Missing the Big Picture: Tribal LLCs and the Moneylending Double Standard

The Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians was featured in An Unlikely Solution, a film about the online lending industry in Indian Country. Still image from An Unlikely Solution as posted on Indianz.com.

By Anthony Broadman

The Eastern District of Virginia’s decision in Williams v. Big Picture this week is another reminder that Tribal LLCs will be held to a different standard in the lending context. 

Despite a legitimate business entity regulatory framework, the court set aside the Lac Vieux Desert LLC’s sovereign immunity.  Courts are almost uniformly rejecting sovereign immunity for Tribal LLCs in the lending context.  Further, the judicial skepticism found in lending cases is going to bleed into treatment of all Tribal LLCs. 

Doctrinally and technically, Big Picture and the Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians may have done everything right.  The court recognized legitimate governmental authority to form businesses, regulate those businesses, and return significant, important revenue to the Tribe.  But, reflecting the perceived stink of moneylending, the court rejected the LLC as an arm of the Tribe under the Breakthrough standard. 

Like many multi-part tests applied to Indian economic development, the Breakthrough 6-part test gives courts cover to do whatever they want.  And what the Big Picture court wanted was to ignore sovereign immunity and un-shield a scheme under which non-Tribal stakeholders enjoyed a much stronger position within this particular moneylending operation. 

It’s hard to say whether courts have been so hard on Tribal LLCs in the lending context because courts don’t like moneylending, or because moneylending tribal LLCs have done a poor job of shaping themselves in line with Breakthrough and its progeny. 

Still, the “big picture” should now be clear.  Entities participating in this industry must exceed the standards that we know courts will apply.  And because moneylenders have made the law courts will apply to all Tribal LLCs, non-moneylending LLCs must, too. 

Anthony Broadman is a partner at Galanda Broadman PLLC. He can be reached at 206.321.2672, anthony@galandabroadman.com, or via www.galandabroadman.com.

Bree Black Horse To Address Microsoft Women's Group: "See Something. Say Something. Do Something."

On Monday night, June 11, Bree Black Horse will speak to Janes of Digital, a platform started by Microsoft for women who work in digital marketing. 

The topic for that night is "See Something. Say Something. Do Something."  Bree intends to discuss the historic invisibility of Native women, and her Indian civil rights work, including on behalf of Carmen Tageant, a Nooksack mother who has been sexually harassed and accosted via Facebook. 

As Carmen's lawyer, Bree has called for broader tribal "opposition to the harassment and violence perpetrated against her and countless other Native women across the Country." 

Carmen, Bree, and others who #StandWithCarmen have sought "to empower other women to boldly tell their stories as Carmen has and call for an end to the marginalization and abuse of Native women— including at the hands of Native men and tribal officials who know that complaints, if any, will almost certainly fall through legal and jurisdictional cracks." 

In recent weeks, Bree has successfully subpoenaed internet protocol information from Facebook, Verizon, and Comcast---over First Amendment and privacy concerns, ironically---to initially expose Carmen's cyber harassers at Nooksack.  But, as she will share with Janes of Digital, Bree believes the legal process is far too difficult for a woman to protect herself from cyber harassment and violence.

Bree was recently featured in a Seattle Times Pacific NW Magazine story (here) regarding "the different ways women from minority and marginalized populations connect with the #MeToo movement’s outpouring of stories about sexual harassment and violence."

Bree is an associate in the Seattle office of Galanda Broadman and an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma.  Her practice focuses on defending individuals’ civil rights in federal, state and tribal courts. She can be reached at (206) 735-0448 or bree@galandabroadman.com.

Gabe Galanda Named Western Washington University Distinguished Alumnus

On May 18, 2018, Western Washington University will honor Gabriel “Gabe” Galanda as a Distinguished Alumnus.

Gabe is being recognized for his staunch advocacy for Indian civil rights protection, especially in the context of tribal disenrollment.  He maintains that traditional indigenous kinship norms should over-ride colonial rules for tribal belonging, most notably blood quantum.

Last October, Gabe delivered a campus-wide lecture at Western titled, “Restoring Indigenous Kinship Amidst America’s Nationalist Movement.” He believes that indigenous kinship norms—rooted in family and place—provide a path towards resolution of America’s current identity crisis.

Last week Gabe delivered a speech at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, “Re-imagining Tribal Citizenship,” in which he urged indigenous peoples in America to restore traditional kinship rules and norms for purposes of self-rule, including determinations regarding who belongs to tribal communities.

