Seminar on tribal legal topics: lots of info,
some key issues left out

    Calling Indian issues "the most controversial and misunderstood areas" of law, the Minnesota Institute of Legal Education (MILE) held a one-day seminar entitled "Tribal Issues in the New Millennium" on Feb. 26, 1998.
    Generally, participants were exposed to a wealth of solid material in the way of history and law relative to Indian issues through eight presenters comprising the faculty, as well as through their written summations in the manual. Those attending the seminar and recipients of the manual did indeed receive a primer in key issues, with hundreds of court decisions cited and existing trends in legal interpretation laid out. Scott Strand, for example, of the Minnesota Attorney General's Office, presented legal points and counterpoints in the Mille Lacs 1837 Treaty case.
    However, critics observed what they perceived to be overriding biases and omissions in the eight presentations as a whole. For example, the case for tribal sovereignty and sovereign immunity was laid out without equal weight to constitutional and other legal arguments against it. A trend towards "agreements" and legal "cooperation" between tribes, states, and the federal government - where state interests are often compromised - was more praised than criticized. Overall, in matters where state and tribal jurisdictions collide, the weight of MILE's seminar tended to favor the tribal side.
    The seminar came at a time when treaty hunting and fishing cases are to the fore in Minnesota, and when various jurisdictional issues are on the front burner across the state. Examples: a recent Memorandum of Understanding between the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), and the Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa tribal government wherein the state agrees not to seek primacy for conducting EPA's underground injection control program in three townships comprising the old 61,000-acre Mille Lacs Reservation which local residents and the state have traditionally argued no longer exists; the case of Leech Lake Band of Chippewa v. Cass County, Minnesota now before the U. S. Supreme Court, where the Band claims that even fee land (land other than Indian trust land) owned by Indians is not taxable; the situation where the Grand Portage Band claims its zoning laws and tribal court apply to non-Indians and non-Indian land within their reservation; with legal challenges to tribal sovereign immunity through which tribal governments shield themselves from lawsuits and liability for the safety and welfare of Indians and non-Indians alike.
    A regret by some was that the seminar overlooked the concerns of Indians and non-Indians critical of tribal "kangaroo" courts as extensions of dictatorial tribal governments guilty of civil rights violations and unaccountable to Band members. Also kept in the background, without laying out related issues, was the ongoing series of meetings between Minnesota Supreme Court justices and other legal people from the state's side and tribal judicial interests apparently aimed at eventual state recognition of tribal court decisions.
    All states have "full faith and credit" with other states and federal courts. Now the tribes are working with states to obtain the same power so states will fully enforce tribal courts judgements.
    Judge R.A. (Jim) Randall of the Minnesota State Court of Appeals has written two lengthy opinions about how tribal sovereignty is an ill-conceived legal quagmire. Randall writes, "Evidence is accumulating that the fairly recent creation of tribal courts in Minnesota may be part of a calculated plan by tribal governments and their advisors to create a totally controlled in-house court system to shield themselves from lawsuits and accountability in state district court where the mandates of state and federal constitutions apply.
    "Tribal 'sovereignty' is just one more indignity, one more outright lie, that we continue to foist on American citizens, the American Indian."

MILE, based in Minneapolis, is a non-profit "legal education provider" and bills itself as "a top provider of continuing legal education throughout the country."