By Jared Miller

When the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Nebraska v. Parker earlier this month, it created the real possibility of a new kind of land-grab in Indian country.

Nebraska is a reservation “diminishment” case in which the State of Nebraska has invited the Court to rework the three-factor Solem test, such that contemporary demographics play a much larger role in determining whether land is Indian country.

Towns, cities and counties, as tribal communities' closest neighbors, have historically played a major role in the "deadliest enemies"-dynamic of tribal-state relations. At the municipal level Indians have been murdered, imprisoned, excluded, discriminated, and taxed over the last few hundred years.  Those human rights violations have persisted in modern times, especially in rural America.  So naturally Natives have wanted little to nothing to do with local government.

That reality is now changing, dramatically.  In the staunch spirit of Indian self-determination and with the fervency of the Idle No More movement, Natives are aggressively grabbing, and leveraging, local government platforms to affect social change for Indian people.

By Jared Miller

Since President Barack Obama announced the United States’ endorsement of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Declaration) in 2010, some legal scholars and tribal lawyers have slowly begun weaving the Declaration into articles, books, and legal briefs.

That’s not good enough, according to Walter Echo-Hawk, an attorney, author, activist, law professor, and tribal judge.

By Joe Sexton

Indian Country is not immune to the crime of human trafficking. In fact, given the history of federal law enforcement negligence and the federal government’s willful oppression of indigenous peoples (see the federal policy of kidnapping Native children and sending them to “boarding schools”), reservations are ripe to attract human trafficking operations. There, pimps are more likely to find potential victims and can operate more freely because law enforcement is hampered by federal mismanagement and frustrating jurisdictional constraints imposed by the federal judiciary and corresponding statutes.

By Ryan Dreveskracht

The current regulation of water pollution in Indian country is complex, to say the least.

Governed largely by the Clean Water Act (“CWA”)—a comprehensive statute designed to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation's waters” through the reduction and eventual elimination of pollutant discharge into those waters—the regulation of water pollution in the U.S. anticipates a partnership between the federal government and states.  33 U.S.C. § 1251.  The federal government sets the minimum level of pollution reduction required by the Act and “[i]f the states wish to achieve better water quality, they may.”  U.S. Steel Corp. v. Train, 556 F.2d 822, 838 (7th Cir. 1977).

Gabe Galanda recently kicked off the "Tribal Participation In the Cannabis Industry"-conference in Portland, Oregon.  Gabe delivered a monologue that attempted to bring some rationality to the Indian lawyer-fueled hysteria regarding the possibilities of marijuana commerce in Indian Country.

Bree Black Horse is chipping in to help her alma mater, the Seattle University School of Law, and its Center for Indian Law & Policy.  Bree has been appointed to the Center's advisory Council, and is helping teach legal writing along with Professor Eric Eberhard to the incoming American Indian Law Journal cohort. Bree co-founded the American Indian Law Journal and served as its Editor-in-Chief during law school. Her father and fine artist Terrance Guardipee designed and gifted the ledger art, The Spirit of Justice, that depicts the Center.

It was not long ago when legal journals would not pay any attention to tribal disenrollment controversy. Today mainstream legal journals like Law360 and Courthouse News Service write on the subject.

This summer a number of tribes, including the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, Spirit Lake Tribe of North Dakota, and Blackfeet Tribe of Montana, have resuscitated the penal tradition of banishment to eradicate member drug dealers from their lands and to deter others from selling drugs there.