As Indian Country Today Media Network observed when naming Gabe as one of “50 Faces of Indian Country” in 2016, he has emerged nationally “as one of the most outspoken critics of the practice” of disenrollment, the “roots of [which] lie in colonialism, not indigeneity.”

In 2015, Gabe co-authored a 92-page law review article, “Curing the Disenrollment Epidemic: In Search of a Remedy.”  His article was recently named one of the Top 100 pieces of indigenous legal rights scholarship.

Gabe has defended nearly 600 Indians against disenrollment, including having kept the Nooksack 306 where they belong since 2013; obtained a “watershed decision” for 66 Grand Ronde Chief Tumulth Descendants; and protected 132 Elem Pomo Indians from being exiled, which would empty their Reservation.

Gabe was born and raised in Port Angeles, Washington.  In 1995, he received his A.A. from Peninsula College, where he served as Associate Student Body President.  He received his B.A. in English Literature from Western in 1997, and his J.D. from the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona in Tucson, in 2000.  At Arizona, he served as President of the Native American Law Students Association.

Gabriel S. Galanda is the managing lawyer of Galanda Broadman, PLLC, in Seattle. Gabe is a descendant of the Nomlaki and Concow Tribes, belonging to the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Northern California.  He can be reached at (206) 300-7801 or gabe@galandabroadman.com.

"We were not 'governments' in 1492....We were kinship societies."

This blog is based on a talk that Gabe Galanda gave at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, in conjunction with Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development forum, "The Next Horizon," on May 1st. Gabe thanks Seattle City Councilwoman Debora Juarez, Dr. David Wilkins, and Professors Robert Williams, Matthew Fletcher, and Eric Eberhard for their teachings and research insights.

"The culture comes from the language." -- Darrell R. Kipp, Blackfeet

We were not “governments” in 1492. 

We were not “nations” in 1787. 

We were not “citizens” in 1823 or 1832.

We were kinship societies when Columbus arrived to Haiti, when the framers drafted the Constitution, and when Chief Justice John Marshall authored the Marshall Trilogy. 

We belonged to our societies as members, as in family members, not as citizens.

We were self-governing, but we were not governments.

“Native nations” and “tribal citizens” are racial formations, established by the colonizer under its processes—not ours.

Native nationhood was the mode by which Treaties and other laws could be forged to dispossess us of our lands—it was a mode of annihilation.

Native nationhood, to the extent exclusive of traditional kinship norms, remains a mode by which indigenous peoples will be extinguished.

If we continue to determine who belongs through use of racial formations, rather than through kinship rules, we will eventually be terminated.  Just look at the Trump Administration’s most recent treatment of tribes as a racial group for federal Medicaid reimbursement purposes.

Unless we return to the ways of kinship, we will eventually cease to exist.

Who were we?

Vine Deloria, Jr.’s auntie, Ella Deloria, said it best, writing from New York City in 1944:

All peoples who live communally must first find some way to get along together harmoniously and with a measure of decency and order.  This is a universal problem.  Each people, even the most primitive have solve it in its own way.  And that way, by whatever rules and controls it is achieved, is, for any people, the scheme of life that worked, The Dakota people of the past found a way: it was through kinship.

Kinship was the all-important matter.  Its demands and dictates for all phases of social life were relentless and exact . . . . By kinship all Dakota people were held together in a great relationship that was theoretically all-inclusive and co-extensive with the Dakota domain.  Everyone who was born a Dakota belonged in it; nobody need be left outside. . .

[T]he ultimate aim of Dakota life, stripped of accessories, was quite simple: One must obey kinship rules; one must be a good relative. . . . In the last analysis every other consideration was secondary—property, personal ambition, glory, good times, life itself. . .

[T]hose who kept the rules consistently and gladly, this honoring all their fellows, were good Dakotas—meaning good citizens of society, meaning persons of integrity and reliability.  And that was practically all the government there was.

“Speaking of Indians,” "Part II, 'A Scheme of Law That Worked,'" at pp. 25-32.

Illustrating the still pervasive universal nature of kinship and belonging at birth, as Ms. Deloria described, are Articles 9 and 22 of of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which provide respectively:

Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right to belong to an indigenous community or nation, in accordance with the traditions and customs of the community.

Indigenous peoples have the right to determine their own identity or membership in accordance with their customs and traditions.

