Washington State Supreme Court Holds Historic Indigenous Human Rights Symposium

On June 11, 2025, the Washington State Supreme Court’s Minority and Justice Commission hosted a nine-hour Symposium regarding Indigenous human rights, with a focus on federal Indian boarding schools.

The Symposium was titled , “TÁĆELŚW̱ SIÁM: A Call to Justice for Indigenous Peoples.”

The day included a showing of the Oscar-nominated documentary Sugarcane, which chronicles the atrocities associated with Canadian residential boarding schools. The nine Justices watched the movie while seated on the bench in the State Temple of Justice.

Justice Raquel Montoya-Lewis (Isleta/Laguna) introduced the movie through a very personal 45-minute presentation about her own family and people’s boarding school experience.

The afternoon was dedicated to “State Issues Recognizing Indigenous Humanity,” involving presentations regarding Indigenous historical trauma vis-a-vis juvenile incarceration, Indigenous gender-based violence protection, and Indian child welfare restoration. Each of the presentations discussed the correlation between those Indigenous human rights issues and federal indian boarding schools.

Afterwards, her colleague, Justice Salvador Mungia, took to LinkedIn to express his gratitude to Justice Montoya-Lewis as well as the “heartbreaking, gut-wrenching…effect the symposium had on [him].”

Of significance, three formerly or currently incarcarated Indigenous men shared powerful testimonials with the Justices about their walks to state prison, and their work to rehabilitate themselves and seek redemption and forgiveness from those who they have harmed. It is believed to be the first time incarcerated people have directly addressed the Supreme Court from within the Temple of Justice.

The Supreme Court and Commission convened the Symposium in response to a 2024 Resolution of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI) titled, “Rectifying the Dehumanization of Indigenous People in State Legal Systems.”

ATNI expressed concern about “the overrepresentation of Indigenous Americans in every stage of [Washington state] criminal and juvenile justice systems,” citing “the vestiges of colonization.”  ATNI called upon the Supreme Court to address “the historical and continued dehumanization of Indigenous people in Washington state.”

You can watch the entire day on TVW here. Photo albums are available here and here.

Chambers USA Again Recognizes Galanda Broadman's Excellence in Native American Law

Galanda Broadman, PLLC, has been recognized among the best Native American Law firms in the country by Chambers USA 2024. Gabe Galanda was also ranked among the nation’s best Native American Law practitioners.

The firm, with nine lawyers and offices in Seattle and Yakima, Washington and Bend, Oregon, represents Tribal governments, businesses, and citizens in critical litigation, business and regulatory matters, especially in matters of Treaty rights, sovereignty, taxation, civil rights, and belonging.

Galanda Broadman also represents Indigenous individuals in civil and human rights matters, especially in litigation against local, state, and federal police officers and jails for the loss of human life.

Galanda Broadman is honored to be ranked among the best Native American Law firms in the country and grateful to all of our Tribal and Indigenous clients for allowing us the opportunity to earn that recognition.

Shelby Stoner Explains Latest Federal Labor and Employment Laws in Indian Country

Shelby Stoner has published “Application of Federal Employment and Labor Laws in Indian Country” in the new edition of Indian Law Newsletter. An excerpt:

Do federal employment and labor laws apply to federally recognized Tribes operating on their own reservations? The answer to this question is convoluted. For many years, federal courts have grappled with whether federal employment and labor laws apply in Indian country. And even when courts have spoken on the subject, their conclusions that certain federal laws apply on reservations rest on a shaky legal foundation that disregards Tribal sovereign immunity and longstanding Indian law canons, at least in the Ninth Circuit. As a result, Tribal governments are forced to guess whether their economic and governmental activities are subject to federal employment laws or not, and if so, which ones. This article summarizes the framework adopted by the Ninth Circuit to determine when federal employment statutes of general applicability apply to federally recognized Tribes. The article further seeks to clarify when Tribes should comply with federal employment laws under Ninth Circuit precedent. This will depend on the federal statute at issue, the type of business operated by the Tribe, any relevant treaties, and even the particular court hearing the case.

