Indian Law Stories
Authors:
Goldberg, Carole E. / Washburn, Kevin K. / Frickey, Philip P.
Edition:
1st
Copyright Date:
2011
25 chapters
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Acknowledgments 6 results (showing 5 best matches)
Introduction 73 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Indian law stories to tell? Because there is a wellestablished canon of Supreme Court Indian law decisions, regularly taught and regularly cited in courts and scholarship, we did not choose on a blank slate. How that canon came into being is a story by itself.
- These Indian Law Stories combine sweeping historical events with intimately personal accounts to portray the difficult encounters between American law and Native peoples. Experts as well as novices in Indian Law will see the cases from a new vantage, as the authors probe lawyers’ strategic decisions and situate the lawsuits within broader Native political struggles. Story-telling is a central feature of Native cultures—among them stories of founding of the natural and social order; stories of tricksters who get themselves into and out of trouble; and stories of visions that compel transformative acts.
- Indian Law Stories
- As Professor Carole Goldberg points out in her story of (1974), until the early 1970s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (“BIA”) had done little to implement a 1934 federal law granting preferences to “Indians” for employment with that agency. Very few Indians served in the higher ranks. When Indian protesters enlisted a young Denver practitioner to sue the BIA for ignoring the law, they triggered a chain of events leading to the Supreme Court’s decision in . Once the protesters succeeded, a white teacher at a BIA school, Carla Mancari, brought her own lawsuit, raising an equal protection challenge to the federal preference. Although Mancari’s suit used equal protection to challenge a single federal law, it threatened to demolish the entire edifice of federal Indian law. Carla Mancari contended that any law singling out Indians for special treatment constitutes impermissible race discrimination. Yet an entire title of the United States Code, Title 25, is devoted to laws providing...
- The Indian Law Stories assembled in this volume provide dramatic insight into conflicts over sovereignty and property that have marked the relationship between the United States and Indian nations for over two centuries. Against the backdrop of Indian treaties and major historical events, these stories illuminate the ongoing competition for resources and authority among the federal government, Indian tribes, and the states. Courts have played an unusually prominent role in determining the outcome of this competition. Given the ambiguous constitutional basis for federal authority over Indians, courts have often projected their own conceptions of Indian peoples and Indian policy onto what they perceive as a blank jurisprudential slate. This activist judicial approach, in turn, has created opportunities for lawyers to help define the relationships among tribal, federal, and state governments. The quality of the lawyering—and the power of human stories—can change the outcome of a case...
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Chapter 5: The Distorted History that Gave Rise to the “So Called” Plenary Power Doctrine: The Story of United States v. Kagama 131 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Thus, there are at least two, often unrelated “Indian law stories” behind each case. First is the “story” at the tribal or community level, the dispute between Indian people that led to the unfolding of events and to litigation in a federal court. Second, there are the “facts of the case” as developed to support the doctrine in Federal Indian Law. The first requires a careful reading of tribal history and ethnography; the second, a creative deconstruction of the basic doctrine of Indian Law, in the context of various legal interpretative frameworks, beginning with the core legal concept that every case is rooted in its unique facts. No holding, in other words, can be separated from the facts of its case. A careful reading of both of these stories as they unfolded together on the Klamath River in northern California, undermines the Supreme Court’s opinion.
- Our contention is that Congress may regulate intercourse with the Indians in whatever way it may deem wise and prudent. Congress has provided for the establishment of schools upon the Indian reservations…. Will it be seriously contended that an Indian should be permitted to enter one of these Indian schools and murder the Indian teacher or one of the Indian children, without being amenable to any law, except mere tribal custom, which permits the escape of the murderer upon the payment of a small stipend to the family of the victim? As a matter of fact, such a thing was possible before the passage of this law. Although fed and clothed by the Government, Indians, before the passage of this law could murder each other with impunity.
- Ever since the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 Congress has exercised the power of regulating the intercourse with Indians, and of enacting criminal laws with regard to the conduct of Indians and the conduct of white men having intercourse with Indians in the Indian country and reservations within the states. It may be profitable, perhaps, in this discussion, to trace briefly the history of the Indian intercourse laws which have been adopted since the organization of the Government.
- was never read by the Indian nations as defining them as “wards of the nation.” Rather, it was read by different nations on their own terms. Some read it as a mistake, or even worse as a conceit, rooted in racism and colonialism. Others read it as an argument. Still other Indian nations read United States Indian law as just that—whatever the United States wants to define as its own Indian Law, but not the law of the Indian nations. Felix Cohen, in his classic
- The opinion rests on two grounds. The first, derived from the logic of treaty law as being between nations, holds that power over Indians derives from national sovereignty, inherited from British power over Indians at the time of Independence. This understanding of power over Indian affairs denied any role for the states in Indian Law, critical then, as now, in a federal system where assertions of states’ rights must be seriously addressed. The second, better known, follows from the poverty and dependency of the tribes, a relationship changed since early nationhood. Among the most infamous language quoted in Federal Indian Law is the following:
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Chapter 16: Beating a Path of Retreat from Treaty Rights and Tribal Sovereignty: The Story of Montana v. United States 162 results (showing 5 best matches)
- as only, or as even primarily, the story of anti-Indian forces on a reservation succeeding in turning the tide of judicial opinion against the United States government’s historic solicitude for tribal autonomy in Indian country. More immediately, is the story of a tribe and its advocates encountering intransigent resistance by the Supreme Court itself to bedrock principles of Indian law, a resistance informed more by the ideological orientation of the Court’s member Justices than by any ingenuous application of precedent. And from the Crow Tribe’s perspective, certainly, the story of is a story of the federal government’s betrayal of a sacred trust rooted in treaties, a betrayal rendered all the more bitter in view of the Crow Indians’ unique historic role as occasional allies of the United States in military campaigns against other northern plains tribes during the nineteenth century.
- is the racial tension that simmered beneath the surface of both controversies. Items published in Montana newspapers during the course of the litigation reflect some of that tension. After non-Indian fishermen won a favorable outcome from the district court in the praising the decision for vindicating the belief “that rivers and streams are not the sole property of any one interest or ethnic group, but belong to all people equally.” Presciently, the reader added: “I for one hope that a few cocky persons don’t go down there and make a bunch of trouble by getting smart with the Indians.” In a subsequent news story the lawsuit wherein a National Park Service official testified that an armed fisherman whom he confronted retorted, “Damn it, I am carrying a weapon because I don’t want any Indian to tell me what to do or where to fish.” The same news story reported that “non-Indian fishermen were littering the banks of the river with beer cans despite federal laws prohibiting alcoholic...
