A working group of faculty and students at the University of Texas at Austin is claiming that human rights are being violated by the United States’ construction of a wall on the Texas/Mexico border. The group submitted a series of briefing papers to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (the “Commission”), an inter-governmental body of [...]

Revenues at Arizona’s 22 tribal casinos fell by 7.5% in the past three months, according to the state Department of Gaming. Tribes shared $26 million with the state in the quarter that ended June 30. That was down from $28.1 million from the same period in 2007. “Gaming is like any other entertainment industry,” Sheila [...]

To my knowledge, most of the most than 106 federally recognized tribes in California do not have court systems. This leads to complicated jurisdictional problems when people attempt to sue tribes. The Hoopa Tribe in northern California has a full time judge to hear trials and appeals from that court go to the Northwest Intertribal [...]

The federal D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Cherokee tribal officials can be sued by the Freedmen. The case will return to the same federal judge who has already criticized the tribe for marginalizing the descendants of former African slaves. A key critic in Congress described the decision as a victory. Rep. Diane Watson(D-California) [...]

News From Indian Country reports that the Crow Tribe of Montana is seeking to expand its coal mining operations. The Tribe estimates that its reservation holds 9 billion tons of high quality coal, enough to meet the United States’ needs for almost a decade. The Tribe has tried casinos but they have all failed. Location, [...]

In June, the Anchorage Daily News reported that Shell was giving up on its plans to drill in 2008 in the Beaufort Sea. This was the second year that Shell made that decision to shelve its offshore drilling plans due to an unresolved court challenge. The June announcement of Shell’s decision came only a day [...]

Indian Country Today reports in part: “A woody biomass power generation project of the Warm Springs Tribe is under way after years of planning . . . An agreement is already in place with an undisclosed independently operated utility to purchase the tribe’s biomass power, he said. ”It brings in a reliable baseload allocation of [...]

Indian Country Today reports on an important new decision by the U.S. National Indian Gaming Commision that could cripple Class II gaming by tribes. “Concern . . . has arisen that the Indian Class II industry could be going down hard after a June 4 ruling of the National Indian Gaming Commission. NIGC Chairman Phil [...]

As I blogged yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice has uncovered its own illegal use of politics in making employee decisions. Read the Department of Justice Inspector General and internal ethics office report. In addition to using political viewpoints to make hiring decisions, at least one DOJ employee used her views against homosexuality to make [...]

News services are reporting that Sen. Ted Stevens from Alaska was indicted by a federal grand jury indictment on Tuesday on seven counts of making false statements. The U.S. Justice Department held a news conference at 1:20 p.m. to announce “a significant criminal matter.” The 28-page indictment outlining the charges against Stevens was released by [...]