Shelby Stoner is Of Counsel with Galanda Broadman, where she leads the strategy and execution of complex, high-impact cases involving tribal law, Indigenous rights and other civil rights matters, labor and employment, land and environmental issues, and appellate litigation.

Gabe Galanda to Address Indian Country Lawyer Ethics at 50th Annual Federal Indian Law Conference

Gabe Galanda will present a paper titled “The Indian Country Lawyer Ethics Void” at the Federal Bar Association's 50th Annual Indian Law Conference next Tuesday in Albuquerque.

Galanda Broadman Celebrates 15 Years of Indigenous Rights Advocacy

On April 10, 2010, Gabe Galanda and Anthony Broadman formed Galanda Broadman, PLLC. They began the firm practicing out of a spare room in Gabe’s house in northeast Seattle, while Gabe’s wife was pregnant with his twin daughters and Anthony’s family was transitioning to Bend for the beginning of his wife’s medical career. Today, the firm has thirteen team members, with offices in Seattle, Yakima, and Bend, and Tribal and Indigenous clients throughout the American west. We are proud of 15 years of advocacy for Tribal nations, businesses, and citizens, and human and civil rights victims from all walks of life. We are grateful for our families’ support and our clients’ trust. Here’s to 15 more.

Galanda Broadman Trial Lawyers Obtain $25M Federal Jury Verdict for Javier Tapia

On Friday, Ryan Dreveskracht and Corinne Sebren obtained a $25 million verdict from a federal court jury in Seattle for Javier Tapia, who lost his lower leg while incarcerated in the Pierce County Jail in 2018.

The jury returned the $25 million verdict against NaphCare, a health care company based in Alabama that contracts with local governments in 49 states to provide medical care to incarcerated people, including those jailed by Pierce County. The verdict included $5 million to compensate Javier for the physical and emotional harm that NaphCare caused him as well as $20 million in punitive damages.

As OPB reported regarding the verdict:

Court records show that the jury agreed with Tapia’s three principle arguments: that NaphCare relied on nurses to work beyond their skillset to treat inmates, relied on corrections deputies to monitor inmates’ health, and didn’t communicate with staff about Tapia as his condition worsened.

Those patterns amounted to violating Tapia’s constitutional right to adequate health care, said attorney Corinne Sebren.

“Every inmate in that jail is NaphCare’s patient, and they were only responding when they were being dragged to respond,” Sebren said.

Prior to the trial, Pierce County settled Javier’s claims against the county for $1 million. Ryan and Corinne were supported at trial by Ed Budge of Budge & Heipt. NaphCare was defended by Perkins Coie.

Gabe Galanda Dispels "Federal Indian Blood Quantum Fiction" in New Book

Gabe Galanda’s essay, “The Federal Indian Blood Quantum Fiction,” was published in a new book this month, “Beyond Blood Quantum: Refusal to Disappear.”

The book is the second volume of “The Great Vanishing Act: Blood Quantum and the Future of Native Nations,” which was published in 2016. In the new book, voices from Indian Country convey the insidious impacts of the Indian Reorganization Act confronting the existential and pragmatic questions facing many Native Nations to determine who is—and who is not—a citizen.

Gabe assails blood quantum as a colonial racial fiction. Here’s the introduction:

Indian blood quantum is a fiction. It is made up. It is fake. It is pretend.[1]  

It began as colonial racial fiction.[2] It morphed into federal legal fiction.[3] It now exists as widespread tribal political fiction.[4]

It is and always has been fictional that certain percentages of “Indian” or other racial blood run through Indigenous people’s veins. Human blood simply cannot be reduced to fractions or decimal points based on racial categorization.[5] That idea lacks “intellectual credibility.”[6]

He urges Native nations to urgently confront and reject the Indian blood quantum fiction and restore culturally appropriate forms of kinship-based criteria for Indigenous national belonging.