- For students of Indian law—especially students of Indian law—hard lessons is what education is all about.
- Battin’s multi-part holding on this “corollary issue” once again overwhelmingly favored the state. He held that Montana had exclusive authority to regulate non-Indian hunting and fishing on the Big Horn River and on all non-Indian fee lands within the reservation. He further held that the state enjoyed “concurrent jurisdiction with the United States to regulate non-Indian hunting and fishing activities on tribal or Indian lands if such activities are in violation of state law,” adding that federal jurisdiction was “predicated on 18 U.S.C. § 1165,” the statute forbidding trespass on Indian land. As for the Crows’ governing authority and rights, Battin held that the Tribe retained exclusive hunting and fishing rights only on tribal and Indian land as defined in the federal trespass statute, and that the Tribe had “no authority to regulate non-Indian hunting and fishing activities within the exterior boundaries of the Crow Indian Reservation, save in granting permission to non-Indians...
- ’s continuing importance today is enormous. That part of the decision eclipsed by the riverbed issue in 1981—the casually introduced test for determining when a tribe has inherent sovereign authority to govern the conduct of nonmembers on reservations—has grown massive in influence, and no one in the field of Indian law today can escape its gravity. In addition, the case’s stark, “strong presumption” that threatens tribal ownership of the bedlands under navigable waters in Indian country has wreaked its own havoc, as has that part of the opinion that seems to instruct courts to disregard Indian law canons when deciding whether treaty rights with respect to reservation lands subsequently alienated to non-Indians have been silently nullified or diminished. As illustrated by what happened in itself, the dire law of the case, especially as exacerbated by later expansions, potentially plants landmines tribal advocates can set off ...most commonplace assertion of Indian rights—rights...
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Chapter 15: Challenging the Narrative of Conquest: The Story of Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association 167 results (showing 5 best matches)
- It is a story of cultural revival fueled by the Indian way of life. It is a story of a community forced to defend itself against the assimilationist agenda of the federal government—and developing a contemporary political identity in the process. It is a story of the inextricable relationship between Indian people and lands, in which the Tribes’ attachment to their sacred sites ultimately triumphed over the Supreme Court’s narrow application of religion and property laws. And, finally, it is a story about the power of narrative itself. In the many stages of the litigation, the Supreme Court stands alone as the only court that refused to listen to the tribal people’s claims about the critical quality of the High Country to their religious freedom. In the final analysis, however, the Indian story of religious and cultural persistence has prevailed over
- remains an unjustifiable decision about American Indian religious freedoms and property rights, a judicial attempt to reify the rules of conquest. And yet, from the Tribes’ perspective, the case also stands as a powerful testament to Indian cultural survival against great odds. This is the story that the tribal people will keep telling and living.
- Today, California Indian Legal Services is the leading public interest law firm focusing on Indian law in California today. California Indian Legal Services, www.calindian.org (last visited Oct. 30, 2009). In the 1970s CILS also played an instrumental role in extending specialized Indian law representation to tribes nationwide, through a pilot project that eventually became the Native American Rights Fund, one of the nation’s pre-eminent Indian law organizations.
- All of these challenges—of coalition-building, culture, and language—made it difficult, if not unthinkable, for the Indians to contemplate explaining the significance of the High Country in a courtroom setting. But the Indians and their lawyers realized early on that, to win a First Amendment case, the Indians to make the case that destruction of the High Country would burden their religious freedom. While non-Indian expert witnesses could, and would, testify, the most powerful statements would come from the Indians themselves, the people who became known as “religious practitioners” in the case. These were people who relied upon the High Country for spiritual strength and guidance, and prayed on a daily basis for the well-being of the entire world. They understood it was time for them to tell the story of the High Country. Their way of life and the survival of their ancient religion depended on it. For all of these reasons, the Indian people began to talk and the lawyers began to...
- Judge Canby is a well-known authority in federal Indian law and the author of the popular reference book, William C. Canby, Jr.,
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Chapter 14: Three Stories in One: The Story of Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez 108 results (showing 5 best matches)
- stories to come. The development of Indian law that will apply to tribes and pueblos is dependent on institutional stories, , what happens in Congress and at the Supreme Court. As an evolving government, Santa Clara Pueblo will create its next story contingent on how it resolves the problems arising from its membership ordinance. Many people, inside and outside the Pueblo, await the next stories from
- Membership, commonly called citizenship in the non-Indian world, involves the requisite descent and self-identity that are culturally intertwined among indigenous peoples. The identity arises from connections with specific land and common experiences with a designated community. The common experiences extend, through the creation story and sacred culture of each tribe, with ancestors whose presence and guidance has contemporary value.
- Three opinions from the federal district court, the Tenth Circuit, and the Supreme Court engaged the facts and situation to resolve the obvious cultural conflict. The three courts confronted the singular body of Indian law, as well as more general principles of federal jurisdiction. The Supreme Court decision is particularly noteworthy because it was written by Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African–American Justice on the Court and a renowned advocate for civil rights before joining the federal bench. decision is a fascinating story itself, revealing the Justices’ different responses to the gap between Santa Clara Pueblo and United States worldviews. To understand , one must start with the personal story, where Julia and Myles Martinez sought medical care for their daughter with severe health problems. Then, from the personal to the institutional level of the Pueblo and the Supreme Court, one can grasp how events led to the broad impact of the decision.
- The Pocahontas Perplex: The Image of Indian Women in American Culture
- is one the most cited Indian law cases in the law databases, yet the publications are from the perspective of non-Indians and not Tewa or Santa Clara peoples. In the Pueblo and the Indian world outside there was great awareness and concern about what the Supreme Court would decide. All understood, as stated by the Pueblo’s attorney in Supreme Court argument, that “Every tribe will be affected.” The biggest concern was that an external authority, the laws and courts of the federal government, would take control of the critical matter of who qualifies for membership in a tribe.
