Indian Land Claims Research Articles

Wabanaki Nationhood, Sovereignty, and the State of Maine: A Discussion on Wabanaki-American Treaty History and the 1980 Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Acts

Wabanaki Nationhood, Sovereignty, and the State of Maine: A Discussion on Wabanaki-American Treaty History and the 1980 Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Acts

American Indian Land Rights, Rich Indian Racism, and Newspaper Coverage in New York State, 1988-2008

Recent scholarship argues that American Indian political activities are increasingly being understood in the context of gaming and that a growing "rich Indian racism" portrays American Indian nations as rich, greedy, and inauthentic. This article analyzes newspaper coverage on American Indian land claims to test the proposition of rich Indian racism. Data on national coverage show that language that references gaming has characterized much of the reporting on land claims. An analysis of newspaper coverage of land claims in central New York reveals a tendency to describe and characterize American Indian nations and their claims negatively, as greedy, threatening, or unfair.

Saving Maine for the Indian: The Legacy of Joseph Nicolar’s <i>The Life and Traditions of the Red Man</i>

I read book once again. This time it struck me how Indian way of life and culture is built largely on legends and passed down from one generation to next--and how my grandfather tried to communicate this in written form. I see it as a preservation of what he knew, what he'd heard and learned directly. Concerned that old storytellers were dying off and that new generations would be swept up in assimilation, he gathered up their stories and put them in book form so that those who came later might learn and understand. --Charles Norman Shay (x-xi) In an audacious and unprecedented move on 26 October 2007, 188th Convention of Episcopal Diocese of Maine passed a resolution calling for Archbishop of Canterbury, titular head of worldwide Anglican Communion, and Queen Elizabeth II, Supreme Governor of Church of England, to disavow and rescind 1496 royal charter granted to John Cabot and his sons. (1) Originally issued by England's King Henry VII in March 1496, that charter established legal foundation for England's version of infamous Doctrine of Discovery. (2) Under charter, Cabot, his sons, and their heirs were authorized to conquer, occupy and possess any and all peoples and lands before this time were to all Christians. If unknown to all Christians, these peoples and lands were considered as yet undiscovered. (3) Thus, according to charter, islands, countries, regions or provinces of heathens and infidels, in whatsoever part of world placed, could now be claimed by Cabots for the dominion, title and jurisdiction of English crown (First 9). Of course, by 1496, large parts of Asia, Africa, and Middle East were already well known to Christian Europe and, following upon Christopher Columbus's voyages, Europe was now beginning to explore westward across Atlantic. In effect, therefore, charter issued to Cabots had its greatest impact in North America and, more specifically, in those territories supposedly yet undiscovered by Christian world and now legally available to be claimed for England by Cabot and all subsequent explorers sailing for British crown. proponents of 2007 resolution in Maine had no illusion that they were in any way reversing consequences of long and ugly history that unfolded from 1496 charter's Doctrine of Discovery. Nonetheless, they hoped at least to force their church into a public acknowledgment of a in which both church and crown had been complicit. As one member of October 2007 Convention put it, We who enjoy so much privilege owe it to those whose privilege was taken away to call a a wrong (188th). A few days after passage of resolution, John Dieffenbacher-Krall, a member of Diocese's Committee on Indian Relations, group that originally sponsored resolution, explained in Bangor Daily News: My objective is universal recognition that doctrine [of discovery] is repugnant. In his view, The doctrine ... should not be used to justify taking of and other rights from indigenous people (Harrison B1). Needless to say, Doctrine of Discovery had been used to justify England's claims to traditional tribal homelands in Maine only real property that Europeans understood indians to possess--and nothing in resolution passed by 2007 annual Convention of Episcopal Diocese of Maine does anything to alter this fact of dispossession. But return of land to Indians is not what motivated those who sponsored resolution. With 1980 settlement of Maine Indian Land Claims lawsuit, that dispossession had already been at least partially redressed. First filed on 17 July 1972 by Penobscot Nation and Passamaquoddy Tribe (and later joined by another federally recognized Maine tribe, Houlton Band of Maliseets), suit generally argued that federal government and State of Maine had broken or ignored long-standing treaty agreements to protect in perpetuity large swaths of tribal lands. …

The New Laches: Creating Title Where None Existed

Tribal land claims are facing a challenge from an old area of law. Courts have been paying special attention to the law of equity and how it can defeat tribal land claims. Specifically, the equitable defenses of laches, acquiescence, and impossibility were used by the Supreme Court to hand defeat to the Oneida Indian Nation on a tax issue. Since then, lower courts in the Second Circuit have used this precedent to deny Indian land claims. But are these three defenses based on precedent themselves? Rarely. Instead, they have been combined to create a defense, what I will call the new laches. This defense, so far used successfully in Indian land cases in New York state and unsuccessfully elsewhere, has been so broadly construed by the Second Circuit that, if this view is adopted nationwide, it could apply to any treaty-based claim brought by Indians or Indian tribes.

Human Rights and American Indian Land Claims

The Native Americans have been subject to the westward process of settlement since the US government forced them to part with their land. This policy has expanded the territorial base of the federal government to the detriment of the indigenous people's rights. For the Western Shoeshone, it was the Treaty of Ruby Valley 1863, which the USA has abrogated by annexing the Newe Segobia, that not all the tribe had sanctioned. The Dann band challenged this as an affront to human rights, and the Organisation of American States gave a landmark preliminary judgment in their favour in 2004, which the USA has rejected.

Indian Land Claims: Sherrill and the Impending Legacy of the Doctrine of Laches

Indian land disputes have been the source of legal controversy since the founding of the United States. In 1970, lands purchased, confiscated, or otherwise acquired by the United States from Indian tribes had an estimated value of over $560,000,000,000.x Indian tribes had remote success in the hard fought federal litigation of land claims until recently, but their future success is unlikely. Through its decision in City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation,1 the Supreme Court essentially accomplished what Justice Powell urged Congress to do in the majority opinion of County of Oneida v. Oneida Indian Nation {Oneida II) ten years prior3: It virtually extinguished redress for Indian land claims against states by using the doctrine of laches as a defense, essentially time-barring such claims due to undue or inexcusable delay. As a decade passed without legislation by Congress in this regard, Justice Stevens' dissent in Sherrill exposed what can only be called judicial activism involved in Justice Ginsberg's majority opinion, and how the Court effectively overlooked and overruled good standing law to reach its decision.4 The Court's decision in Sherrill will more than likely severely disrupt all Indian property right remedies in the lower courts, as exemplified by the decision in Cayuga Indian Nation v. Pataki.5 This note will address a general background of relevant Indian land claims and their success in the judicial system up to Sherrill, paying special attention to the Oneida case regarding the use of the doctrine of laches as applied to Indian land claims. This note will then discuss the likely consequences that

Moral Minimalism in American Indian Land Claims

This is an essay about Indian claims for the return of historically stolen lands, written from the perspective of a academic moral philosopher. I want to try to outline points of agreement and disagreement between Indian and Western moral conceptions and to seek common ground on which land claims can be more clearly evaluated and justified to both sides. To foreshadow my conclusions, I will argue that Indian nations seem morally entitled to the return of a significant land base and that there are good reasons for the United States to re-open consideration of Indian claims on a more serious and pluralistic basis than is now occurring or than occurred during the late Indian Claims Commission. On the other hand, the United States seems morally prohibited from transferring lands held by individual non-Indians in most circumstances.' Or at any rate, that is what I will argue-the test of the argument's effectiveness, as always, is whether it actually proves convincing to those who read it.

“The Legal Effect of the Judgment”: Indian Land Claims, Ecological Anthropology, Social Impact Assessment, and the Public Domain

The legal, cultural, and ecological issues surrounding Western Shoshone Indians’ claim to and use of the public domain in Nevada are examined through discussion of three cases of contested uses: plans for a mine in a proposed World Heritage Site; plans for a dam at a sacred site; and economic use of the public domain for stock grazing by a Western Shoshone family. Results of a research project aimed at documenting historic and contemporary uses of the area as well as Shoshone land claims reveal a challenge for anthropologists and other social scientists to include the political impact of institutional power on ecosystems in environmental studies.

The Continuing Saga of Indian Land Claims: The Catawba Indian Land Claim: A Giant among Indian Land Claims

Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation John C. Christie, Jr.; The Continuing Saga of Indian Land Claims: The Catawba Indian Land Claim: A Giant among Indian Land Claims. American Indian Culture and Research Journal 1 January 2000; 24 (1): 173–182. doi: https://doi.org/10.17953/aicr.24.1.w55742852146u137 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest Search

The Continuing Saga of Indian Land Claims: Not All Aboriginal Territory is Truly Irredeemable

Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Imre Sutton; The Continuing Saga of Indian Land Claims: Not All Aboriginal Territory is Truly Irredeemable. American Indian Culture and Research Journal 1 January 2000; 24 (1): 129–162. doi: https://doi.org/10.17953/aicr.24.1.4202473j304x3r50 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest Search

The Continuing Saga of Indian Land Claims: The Coeur D'Alene Tribe's Claim to Lake Coeur D'Alene

L'A. retrace de facon synthetique le conflit territorial entre les Indiens Coeur d'alene et l'Etat de l'Idaho (Etats-Unis) concernant le lac et la riviere Coeur d'alene qui faisaient traditionnellement partie de leur reserve. Apres une presentation historique de l'importance des ressources en eau pour les Coeur d'alene, et de l'etablissement de leur reserve, il decrit brievement la maniere dont l'Etat federal americain et la Cour Supreme des Etats-Unis sont intervenus dans la procedure judiciaire entre l'Etat de l'Idaho et les Coeur d'alene.

The Continuing Saga of Indian Land Claims: Concluding Commentary

The Continuing Saga of Indian Land Claims: Concluding Commentary

Replacing Regionalism: Abenaki Tales and "Jewett's" Coastal Maine

In 1980, the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Indians of Maine received an $81.5 million settlement from the federal government in exchange for abandoning claims to land in the state. On the one hand, the settlement was the largest Indian land claims victory of its kind in American history and included funds to repurchase 300,000 acres of land. On the other hand, the agreement-signed by then-President Jimmy Carter with a feather pen-was a compromise, as the Maine tribes had demanded the return of almost two-thirds of land in the state, which they argued had been taken from them illegally (Calloway 13, 95). From either perspective, however, the 1980 Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act made one thing clear: despite centuries of attempted genocide, Maine Indians continue to live on tribal lands. Although the US government did not recognize Maine Indians as US citizens until 1924 (even then many refused-and some continue to refuse-US citizenship) and did not grant federal recognition to the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy until the 1980 settlement, Native peoples have always maintained land and cultural ties to the region.' Nor are the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy the only New England Indians reclaiming land and undergoing cultural and political resurgence: inspired by the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy case, the Mashantucket Pequots of eastern Connecticut successfully argued for federal recognition in 1983, established the hugely profitable Foxwoods Casino, and have since repurchased roughly 3,000 acres of land.2 Despite this, however, most readings of literary and the New England with which it is most often associated implicitly or explicitly consider the region in relation to a history in which this presence on the land has been long (though shamefully) annihilated or removed. Even recent, historically informed analyses of turn-of-the-century regionalism focus on the story of US national and international hegemony during this period, and

Landscapes, land use, and the history of territory formation: An example from the Puebloan southwest

Territories are spatial units that encompass the broadest range of a society's land-use behaviors as well as the history of human interactions with the natural landscape. Drawing from published documents pertaining to the North American Indian Land Claims and to the prehistory and history of land use among the Hopi Indians of Arizona, this paper integrates spatial, material, and historical variables of land use behavior (1) to formulate an empirical definition of territory and (2) to develop a generalized life history of territory formation that can be applied explicitly to the archaeological record.

American Sacred Space.

1. Introduction, by David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal 2. Dirt in the Courtroom: Indian Land Claims and American OProperty Rights,O by Robert S. Michaelsen 3. Resacralizing Earth: Pagan Environmentalism and the Restoration of Turtle Island, by Bron Taylor 4. OAlexanders AllO: Symbols of Conquest and Resistance at Mount Rushmore, by Matthew Glass 5. Creating the Christian Home: Home schooling in Contemporary America, by Colleen McDannell 6. Locating Holocaust Memory: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, by Edward T. Linenthal 7. OA Big Wind Blew Up During the NightO: America as Sacred Space in South Africa, by David Chidester 8. American Sacred Space and the contest of History, by Rowland A. Sherrill

The constitutional status of Yukon Territory

AbstractThe Meech Lake Accord constitutional amendment proposal generated extensive debate throughout Canada and the Canadian north. Aboriginal and northern Canadians were particularly vocal in their opposition to the Accord. Northerners were especially offended by the ‘unanimity’ clause, which would have given every province a veto over the creation of new provinces in the north. This paper provides a brief history of the Yukon's constitutional status, and discusses options for future constitutional development, in the context of an impending Yukon Indian land claims settlement and the issues raised by the Meech Lake accord.

Haida Indian Land Claims and South Moresby National Park

(1990). Haida Indian Land Claims and South Moresby National Park. American Review of Canadian Studies: Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 7-30.