Gabe’s latest essay is among a series of scholarly essays he’s published since 2023 about existential challenges facing Indigenous peoples:

• In the Spirit of Vine Deloria, Jr.: Indigenous Kinship Renewal and Relational Sovereignty

• Durability and Duress: Inter-Tribal Kinship and Indian Gaming Capitalism

• Into The Void: Indigenous American Civil Rights

• The Original Peoples Deserve Freedom

Gabe Galanda is an Indigenous rights attorney and the managing lawyer at Galanda Broadman. He has been named to Best Lawyers in America in the fields of Native American Law and Gaming Law from 2007 to 2025, and dubbed a Super Lawyer by his peers from 2013 to 2025.

Footnotes:

[1] C. Matthew Snipp, American Indians: The First of This Land 30 (1989) (“It was, and still is, impossible to designate a person as 3/4 blood quantum without knowing the blood types of his or her parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and even earlier ancestors.”); Kim Tallbear, Native American DNA 54 (2013) (“Blood fractions are not enumerated based on examinations with laboratory prostheses of blood the fluid or of the genetic material found in cells.”); John H. Moore & Janis E. Campbell, Blood Quantum and Ethnic Intermarriage in the Boas Data Set, 67 Human Biology 499 (1995) (“Blood quantum of course, is only loosely related to real genetic heritage and is based on the fiction that one inherits ‘blood’ equally from the male and female side.”); R.W. Schmidt, American Indian Identity and Blood Quantum in the 21st Century: A Critical Review, 2011 Journal of Anthropology, 3 (2011) (“Using what today would be called pseudoscience to support a racial ideology established through ‘scientific objectivity,’ the physical anthropologists made claims of being able to accurately detect and separate mixed bloods from full bloods.”).

[2] See Paul Spruhan, A Legal History of Blood Quantum in Federal Indian Law to 1935, 51 S.D. L. Rev. 1 (2006). 

[3] See P.N. Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past Of The American West 338 (1987) (“Set the blood quantum at one-quarter, hold to it as a rigid definition of Indians, let intermarriage proceed as it had for centuries, and eventually Indians will be defined out of existence. When that happens, the federal government will be freed of its persistent ‘Indian problem.’”); Snipp, supra note 2, at 34 (“Confronted by legal challenges, federal authorities were forced to concede that blood quantum definitions cannot be legally enforced for most purposes. Furthermore, the blood quantum information haphazardly collected in the early rolls is at best unsystematic, if not altogether unreliable.”).

[4] Felix S. Cohen, On The Drafting of Tribal Constitutions 113 (David E. Wilkins ed., 2006); David E. Wilkins & Shelly Hulse Wilkins, Blood quantum and the Mathematics of Ethnocide, in The Great Vanishing Act: Blood Quantum and the Future of Native Nations 210, 220 (Kathleen Ratteree & Norbert Hill eds., 2017) (citing Kirsty Gover, Tribal Constitutionalism 83 (2010)).

[5] See Snipp, supra note 1.

[6] Snipp, supra note 1, at 34.

Ethan Jones Joins Galanda Broadman

Ethan Jones has joined Galanda Broadman PLLC as Of Counsel, where he will focus his practice on litigation and other civil legal services for Tribal governments and their enterprises.

“Ethan has over a decade of experience asserting and defending Tribal sovereignty and Treaty rights,” said Gabe Galanda, the firm’s managing lawyer. “We are thrilled to have Ethan join our team of lawyer warriors.”

Ethan graduated from the University of Washington School of Law in 2013, where he concentrated his studies on federal Indian law and interned with Galanda Broadman.  He also holds a Bachelor of Arts in History with College Honors and a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from the University of Washington.

