Seattle Tribal Lawyer Anthony Broadman Publishes Local Taxation in Indian Country Article

Anthony Broadman has published a paper, "Know Your Enemy: Local Taxation and Tax Agreements in Indian Country," has been published in the inaugural edition of Seattle University's American Indian Law Journal.

Intergovernmental disputes between tribes and their neighbors have educated states about tribal sovereignty. What many state governments have learned, through litigation, political battle, and intergovernmental dispute, is that even when states have “won” tax disputes, they have lost. This dependably pyrrhic result has driven rational state actors—state taxing authorities acting consistently with their own best fiscal interests—to pursue negotiated agreements. Today, state-tribal tax compacts, while often controversial, are commonplace.

Counties and cities, on the other hand, with some admirable exceptions, have yet to learn, or heed, lessons from inter-local tax disputes. As it stands, tribes must be prepared for future battles over local taxation in Indian Country, particularly in regard to real or personal property owned by tribes. But as counties and municipal governments slowly learn the lessons already learned by the states, tribes should also be ready to negotiate intergovernmental solutions to inter-local tax disputes.

Anthony Broadman is a partner at Galanda Broadman PLLC, of Seattle, an American Indian majority-owned law firm.  His practice focuses on company-critical business litigation and representing tribal governments, especially in federal, state and local tax controversy. He can be reached at 206.691.3631 or anthony@galandabroadman.com, or or via galandabroadman.com.

Seattle Tribal Lawyers Galanda & Dreveskracht Publish "Tribal Court Litigation" Deskbook Chapter

This month, a chapter on "Tribal Court Litigation" co-authored by Gabe Galanda and Ryan Dreveskracht for an authoritative commercial litigation handbook, was published by the American Bar Association Business Law Section. The chapter appears in the 2012 edition of Annual Review of Developments in Business and Corporate Litigation. The breadth of the very complex Indian law issues covered by the chapter is suggested by its Table of Contents:

§ 27.1 Introduction to Transacting in Indian Country § 27.2 The Third Sovereign § 27.2.1 The Modern Erosion of Tribal Sovereignty § 27.2.2 State Regulation and Taxation, and Federal Indian Preemption § 27.3 Tribal Sovereign Immunity § 27.3.2.1 Scope of Tribal Immunity § 27.3.2.2 Waiver of Tribal Immunity § 27.4 Tribal Structures § 27.4.1 Tribal Corporations § 27.4.2 Tribal Courts § 27.5 Tribal Assets and Federal Approval § 27.4.1 Fee-to-Trust and Carcieri § 27.4.2 Federal Approvals § 27.6 Tribal Labor and Employment § 27.7 Federal Laws of General Applicability § 27.8 Federal Court Jurisdiction § 27.9 Tribal Court Jurisdiction § 27.9.1 Tribal Authority Vis-à-vis State Authority § 27.9.2 Tribal Exhaustion Doctrine § 27.9.2.1 National Farmers Union § 27.9.2.2 Exceptions to the Exhaustion Doctrine § 27.10 Conclusion

Consider the conclusion to the chapter:

Economic growth and development throughout Indian country have spurred many businesses to engage in business dealings with tribes and tribal entities. Confusion may arise during these transactions because of the unique sovereign and jurisdictional characteristics attendant to business transactions in Indian Country. As a result, these transactions have prompted increased litigation in tribal and nontribal forums. Accordingly, counsel assisting in these transactions, or any subsequent litigation, should conduct certain due diligence with respect to the pertinent tribal organizational documents and governing laws that may collectively dictate and control the business relationship.

To maximize the client’s chances of a successful partnership with tribes and tribal entities, counsel should ensure that the transactional documents contain clear and unambiguous contractual provisions that address all rights, obligations, and remedies of the parties. Therefore, even if the deal fails, careful negotiation and drafting, and in turn thoughtful procedural and jurisdictional litigation practice, will allow the parties to more expeditiously litigate the merits of any dispute in the event that the deal fails, without jurisdictional confusion. As business between tribes and nontribal parties continues to grow, ensuring that both sides of the transaction fully understand and respect the deal will lead to a long-lasting and beneficial business relationship for all.

Gabe served as the Editor-in-Chief of Annual Review for the 2007 through 2010 editions, and has co-authored the Tribal Court Litigation chapter each year since 2006. This is Ryan's first year co-authoring the chapter.

