Updates from the University of North Dakota School of Law.
A Tale of Two Tribal Nations Episode Description The word “reservation” implies “reserved” – as in, this land is reserved for Native Americans. But most reservation land actually isn’t owned by tribes. Instead, it’s checkerboarded into private farmland, federal forests, summer camps, even resorts. That’s true for the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe in northern […]
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The economic impact of SCOTUS upholding the Indian Child Welfare Act Marketplace Savannah Maher Listen Indian Country breathed a sigh of relief on Thursday morning when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA. That 1978 federal law gives tribal nations a voice in custody proceedings involving Native children and aims to […]
In their efforts to overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act, a constellation of law firms and conservative organizations have put tribal sovereignty in jeopardy. June 7, 2023 The New York Review Murat Oztaskin Four years ago Lisa Blatt argued a case before the Supreme Court called Carpenter v. Murphy. It rested on whether a citizen of the Muscogee […]
The fate of the Indian Child Welfare Act When it comes to children, should tribes govern themselves? DeseretNews By Mya Jaradat May 16, 2023, 12:16pm CDT Not long after Jennifer and Chad Brackeen felt called by God to become foster parents, they got a call of another kind: this one from Texas’s Child Protective Services, saying […]
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A lawsuit in Washington state and another case before the U.S. Supreme Court are part of a coordinated campaign that experts say is pushing once-fringe legal theories to the nation’s highest court and represents the most serious challenge to tribal sovereignty in over 50 years. OregonLive | Oregonian By Karina Brown | Underscore News Editor’s note: This […]
The U.S. Supreme Court is considering challenges to a law enacted in 1978 to respond to the alarming rate at which Native American and Alaska Native children were being removed from their homes by public and private agencies. The U.S. Supreme Court now has taken up challenges to the law three times — in 1989, 2013 and […]
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A five-year battle over a bag of clams shows how a reliance on century-old treaties can lead authorities to treat members of some tribes differently than others. by Ashley Braun Hakai Magazine | November 10, 2022 It was April 30, 2017, and Michael and Andrew Simmons were walking down Copalis Beach, along Washington’s southwest coast, […]
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We have been here from time immemorial, and we remember. Dan Lewerenz, Guest Contributor November 7, 2022 We remember before the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case challenging the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act (“ICWA”). We remember before ICWA was passed in 1978, the four long years of congressional investigation and deliberation that led to its enactment, […]