News & Updates
Conference of Western Attorneys General
November 15, 2023
|
|
Raid Challenges Minnesota Cannabis Law
The case invokes complicated Indian law and could cut against the state’s goal to end the punitive approach to cannabis. Mahnomen County sheriff’s deputies and White Earth tribal police raided a tobacco shop, seizing around seven pounds of cannabis, along with $3,000 in cash, a cell phone and surveillance system. The raid happened the day after recreational marijuana became legal across the state and was the first major enforcement action under the new law. But no charges have been filed in the case and the state may not have the authority to prosecute him or any other tribal member for marijuana crimes on reservations. A member of the White Earth Nation he had no state permit to sell cannabis nor did he have the consent of the tribal council, which voted days earlier to allow adult-use cannabis and sell marijuana cultivated in its tribal-run facility. Minnesota has the power to prosecute criminal — but not civil — violations of state law by tribal members on certain reservations including White Earth’s under what’s called Public Law 280 and the shop owner believes the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe constitution grants the right to sell cannabis because it grants “equal opportunities to participate in the economic resources and activities of the Tribe. Even if the county doesn’t ultimately prosecute, it doesn’t have to automatically return his cannabis, cash, cell phone or other seized items, he would likely have to file a lawsuit to get his property back.
|
|
Endangered Species Act & Cattle Grazing: Suit Action Alleging of Land Management Violations
The Center for Biological Diversity and Maricope Audubon Society filed a Complaint for Declaratory Judgment and Injunctive Relief in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“Service”). The Complaint was filed pursuant to the citizen suit provision of the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”) and alleges violations of that statute and its implementing regulations. Audubon alleges that BLM and the Service have failed to protect habitat for the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher and Western, yellow billed cuckoo. The damages are allegedly due to cattle grazing along the State of Arizona’s Gila River.
|
|
|
|
Endangered Species is on the Path of a Border Patrol Road
The road could harm, even possibly wipe out the Zapata bladderpod plants in Texas. The current administration could risk the extinction of an endangered plant if it pursues a new road in southern Texas designated for use by U.S. Border Patrol.
|
|
A Tiny Deer and Rising Seas: How Far Should People go to Save an Endangered Species?
North America was covered in ice, a distant relative of a white-tailed deer grazed its way down a limestone ridge to the southeast edge of the continental U.S. Over time, as the ice melted and seas rose, the limestone ridge was reduced to a series of shrinking islands off the South Florida coast. The deer, trapped and isolated from its mainland relatives, shrank too. The Key deer or toy deer, as it's sometimes called because of its dog-size stature is the smallest deer species in North America. Rising seas created the Key deer. Rapidly rising seas, a symptom of climate change, are challenging its continued existence and raising tough questions for the people trying to keep the nation's more than 1,300 other threatened and endangered species alive.
|
|
Endangered Species Act Protections for Wolverines Likely Imminent
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a 100-page “species status assessment” for North American wolverines in late September. That document presages a final determination that federal wildlife managers must make by late November to satisfy a May 2022 federal court order. The assessment’s closing paragraph hints that Wolverines will no longer be a state-managed species, and instead will be entrusted to federal managers and the protective guidelines of the Endangered Species Act. Wolverine ecology is plagued by unanswered “key questions” about the population size, gene flow and dispersal corridors across the Canadian border, the assessment states.
|
|
Bison Return to Texas Indigenous Lands, Reconnecting Tribes To Their Roots
Indigenous Ranchers in Texas are receiving help from nonprofits to rebuild bison herds in the State. One family in Sulphur Springs that received five bison last month invited Texas tribal members to see the herd in person. The bison’s new home is the 60-acre Ranch in Hopkins County, about 90 miles northeast of Dallas. It’s part of an effort by the Tanka Fund, a native-led nonprofit based in South Dakota, and The Nature Conservancy to restore more than 700 bison to Indigenous lands across the country this fall in partnership with tribal nonprofits and nations. The arrival at the ranch marks the second bison transfer to Texas through the program; the first one was a transfer of five bison to a Lipan Apache ranch in Waelder, an hour east of San Antonio. Millions of bison once roamed the plains, including parts of Texas. Early Spanish explorers in North America reported that bison were as numerous as “fish in the sea.” Native Americans relied on the massive herds for food, clothing, medicine and spiritual practices. In the 1800s, the bison population suffered a catastrophic decline after the arrival of new settlers and bison hunters.
|
|
Florida Museums Work Toward Native American Repatriation
A visual communications student and descendant of the Mi'kimaq tribe visited the Florida Museum a few times since coming to the University of Florida (UF). When they learned the museum holds thousands of Native American remains, they were mortified they hadn’t known sooner. The Florida Museum’s collections hold at least 2,500 Native American ancestors; the 11th-largest collection of unrepatriated Native American remains in the United States and sacred items in its Powell Hall exhibit. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990 requires institutions receiving federal funds, like UF, to return ancestors and sacred objects to federally recognized tribes. The museum has recently reinforced its commitment to NAGPRA by resuming its initiative to return ancestral remains and planning renovations for a 20-year-old exhibit on indigenous history.
|
|
Rosebud Sioux Tribal Ranch Wins Conservation Award
The U.S. Department of Agriculture-Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) serving South Dakota awarded the 2023 Excellence in Cooperative Conservation Award to the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Ranch for their conservation outreach and education on Tribal land. The Excellence in Cooperative Conservation Award highlights an individual or group’s capability to communicate, grow, and innovate to conserve South Dakota’s natural resources.