Rather ironically, under the colonizer’s words governing its own citizens' belonging, citizenship is guaranteed, quite simply, to all who are born unto the land known today as the United States.  That bedrock American rule is established by the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment and affirmed by 5 U.S.C. 1402, titled “Nationals and citizens of United States at birth.”

Pre-conquest we, too, were inclusive peoples, who identified and governed according to very simple but exacting kinship rules.  But those ancient rules began to vanquish in the 19th Century.

How did we become "nations"?

In 1823, in Johnson v. McIntosh, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, immediately before declaring us “fierce savages,” observed: “When conquest is complete . . . the conquered inhabitants can be blended with the conquerors, or safely governed as a distinct peoples.”

By 1831, he “denominated” us “domestic dependent nations,” in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia.  Whether as "savages" or "dependent nations," these are racial formations from which modern Native nationhood has evolved. 

Exclaiming the United States' racial subjugation of indigenous peoples, the following year in Worcester v. Georgia, Justice Marshall explained:

The words ‘treaty’ and ‘nation' are words of our own language, selected in our diplomatic and legislative proceedings, by ourselves, having each a definite and well understood meaning.  We have applied them to Indians . . .

The “our” and “we” is the colonizer.  Words like “nation” were the colonizer’s—not ours.

Lest you have any doubt about that term, as applied to the then so-called Cherokee Nation in Worcester, consider Professor Rennard Strickland’s words in “Fire and Spirits”:

Englishmen were looking for Native versions of British courts and . . . concluded, in a supreme gesture of ethnocentrism, that the Cherokees had no system of law.

In truth, the Cherokee conception of law was simply different from the more traditional Western idea of law.  To the Cherokees law was the early representation of a divine spirit order. . .

The ongoing social process could not, in the Cherokee way, be manipulated by law to achieve policy goals.  There was no question of man being able to create law because to the Cherokee the norms of behavior were a sovereign command from the Spirit World.  Man might apply to the divinely ordained rules, but no earthly authority, was empowered to formulate rules of tribal conduct.

Indeed, treaties and positive law, including those establishing tribal “nationhood” and “government” in the 1800s, were then the colonizer’s words and ways—not ours.

As to Cherokee kinship and belonging, Professor Strickland offers these words:

Society is divided into separate classes and ranks which were created by the Spirits.  There is no significant stigma attached to class membership.  All classes, both men and women, are of great value socially and have important and useful roles in Cherokee society. . . .

Legal norms existed on four levels among ancient Cherokees. . . .

The first of the norms were those governing relationships between man and the supernatural—the Spirit Beings.  Second were the norms prescribing conduct of the individual Indian towards specific public order, issues relating to the entire village or tribe.  Next were the norms concerning clan rights and duties.  Finally, there were a limited number of norms on individual or personal questions.

In other words, kinship rules and norms pervaded, until the Marshall Trilogy took hold.

How did we cease self-rule by kinship?

Aided by the Marshall Trilogy's discovery doctrine and native nationhood model, Treaties and the General Allotment (Dawes) Act of 1887 were promulgated.  Each of those federal laws were intended to, and operated to, pulverize our kinship ties to multi-millions of acres of homelands. 

The Dawes Rolls, created by the U.S. in only six months and thus demonstrably incomplete and incorrect, were especially destructive to kinship.  Kinship societies-turned-tribes have since used those federal rolls as their so-called base rolls—as the foundation of who belongs, or doesn’t.

Then in 1934, the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA), deciding for tribes, who belongs to tribes, declaring Indians to be “members” if ½ degree or more of "blood quantum" and if in residence on reservations. 

Blood quantum is a racial fiction; one's human blood doesn't segregate mathematically.

Residence, although once a predominate form of kinship, took on a new meaning after arbitrary lines were drawn by the colonizer to concentrate Indian homelands onto reservations, in order to allow Manifest Destiny to flourish from coast to coast.

Now, 85 years later, the colonizer’s membership rules—and norms—indeed racism and classism—have supplanted kinship rules.  That is why we refer to ourselves as a race of “full bloods,” “half bloods,” and “mixed bloods”; and classes of “res Indians,” “off-res Indians,” and “urban Indians.”

Under the IRA, family members became political members of tribal constitutional governments and corporate entities, particularly under boilerplate constitutions and corporate charters foisted upon tribes by John Collier and his followers, including a nascent National Congress of American Indians.  Under those new tribal laws, tribal relatives can be “disenrolled” from the tribe. 

I have yet to discover an indigenous word that translates even close the word “disenrollment,” exclaiming the wholly foreign nature of that concept to us as indigenous peoples.