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Chapter 7: Erasing Indian Country: The Story of Tee–Hit–Ton Indians v. United States 103 results (showing 5 best matches)
- decision, the Supreme Court arguably made three major errors. First, the Court misrepresented federal law regarding what it called “original Indian title.” prior law provided that Indian title not only included full possessory rights, but was “as sacred as the fee simple of the whites.” It is hard to fathom how tribal property rights could be deemed to enjoy equal protection of the laws if, unlike non-Indian property rights, they can be taken without compensation. Second, the Court wrongly asserted that the United States provided compensation for lands taken from Indian nations voluntarily rather than out of a sense of legal obligation. To the contrary, from the signing of the Constitution onward, all branches of government, including the courts, Congress, and the President, recognized a legal duty to compensate Indian nations for any lands taken from them. Third, from the beginning—and contrary to Justice Reed’s conquest story—the United ...existence of Indian country, that is,...
- None of this denies the incredible injustices imposed on Indian nations by the United States and prior colonial powers and the fact that those nations were coerced to relinquish most of their lands to the American conqueror. Nor does it deny that the United States often failed to live up to its own legal obligations. It is the case, however, that the Supreme Court’s opinion in presents a fanciful American story that is at odds with law, history, public policy, and political geography. The Court told a story about American history that treated Indian nations as if they did not exist. In so doing, it erased Indian country from the map. We will not understand the decision unless we redraw the map to include the Indian nations that inhabited our land before the coming of the colonists and who, despite overwhelming odds, endured and are today experiencing a renaissance, building their nations alongside the United States.
- Beyond a misreading of precedent, the Court gives three reasons, each of which is based on a story about the historical relations between the United States and Indian nations and each of which is false. First, Justice Reed argues that “no other course would meet the problem of the growth of the United States except to make congressional contributions for Indian lands rather than to subject the Government to an obligation to pay the value when taken with interest to the date of payment.” While this solicitude for the Treasury of the United States is heartwarming, it is based on a version of American history that is believed by many non-Indians but is a complete fantasy. It evokes the story about the purchase of Manhattan Island for $24 and some trinkets. The United States needed the land and could not afford to pay fair market value and so tricked the Indians out of the land for a pittance. According to this story, the United States could not have grown if it had paid fair value.
- Second, Justice Reed tells a story about the nature of tribal occupation of land. He notes that the Tee–Hit–Tons were “greatly reduced in numbers” and counted a membership of “some 65.” Why is this relevant? Because it triggers the story of the “vanishing Indian”—it suggests to the reader that the land is mostly vacant. The Court bolsters this story by emphasizing how much land is claimed by this tiny band—some 350,000 acres. The Court goes on to explain that the band was in a “hunting and fishing stage of civilization.” Again, this language triggers the story of the march of history where agriculturalists replace hunters and the “civilized whites” replace the “fierce savages” that Chief Justice Marshall spoke of in ...around and lived in various villages and held their property in common. All this is intended to present a story about the relationship between the Tlingit band and the land that denigrates the closeness of their relationship with the land. It evokes the arguments...
- If we look instead at maps of Indian land cessions, we see a much more gradual movement of the American border to the west. To understand the story of
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Chapter 8: Mark the Plumber v. Tribal Empire, or Non–Indian Anxiety v. Tribal Sovereignty?: The Story of Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe 123 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Mark David Oliphant, a plumber in Poulsbo, Washington, will not return a researcher’s phone calls. Daniel Belgarde cannot be found. Phillip Malone, the criminal defense lawyer for Mr. Oliphant and Mr. Belgarde, died in 2004. Barry Ernstoff, the lawyer who represented the Suquamish Indian Tribe, is living and practicing law in Jerusalem, Israel. Is it just a coincidence that the litigants and lawyers in one of the most important Indian law cases decided by the Supreme Court have, either literally or virtually, fled the scene? Without their contemporary reflections to inform the story of
- Other immediate effects included a practical gap in Indian country law enforcement. In theory, does not result in a legal vacuum for criminal behavior by non-Indians in Indian country. Under the Indian Country Crimes Act, the federal government has the power to prosecute virtually all crimes involving non-Indian defendants and Indian victims. Further, pursuant to interpretations of an early Supreme Court case, states have jurisdiction over any non-Indian versus non-Indian crime in Indian country. Yet the reality is quite different. The facts of State and local governments likewise were (and are) unresponsive to policing behavior that they perceive to be out of their domain. A further complication for states is that, unless they have accepted Public Law 280 jurisdiction, they do not have the power to prosecute any crimes other than those committed by a non-Indian against a non-Indian, and therefore often withdraw from any law enforcement in Indian country because the likelihood of...
- allow nontribal county, city, or township law enforcement officials to stop, arrest, and issue citations to Indians within Indian country. Conversely, tribal law enforcement can stop, arrest, and issue citations to non-Indians on Indian land and, in some cases, outside the boundaries of the reservation. In essence … [a]ny cross-deputized law enforcement official can arrest a person for committing a crime; after the arrest, the prosecutors will sort out which court is the proper venue and will determine which law the individual will be charged with violating.
- The high rate of sexual violence against American Indian women is not attributable solely to the case. As the quote above indicates, there are multiple causes for the insufficient protection of American Indian crime victims. They include the punishment limitations imposed on tribes by the Indian Civil Rights Act, insufficient funding of tribal law enforcement and health services, and, in some states, federal legislation (mainly Public Law 280) that imposes state criminal law enforcement in Indian country. Some of these problems have been addressed by the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010, which increases tribal sentencing authority to a maximum of three years if certain procedural protections are in place, and provides for information sharing, deputization, and other administrative improvements for law enforcement in Indian country. of tribal jurisdiction over non-Indian defendants. When a crime occurs in Indian country, tribal police are the most proximate and therefore most logical...