Gabriel "Gabe" Galanda is a partner at Galanda Broadman PLLC, of Seattle, an American Indian owned law firm.  He is an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Covelo, California.  Ryan Dreveskracht is an associate with Galanda Broadman. Gabe and Ryan litigate various critical matters on behalf of tribal governments and businesses and individual Indians, in tribal, state and federal court.

Indian Country Must Stop the STOP Act!

Indian tribes are not engaged in illegal smuggling of tobacco.  Indian tribes oppose the STOP Act because it interferes with completely legal tobacco sales on Indian reservations, and with tribal government collection of tobacco taxes that fund critical governmental services. Tribal entrepreneurs, regulated and taxed by tribal governments, are able to sell their products at below-market prices because they are not part of the Big Tobacco market.  Big Tobacco has sought to monopolize and price-fix through state taxation and regulation, particularly through those provisions of state law that implement the Master Settlement Agreement.  The STOP Act would tip the scales towards Big Tobacco, via the states, through state tax collection and the standardization of tobacco prices before tobacco products ever reach Indian Reservations.  These revenue-controlling provisions of the STOP Act have nothing to do with public health or child welfare.

Further, the STOP Act will very likely violate U.S. Constitutionally protected Indian Treaties and upset tribal-state tax compacts; undermine the legal tribal manufacture of tobacco; and impermissibly sanction tribal commerce – exchange that is protected by the federal Constitution’s mandate that Congress regulate commerce “among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.”   It is time for Congress to stand up to its responsibilities and fully include Indian tribal regulatory and taxing authority in the laws that regulate commerce in tobacco.

Section 103(a) would require that every manufacturer or importer (including tribal governments) stamp each tobacco package with a “unique identification marker.”  Although 103(b) requires that the “unique identification marker” “not interfere” with state, local or Indian tax stamps, the marker would be designed to “facilitate collection of” all currently applicable state and federal taxes and to “facilitate the enforcement” of other federal laws against tribal manufacturers, wholesalers or distributors, such as the PACT Act.  The marker must provide the “value” of the marker, a tracking code, the name and address of the stamper, the date that it was stamped, and the name and address of the “first unrelated person purchasing or otherwise receiving” the product.  Although the “marker” is couched as a tracking device, rather than a tax stamp, the statute arguably leaves room for all forms taxation at the manufacturer level.  The fact that the stamp has a “value” is especially telling.

Section 105(a) would require that every tribal manufacturer, wholesaler or importer of tobacco obtain a permit from the Secretary of Treasury (presumably).  In order to obtain the permit, the applicant must be in compliance with the PACT Act, the Jenkins Act, and numerous other tobacco-specific laws and regulations.  The applicant must also be in compliance with “all other Federal, State, and Indian tribal laws relating to the taxation, manufacture, importation, exportation, distribution, marketing, sale, or transportation of tobacco products . . . .”  In other words, it forces tribal manufacturers, wholesalers, and importers to comply with state laws (even if not expressly subject to state taxation per Section 301).  Importantly, it also forces tribal manufacturers to comply with state laws that implement the Master Settlement Agreement, something that tribes had nothing to do with.

Section 108(b) would make it illegal to ship, transport, deliver, or receive any tobacco products that are unstamped.  It also makes it illegal to sell more than 3,000 cigarettes in a single transaction or a series of related transactions.  Considering how the Department of Justice has to date construed the PACT Act and its definitions of “inter-state commerce” and “delivery seller,” Section 108(b) likely interferes with certain Indian Treaty rights to travel for purpose of commerce, including tobacco commerce, unfettered from state and federal limitations.  See, e.g., The Treaty With the Yakama, 12 Stat. 951, Art. III (1859).

Section 301 says that “[n]othing in this Act or the amendments made by this Act shall be construed to amend, modify, or otherwise affect . . . any agreements, compacts, or other intergovernmental agreements . . . relating to the collection of taxes on tobacco products sold in Indian country.”  Of course, these agreements and compacts arose in a different climate, one where federal law did not sanction the collection of state taxes and otherwise subjecting tribal governments to local restrictions.  Under the STOP Act, states no longer have an incentive to stay in compliance with these agreements because the execution of otherwise non-enforceable state regulations can now be facilitated in Indian Country by the United States and its Treasury and Justice Departments.

Section 301 does contain the following disclaimer:

Nothing in this Act or the amendments made by this Act shall be construed to amend, modify, or otherwise affect . . . any limitations under Federal or State law, including Federal common law and treaties, on State, local, and tribal tax and regulatory authority with respect to the sale, use, or distribution of tobacco products or processed tobacco by or to Indian tribes, tribal members, tribal enterprises, or in Indian country; . . . any Federal law, including Federal common law and treaties, regarding State jurisdiction, or lack thereof, over any Indian tribe, tribal member, tribal enterprise, Indian reservations, or other land held by the United States in trust for one or more Indian tribes; or . . . any State or local government authority to bring enforcement actions against persons located in Indian country.

This savings clause is similar to that of Section 5 the PACT Act.  However, as we have seen with the PACT Act, such provisions are not enough to deter states and Big Tobacco from seeking to destroy inter-tribal tobacco commerce via state regulation and taxation and federal enforcement.  In order to be effective, the savings clause should specifically integrate tribal governments as appropriate regulatory and tax collection entities on the same basis as state governments, as well disclaim any application of state regulations to tribal tobacco businesses acting in Indian Country, especially in inter-tribal or reservation-to-reservation commerce.

Gabriel "Gabe" Galanda is a partner at Galanda Broadman PLLC, of Seattle, an American Indian owned law firm.  He is an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Covelo, California.  Gabe helps tribes and Indian small businesses with economic diversification efforts, with an emphasis on minimizing state interference or taxation. Gabe can be reached at 206.691.3631 or gabe@galandabroadman.com.

If You Haven't Drank The Tribal Economic Diversification Kool-Aid, You Better Quickly Take A Sip

Indian gaming is the first tribal economy that has ever brought the type of non-Indian capital to Indian Country to make a meaningful difference in the lives of Reservation Indians. Today, however, Indian gaming is under it's most severe threat since states attempted to outlaw Indian gaming in the 1980s, prior to the Supreme Court's Cabazon decision. According to the New York Times today::

After shunning the concept for years, Massachusetts, seeking solutions to its budget woes, last fall became the first New England state to pass a broad law allowing resort casinos. Now others may not be far behind. . . . In New Hampshire, which dreads losing tourism money to Massachusetts, lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow up to four casinos there. Maine just granted its first casino license to a six-year-old Bangor slot parlor that will add table games next month, and a second casino is expected to open in Oxford this year. Both are the result of voter referendums. Rhode Island, which already has two slot parlors, will hold a referendum in November on whether to allow table games at one of them.

State-supported commercial, brick-and-mortar casinos are likely coming to a state, if not neighborhood, near you.

If that force weren't a threat enough to the Indian gaming industry, there is the December 23, 2011 decision to declare intrastate Internet gaming legal. The Las Vegas Sun headline, "DOJ opinion ‘important day’ in efforts to legalize online gaming," says it all.

It is widely believed that sooner or later the legalization of interstate iGaming will follow, meaning legalized Internet gaming throughout all of the United States.  Imagine Indian Country's best gaming patrons commencing play of Class III slot machines or other gaming devices on their laptop computers, from the comforts of their bedrooms and home offices.  That reality is in fact what is on the horizon.

Indeed, it is not a question of if the $26 billion tribal governmental gaming economy will recede as a result of mounting state and commercial gaming forces; it is a question of when -- and to what extent. So if you and your tribe aren't yet aggressively diversifying your  tribal economy away from sole reliance on gaming, what are you waiting for?

Gabriel "Gabe" Galanda is a partner at Galanda Broadman PLLC, of Seattle, an American Indian owned law firm.  He is an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Covelo, California.  Gabe helps tribes and Indian small businesses with economic diversification efforts, with an emphasis on minimizing state interference or taxation. Gabe can be reached at 206.691.3631 or gabe@galandabroadman.com.

Gabe Galanda Encourages Indian Country to Utilize the UN Indigenous Rights Declaration in Domestic Struggle Against the United States

Gabe Galanda has published “Deploying the U.N. Indigenous Rights Declaration in the Courts of the Conqueror” in Indian Country Today. He explains:

On December 16, 2010, with much pomp and circumstance before American tribal leaders, President Obama endorsed the Declaration, explaining to the tribal leaders who had gathered in Washington, D.C.:

“The aspirations it affirms—including the respect for the institutions and rich cultures of Native peoples—are one we must always seek to fulfill…. I want to be clear: What matters far more than words—what matters far more than any resolution or declaration—are actions to match those words.”