How did money over-rule kinship?

Dating back to the federal Lacey Act of 1906 and continuing through the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) of 1988, belonging has been increasingly individualized and monetized, through “pro rata” or “per capita” distributions of tribal communal wealth, by tribes to tribal members. That federally designed regime is also intended to pulverize us into oblivion. 

In fact, fueled by that new individual wealth, and corresponding graft and greed, 15% of today’s federally recognized tribes have disenrolled their kin.  In the case of the Elem Colony of Pomo Indians, tribal politicians are attempting to disenroll 100% of the tribe’s on-Colony population.  They are purportedly legislating themselves into oblivion. It is self-termination.

Addled by per capita greed, tribes are also imposing enrollment moratoria, meaning no longer enrolling or including their children among those who belong. 

Think about that for a minute. 

We talk, almost tritely, of the sustaining as indigenous peoples for sake of the Seven Generations.  Yet an increasing number of tribes are severing inter-generational kinship ties.  They are disowning their Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Generations.

In today's final analysis, kinship is secondary—to money. Venal exclusion has supplanted traditional inclusion.

Where do we go from here?

We cannot throw out the Native nationhood model.  Or abrogate Treaties, or IRA Constitutions or Bylaws.  Or abandon tribal capitalism via economic development. 

Tribes would be terminated without the modern nation-to-nation relationship; without Treaties as the Supreme Law of the Land per the U.S. Constitution; or without economic resources and the political power that accompanies those dollars.

Kinship, however, must be infused into Native nationhood, and throughout Native nation institutions as we know them today. 

In particular, we must use traditional kinship norms to define ourselves and our belonging.  That can mean maintaining the rubric and language of citizenship and IRA membership, if necessary.  

But we cannot self-define who belongs according to the Dawes Rolls or other federal censuses, or blood quantum, or colonial residential criteria, or gaming per capita checks.

We cannot allow racism, classism, individualism, nor capitalism to self-define us any longer.

We must re-define ourselves according to kinship rules.  We must re-define ourselves according to birthright.  We must re-define ourselves according to spiritual and cultural indigenous norms. 

If we do not, our nascent Native nations will rot from our core, until we eventually fall.

Gabriel S. Galanda is the managing lawyer of Galanda Broadman, PLLC, in Seattle. Gabe is a descendant of the Nomlaki and Concow Tribes, belonging to the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Northern California.  He can be reached at (206) 300-7801 or gabe@galandabroadman.com.

9th Circuit Says Jurors Needn’t Read Jailers’ Minds to Find Liability

By Ryan Dreveskracht

On Monday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals made clear that jurors do not need to be mind-readers when it comes to determining whether adequate medical care was provided to pretrial detainees. In clarifying that these Fourteenth Amendment claims must be evaluated under an objective standard—as opposed to the Eighth Amendment’s subjective standard—the Court significantly eased the burden on § 1983 plaintiffs.

In Farmer v. Brennan, the U.S. Supreme Court held that under the Eighth Amendment's "cruel and unusual punishments" clause jail employees must "take reasonable measures to guarantee" an inmate's safety, which includes providing "adequate . . . medical care."  511 U.S. 825, 832 (1994).  The Court then articulated a two-prong inquiry for determining whether this standard is violated. 

First, the jury must consider whether a person is detained “under conditions posing a substantial risk of serious harm."  Id. at 834.  Second, the jailers who put the inmate in those conditions must both "know[] of" and purposefully disregard those conditions.    Id. at 837.  In other words, the jury must go into jailers' heads and determine (1) whether they actually believed the inmate was put at an increased risk of harm or death, and (2) whether the jailer made the conscious decision to keep the inmate in harm’s way despite that risk.  As the Court observed, under this test a jailer could escape liability under the second prong if he or she “knew the underlying facts but believed (albeit unsoundly) that the risk to which the facts gave rise was insubstantial or nonexistent.”  Id. at 844.  Or, alternatively, a jailer so aware would not be liable if he or she “responded reasonably to the risk, even if the harm ultimately was not averted.” Id.

Four years later, in Frost v. Agnos, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that "[b]ecause pretrial detainees' rights under the Fourteenth Amendment are comparable to prisoners' rights under the Eighth Amendment . . . we apply the same standards."  152 F.3d 1124, 1128 (9th Cir. 1998).  Other Courts of Appeal held likewise, refusing to "distinguish between Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment standards."  Funchess v. John Doe #1, No. 96-4767, 1997 WL 12785, at *2 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 10, 1997).  In other words, the law did not distinguish between convicted felons serving their sentence and pretrial detainees not convicted of anything—Farmer's subjective test applied to everyone.

