Law Commons^™

To Sue And Be Sued: Capacity And Immunity Of American Indian Nations, Richard B. Collins

Publications

Can American Indian nations sue and be sued in federal and state courts? Specific issues are whether tribes have corporate capacity to sue, whether a Native group has recognized status as a tribe, and whether and to what extent tribes and their officers have governmental immunity from suit. Tribal capacity to sue is now well established, and federal law has well-defined procedures and rules for tribal recognition. But tribal sovereign immunity is actively disputed.

This Article reviews retained tribal sovereignty in general and summarizes past contests over tribal capacity to sue and their resolution into today’s settled rule. Next is …

Standing Rock, The Sioux Treaties, And The Limits Of The Supremacy Clause, Carla F. Fredericks, Jesse D. Heibel

Publications

The controversy surrounding the Dakota Access Pipeline (“DAPL”) has put the peaceful plains of North Dakota in the national and international spotlight, drawing thousands of people to the confluence of the Missouri and Cannonball Rivers outside of Standing Rock Sioux Reservation for prayer and peaceful protest in defense of the Sioux Tribes’ treaties, lands, cultural property, and waters. Spanning over 7 months, including the harsh North Dakota winter, the gathering was visited by indigenous leaders and communities from around the world and represents arguably the largest gathering of indigenous peoples in the United States in more than 100 years.

At …

Responsible Resource Development: A Strategic Plan To Consider Social And Cultural Impacts Of Tribal Extractive Industry Development, Carla F. Fredericks, Kate Finn, Erica Gajda, Jesse Heibel

Publications

This paper presents a strategic, solution-based plan as a companion to our recent article, Responsible Resource Development and Prevention of Sex Trafficking: Safeguarding Native Women and Children on the Fort Berthold Reservation, 40 Harv. J.L. Gender 1 (2017). As a second phase of our work to combat the issues of human trafficking and attendant drug abuse on the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation (MHA Nation), we developed a strategic plan to better understand the time, scale, and capacity necessary to address the rising social problems accompanying the boom of oil and gas development there. During our process, we discovered, …

"At Bears Ears We Can Hear The Voices Of Our Ancestors In Every Canyon And On Every Mesa Top": The Creation Of The First Native National Monument, Charles Wilkinson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Public Lands, Conservation, And The Possibility Of Justice, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

On December 28, 2016, President Obama issued a proclamation designating the Bears Ears National Monument pursuant to his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906, which allows the President to create monuments on federal public lands. Bears Ears, which is located in the heart of Utah’s dramatic red rock country, contains a surfeit of ancient Puebloan cliff-dwellings, petroglyphs, pictographs, and archeological artifacts. The area is also famous for its paleontological finds and its desert biodiversity. Like other national monuments, Bears Ears therefore readily meets the statutory objective of preserving “historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific …