American Indian law

The U.S. Supreme Court is slated to hear arguments December 2 in the case of an off-reservation casino in Michigan that is opposed by the state, the Petoskey News reported. The justices will consider whether a state can challenge a tribe’s right to open a casino if the state contends the gaming facility is on land that doesn't qualify as tribal land, Indian Country Today reported this summer: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/07/03/reservation-tribal-...

Diane J. Humetewa, a Hopi citizen, the first American Indian to serve as a United States attorney, and who has been an appellate court judge for the Hopi Tribe Appellate Court, was nominated this week by President Barack Obama for a federal judgeship on the U.S. District Court for Arizona. If confirmed, Humetewa would be the first American Indian woman and only the third American Indian overall to serve in the federal judiciary, according to Indian Country Today Media Network. "Indian affairs experts had been pressuring the president to make another Native American federal judgeship appointment – several more, in fact – citing the large number of Indian law cases heard in federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court's tendency not to understand tribal law," Indian Country Today further reports.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports: "One group that won't be required to have health insurance when the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate goes into effect next year is American Indians, of which Douglas County has a larger-than-average population. The health reform law often known as Obamacare mandates that Americans carry some type of health insurance in 2014 or be fined. The 2010 law does, however, exempt certain people from that requirement: members of religious groups opposed to insurance, undocumented immigrants, prisoners, Americans who either don't make enough money to file taxes or would have to spend more than 8 percent of their income on premiums, and American Indians eligible for care through the Indian Health Service."

The Washington Post's Robert Barnes reports on the latest legal disputes in the custody dispute over Baby Veronica between her adoptive white parents and her biological American Indian father: "Since a deeply divided Supreme Court ruled in Veronica’s case in June, here’s who else has had a say: two South Carolina courts, three Oklahoma courts, the Supreme Court of the Cherokee Nation, a battalion of lawyers, two governors and someone from the United Nations." One of the legal issues is South Carolina's call to extradite the biological father to face contempt charges for not following court orders in favor of the adoptive parents.

Buried in this story on a meeting of American Indian tribes and federal prosecutors is a statistic showing that federal prosecutions of crimes on reservations increased 54% from 2009 to 2012. The lack of resources to pursue law-breaking on tribal reservations, particularly sexual violence against American Indian women, has been a huge issue in recent years. As novelist Louise Erdrich said in an interview about her most recent novel in which a mother's rape by a white man is unprosecutable, "The statistics are one in three native women are raped, about 67 percent of those rapes fall under federal jurisdiction and are not prosecuted.  Something like 88 percent are believed to be committed by non-natives, and the tribes have no jurisdiction over non-natives." The increase in federal prosecutors' caseloads might be showing the tide is turning on this issue.

For the full interview with Erdrich, see: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2012/10/conversation-louise-erdrich...

With 70 percent of American Indians living in urban areas, the nation's first legal clinic for city-dwelling American Indians and their unique legal problems is still going strong after seven years.

A United Nations official has called on courts in South Carolina and Oklahoma to respect the human rights of a little girl who is a member of the Cherokee Nation and is the subject of a cross-state custody dispute. Veronica lived the first two years of her life with adopted parents in South Carolina and the next two years with her American Indian father, who argues he did not consent to the adoption. When the US Supreme Court heard the case, the justices ruled that several provisions of the Indian Child Welfare Act did not apply to American Indian biological fathers who are not custodians. The UN official cited the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which sets out goals for the collective rights of indigenous peoples around the globe and  which President Obama has agreed to follow.