A Growing Partnership: Historians, Anthropologists and American Indian History

This article depicts the growth of interdisciplinary collaboration since World War II, and traces its antecendents in the nineteenth century. Attention is given especially to the emergence of the idea of culture in anthropology, and its supplanting of race as the discipline's central organizing concept. The implications for history of this revolution in ideas are noticed, especially in relation to Frontier history. The article argues that all theories and methods must conform to dated events and observed chronological sequences. An explosion in interdisciplinary collaboration occurred shortly after World War II. Like many sudden changes in the life of the mind, it was unpremeditated. As I get the story from surviving participants-you may call this hearsay if you wish, though the custom now is to say that one has consulted the oral tradition-the U.S. Congress of 1946 decided to get Indian land claims out of the way once and for all, and so it enacted the law establishing the United States Indian Claims Commission. The lawyers making up that commission decided to be what lawyers always want to be so, instead of acting as administrators, they set themselves up as judges. Every tribal claim turned into a lawsuit with lots of work for more lawyers on both sides. There was a scramble to buttress each case with the testimony of expert witnesses who were required to speak to both the customs and the history of the plaintiff tribes, and collaboration became a requirement of the circumstances. Apart from the practical judgments of the commission, the results of these proceedings were an archive and two massive sets of publications.' The Department of Justice granted a ten-year contract to anthropologist Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin to set up an interdisciplinary research center at Indiana University which created the Ohio Valley-Great Lakes Ethnohistory Project Archives-a mine of source materials and interpretive essays. It almost became an abandoned mine after the project's completion, but it has been rescued and put in order by the university's archaeology laboratory and an interested graduate student. The Claims Commission's studies have been published in a select letterpress edition by Garland Press and a comprehensive microfilm edition by Clearwater Press.2 I do not mean to suggest that all the interdisciplinary cooperation grew by happenstance from one act of Congress. By good fortune, however, that act came at a time when new conceptual tools made effective cooperation possible. These tools, it must be acknowledged, were forged by anthropologists, and historians have been a little slow in grasping them. They will be discussed further on, together with some of the problems they raise. Here let us notice other instances of collaboration in that prolific post-war era. In 1945, the interdisciplinary Conference on Iroquois Research began to meet, presided over informally by anthropologist William N. Fenton.3 In 1951,

A Growing Partnership: Historians, Anthropologists, and American Indian History

This article depicts the growth of interdisciplinary collaboration since World War II, and traces its antecendents in the nineteenth century. Attention is given especially to the emergence of the idea of culture in anthropology, and its supplanting of race as the discipline's central organizing concept. The implications for history of this revolution in ideas are noticed, especially in relation to Frontier history. The article argues that all theories and methods must conform to dated events and observed chronological sequences. An explosion in interdisciplinary collaboration occurred shortly after World War II. Like many sudden changes in the life of the mind, it was unpremeditated. As I get the story from surviving participants-you may call this hearsay if you wish, though the custom now is to say that one has consulted the oral tradition-the U.S. Congress of 1946 decided to get Indian land claims out of the way once and for all, and so it enacted the law establishing the United States Indian Claims Commission. The lawyers making up that commission decided to be what lawyers always want to be so, instead of acting as administrators, they set themselves up as judges. Every tribal claim turned into a lawsuit with lots of work for more lawyers on both sides. There was a scramble to buttress each case with the testimony of expert witnesses who were required to speak to both the customs and the history of the plaintiff tribes, and collaboration became a requirement of the circumstances. Apart from the practical judgments of the commission, the results of these proceedings were an archive and two massive sets of publications.' The Department of Justice granted a ten-year contract to anthropologist Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin to set up an interdisciplinary research center at Indiana University which created the Ohio Valley-Great Lakes Ethnohistory Project Archives-a mine of source materials and interpretive essays. It almost became an abandoned mine after the project's completion, but it has been rescued and put in order by the university's archaeology laboratory and an interested graduate student. The Claims Commission's studies have been published in a select letterpress edition by Garland Press and a comprehensive microfilm edition by Clearwater Press.2 I do not mean to suggest that all the interdisciplinary cooperation grew by happenstance from one act of Congress. By good fortune, however, that act came at a time when new conceptual tools made effective cooperation possible. These tools, it must be acknowledged, were forged by anthropologists, and historians have been a little slow in grasping them. They will be discussed further on, together with some of the problems they raise. Here let us notice other instances of collaboration in that prolific post-war era. In 1945, the interdisciplinary Conference on Iroquois Research began to meet, presided over informally by anthropologist William N. Fenton.3 In 1951,

The Land Claims Cases: Anthropologists in Conflict

In a session devoted to Anthropology and Indian Land Claims Litigation conducted in Bloomington, Indiana, in May, 1955, expert witnesses from both sides and one somewhat out-of-place attorney discussed not only the problems involved in proper adjudication of the cases now being prepared and heard but the potential usefulness to anthropology of the research findings being accumulated.* It appears from the partial transcript of the discussions which has been made available that there was general agreement among those who participated that the data were likely to be of such great value to ethnohistorians that something ought certainly to be done to bring the findings together and make them available examination by interested researchers and scholars. But there are other and related matters of more than parenthetical interest which came out of the symposium and which merit the consideration not only of those who are immediately involved in these cases but of the whole professional anthropological fraternity as well. For although the behavior of participants on both sides seems to have been decorous in the extreme, there is no escaping the faint tone of self-righteousness in the expression of those who are 'defending the Indians and the counter-assertive tone of belligerence of those who are working for the Justice Department. This has interest beyond providing us with proof of the essential 'humanness of anthropologists. For it is inevitable