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College Of Law Committed To Native Law Program, Mark Adams

Articles

No abstract provided.

New Approaches To Energy Development In Indian Country: The Trust Relationship And Tribal Self-Determination At (Yet Another) Crossroads, Monte Mills

Articles

Energy development in Indian country exists at the crossroads of tribal self-determination and the federal government's trust responsibility. This article reviews the foundations of this crossroads, describes recent developments, and analyzes pending proposals that may enhance both tribal sovereignty and energy development in Indian country.

What Should Tribes Expect From Federal Regulations? The Bureau Of Land Management's Fracking Rule And The Problems With Treating Indian And Federal Lands Identically, Monte Mills

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On March 26, 2015, the Bureau of Land management (BLM) published its Final Rule regarding Hydraulic Fracturing on Federal and Indian Lands (Final Rule). Work on the Rule had begun nearly four and a half years earlier as a way to update the agency’s outdated regulatory scheme to account for new fracking technology and growing public concern over the practice and potential safety concerns related to fracking.

The Final Rule amassed a number of procedural and substantive requirements for fracking operations and proposed to apply these standards uniformly to both public lands and lands held in trust by the Federal …

Sovereignty And Subsistence: Native Self-Government And Rights To Hunt, Fish, And Gather After Ansca, Robert T. Anderson

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The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was passed in 1971 to extinguish aboriginal rights of Alaska Natives and provide compensation for those rights extinguished. Instead of vesting assets (land and money) in tribal governments, Congress required the formation of Alaska Native corporations to receive and hold these assets. A major flaw in the settlement was the failure to provide statutory protections for the aboriginal hunting, fishing, and gathering rights extinguished by ANCSA. Moreover, while ANCSA did not directly address Alaska Native tribal status or jurisdiction, the Supreme Court interpreted the Act to terminate the Indian country status of ANCSA …

Federal Treaty And Trust Obligations, And Ocean Acidification, Robert T. Anderson

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Ocean acidification will have profound effects on the entire human population and natural resources that depend in any way upon Earth’s oceans and lakes. In turn, those effects will be even greater, and potentially catastrophic, for indigenous populations who rely on the seas for physical, cultural, and spiritual sustenance. While most research on carbon dioxide absorption from the atmosphere has focused on oceans and the resulting acidification, many believe that acidification levels also will also increase in the Great Lakes. Indian tribes in the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes regions share reliance on marine and freshwater resources, and many …

Adaptive Governance Of Water Resources Shared With Indigenous Peoples: The Role Of Law, Barbara Cosens

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Adaptive governance is an emergent phenomenon resulting from the interaction of locally driven collaborative efforts with a hierarchy of governmental regulation and management and is thought to be capable of navigating social-ecological change as society responds to the effects of climate change. The assertion of Native American water rights on highly developed water systems in North America has triggered governance innovations that resemble certain aspects of adaptive governance, and have emerged to accommodate the need for Indigenous water development and restoration of cultural and ecological resources. Similar innovations are observed in the assertion of Indigenous voices in Australia. This presents …

The Legislative History Of The Mccarran Amendment: An Effort To Determine Whether Congress Intended For State Court Jurisdiction To Extend To Indian Reserved Water Rights, Dylan R. Hedden-Nicely

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The year 1976 marked a sea change in federal policy regarding the treatment of American Indian tribes and their water rights. In that year, the Supreme Court of the United States was called upon to determine the scope of the McCarran Amendment, a rider on a federal appropriations bill that waived the sovereign immunity of the United States in state court general stream adjudications "where it appears that the United States is the owner or is in the process of acquiring water rights by appropriation under State law, by purchase, by exchange, or otherwise." The Supreme Court, in what has …

Commentary On The Emerging Constitutional Indigenous Peoples Land Rights In Tanzania, Daniel Halberstam

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The pastoralists and hunter-gatherer indigenous peoples in Tanzania continue lobbying their recognition as such and protection of their land rights. This article discusses the extent to which the indigenous peoples are legally recognized and the state of their security of land tenure. With the hindsight of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 2007 and the 2003 Report of the African Commission Working Group of Experts on Indigenous Population, this article probes the emerging indigenous land rights within the broader understating of the minority rights in the Draft Constitution of Tanzania 2014 as well as the Draft Policy …