Ethan joins the firm after serving as Lead Attorney for the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. As the Yakama Nation’s Lead Attorney, Ethan litigated in tribal, federal, state, administrative, and ADR forums, negotiated complex multi-party agreements, and represented many of Yakama’s economic enterprises.

Galanda Broadman, PLLC, is an Indigenous rights law firm with nine lawyers and offices in Seattle and Yakima, Washington and Bend, Oregon. The firm is dedicated to advancing Tribal Treaty and other sovereign legal rights as well as Indigenous human rights.

UN Lifts Embargo on Unanswered Interventions to Biden State Department, Nooksack Tribe

Today, the United Nations lifted the embargo on companion November 29, 2024 communications to the Biden Administration's State Department and the Nooksack Tribe.

The interventions the day after Thanksgiving described the "forced evictions of seven households who self-identify as Indigenous Nooksack, without due process, and without due consideration for their right to remain,” as “violation[s] of the right to adequate housing, including with regard to affordability and security of tenure, as well as the freedom to choose one’s residence."  

FOIA response information reveals that unlike the UN's Nooksack interventions with the State Department in 2022 and 2023, the Biden Administration did not forward the November 29, 2024 communication to the Interior Department or Secretary Deb Haaland for lead response. Accordingly, the Biden Administration did not respond to the UN before leaving office on January 20, 2025, knowing full well the Trump Administration would or could not respond before a January 28, 2025 UN response deadline. 

Through a January 13, 2025 email from the Nooksack families' counsel to Secretary Haaland, the families "observe[d] the demise of international Indigenous human rights protection and federal Indian civil rights protection in the United States, on [her] watch, the first Indigenous cabinet secretary in history."  

You can read all of the UN's unprecedented human rights communications to the United States and Nooksack Tribe here.

Gabe Galanda is an Indigenous rights attorney and the managing lawyer at Galanda Broadman. He has been named to Best Lawyers in America in the fields of Native American Law and Gaming Law from 2007 to 2024, and dubbed a Super Lawyer by his peers from 2013 to 2024.

NCAI Formed a Tribal Citizenship Protection Task Force to Prepare for This Moment. But Then Killed It.

In November 2020, NCAI formed the Tribal Citizenship Policy and Protection Task Force, by Resolution. 

According to its proposed "Charge," the Task Force was to "[e]valuate and monitor external political and legal threats to Tribal citizenship" and "undertake...work as necessary to help NCAI defend against emerging threats to Tribal citizenship."

Two such threats were the first Trump administration's "treatment of Native Nations as racial groups under Medicaid rules and disregard of Tribal citizenship data as a basis for federal COVID-relief funding."

But within months, the NCAI Executive Board ignored both the Resolution and proposed Charge, essentially killing the Task Force. That is because any effort that remotely touches Indigenous or Tribal human rights, most notably the right to belong, is anathema to NCAI politicians.

Now the Trump administration questions whether Tribal citizens enjoy American birthright citizenship and ICE is reportedly interrogating Tribal citizens in Arizona and New Mexico. 

Imagine if NCAI had undertaken the work over the last four years to help meaningfully defend these and any further assaults on Tribal citizenship and sovereignty. 

Imagine if Indian country writ large was more intentional about Tribal citizenship protection vis-a-vis either Tribal or U.S. constitutional law.  See "The Original Peoples Deserve Freedom" (2024) ("Tribal citizens’ right to belong as Americans is not even protected by the Fourteenth Amendment....Tribal citizens remain exempt from America’s central promise."); "Tribal Nationhood Requires Civil Rights Protection" (2022) ("there is no national tribal organization…that advocates for the universal protection of Indigenous civil rights"). 

Gabe Galanda is an Indigenous rights attorney and the managing lawyer at Galanda Broadman. He has been named to Best Lawyers in America in the fields of Native American Law and Gaming Law from 2007 to 2024, and dubbed a Super Lawyer by his peers from 2013 to 2024.