Then, in 2015, the Supreme Court decided Kingsley v. Hendrickson, holding, in relevant part:

In deciding whether the force deliberately used [by the officer on the pretrial detainee] is, constitutionally speaking, “excessive,” should courts use an objective standard only, or instead a subjective standard that takes into account a defendant's state of mind?  It is with respect to this question that we hold that courts must use an objective standard.  In short, . . . a pretrial detainee must show only that the force purposely or knowingly used against him was objectively unreasonable.

135 S.Ct. 2466, 2472-73 (2015).  Since "a subjective standard will be more demanding, requiring the plaintiff to allege specific facts that shed light on the defendant's mental state, rather than more general notions of what should have been objectively clear," Kingsley's application of the objective test to Fourteenth Amendment excessive force cases was a huge step forward for civil rights plaintiffs.  Kedra v. Schroeter, 876 F.3d 424, 454 (3d Cir. 2017).

Shortly after Kingsley, in Castro v. County of Los Angeles, the Ninth Circuit held that Kingsley's Fourteenth Amendment objective test applied to "failure to protect" cases, as well as those where officers use excessive force.  833 F.3d 1060, 1070 (9th Cir. 2016).  As the Castro court explained:

Excessive force applied directly by an individual jailer and force applied by a fellow inmate can cause the same injuries, both physical and constitutional. Jailers have a duty to protect pretrial detainees from violence at the hands of other inmates, just as they have a duty to use only appropriate force themselves. . . . [T]here are significant reasons to hold that the objective standard applies to failure-to-protect claims as well.

What followed was an erratic series of rulings by district courts “on whether to extend the objective reasonableness standard of review set forth in Kingsley to cases of pretrial detainees that do not involve the use of excessive force (i.e., cases challenging medical treatment . . . ).”  Castillo v. Dubose, No. 14-0987, 2017 WL 3765772, at *6 (M.D. Ala. Jul. 31, 2017) (quotation omitted).  In the Ninth Circuit, district courts that addressed Kingsley's objective standard applied it with hesitancy, holding, for example, that "factual allegations are sufficient under either standard."  Williams v. Cty., No. 15-1760, 2016 WL 4745179, at *6 (D. Or. Sept. 12, 2016); see also Bremer v. Cty. of Contra Costa, No. 15-1895, 2016 WL 6822011, at *6 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 18, 2016) ("The Court need not decide whether the subjective or objective standard applies here as no reasonable jury could find the Individual Defendants were deliberately indifferent under either standard.").  Defendants, of course, continued to argue that a subjective standard should be applied in all but excessive force and failure-to-protect cases, while inmates and the families of deceased inmates argued that the less-demanding objective standard applied.

Then, on Monday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order that provided clarity once and for all.  In Gordon v. Cty. of Orange the court expressly held that that "claims for violations of the right to adequate medical care brought by pretrial detainees against individual defendants under the Fourteenth Amendment must be evaluated under an objective deliberate indifference standard."  No. 16-56005, 2018 WL 1998296, at *5 (9th Cir. Apr. 30, 2018). 

Gordon leaves jurors no longer needing to read jailers’ minds in order to find them liable for failure to render medical care to inmates.

Ryan Dreveskracht is an attorney with Galanda Broadman, PLLC, in Seattle.  His practice includes civil rights litigation against jails and prisons for their unlawful treatment of inmates.  He can be reached at (206) 909-3842 or ryan@galandabroadman.com.

Gabe Galanda to Talk Tribal Kinship At Harvard University

From Ella Deloria's Speaking of Indians (1944)

Next week, Gabe Galanda will deliver an Insight Blast titled, "Re-Imagining Tribal Citizenship," at Harvard University. 

Gabe will discuss the acute need for indigenous peoples to infuse historic tribal kinship values into modern modes and institutions of self-governance, particularly in regard to belonging.

Gabe's talk will occur at the John F. Kennedy School of Government on May 1, in conjunction with a Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development forum: "The Next Horizon." 

The invite-only forum "will bring together the leaders, the innovators, the thinkers, and the decision makers who are fighting to make Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination realities. The peer-to-peer events of the gathering will help chart the path forward."

