Law Commons^™

“Always Said To Be Of Indian Extraction”: Native/African American Freedom Suits In Virginia 1773-1853, Cress Ann Posten

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Freedom suits of enslaved people in Virginia who claimed liberty based upon matrilineal descent from a Native American woman provide a multi-dimensional lens into social, cultural, and legal aspects of colonial and antebellum considerations of race, kinship, and self-determination. Within records of depositions are detailed transcriptions of questions posed to neighbors, family members, acquaintances of enslavers, and slaveowners themselves. Answers reveal a nuanced and complicated set of opinions concerning who had a right to freedom. Local memory banks overflowed with detailed descriptions of the plaintiff and his or her native ancestress, including skin color, hair texture, and manners. Within isolated …

Case Law On American Indians, Thomas P. Schlosser

American Indian Law Journal

An update on American Indian case law from September 2021-October 2022.

Toward A Tribal Role In Groundwater Management, Alexandra Fay

American Indian Law Journal

This Article considers the Agua Caliente groundwater litigation a decade since its inception. It recounts the most recent developments in the case, notably the move to mediation and the strategic work that brought the water districts to the table. The Article places this monumental case in context: in the history of colonization and tribal-state relations, the present climate crisis, and the State of California’s groundwater management regime. The Article ultimately outlines the present opportunity to reimagine the role of tribes in groundwater management.

Native American Intellectual Property Protection: Altering Federal Ip Law And The Indian Arts And Crafts Act To Aid Tribal Economic Development, Trey V. Perez

American Indian Law Journal

Native Americans tribes remain subject to an epidemic of poverty. Although tribal gaming has provided relief and a method of economic development for some groups, other tribes are unable to employ gaming to bring in revenue and grow out of poverty. One method to assist tribes that cannot use tribal gaming could be amending federal intellectual property law to better suit tribes needs and allowing them to better exploit the billion-dollar Native American arts and crafts industry.

Moreover, tribes are able to determine which artists qualify as “Indian” under the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, which leaves individual artists subject …