- ’s categorical exclusion of tribal authority over non-Indians. Rather, the cases in the civil context outlined a fuzzier approach, appearing to draw lines between inherent tribal civil powers over non-Indian activity on tribal lands versus non-Indian lands, and also to distinguish somewhat between regulatory, adjudicative, and taxation powers. For example, in 1980, two years after
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Chapter 10: Property, Power, and American “Justice”: The Story of United States v. Dann 75 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Recently, one of my colleagues, who is a Native attorney and entrepreneur well-known for his unconventional approach to the law, remarked that almost all of the cases we study in federal Indian law are cases of , and that you really have to go behind the cases to see the stories of how Native people . The story of
- Judge Canby is the author of an Indian law treatise that is now in its fifth edition. William C. Canby, Jr.,
- There are many stories embodied within beyond the “trespass” action. There is the story of the Treaty of Ruby Valley as a “sacred obligation,” which the United States undertook in order to protect the rights of the Western Shoshone people to their traditional lands. There is the story of the Indian Claims Commission Act as an experiment in “reparative justice,” assigning to the United States statutory responsibility to pay for the “taking” of aboriginal title, which is not protected by the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution. There is the story of the profound and enduring spirit of the traditional Western Shoshone people, who have engaged a complex and multifaceted strategy of legal activism to secure their human rights to their ancestral lands. Within all of those stories are two disparate narratives, which continue to frame the debates about who the Western Shoshone people are and what rights they have.
- The Supreme Court distilled this complex record into one simple and manageable issue: “The question presented in this case is whether the appropriation of funds into a Treasury account pursuant to 31 U.S.C. § 724a constitutes ‘payment’ under § 22(a) of the Indian Claims Commission Act.” case became a simple exercise in statutory construction. A federal law, 31 U.S.C. § 724a, authorized the appropriation of sums into a Treasury account to pay the Indian Claims Commission award. Section 22(a) of the ICC elaborated the process leading to a “final judgment” and discharge of liability for the United States for all claims “touching any of the matters involved in the controversy.” There were ambiguities, of course. Was this an “Indian law” case, necessitating application of the Indian law canons of construction? If so, those canons, in place for hundreds of years, require that any ambiguities in statutory language be resolved in favor of the Indians. ...case for purposes of common law...Indian
- In a 2008 radio interview, Carrie Dann encouraged Native youth to learn their own histories and study the proceedings of the Indian Claims Commission to see how the rights of Native people have been destroyed under United States law. That instruction is quite telling. A survey of the voluminous record of the Western Shoshone Claims Commission case reveals a stark legal narrative about the “valuation” of the Indians’ aboriginal interest and the amount of “offsets” to be deducted from the Not surprisingly, the accompanying story, largely told through non-Native “experts,” depicts the Western Shoshone people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as “destitute paupers,” wandering from location to location, begging for food and scrounging for survival as “trespassers” or “laborers” on privately owned ranches and farms. Consider, for example, this excerpt from the Claims Commission’s “Additional Findings of Fact”:
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Biographies of Indian Law Stories Contributors 20 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Indian Law Stories
- is Professor and Dean of the University of New Mexico School of Law. After graduating from Yale Law School, Dean Washburn clerked for Judge William C. Canby, Jr., of the Ninth Circuit. He served as a practicing lawyer in the field of Indian law for several years prior to entering the academy. His practice included work as a civil litigator handling Indian tribal rights to land and water, as well as environmental law involving tribes, as a federal prosecutor of Indian country offenses, and as the General Counsel of the National Indian Gaming Commission. Before joining the New Mexico faculty as its dean, he was the Rosenstiel Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. He was on the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School from 2002–2008, during which he spent a year as the Visiting Oneida Nation Professor at Harvard Law School, in the 2007–2008 academic year. Dean Washburn has written extensively in the fields of Indian law,...
- is the Jonathan D. Varat Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Joint Degree Program in Law and American Indian Studies at UCLA. She also serves as a Justice of the Court of Appeals of the Hualapai Tribe, and as Faculty Chair of UCLA’s Native Nations Law & Policy Center. Professor Goldberg is co-author of Goldberg, Tsosie, Washburn, and Washburn,
- is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Law School where she teaches Property and American Indian Law. Her research examines the real property interests of Indian nations, as well as issues of culture, religion, and language. Before entering academia, Professor Carpenter clerked for the Honorable John C. Porfilio on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and then practiced at Hill & Barlow, P.C., in Boston. She has also worked at the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation’s Office of Legal Counsel and private Indian law firms in Colorado and Alaska. Professor Carpenter’s previous academic appointments were at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and Suffolk University Law School. She recently served a four-year term on the Board of the Colorado Indian Bar Association and as chair of the Federal Bar Association’s Annual Indian Law Conference. Professor Carpenter is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School.
- is a Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law (UNM). After Harvard Law School, she completed federal clerkships in Indian Country for the Hon. Lee R. West, Western District of Oklahoma, and for the Hon. William J. Holloway, Jr., Chief Judge of the Tenth Circuit. At the University of Tulsa College of Law she established the first Indian Law Certificate program in the ABA schools and then established the second at UNM. Professor Valencia–Weber served as Director of the Indian Law Certificate Program at UNM (1992–2002) and as the Henry Weihofen Professor, and is currently serving on the Southwest Intertribal Court of Appeals. Her past publications cover tribal courts, domestic violence, and the constitutional interface with Indian tribes and state power. Professor Valencia–Weber also was an author of
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- INDIAN LAW STORIES
- Chapter 7: Erasing Indian Country: The Story of Tee-Hit–Ton Indians v. United States
- Chapter 2: The Tribal Struggle for Indian Sovereignty: The Story of the Cherokee Cases
- Chapter 4: Who Is an Indian?: The Story of United States v. Sandoval
- Chapter 6: The Apex of Congress’ Plenary Power over Indian Affairs: The Story of Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock
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Chapter 6: The Apex of Congress’ Plenary Power over Indian Affairs: The Story of Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock 118 results (showing 5 best matches)
- If the Court’s dubious creation of a virtually limitless plenary power over Indian affairs—first in —is easily traced through the Court’s Indian Law jurisprudence, the circumstances that gave rise to the actual case of before the Supreme Court prove to be far more complex and obscure. Lone Wolf’s journey to the highest court in the land was complicated by the conflicts between powerful interest groups at play in Indian country in the late 1800s. By this time, more than thirty Indian tribes had been “removed” from eastern lands to the Indian Territory to make room for white expansion. At the same time, railroad development and mineral extraction were spreading westward, causing an influx of non-Indians into the region. Though most Indians on reservations suffered horribly during this period, some tribal leaders were able to make deals with Texas ranchers ...KCA reservation was leased for cattle grazing. These payments buttressed tribal Indians, with significant payments going to...
