of modern society may be producing these fundamental changes in tribal identity. This article explores the challenges that face tribes as their identities are reshaped in the modern world.
Sex trafficking is often thought of as a crime that originates overseas. This article explores the ugly reality of commercial sexual exploitation in the lives of American Indian women and girls, right here in the United States.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision inCalifornia v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indiansmay be the most momentous decision in federal Indian law in the last 50 years.
Also, FBA Indian Law Section President Elizabeth Ann Kronk’s “At Sidebar” Message, “United States v. Jicarilla Apache Nation: Its Importance and Potential Future Ramifications” is here. Apparently, she doesn’t get a photo.
As a Native feminist without apology, I’m thrilled that the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 has been passed to protect Native women from violence. I have fellow Native woman warrior and feminist to thank for coining that exact phrase, and in fact, the bill itself: my shero Ms. Sarah Deer.
Sarah and I first met through Facebook, then face-to-face at the Tribal Policy and Law Institute of America in St. Paul, MN. It was Indigenous feminist love at first sight.
A Mvskoke (Creek) from Kansas, Sarah is a Tribal Law Professor at William Mitchell College of Law and served on the advisory committee (while undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer) for Amnesty International’s 2007 report “Maze of Injustice: The Failure to Protect Indigenous Women from Violence“–the fire behind getting the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 passed.
It’s been a whirlwind three years–from the Amnesty report to the bill signing just days ago–but as Sarah says here it’s really been 500+ years in the making. And since women are the life-givers, matriarchs, and center of our communities, we all have a responsibility to keep fighting.
JY: How are you feeling right now?
SD: I’m feeling exhausted and exhilarated. We–the five or six of us women who were connected in making this happen–kept saying to each other outside the White House, “This is so surreal!”
JY: When did it become real for you?
SD: It became very real when Lisa Marie Iyotte–a Lakota woman from the Rosebud Sioux tribe in South Dakota who is a rape survivor–spoke [at the bill’s signing]and said unequivocally, “If the Tribal Law and Order Act had existed 16 years ago, my story would have been very different.”
JY: Watching Lisa Marie I couldn’t help but cry myself. I’m always reminded that when I feel emotional or show my feelings publicly, it’s a sign that I’ve survived the attempts to beat the feelings out of me as an Indigenous person.
Sarah Deer has published her excellent paper “Decolonizing Rape Law: A Native Feminist Synthesis of Safety and Sovereignty” in the Wicaso Sa Review. (Deer Decolonizing Rape Law)
Here is an excerpt:
The question I raise is–should the tribal government itself respond to such crimes? If yes, how–and what might a Native feminist analysis have to offer in addressing this crisis?
Many people will argue that such crimes are too serious to be handled by contemporary tribal justice systems. (3) Given the numerous legal and financial limitations faced by tribal court systems, they might say, tribal governments must simply rely on the federal (or state) system to prosecute and sentence such rapists. However, this over-reliance on foreign governmental systems has often been to the detriment of Native women. Today, Native women suffer the highest per capita rates of sexual violence in the United States. (4) Conservative estimates suggest that more than one of three Native women in America will be raped during their lifetime. (5) Rape was once extremely rare in tribal communities. (6) Arguably, the imposition of colonial systems of power and control has resulted in Native women being the most victimized group of people in the United States.7 Moreover, statistics indicate that most perpetrators of rape against Native women are white. (8) As a result of a 1978 U.S. Supreme Court decision, tribal governments have been denied their authority to criminally prosecute non-Indian perpetrators.
Turtle Talk 