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Full-Text Articles in Law
Fmc Corp. V. Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Seth T. Bonilla
Fmc Corp. V. Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Seth T. Bonilla
Public Land & Resources Law Review
In 1998, FMC Corporation agreed to submit to the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes’ permitting processes, including the payment of fees, for clean-up work required as part of consent decree negotiations with the Environmental Protection Agency. Then, in 2002, FMC refused to pay the Tribes under a permitting agreement entered into by both parties, even though the company continued to store hazardous waste on land within the Shoshone-Bannock Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho. FMC challenged the Tribes’ authority to enforce the $1.5 million permitting fees first in tribal court and later challenged the Tribes’ authority to exercise civil regulatory and adjudicatory jurisdiction over …
Standing For Standing Rock?: Vindicating Native American Religious And Land Rights By Adapting New Zealand's Te Awa Tupua Act To American Soil, Malcolm Mcdermond
Standing For Standing Rock?: Vindicating Native American Religious And Land Rights By Adapting New Zealand's Te Awa Tupua Act To American Soil, Malcolm Mcdermond
Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)
On February 23, 2017, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (“Tribe”) was forced to disband its nearly year-long protest against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which threatened the integrity of its ancestral lands. The Tribe sought declaratory and injunctive relief in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, but the court ruled against the Tribe and failed to protect its interests. While the United States was forcibly removing Indigenous protesters, other countries were taking steps to protect Indigenous populations. In unprecedented legislative action, New Zealand took radical steps to protect the land and cultural rights of …
Solenex Llc V. Jewell, F. Aaron Rains
Solenex Llc V. Jewell, F. Aaron Rains
Public Land & Resources Law Review
In Solenex LLC v. Jewell, the Secretary of the Interior cancelled a highly contentious oil and gas lease in Montana’s Badger-Two Medicine area, an environmentally sensitive and culturally significant area to the Blackfeet Tribe, nearly thirty years after the lease had been issued. Solenex, a Louisiana based oil and gas company and holder of the lease, brought this action to enjoin the cancellation. The District Court for the District of Columbia agreed with Solenex and found that the Secretary’s decision took an unreasonable amount of time and violated good-faith contractual obligations. On these grounds, the court found the Secretary’s …
Upstate Citizens For Equality, Inc. V. United States, Kirsa Shelkey
Upstate Citizens For Equality, Inc. V. United States, Kirsa Shelkey
Public Land & Resources Law Review
The Indian Reorganization Act of 1935 is the proper avenue for Tribes pursuing restoration of their historic trust lands. The Oneida Indian Nation of New York long sought to reassert tribal jurisdiction over its historic homeland in Central New York. These efforts were largely unsuccessful until 2008 when the United States took 13,000 acres of this historic homeland into trust on behalf of the Tribe under the Indian Reorganization Act. This case affirms the federal government’s plenary powers over Indian Tribes, and that neither state sovereignty principles, nor the Enclave Clause upset that authority.
I See You - A Story From The Haudenosaunee, Simone Anter J.D.
I See You - A Story From The Haudenosaunee, Simone Anter J.D.
American Indian Law Journal
A young Apache woman sits on a bench outside of her university classroom; next to her is a stack of law books. She has just come from the first day of her first-year property class, where the professor lectured about the origins of property law devoid of any mention of Native people. As she sits she notices an individual walking along the sidewalk, towards her. This person wears a baseball hat with the Washington Redskins’ logo embellished on the front, a grotesque caricature of an “Indian.” The person’s attire includes a T-shirt featuring a skull wearing a feathered headdress, probably …
Navajo Nation V. Department Of The Interior, Jaclyn R. Van Natta
Navajo Nation V. Department Of The Interior, Jaclyn R. Van Natta
Public Land & Resources Law Review
In Navajo Nation v. Department of the Interior, the Navajo Nation challenged the Department of the Interior’s 2001 and 2008 water allocation guidelines and asserted that under NEPA and the APA the guidelines violated the Navajo Nation’s water rights. The Navajo Nation also asserted a breach of trust claim against the United States. After nearly a decade of attempted settlement negotiations, the Navajo Nation reasserted its complaints. The District Court for the District of Arizona denied the Navajo Nation’s motions, and the Navajo Nation appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which determined the Navajo Nation lacked standing, …
By Any Means: How One Federal Agency Is Turning Tribal Sovereignty On Its Head, Clifton Cottrell
By Any Means: How One Federal Agency Is Turning Tribal Sovereignty On Its Head, Clifton Cottrell
American Indian Law Journal
No abstract provided.