- A related, and equally unfortunate, allotment story is at the heart of the now famous litigation, where thousands of Indian plaintiffs are suing the United States government for its mismanagement of Individual Indian Money (IIM) accounts ranging in the billions of dollars. The accounts were part of the government’s obligation to maintain records and administer revenues produced from Indian land (for oil, gas, grazing, etc. leases) for individual Indians under the General Allotment Act. Through a combination of an old, unwieldy accounting system and wanton negligence, the U.S. government has lost or squandered billions of dollars of Indian monies, all part and parcel of allotment policies. ...the Indian claimants will only receive compensation for these monetary losses through a statutorily-imposed settlement, as an accounting has been shown to be largely infeasible. The proposed settlement awaiting approval by the United States Senate would require the federal government to create a...
- Many federal Indian treaties promised perpetual protection for collective tribal territories, and thus could have thwarted federal allotment policy, unless the Indians agreed to new terms. Congress pressed forward with allotment regardless. It was a new era in federal-tribal relations. From its inception, the United States had followed the British practice of conducting Indian relations via treaty, viewing tribes as distinct nations that governed their own affairs, separate from federal and state governments. In 1871, however, Congress barred further treaty-making with the Indians. And in 1885 it enacted the first law directed at controlling tribes’ internal affairs, a law that criminalized conduct involving only Indians. In the 1886 case of ...Court upheld this law, determining that Congress had plenary authority to regulate tribes’ internal affairs because tribes were “wards” of the federal government. By ruling that the federal government had jurisdiction over a murder committed...
- In order to prevail, Springer and Carson would have to convince the Court that Lone Wolf’s lawsuit was different from recent cases where the Court had found issues concerning Indian affairs to be merely political questions. In their brief, they distinguished numerous cases, including the 1890 decision in where the Court had held that Congress could grant railroads leases to cross Indian lands. But most critical were their efforts to distinguish their case from the Court’s recent and policy-altering decision in , the Supreme Court had upheld the constitutionality of the Major Crimes Act of 1885, penalizing offenses committed by one Indian against another. In doing so, the Court justified Congress’ authority over Indian affairs based, largely, on its conception of Indian tribes as wards of the United States. marked a potential sea change in federal policy toward Indians, Springer and Carson argued that its holding should not control Lone Wolf’s case, as “the only question involved [in
- It was demonstrated [by this time] that the Indian was absolutely incapable of protecting himself in his new surroundings or of determining what was for his advantage … [T]o afford the Indian that protection which the laws of humanity demanded should be given him, and to prevent as far as possible the evil consequences to both parties which would necessarily flow from the clash between civilization and savagism, it was necessary that the Government should intervene and assume complete control over the Indians.
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Chapter 2: The Tribal Struggle for Indian Sovereignty: The Story of the Cherokee Cases 57 results (showing 5 best matches)
- come to call “Conquest by Law” or “Genocide at Law.” A careful review of the stories of provides ample proof of what the Cherokees’ storytellers have maintained since that era: Law is a double-edged sword whose blade always seems ready to find and cut away at the soft spots of Indian Nationhood. And yet, the Cherokees and other Indians continue to play within the white man’s law because, for many purposes, the courts are the only game in town.
- As William Wirt feared, the Supreme Court found against the Cherokee Nation. Of the seven Justices, four rejected the Cherokees’ jurisdictional position (John Marshall, William Johnson, John McLean, and Henry Baldwin), two upheld the Cherokee position (Smith Thompson and Joseph Story), and one was absent (Gabriel Duvall). In a sense, the Cherokee decision might best be described as a two, two, two split, with Marshall and McLean deciding that the Court did not have original jurisdiction but that the Cherokees were entities with specific rights. Those rights and the definitions of tribal nations were the most significant aspects of the opinions and remain crucial in interpreting Federal Indian Law. Baldwin and Johnson decided that the Cherokee were not a state and had very few, if any, rights. Story and Thompson, on the other hand, decided that the Cherokees were entitled to original jurisdiction as a foreign state with independent legal and political rights. In another, broader...
- While Wirt contemplated the question of how to get the Cherokee case before the Court, tribal lands were overrun by Georgians who stole horses and cattle, ejected Indians from their homes, and seized their property. Little could be done because Georgia law prohibited Indians from testifying in court proceedings. Finally, after declaring the historic Cherokee Nation to be Cherokee County, Georgia, the state began a lottery to distribute Indian lands to white citizens. At Georgia’s request, President Jackson removed federal troops from Indian land and turned all law enforcement, including tribal criminal law, over to the state.
- To the Cherokee people, these cases mean even more. Knowing the story of the To non-Indians, these cases are remembered primarily for the response they purportedly elicited from President Andrew Jackson: “Marshall has made his law, now let him enforce it.”
- and the price the Cherokee people paid for that failure. Indeed, the events leading up to and following these cases with their dramatic, sometimes melodramatic, events were among his favorite tales. Sixteen thousand Cherokees were driven from their ancient homeland at gunpoint, despite a Supreme Court decision in their favor. I knew as a small child what all Cherokees remember: that only twelve-thousand reached the new land. More than four thousand—one quarter of all Cherokees—died in what American historians clinically describe as “Indian Removal.” Like many Indian peoples of their generation, education was important to both my Osage Mother and Cherokee Father. I think it was hardly accidental that when it came time for my brother and me to write our dissertations that we both turned to the historical events and the tribal stories we had first heard from our father in their Native The account that follows reflects those stories and is told from a tribal perspective.
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Chapter 13: How a $147 County Tax Notice Helped Bring Tribes More Than $200 Billion in Indian Gaming Revenue: The Story of Bryan v. Itasca County 104 results (showing 5 best matches)
- victory as its top story in a banner headline on June 15, 1976, announcing “State Forbidden to Tax on Indian Reservations.” The New York Times printed a story on the same day on page nineteen, under the headline, “Justices Bar State’s Taxation of Reservation Indians.”
- Possibly because it was a convenient claim in the heat of argument or perhaps it sprung from ignorance, but Becker oversimplified some of the facts related to the passage of Public Law 280. He argued, in essence, that Public Law 280 passed precisely because “this statute was not imposed on the Indians. The Indians came looking for this statute.” And they did not oppose it, he argued, because everyone agreed that it would not give the states authority to tax Indians on Indian reservations. Referring perhaps implicitly to the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, he argued that the tribes that had adequate law and order “were exempted without any difficulty. Nobody fought about it. Nobody argued about it.”
