Tribal Courts Research Articles

Retribution for tribal sovereignty: Settler colonial policing and civil justice impacts

Unique among marginalized groups, American Indians are both citizens of the United States and citizens of sovereign tribal nations, as recognized (but not granted) by federal Indian law. However, even as tribal nations exert increasing economic and political power, criminal legal outcomes for tribal members—who interface with an array of tribal, local, state, and federal law enforcement and justice systems—remain detrimental or are worsened. These outcomes also include increased contact with state courts and the delegitimization of tribal courts, which uniquely implicate the civil justice context. We use the settler colonial framework to investigate how tools of state criminal law, such as heavy policing and disparate punishment, may impact the civil justice needs of Indigenous people, and more broadly, the very sovereignty these policies aim to protect. Drawing on interviews and observations in tribal and county-level courts, we examine the experiences of American Indians and other stakeholders in Indian country. We identify how enforcement practices, surveillance of space, and the complexities of layered policing within a “jurisdictional maze” contribute to the deterioration of tribal sovereignty. We contextualize our findings by considering the historical, cultural, and socio-economic factors that influence the experiences of American Indians in the criminal justice system, and by examining the civil justice implications.

THE RIGHT TO A JUST REMEDY IN PRIVATE LAW—A RIGHT AND A HUMAN INSTINCT:AN ANALYSIS OF HOW GREED AND LAWLESSNESS REMOVES CONFIDENCE

This article explores the fundamental concept of justice and the right to a remedy in private law. Specifically, the question of whether the belief that justice will prevail is a spoiled concept to have, and only shared by populaces in places without corruption, rule of law issues, etc. The paper delves into the historical and global recognition of the rights of obligees, and scrutinizes the diminishing trust and conviction in justice, especially in jurisdictions plagued by corruption and weak rule of law. Bribery and corruption in judicial systems undermine access to remedies, particularly for the poor, and contribute to the erosion of faith in the judiciary. The analysis extends to non-state judiciaries, exploring the role of tribal courts in addressing private law matters in regions with challenges in formal legal systems. Ultimately, the paper contends that the instinct for justice is a timeless and universal human trait, inherent in the evolution of legal systems. While corruption and external influences can erode confidence, the desire for a just remedy remains engrained. Keywords: justice, corruption, judicial corruption, instinctive access to justice, sociology of remedies and their opinions, comparative legal systems

No Tribal Court is an Island? Citation Practices of the Tribal Judiciary

No Tribal Court is an Island? Citation Practices of the Tribal Judiciary

Tribal Court Improvement Program (ACF)

Federal Grants & ContractsVolume 47, Issue 9 p. 7-8 Grants Alerts Tribal Court Improvement Program (ACF) First published: 04 April 2023 https://doi.org/10.1002/fgc.32963Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Volume47, Issue96 April 2023Pages 7-8 RelatedInformation

An Intertribal Business Court

Few Indian reservations have any semblance of a private sector. Consequently, poverty and unemployment are major problems in much of Indian country. While there are many reasons why private enterprise is scarce in Indian country, one of the foremost reasons is businesses do not trust tribal courts. Businesses' distrust of tribal courts is not unique as outsiders often fear bias in foreign tribunals. Similarly, businesses are often concerned about a court's capacity to adjudicate complex disputes. Federal diversity jurisdiction was developed to allay fear of bias, and many states have developed business courts to address questions about court capacity. Tribes can overcome these issues by creating an intertribal business court (IBC). Tribes will be free to sculpt the IBC as they see fit. However, the IBC's intertribal nature will help reduce fears of bias, and an IBC's focus on business disputes will answer doubts about court capacity. An IBC will also make tribal law more accessible, further increasing confidence in this new tribunal. As businesses gain greater confidence in tribal legal institutions through the IBC, they will be more likely to operate in Indian country. Accordingly, the IBC could help to transform tribal economies.

Due Process and Equal Protection in Michigan Anishinaabe Tribal Courts

Due Process and Equal Protection in Michigan Anishinaabe Tribal Courts

Reclaiming the Reservation: Histories of Indian Sovereignty Suppressed and Renewed

In June 2021, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that tribal police have “the authority to detain temporarily and to search a non–Native American traveling on a public right-of-way running through a reservation for potential violations of state and federal law.”1 A win for advocates of Native nations’ sovereignty, the decision's unanimity elided a deeply contested history of tribal governmental power exercised over non-Indians. Readers of Alexandra Harmon's Reclaiming the Reservation: Histories of Indian Sovereignty Suppressed and Renewed know how significant the Court's decision in United States v. Cooley is, though. Her monograph masterfully documents the revitalization of tribal governments that began asserting their power with more force and fervor in the 1960s and ’70s. Specifically, Harmon charts the history of tribal policing of non-Indians on reservation land, a power never ceded to the United States but previously limitedly practiced by many nations. Pressures—such destructive behavior by non-Indians on and/or to tribal lands—and opportunities produced new urgency to reasserting tribal governance.Harmon's monograph is largely a case study of the Quinault and Suquamish nations, whose homelands are in the Pacific Northwest and whose respective reservations are surrounded by Washington State. Harmon's work moves gracefully from specific contexts, people, and politics to national movements and federal trends. She illuminates the power of pan-tribal organizations, the specific concerns of regional indigenous alliances, and the particularities of Quinault and Suquamish history. Reclaiming the Reservation culminates with Harmon's analysis of the 1978 Supreme Court case Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, in which the Supreme Court ruled that tribal courts did not have jurisdiction over non-Indians. Harmon ends her work by tracing the effects of Court's decision and the ways in which tribal governments have strengthened their power even in Oliphant's wake. Harmon's contribution is aided by extensive archival work, oral histories, and Harmon's own career in the field.In a strong monograph, Harmon's strongest chapter is her analysis (though take-down might be a more appropriate description) of Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist's majority opinion in Oliphant. Indeed, this chapter is the heart of—the call-to-action for—Reclaiming the Reservation. Harmon notes that “[m]ost of the court opinion was a narrative about the intentions of non-Indian legislators, administrators, legal advisors, and jurists—people who had roles in governing the United States and creating the records from which Rehnquist crafted his story” (p. 276). Harmon's work is a self-conscious corrective to a court opinion that obfuscated thicker histories produced by Indigenous people. As Harmon notes in her introduction, she purposefully casts Indians as the “principal protagonists,” centering “experiences little known outside Indian country” (p. 12). What emerges is a nuanced, rich exploration of sovereignty's fluidity and the determination of Indian people to create communities of integrity. The history that Harmon relates is the ultimate antidote to Rehnquist's “blinkered focus” on a non-Indian history Harmon proves selective and disingenuous (p. 262). Ultimately, Reclaiming the Reservation reminds its reader of history's centrality to law and the dangers of practicing the latter without the former.In her conclusion, Harmon situates her narrative as part of Native peoples’ ongoing project of maintaining and sharpening their tools of self-determination. Harmon's work examines one of the tools used in that battle: American law. In her final pages, she hints at the ultimate paradox of this situation—that in order to weaken the bonds of colonialism, Native Americans have used the colonial legal system. Rather than dismantle the system itself, this practice potentially lends credence to it. Yet Harmon suggests that the fight for Indigenous sovereignty transcends American law, that it draws on Indigenous cultures, legal communities, and communal histories. As she concludes her work, then, Harmon points the way for future scholars.

Life of the Indigenous Mind: Vine Deloria Jr. and the Birth of the Red Power Movement by David Martínez