Gabriel S. Galanda is the managing lawyer of Galanda Broadman, PLLC, in Seattle. Gabe is a descendant of the Nomlaki and Concow Tribes, belonging to the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Northern California.  He can be reached at (206) 300-7801 or gabe@galandabroadman.com.

Gabe Galanda To Keynote American Indian Law Journal Banquet: "Keeping it Real: Indian Lawyers & Indian Law Scholarship”

Gabe Galanda will be the Keynote Speaker at the American Indian Law Journal's End-of-the-Year Banquet on Friday, April 27th at Seattle University School of Law. Gabe's speech is titled, "Keeping it Real: Indian Lawyers & Indian Law Scholarship.”  He will discuss the growing need for Indian lawyering and scholarship that are rooted in tribal values, morals and ethics.

Gabriel S. Galanda is the managing lawyer of Galanda Broadman, PLLC, in Seattle. Gabe is a descendant of the Nomlaki and Concow Tribes, belonging to the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Northern California.  He can be reached at (206) 300-7801 or gabe@galandabroadman.com.

Dreveskracht, Galanda Publish ABA "Tribal Court Litigation" Deskbook Chapter

The American Bar Association Business Law Section just published the 2018 edition of Annual Review of Developments in Business and Corporate Litigation, which includes a 58-page Tribal Court Litigation chapter co-authored by Indian litigators Ryan Dreveskracht and Gabe Galanda of Galanda Broadman.  An excerpt from the introduction:

“Indian law”—a body of tribal and federal law predominately—is the foundation for every transaction arising in or from Indian Country. Almost every arena of commercial practice now intersects with Indian law, including tax, finance, merger and acquisition, sales, secured transactions, antitrust, debt collection, real estate, environmental, energy, land use, employment, and litigation. Therefore, virtually every business lawyer or litigator needs to have some working knowledge of Indian law. This chapter seeks to provide that basic understanding.

Gabe served as the Editor-in-Chief of Annual Review for the 2007 through 2010 editions, and has co-authored the chapter each year since 2006. This is Ryan’s seventh year co-authoring the chapter.  They collaborated on the 2018 edition of the chapter with Grant Christensen, associate professor at the University of North Dakota School of Law, and Heidi McNeil Staudenmaier, a senior partner with Snell & Wilmer LLP.

Joe Sexton, Yakama Nation Present to Society for American Archaeology Re: Kennewick Man

On Saturday, Joe Sextion presented, along with Yakama Nation Leadership, at the Society for American Archaeology's 83rd Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, regarding: "The Cultural Affiliation of the Ancient One (Kennewick Man)." According to the program description:

The Colville, Nez Perce, Umatilla, Wanapum, and Yakama utilized NAGPRA’s preponderance of evidence standard to demonstrate a relationship of shared group identity with the Ancient One. The tribe’s proactive approach with collaborative partners overcame the hegemonic ideology of a federal agency to repatriate the Ancient One for his final journey to the Creator. For over twenty years, the Claimant Tribes asserted their cultural affiliation. Our purpose here is to illustrate that, although he was repatriated under the WIIN Act of 2016, there does exist evidence of a shared group identity based upon all available, population specific data for the Columbia Plateau. This information provided the evidentiary basis for the identification of an earlier group and cultural affiliation to the Claimant Tribes. The Ancient One falls within the variability exhibited at the same time period and throughout time on the Columbia Plateau. He was not outside of the norm for the population existing during the Early Cascade period and for the populations that followed for which he has a shared group identity. The Claimant Tribes are in fact culturally affiliated to the Ancient One and have never signed anything that legally says they are not.

Joe Sexton is Of Counsel with Galanda Broadman, PLLC.  Joe’s practice focuses on tribal sovereignty issues, including complex land and environmental issues, and economic development matters.  He can be reached at (509) 910-8842 and joe@galandbroadman.com.

Bree Black Horse Elected to National Native Bar Association Board

At its Annual Meeting on April 4th in Scottsdale, Arizona, the National Native American Bar Association (NNABA) elected Bree Black Horse to its Board of Directors.  Bree will serve a two-year term as an at-large member of the Board.

Bree, at center, with Lloyd Miller, Heather Kendall-Miller, Gabe Galanda and Eric Eberhard, at the FBA Annual Indian Law Conference in Scottsdale on April 4

Bree is an associate in the Seattle office of Galanda Broadman and an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma.  Her practice focuses on defending individuals’ civil rights in federal, state and tribal courts. She can be reached at (206) 735-0448 or bree@galandabroadman.com.