- The story of the case began with the aforementioned visit from the Itasca County tax assessor to a parcel of land on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation. Helen Charwood, a member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, had been born on this land near Squaw Lake, her father’s land, the same land where the trailer home would later sit. The land was held, as much Indian land is held, in trust by the federal government.
- Return of the Buffalo: The Story Behind America’s Indian Gaming Explosion
- [J]urisdiction over offenses committed by or against Indians in the areas of Indian country … to the same extent that such state … has jurisdiction over offenses committed elsewhere within the state …, and the criminal laws of such State … shall have the same force and effect within such Indian Country as they have elsewhere within the State …
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Chapter 12: What’s Race Got to Do With It?: The Story of Morton v. Mancari 110 results (showing 5 best matches)
- could spread beyond the BIA, encompassing even some laws that worked to the detriment of individual Indians. In , the Court reviewed a principle of federal Indian law making tribal jurisdiction exclusive and thus denying states jurisdiction over domestic relations matters involving only tribal Indians living in Indian country. , and found that so long as the classification was designed to benefit Indians as a class, it mattered not that some individual Indians might be disadvantaged by denial of access to a state court. In , the detriment to the individual Indian as a result of special federal Indian laws was even graver. Under the federal Major Crimes Act, an Indian who killed a non-Indian on a reservation was subject to the federal law of homicide, which included a felony-murder rule. In contrast, a non-Indian who killed a non-Indian under identical circumstances would be subject to state homicide law, which in Antelope’s case meant no state felony-murder rule. But the Court again...
- standard of review had spread far beyond the BIA, encompassing federal laws unrelated to Indian representation in the governance of their communities, as well as laws disadvantaging individual Indians and state laws effectuating federal policies. Not long after , Congress felt confident enough about the constitutionality of Indian preferences to enact several more, including a preference for Indians in employment and subcontracting under tribal contracts to perform federal Indian services; a preference for Indians to receive scholarships or internships to prepare to teach in Indian communities or to train for professions such as law; and a preference for adoptive and foster care placements for Indian children.
- ready acceptance of preferential treatment seemed at odds with that movement, and some of the opponents of affirmative action came to view Indian law, and federal Indian law classifications through the affirmative action lens was magnified by the fact that Native Americans or American Indians were typically included among the groups benefited by conventional state and federal affirmative action in education, employment, and contracting, along with African Americans and Latinos. The upshot of this conflation of Indian law with affirmative action has been an effort by affirmative action opponents to confine or to overturn For example, the sponsor of the Native American Equal Rights Act, a measure that would have repealed Indian preferences in employment and contracting, announced that most Americans, believing in a colorblind society, “would be surprised … to learn that non-Indians may be lawfully discriminated against under what are known as ‘Indian preference laws.’ ” ...Indian...
- . First is the narrow survival of affirmative action itself, as reflected in a case featured in Race Law Stories: the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in of its general inclination to defer broadly to Congress in matters affecting Indians. Its ascendance has produced a preponderance of federal statutory and administrative schemes that limit benefits to members of federally recognized tribes, excluding members of non-federally recognized tribes as well as individuals who may have considerable Indian ancestry but cannot qualify under particular tribal membership requirements. The Indian Commerce Clause theory is the most defensible, historically and legally, but also the most obscure, resting as it does on the not very well known body of Indian law. And the valid-under-equal protection theory appeals to advocates of racial justice, who think all race-based preferences should be judged according to a more relaxed standard of review.
- , Am. Indian L. Newsl. (Indian Law Center, Univ. of N.M. Sch. of Law), Sept. 27, 1972, at 232.
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Chapter 4: Who Is an Indian? The Story of United States v. Sandoval 104 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law
- For purposes of the legal story, however, the military aspects of the campaign are not as important as what the Spanish learned about administering their relationship with the Pueblos. Throughout Spanish-dominated America, the initial system of administration was the semi-feudal , in which the King granted a tract of land or town to an individual “with all its lords and caciques and nobles, and all the divisions and subject villages of the said town, so that you may use and profit by them in your estates and commerce, provided that you indoctrinate them and teach them in the things of our Holy Catholic Faith, and treat them according to the Royal Ordinances which have been issued, or which may be issued, for the good and increase of the said Indians; …” system laid the groundwork for the granting of lands to the Pueblos consistent with crown law and the law of New Spain and its territorial administrators. Nonetheless, the centuries of life under the ...the Indians and the...
- the best Mexicans in New Mexico, and 1,000 of the worst Pueblo Indians, and there will be found less, vastly less, murder, robbery, theft, or other crimes among the 1,000 of the worst Pueblo Indians than among the 1,000 of the best Mexicans or Americans in New Mexico.” Because the Pueblo Indians are law abiding, hold their land in fee (though in common) in grants from the Spanish that have been ratified by the Mexican and American governments (though the territorial government had tried to invalidate them and they were under constant pressure from outsiders), they should not be treated like Indians, because there are other classes of Indians from whom they differ. The other Indians are Indians. Because the Pueblos are good Indians they should be treated not as Indians at all, but should be subject to all of the laws of the state of New Mexico and freed from any threat of the strangling embrace of the federal government. Merely because the federal government has insulated them from...
- This story is recounted in virtually every history of the Spanish colonization of New Mexico.
- Coronado brought back no stories of cities of great wealth or stories of civilizations to rival those found in the valley of Mexico. The reports generated no immediate interest in returning to the territory; yet the desire to explore for mines, save souls, and secure lands and Indians in ultimately overcame tales of hardship that accompanied Coronado. In 1581, Francisco Chamuscado and Fray Rodriguez launched an expedition back into Pueblo territory, encountering the northern Pueblos and leaving the priests among the Indians. The expedition did not establish a permanent settlement, but it did attempt to create a spiritual beachhead. It failed. The priests were killed and a subsequent expedition was launched to search for them.