The Rosebud Sioux Tribal Ranch has been a close partner with NRCS for many years. Since 2019, the Tribal Ranch worked with NRCS and South Dakota State University Extension to host a range day for producers and students in the local area. The event consists of an adult and youth component with workshops with tribal elders to talk about the different medicinal plants on the landscape and how they were used historically, then the group does a pasture walk and identifies the different plants while discussing their agricultural uses. After the walk, the group shares a meal, concluding the day with fry bread and a sampling of jams and jellies made by a tribal member from native plants. The Rosebud Sioux Tribal Ranch received the award at the start of Native American Heritage Month, on the ranch in Todd County.
|
|
First-of-its-Kind Tribal Water Institute Announced
The Native American Rights Fund has a long history of representing Tribal Nations on water rights. The Tribal Water Institute will double their water staffing. They will be able to take on more casework. It will also build a pipeline of new leaders and develop research and forward-thinking policy proposals. The Native American Rights Fund and the Walton Family Foundation announced the creation of the Tribal Water Institute. It will provide Tribal Nations with resources and training to advocate for their water rights and develop water policy solutions. The Walton Family Foundation is making a three-year, $1.4 million commitment to launch the Institute that will be housed within the Native American Rights Fund.
|
|
The Tribe was entitled to go to trial on its claim that the USs’ abandonment and demolition of building constructed for agency use was a breach of trust due to treaty provisions obligating the US to construct an agency building in order to “keep an office open at all times for the purpose of prompt and diligent inquiry” into the Tribe's affairs, despite the fact that the BIA agency offices remained on Reservation in a nearby leased building.
Claims of former employee of oil & gas company owned by Southern Ute Indian Tribe Growth Fund that her termination deprived her of pension payments protected by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”), and employee’s claim that Congress expressly abrogated tribal sovereign immunity when it amended ERISA in 2006, were dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction when the court concluded that the payments to employee were bonus payments
|
|
not protected by ERISA.
Pursuant to a petition for writ of habeas corpus, the court ordered that Petitioner be released from tribal incarceration due to Tribal Court’s sentencing of Petitioner to total term of imprisonment of more than one year without presence of counsel at sentencing hearing, a violation of 25 U.S.C. § 1302(c) (1) (Indian Civil Rights Act).
Search of vehicle by tribal police officers was reasonable under Fourth Amendment, as extended to Indian country by the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968.
Following a court decision vacating leases of subsurface mineral rights held in trust for the Osage Nation due to lack of compliance with National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirements, the BIA acted arbitrarily and capriciously in retroactively approving the leases based on an Environmental
|
|
Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact (FOINSI) that did not adequately address site-specific impacts on the privately-owned surface estate.
Order of Federal Subsistence Board allowing Organized Village of Kake to harvest a limited number of moose and deer on emergency basis during Covid-19 pandemic despite state hunting closure was within the Board’s authority under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) and its implementing regulations.
The State of New Mexico could be sued for alleged violations of the New Mexico Civil Rights Act by a police officer employed by the Pueblo of Isleta and commissioned by the State pursuant to terms of an agreement with the Pueblo providing that while commissioned by the State, the Pueblo's peace officers are “not employees of the State of New Mexico,” but instead are independent contractors.
|
|
Each year we sponsor a 90-minute webinar on current Indian issues in conjunction with the publication of the American Indian Law Deskbook by Thomson Reuters. This year’s webinar will focus on dispute resolution issues and identifying an effective mechanism that often requires addressing forum selection, choice of law, and sovereign immunity. The difficulty in addressing these issues often discourages public and private entities from entering into agreements with Tribes, stifling economic development and discouraging the coordination of law enforcement and other governmental services. The knowledgeable speakers will be Assistant Professor Adam Crepelle of Loyola University Chicago School of Law, and former CWAG Director Tom Gede who is currently Counsel at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP.
The webinar will be held on December 7, 2023, at 1:00 PM EST.
You can register for the webinar at the West LegalEdCenter using the link below.
|
|
|
|
All summaries are posted in CWAG's Google Docs account, accessible through the link below. Should you have any issues with the links, contact Patricia Salazar at [email protected] with questions.
|
|
Conference of Western Attorneys General
5050 Laguna Blvd | Suite 112-323 | Elk Grove, California 95758
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