Reviewed by: Life of the Indigenous Mind: Vine Deloria Jr. and the Birth of the Red Power Movement by David Martínez Gregory D. Smithers (bio) Life of the Indigenous Mind: Vine Deloria Jr. and the Birth of the Red Power Movement by David Martínez University of Nebraska Press, 2019 FOR MANY OF US working in the fields of Native American and Indigenous studies, the moment we first read Vine Deloria Jr.'s Custer Died for Your Sins was transformative. I first read Deloria's 1969 classic as a teenager in the late 1980s. Reading Custer proved exhilarating; it sparked new insights and fresh questions. Deloria's style had me hooked. Anthropologists did not write like he did; historians certainly didn't. Since my teenage encounter with Custer, I've returned to Deloria's work regularly. Each time I learn something new. David Martínez's brilliant Life of the Indigenous Mind taught me even more about Deloria. Written in clear prose and thoroughly researched, Martínez organizes his analysis around Custer; We Talk, You Listen (1970); God Is Red (1973); and Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties (1974)—four key books in Deloria's influential career. Over ten chapters, Martínez covers issues ranging from tribal self-determination to Indigenous epistemologies. Today, most humanists and social scientists incorporate these themes into their work as a matter of course. But when Deloria began writing about self-determination and Indigenous knowledge as vital to the well-being of Native people—first in his role as head of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) and later in his books and essays—he blazed a trail that continues to provide intellectual and political clarity on issues that still resonate across Indian Country. Martínez explains that Deloria made no pretense to the phony objectivity that characterized white scholarship. He wrote as an Indigenous person, specifically as a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and directed his message to "us"—other Native Americans (5). As Martínez explains in chapter 1, Deloria urged Indigenous people to work from within to resist American colonialism by advocating for a tribal court system that would buttress the self-determination of Native nations. Indigenous self-determination, or what Deloria referred to as "tribalism," required bold leadership at the tribal level (65). As Martínez explains in chapters 2 and 3, this meant Indigenous [End Page 162] leaders needed to rise to the challenge of reconnecting communities to the land and throwing off the shackles of termination policy. Indeed, the United States government must fulfill its treaty obligations by recognizing the sovereignty of Indian nations and restoring the nation-to-nation relationship enshrined in hundreds of treaties. Deloria recognized that achieving this new political reality would require a radical shift in how Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) bureaucrats "managed" Indian affairs (105). It would also necessitate creative new thinking out of Indian Country. Overturning what Deloria called the "atrocity" of termination would not be easy (109). However, Martínez notes that Deloria was not alone in championing tribal government, with Indigenous leaders and writers like D'Arcy McNickle also devoting themselves to the cause of self-determination in the decades after World War II. As Martínez argues in chapters 5 and 6, Deloria understood that Indigenous self-determination meant changing how Native people saw themselves and how settlers saw Indigenous people. This is where Deloria offered what, for his time, were stunning insights about the importance of political and cultural self-determination. Native Americans were not individual "others," something that made liberal civil rights discourse ill-suited to Indigenous politics. By taking the term "tribalism" away from anthropologists, Indigenous people could begin to undo stereotypes imposed on them over centuries by Christian missionaries, anthropologists, and politicians. To do so, Deloria insisted that Native people must come together if they hoped to protect their own rights, advance the cause of sovereignty, and articulate their own stories. Martínez has produced a rich and rewarding book. He is balanced in his critiques of Deloria's writings and careful to contextualize Deloria's political motives for self-determination. For those hoping to read a biography of Deloria that...

Review: Mass Murder in California’s Empty Quarter: A Tale of Tribal Treachery at the Cedarville Rancheria, by Ray A. March

Review: <i>Mass Murder in California’s Empty Quarter: A Tale of Tribal Treachery at the Cedarville Rancheria</i>, by Ray A. March

Using Consent to Expand Tribal Court Criminal Jurisdiction

Using Consent to Expand Tribal Court Criminal Jurisdiction

Twentieth Century Black and Native Activism Against the Child Taking System

This Article argues that the historical record supports activism that takes the abolition of the child welfare system as its starting point, rather than its reform. It explores the birth of the modern child welfare system in the 1950s as part of the white supremacist effort to punish Black communities that sought desegregation of schools and other public accommodations; and Native communities that fought tribal termination and the taking of indigenous land. Beginning with the “segregation package” of laws passed by the Louisiana state legislature in 1960, the Article shows how cutting so-called “illegitimate” children off the welfare program, called Aid to Dependent Children, (ADC) and placing those whom their mothers could no longer support in foster care was an explicit response to school desegregation. While the National Urban League initially mounted a formidable national and international mutual aid effort, “Operation Feed the Babies,” its ultimate response—appealing to the federal government to reform the welfare and child welfare systems— backfired in disastrous ways. The Eisenhower administration responded by providing federal funds for a program it called ADC-foster care, giving states resources to dramatically expand the foster care system, resulting in hundreds of thousands of Black children in foster homes within a year. Native Tribal nations, in contrast, fought throughout the late 1960s and 70s to get states out of Indian child welfare. After a decade of activism, in 1978, they succeeded in passing the Indian Child Welfare Act, which put American Indian kids under the jurisdiction of tribal courts instead of the states’. Over the next decades, the number of Native children in foster care shrank dramatically. While history rarely offers clear guidance for the present, these two stories strongly suggest the limits of reform for state child welfare systems, and the wisdom of contemporary activists who call for abolition.