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Chapter 11: Sheep, Sovereignty, and the Supreme Court: The Story of Williams v. Lee 73 results (showing 5 best matches)
- stated bluntly that “an Indian may be sued in the state courts in any matter over which the United States has not expressly retained jurisdiction.” A 1930 Yale Law Journal article,
- Handbook of Federal Indian Law
- , the starting part was the original independent sovereignty of Indian tribes: “Originally the Indian tribes were separate nations within what is now the United States.” the broad principles of that decision came to be accepted as law.” Although absolute exclusion of state law had been modified, “the basic policy of Thus the only places where state law was permitted concerned areas “where essential tribal relations were not involved and where the rights of Indians would not be jeopardized,” such as suits by Indians against non-Indians in state courts and criminal jurisdiction over crimes between Indians. But where state law would undermine the rights of Indians or the authority of their government, the basic policy of remained in force. “Essentially,” the Court declared in a much misinterpreted phrase, “the question has always been whether the state action infringed on the right of reservation Indians to make their own laws and be ruled by them.”
- It was in the Arizona Supreme Court that the legal issues were most fully engaged. Neither party clearly had the law on its side. provided the central precedent for the defendants. In the famous 1832 decision, the Supreme Court had held that Georgia’s effort to assert jurisdiction over a non-Indian missionary on the Cherokee Reservation was “repugnant to the constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States,” and that “the laws of Georgia can have no force” on the Cherokee Nation. over tribal members on their lands. But much had happened since 1832. Indians had become citizens, their lands had been allotted and their people integrated with non-Indian communities, and Congress had declared that it would no longer enter into treaties with Indian nations. Since the late nineteenth century, the Court had been holding that states could over non-Indians acting on Indian lands, and it was accepted that tribal members could sue non-Indians in state court, even about matters as close...
- The policy, although universally condemned by Native people today, at the time responded to some concerns from within Indian country. As the Navajos’ experience with stock reduction shows, federal administration under the Indian New Deal, although ostensibly meant to increase tribal self-rule, was often experienced as heavy-handed domination by the Bureau. Indians returning from World War II were particularly impatient with federal policies that controlled their tribal councils, property sales, and tribal economic development. They were also challenging state laws that prevented Indians living on reservations from voting in several western states. In 1948, returning veterans won court battles challenging voting restrictions in Arizona and New Mexico. Federal and state officials as well argued that Indian people, who had performed so admirably at war, should no longer be subject to federal “wardship” and should be incorporated as soon as possible into mainstream American society.
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Chapter 9: A Step Backward in the Government’s Representation of Tribes: The Story of Nevada v. United States 56 results (showing 5 best matches)
- At least some in the Indian community believed that Nixon’s message may have spurred government attorneys to greater responsiveness. As the Pyramid Lake Tribe stated in a brief to the Supreme Court, “perhaps as a result of President Nixon’s condemnation of governmental conflicts of interest in Indian water rights cases, the Tribe has noted an increased sensitivity and responsiveness on the part of government attorneys to Indian rights and interests.” At the Interior Department, Reid Chambers, an Indian Law expert, was brought in to serve as the Associate Solicitor for Indian Affairs. Other new attorneys came to the federal government with a commitment to Indian rights. It was a time for the federal government to reexamine how to better handle Indian issues.
- Pelcyger became involved with Indian law, as he says, “by accident.” After graduation from law school, he was in London on a Fulbright scholarship when a friend from law school contacted him. A professor at UCLA School of Law, Monroe Price, was developing a course in Indian law and was interested in creating an Indian legal services agency. Pelcyger took the job with what is now California Indian Legal Services (CILS). During his time at CILS, Pelcyger reviewed a contract for the Rincon Indian Nation involving their water rights. This became his first water rights case. As he continued to work on such cases, Pelcyger met Bill Veeder, now a staunch supporter of Indian reserved rights. Veeder brought Pelcyger to the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation, where they met with the Tribal Council and the attorneys working with the Tribe. The Ford Foundation became involved and awarded a grant to CILS to create an offspring legal services group on the condition that the group represent the...
- From 1950 to 1960, the number of persons reporting American Indian as their race increased more than 46%. This large increase is not attributable to population growth but rather to a resurgence of Indian identity. In other words, people who previously identified as white (or non-Indian) changed to self-identify as Indian. Again, many factors led to this increase in American Indian identity, including the broader civil rights movement. In the wake of African–American insurgency, the American Indian community mobilized. The 1960s led to a pan-Indian movement in which tribes worked together toward greater assertion and protection of their rights and a greater sense of ethnic pride. During the 1960s, tribes argued for self-determination—the ability to run the administrative programs formerly governed by the BIA. This claim prompted the formation of many Indian activist organizations, perhaps most notably the American Indian Movement (AIM). Several well-publicized protests took place in...
- The Department of Justice has several Divisions. The Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD, formerly known as the Land and Natural Resources Division) litigates most of the cases involving Indian law issues. The ENRD, through litigation in the federal and state courts, litigates both on behalf of tribes and defends actions brought by tribes. Prior to President Nixon’s administration, the same attorney could be assigned to defend the United States in actions brought by a tribe against the United States, and represent the same tribe in affirmative actions brought for the tribe’s benefit. Although denying the existence of any conflict, “the Department … instituted a procedure to ensure that suits filed for the benefit of tribes are not impaired by the Department’s role in defending claims against the government….” ...procedure” entailed the creation within the ENRD of the Indian Resources Section in 1975 to “conduct litigation for the United States as trustee for the private...
- Pyramid Lake has been the home to the Paiute Indian Tribe (the Tribe) since time immemorial, and it remains the heart of the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation (the Reservation). According to the Tribe’s creation story, Man and Woman had many children. One day when some of the children were misbehaving, Man sent away the misbehaving children, who became the Pitts–River. The well-behaved children stayed with their mother and became the Paiute Tribe. Woman missed her children who had been sent away. She sat near a mountain and cried so quickly that Pyramid Lake formed beneath her. Woman sat for so long that she turned to stone.
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Chapter 3: Water, Legal Rights, and Actual Consequences: The Story of Winters v. United States 91 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The story of itself is a story in three acts, or perhaps four. Act I is the story of the Fort Belknap Reservation, and the fortuitous circumstances that led to the initiation of the litigation. Without the loss of reservation lands to gold fever, there might have been no funding for an irrigation project; without the irrigation project, there would have been no water use for the Indian agent to protect; without the agent’s reputation in Washington, his pleas might have been ignored. Act II is the story of the litigation, and again fortuity plays a large role. The skillful United States Attorney in Montana raised a variety of legal theories, but the district court’s analysis echoed a brand-new Supreme Court case upholding tribal treaty rights, a decision written by the same Justice who would later write the Court’s decision in ...Belknap tribes, the immediate impact of the decision was that non-Indians came into control of the majority of irrigated tribal lands on the...