Yet in action, the departments, agencies, and officials within the Obama Administration do not actually live up to the words contained in the Declaration. To the contrary, federal actions too frequently contradict the promises made by the United States to American Indian indigenous people in the Declaration. As United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples S. James Anaya has noted, it is one thing for governments to “incorporate the norms concerning indigenous peoples; it is quite another thing for the norms to take effect in the actual lives of people.”

After explaining how the Declaration might hold in United States courts, Gabe concludes: "Despite federal contention otherwise, the Declaration is not toothless. Indian country should deploy the Declaration and its embodiment of customary international law in domestic courts when necessary to defend against federal behavior that threatens American indigenous ways of life."

Gabriel "Gabe" Galanda is a partner at Galanda Broadman PLLC, of Seattle, an American Indian owned law firm.  He is an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Covelo, California.  Gabe represents tribes and individual Indians in all matters of controversy with federal, state or local governments. He can be reached at 206.691.3631 or gabe@galandabroadman.com.

Tribal 'Disobedience' and Internet Gaming

Modern Indian gaming was born when tribal governments refused to follow state laws in the 70s and 80s. There is no reason to think modern Indian Internet gaming will arrive any differently. If Indian Country hopes to remain at the forefront of gaming, it will have to have a role in Internet gaming this year.  And that role will not be given to tribes; it must be taken. Had the Cabazon and Morongo Tribes waited for Congress to give tribes the unobstructed right to game, there’s a real chance that the 422-casino, $26 billion dollar industry would have never materialized. See California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, 480 U.S. 202 (1987). Indian gaming exists because tribal governments opened gaming facilities and dealt with the consequences afterward. Tribes took what was rightfully theirs. Had they simply asked for recognition of their gaming rights from states or Congress, they would never have received them. Like anything worthwhile, it took a fight.

Call it breaking state laws (which we know have never applied to tribal governments), or exercising tribal sovereignty, the result was the same. When tribes took what was theirs, Congress, and the states reacted. IGRA was born, and the rest, though fraught with intergovernmental dispute, is history.  There is no reason to think that tribes can enter the Internet gaming market any differently.  Indeed, according to Professor Robert O. Porter, “Tribal disobedience,” the “process by which Indigenous people engage in ‘disobedient’ actions against the colonizing government in order to protect and defend their inherent and treaty-recognized rights,” is absolutely necessary to ensure the survival of tribal sovereignty.

Certainly, it’s naïve to think that Indian Country will get a seat at the table simply by asking for one. First, states will never treat tribal governments with the requisite respect for such a seat to mean anything.  And the federal government doesn’t do anything it doesn’t have to do.  Second, the Internet gaming table isn’t even set.  We know it’s coming, but we don’t know how.  We think it will be federally regulated, by Commerce or Treasury, but as of now we don’t know whether the NIGC will be consulted before it comes, let alone have any role in regulating it. None of the bills before Congress contemplate the NIGC having any role, even though gaming on Indian lands is subject to IGRA.

On Friday, the Department of Justice made public for the first time its new opinion that interstate Internet lotteries do not violate the Wire Act. And that, probably not coincidentally, was right after Nevada regulators on Thursday paved the way for intra-Nevada online poker. Whatever its form, nationally regulated Internet gaming will change gaming permanently and unrecognizably, and it is thus crucial that tribes get involved now. Regulated online gaming will do for gaming what email did to college. Or business. It’s hard to fathom what Internet gaming will mean. But put simply: it will change everything.

State-sanctioned handheld lotto is just the beginning. Your Monday night football picks, with your season winnings to date, might appear automatically on Facebook, with your online poker or blackjack daily or lifetime winnings appearing in your profile. People will still play in casinos. But there’s a real chance that brick-and-mortar casino numbers will pale in comparison to the daily drop we will see among 20-somethings on their iPhones. New markets flocking to regulated online gaming will be born overnight. And players who frequent tribal casinos may still do so. But new players may never set foot in one, choosing instead to play regulated online slots on their bus rides, roulette while waiting for movies to start, or, as was common at one law school in 2006, online poker during Contracts class.