United States V. Osage Wind, Llc, Summer Carmack
United States V. Osage Wind, Llc, Summer Carmack
Public Land & Resources Law Review
The Osage Nation, as owner of the beneficial interest in its mineral estate, issues federally-approved leases to persons and entities who wish to conduct mineral development on its lands. After an energy-development company, Osage Wind, leased privately-owned surface lands within Tribal reservation boundaries and began to excavate minerals for purposes of constructing a wind farm, the United States brought suit on the Tribe’s behalf. In the ensuing litigation, the Osage Nation insisted that Osage Wind should have obtained a mineral lease from the Tribe before beginning its work. In its decision, the Tenth Circuit applied one of the Indian law …
Lewis V. Clarke, Summer L. Carmack
Lewis V. Clarke, Summer L. Carmack
Public Land & Resources Law Review
One manner in which Indian tribes exercise their inherent sovereignty is by asserting sovereign immunity. In Lewis v. Clarke, the Court decided that the sovereign immunity extended to instrumentalities of tribes did not further extend to tribal employees acting within the scope of their employment. The Court acknowledged the concerns of the lower court, namely, the possibility of setting a precedent allowing future plaintiffs to sidestep a tribe’s sovereign immunity by suing a tribal employee in his individual capacity. However, the Supreme Court ultimately felt that the immunity of tribal employees should not exceed the immunity extended to state …
Traditional Problems: How Tribal Same-Sex Marriage Bans Threaten Tribal Sovereignty, Marcia Zug
Traditional Problems: How Tribal Same-Sex Marriage Bans Threaten Tribal Sovereignty, Marcia Zug
Mitchell Hamline Law Review
No abstract provided.
Pit River Tribe V. Bureau Of Land Management, 793 F.3d 1147 (9th Cir. 2015), Kathryn S. Ore
Pit River Tribe V. Bureau Of Land Management, 793 F.3d 1147 (9th Cir. 2015), Kathryn S. Ore
Public Land & Resources Law Review
In Pit River Tribe v. Bureau of Land Management, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit explained the correct application of the zone of interests test and further solidified the importance of proper NEPA and NHPA analysis in geothermal leasing. The court reaffirmed that the BLM and the Forest Service must conduct additional cultural and environmental analysis when granting lease extensions under the Geothermal Steam Act. Furthermore, it rejected the BLM’s decision to grant forty-year lease continuations to unproven geothermal leases by treating them as a unit rather than individually.
Crow Tribe Of Indians – Montana Compact, Ariel E. Overstreet-Adkins
Crow Tribe Of Indians – Montana Compact, Ariel E. Overstreet-Adkins
Public Land & Resources Law Review
This order from the Montana Water Court approved the Crow Water Compact over objections by non-tribal water users in Montana. Although the Objectors have appealed the decision to the Montana Supreme Court, this order represents the next-to-last step in a process, started in 1979, to define and quantify the reserved water rights for current and future uses of the Crow Nation in Montana. The order provides a clear roadmap for other Montana tribes still seeking to achieve approval of a water compact by the Montana Water Court, and for objectors who would attempt to invalidate a compact in future proceedings.
A Tale Of Two Statutes: Zepeda And The Ninth Circuit’S Descent Into Jurisdictional Madness, Luke Emmer Miles
A Tale Of Two Statutes: Zepeda And The Ninth Circuit’S Descent Into Jurisdictional Madness, Luke Emmer Miles
American Indian Law Review
No abstract provided.
An Unfinished Joruney: Arctic Indigenous Rights, Lands, And Jurisdiction?, Tony Penikett
An Unfinished Joruney: Arctic Indigenous Rights, Lands, And Jurisdiction?, Tony Penikett
Seattle University Law Review
The indigenous rights movement has been defined as a struggle for land and jurisdiction. Over the last forty years, American and Canadian governments made much progress on the land question in the Arctic and sub-Arctic; however, from an irrational fear of the unknown, politicians in Washington, D.C. and Ottawa have effectively blocked the pathways to aboriginal jurisdiction or self-government. During the late-twentieth century in the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, as well as in Nisga’a territory, indigenous governments negotiated local government powers, but continent-wide progress on the question of indigenous jurisdiction has stalled. This Article considers the formation and implementation …
Cooperative Agreements: Government-To-Government Relations To Foster Reservation Business Development, Joel H. Mack, Gwyn Goodson Timms
Cooperative Agreements: Government-To-Government Relations To Foster Reservation Business Development, Joel H. Mack, Gwyn Goodson Timms
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.
The Impossibility Of Citizenship, Peter J. Spiro
The Impossibility Of Citizenship, Peter J. Spiro
Michigan Law Review
These are interesting times at the constitutional margins. Questions about where the Constitution takes up and leaves off are more frequently in play; one can no longer so readily assume the Constitution to supply an authoritative metric as we confront prominent cases of nonapplication. At the same time, the increasing robustness of international norms has prompted a vigorous reconsideration of their relationship to domestic ones. Where the twentieth century was marked by deep segmentation among national legal regimes, with minimal transboundary interpenetration, recent years have seen the advent of complex, overlapping regimes: subnational, national, regional, and global, public, and private. …
Nuclear Waste And Native America: The Mrs Siting Exercise, M. V. Rajeev Gowda, Doug Easterling
Nuclear Waste And Native America: The Mrs Siting Exercise, M. V. Rajeev Gowda, Doug Easterling
RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)
Drs. Gowda & Easterling provide cross-cultural perspectives on issues of risk perception, equity and policy as they affect nuclear waste storage on Native American sites.