- doctrine of Indian reserved rights to water. Generally cited as one of the great Supreme Court “wins” for Indian tribes, and a rare win indeed during the allotment and assimilation era of federal Indian policy, guaranteed as a matter of law that non-Indian water use would not strip tribal homelands of the water necessary to their survival. The implementation of that tribal rights to water are paramount over later-created rights under state law.
- The years from the late 1870s to 1934 marked the allotment and assimilation era of federal Indian policy. The “civilization” of the Indians became a primary goal of both Indian “reform” movements and government officials, and the promotion of agriculture was central to this mission. Reservations initially provided the means to “Americanize” the Indians, with the reservation’s Indian agent playing a key role. Indian Office regulations of the day provided expressly that: “The chief duty of an agent is to induce his Indians to labor in civilized pursuits.” In 1879, Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz listed as the first priority of Indian policy: “To set the Indians to work as agriculturalists or
- case was brought to protect the Indians of the reservation, or the non-Indian cattlemen and growers who leased vast tracts of Fort Belknap lands and needed a steady supply of water. Michael Massie posits that non-Indian needs for water were the driving force behind the litigation. “As a result [of the leases of reservation land], the reservation Whites’ economic requirements and the acculturative goals of American Indian policy were the determining factors in the federal government’s support of Indian water rights.” Logan was interested in the economic development of the region, which included leasing reservation land to non-Indians, inducing the Indians to farm, and promoting non-Indian development in the valley; protecting the water supply of the reservation was necessary to all three.
- The second factor the Court relied on was the Indian law canons of construction. Treaties and agreements with Indian tribes should be interpreted in favor of the Indians, and ambiguities should be resolved in their favor as well. This approach is particularly important, the Court stated, when the choice is “between two inferences, one of which would support the purpose of the agreement and the other impair or defeat it.” At no point did the Court simply state that it would privilege the inference that the Tribes reserved the water over the inference that they did not, but the Court’s meaning is nonetheless clear.
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Chapter 1: The Judicial Conquest of Native America: The Story of Johnson v. M’Intosh 56 results (showing 5 best matches)
- according to their [i.e., the tribe’s] laws or usage
- “[T]he uniform understanding and practice of European nations, and the settled law, as laid down by the tribunals of civilized states,” Winder and Murray began, echoing Harper and Adams, “denied the right of the Indians to be considered as independent communities, having a permanent property in the soil, capable of alienation to private individuals.” What is more, “the whole theory of their titles to lands in America, rests upon this hypothesis, that the Indians had no right of soil as sovereign, independent states.” Stated differently, the hypothesis was a necessary corollary to the political reality. Discovery vested in the discoverer ownership of the discovered lands. And if the discoverer owned these lands, the Indians did not.
- The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest
- Soon after “discovering” the lands of the Western Hemisphere, European states began devising legal rules to justify and rationalize the process of acquiring title to them. In the British colonies of North America, governments decided that to reduce the likelihood of indigenous tribal disaffection, lands would be purchased, but that no purchase of Indian lands could be made without the consent of the colonial government. The prohibition of unlicensed individual purchases of Indian land became a common part of colonial codes. With the coming of the American Revolution, the question of how to regulate Indian land acquisition again came to the fore, as the new United States government had the option to replicate or revise the colonial model. In 1790, the United States Congress passed the first in a series of Trade and Intercourse Acts carrying forward the proscription of individual unlicensed purchases, indeed expanding the proscription to make purchases of Indian lands by states...
- 71–72 (Sharon Malinowski and Anna Sheets eds., 1998); 3 American Indian Publishers,
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Chapter 17: Aboriginal Title in the Canadian Legal System: The Story of Delgamuukw v. British Columbia 52 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Aboriginal persons and commentators often mention the fact that the Indians of this province were never conquered by force of arms, nor have they entered into treaties with the Crown. Unfair as it may seem to Indians or others on philosophical grounds, these are not relevant considerations. The events of the last 200 years are far more significant than any military conquest or treaties would have been. The reality of Crown ownership of the soil of all the lands of the province is not open to question and actual dominion for such a long period is far more pervasive than the outcome of a battle or a war could ever be. The law recognizes Crown ownership of the territory in a federal state now known as Canada pursuant to its Constitution and laws.
- The property rights of the indigenous inhabitants of what are now the United States and Canada have common roots in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, by which King George III established colonial governments for the territory acquired in North America from the French in the Treaty of Paris. The Proclamation sought to protect Indian occupation in the areas subject to the Crown’s claimed authority and made it unlawful for colonists to settle upon or acquire Indian lands without Crown consent. King George declared that “great Frauds and Abuses have been committed in purchasing Lands of the Indians, to the great Prejudice of our Interests, and to the great Dissatisfaction of the said Indians…. [so that we] strictly enjoin and require that no private Person do presume to make any purchase from the said Indians of any Lands reserved to the said Indians….”
- In addition, in the twentieth century, payment of compensation pursuant to the Indian Claims Commission process extinguished legal claims to lands taken previously without any payment.
- R. v. White and Bob, [1965] S.C.R. vi (Can.). The fascinating story of this case can be found in Thomas R. Berger,
- Conquest by Law: How the Discovery of America Dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of their Lands
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- This publication was created to provide you with accurate and authoritative information concerning the subject matter covered; however, this publication was not necessarily prepared by persons licensed to practice law in a particular jurisdiction. The publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or other professional advice and this publication is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. If you require legal or other expert advice, you should seek the services of a competent attorney or other professional.
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- Publication Date: December 28th, 2010
- ISBN: 9781599417295
- Subject: American Indian Law
- Series: Law Stories
- Type: Overviews
- Description: This book covers the often complex and unfamiliar doctrine of federal Indian law, exposing the raw conflicts over sovereignty and property that have shaped legal rulings. Fifteen distinguished authors describe gripping cases involving Indian nations over more than two centuries, each story emphasizing initiative in tribal communities and lawyering strategies that have determined the fate of nations.