The regulated online gaming burst may coincide with the bust of tribal exclusivity. Pressure from non-tribal gaming is growing, coupled with hemorrhaging state and local budgets. And there’s simply too much at stake for non-tribal casinos to pack up and go away. Two Oregon businessmen are at it for the fourth time outside of Portland.  And the old saw about leveling the playing field comes up about every two years in Washington State.  Eventually something will stick.

What’s the answer for Indian Country?  In addition to pursuing non-gaming economic development, tribal governments accustomed to steady growth at their brick and mortar casinos have to appreciate what gaming will look like in 2015, 2020, and beyond.  Some tribes have already stuck a toe in the water, launching free poker sites and laying the infrastructure for pay poker. It may not be the first tribe who submits an ordinance that includes Internet poker to the NIGC that blows open Internet gaming. But if tribes begin doing so, the NIGC will have to act, and Congress will respond.  And if tribes can offer gaming online without triggering IGRA or NIGC/DOJ involvement, Congress will react.  It will take an event like Seminole v. Butterworth, or California v. Cabazon, or maybe even some missteps like the Bay Mills off-reservation casino. But when the gaming pundits and lawyers suggest asking for a “seat at the table,” recall that tribal governmental gaming has never been given anything.  If tribes are to have a seat at the Internet gaming table, they must take it.

Anthony Broadman is a partner with Galanda Broadman PLLC in Seattle, and focuses his practice on issues critical to Indian Country. He can be reached at anthony@galandabroadman.com or 206.321.2672.

Ryan Dreveskracht Opines on Congress' Failure to Fund the TLOA

Ryan Dreveskracht is quoted at length today in Rob Capriccioso's article in Indian Country Today, Do Congress and Obama Really Support the Tribal Law and Order Act?. Ryan Dreveskracht is an Associate at Galanda Broadman PLLC, of Seattle, an American Indian majority-owned law firm. His practice focuses on representing businesses and tribal governments in public affairs, energy, gaming, taxation, and general economic development. He can be reached at 206.909.3842 or ryan@galandabroadman.com.

The PACT Act Violates All Tribes’ Sovereignty

Yesterday, Washington, DC U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth – who played an instrumental role in Cobell – struck a blow to the PACT Act, by preliminarily enjoining federal enforcement of the Act. Judge Lamberth's decision is the second federal court ruling that the PACT Act is unconstitutional, in recent months. While the potentially positive implications of the decisions for Indian Country are still being sorted out, the PACT Act remains an imminent threat to the sovereignty of all Tribal governments, and to any notion of tax-free inter-tribal commerce and trade.

The PACT Act of 2010, as federal agencies no doubt still intend to implement it, violates the sovereignty of all Tribal governments – not only those involved in tobacco commerce. Tribal sovereignty, at its core, includes the right of Tribal Governments to be ruled by their own laws and govern their own economies. But the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), by inviting states and state law into Indian Country, has made clear its intent to enforce the Act in a way that will gut Tribes’ inherent right to self govern and chill Indian economic growth.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the PACT Act requires Indian tobacco enterprises to comply with state tobacco laws – even within Indian Country. For two centuries, courts have generally barred states from applying their laws to Tribes and Indian businesses within Indian Country. But federal agency interpretation of the Act threatens to change the tribal-state status quo. It requires no close analysis of the law to see that the federal government is shepherding state tax agencies into Indian Country. Although today’s state-federal attacks focus on tobacco, DOJ is establishing a dangerous precedent; one under which the federal government will pass federal laws allowing states to extract previously unavailable value from Tribal economies and causing DOJ to become the states’ enforcement arm in Indian Country.

DOJ’s interpretation of the PACT Act is inconsistent with the law itself, which on its face prohibits the Act from being used to confer states regulatory authority over Indian Country commerce. As the DOJ and ATF read the law, however, the PACT Act widely opens an unprecedented avenue for states to regulate and tax Tribal and inter-Tribal commerce and trade.

The United States has stated that the Act’s definition of “interstate commerce” includes sales within or between Indian reservations. Legal nuances aside, DOJ’s application of the PACT Act’s “interstate commerce” to inter-Tribal tobacco trade – meaning trade between Tribes situated in different states – is a recipe for Tribal economic disaster. Tribes freely traded between and among themselves long before state governments or taxation existed. To now allow state taxation of inter-Tribal commerce and state regulation of the budding Tribal private sector, under color of federal law and law enforcement, threatens to set Tribal economies back nearly two centuries – to when states destroyed Indian Country’s original economies.

Again, the PACT Act expresses Congress’ clear intent that the law not adversely effect Tribal sovereignty. Indeed a pro-Tribal interpretation clause of the Act requires ambiguities in the new law to be resolved in favor of preserving Tribal sovereignty and immunity from state authority. Incredibly, though, the Executive Branch’s interpretations of the law have taken the very opposite approach, with the Act being construed to favor state regulation and taxation in Indian Country. States have already seized the DOJ’s written interpretation of the PACT Act to regulate and tax – the proverbial power to destroy – Tribal and inter-Tribal economies.

Notwithstanding yesterday's court ruling, all of Indian Country must stand together now, united in vocal opposition to the PACT Act.

Gabriel "Gabe" Galanda, a partner at Galanda Broadman PLLC, is an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Covelo, California.

Congress Strikes a Blow to Tribal Law and Order Act

According to the 2008 National Crime Victimization Survey, American Indians experience almost twice as much violence as other Americans. Among tribal members age 23 to 34, the rate of violent crime victimization is over 2.5 times the rate for all persons the same age. This is particularly true for Native American women, one-third of whom will be raped in her lifetime, most likely by a non-Indian. The Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 ("TLOA") was Congress' official recognition that the federal government's approach to law and order in Indian country had absolutely failed. Indeed, it is federal law and policy alone that is primarily to blame for these statistics.

One way the TLOA sought to remedy the epidemic was to mandate that federal law enforcement cooperate and coordinate with tribal law enforcement. The TLOA sought to immediately increase tribal law enforcement funding levels. Because Indian country crime is local, these consultation and tribal funding mandates were deemed crucial to the effectiveness of the TLOA.

Most recently, on November 14, 2011, Congress released the fiscal year 2012 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Programs Report, striking a major blow to the TLOA. The report indicates funding cuts for tribal justice programs across the board, and did not include a tribal set-aside for discretionary Office of Justice Programs needed to implement the TLOA. The Report also proposes $15 million cuts to both the COPS Tribal Resources Grant Program and the Tribal Youth Program. Funding for tribal assistance within Office of Justice programs was also cut, receiving only $28 million – $62 million short of the approximate $100 million initially proposed in President Obama's FY 2012 budget request.

In order for the TLOA to have any effect, federal agencies must comply with the law and Congress must provide adequate funding. Unfortunately – and in violation of the federal government's trust and treaty obligations – it appears that neither of these obligations are being fulfilled.

Ryan Dreveskracht is an Associate at Galanda Broadman PLLC, of Seattle, an American Indian majority-owned law firm. His practice focuses on representing businesses and tribal governments in public affairs, energy, gaming, taxation, and general economic development. He can be reached at 206.909.3842 or ryan@galandabroadman.com.

Tribal Media Outlets Post Gabe Galanda's "Attack on the Tribal Middle Class, Part III"

The Indian Country Today Media Network has published Part Three of Gabe Galanda's three-part series, "Attack on the Tribal Middle Class." The column was reposted by pechanga.net and Indianz.com.

Make no mistake, tribal sovereignty, and the vast economic benefit it brings to Indian and non-Indian America, is under siege. Non-tribal governments are once again speaking the language of assimilation and termination in an attempt to impede or extract value from any tribal economic endeavor that they perceive does not benefit the non-tribal middle class or private sector. Instead of brute physical force, they now deploy the power to tax, legislate, litigate and otherwise exploit sovereignty-based revenue from everything Indian Country and its tribal middle class have worked so hard to rebuild over the last 200 years.

Indian Country must now recognize this growing state and federal attack for what it is – an attack on Indian sovereignty. Then, only by taking preemptive legal and political steps to expose, confront and countervail those insurgent non-tribal forces that threaten American Indian economies, will we deter the termination of the new tribal middle class.

Gabriel "Gabe" Galanda is a partner at Galanda Broadman PLLC, of Seattle, an American Indian majority-owned law firm.  He is an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Covelo, California.  He can be reached at 206.691.3631 or gabe@galandabroadman.com, or via galandabroadman.com.