Tribal Pardons: A Comparative Survey

This paper surveys American Indian tribal justice systems to assess whether collateral consequences attach to convictions and whether a pardon or expungement process exists to remove tribal convictions. Tribal criminal jurisdiction is often limited to lesser crimes and only those occurring on a reservation by members of the tribe; with exceptions, other cases are transferred to U.S. state or federal court. The framework of the tribal pardon power varies widely across jurisdictions: it may be exercised by a tribal executive, a tribal legislature or council, a specially appointed pardons board or committee, a vote of the tribal membership, or some combination of the above. Some jurisdictions instead have a traditional peacemaking, forgiveness, or reconciliation ritual process in lieu of a true pardon or expungement process. Many Indian tribes impose collateral consequences for convictions both in tribal court and in state or federal court. Most commonly, these consequences restrict tribal membership and rights, including the right to vote in tribal elections or hold tribal office, but they may extend to housing, gaming licenses, tribal employment, and other areas. Many tribal jurisdictions do not have a pardon or expungement process, despite having collateral consequences attach to convictions. Several tribal courts have considered whether their tribal constitutions create an implied pardon power where one is not specifically provided for in tribal law. As a normative matter, this paper takes the position that tribal jurisdictions should have a pardon or expungement process (or its equivalent in indigenous law) where collateral consequences attach to conviction.

On Shared Suffering: Judicial Intimacy in the Rural Northland

Rural state and tribal court judges in the upper US Midwest offer an embodied alternative to prevailing understandings of “access to justice.” Owing to the high density of social acquaintanceship, coupled with the rise in unrepresented litigants and the impossibility of most proposed state access to justice initiatives, what ultimately makes a rural courtroom accessible to parties without counsel is the judge. I draw on over four years of ethnographic fieldwork and an interdisciplinary theoretical framework to illuminate the lived consequences and global implications of judges' responses, which can be read as grassroots-level creativity, as resistance, or simply as “getting by.”

Investigating Access to Justice, the Rural Lawyer Shortage, and Implications for Civil and Criminal Legal Systems

Access to justice (A2J) is associated with a number of metrics aimed at assessing the extent to which people enjoy equal access to courts, including pre-trial means for resolving disputes. While the concept is typically associated with civil justice systems, many factors associated with that context overlap with criminal justice system concerns. Central among these and of growing significance in the rural context is a worsening attorney shortage. When lawyers are not readily available, A2J is undermined, and costs to litigants and courts rise. Many quantitative factors measured in relation to A2J are unidimensional and have limited ability to reveal the full complexity of impediments to accessing legal processes. Simple metrics include attorney counts and caseload data. In both the civil and criminal contexts, the more revealing studies deploy mixed methods; in studying indigent defense, interviews with key stakeholders have proved particularly effective. Surveys of litigants, attorneys, and judges have proved highly informative, too, especially in rural settings without infrastructure for tracking data. Ethnographic research remains rare in both criminal and civil contexts. Meanwhile, law scholars often frame their work more explicitly in terms of constitutional and other legal issues, e.g., attorney ethics, implicated by access. This chapter, written for an anthology on Research Methods for Rural Criminologists, begins with a broad introduction to A2J. Next, it turns a geographic lens on the A2J landscape, highlighting spatial and place-specific issues as a prelude to discussing rural deficits, including the lawyer shortage. The chapter concludes by discussing rural criminal justice, with a focus on indigent defense. Tribal courts are beyond the scope of this chapter.

Habeas in Indian Country Syllabus

Habeas corpus is revered for its function as a guarantor of individual liberty against an overreaching sovereign. The Great Writ has served this function in Indian Country, but it is most often invoked in debates over the extent of tribal sovereignty and how much control the U.S. federal government has over tribes. To what sovereign a habeas petition should be submitted is a critical question, especially when two possible answers exist. This class investigates questions that revolve around this central theme of how habeas has functioned as a tool of expanding and curtailing tribal sovereignty: how have tribal members used habeas corpus throughout history? How did changing views of Indian jurisdiction over criminal matters affect the use of habeas? Is it right to place so much emphasis on habeas corpus as the only available remedy under one of the most significant pieces of federal Indian legislation, the Indian Civil Rights Act? How are tribes currently using habeas to shape debates on pressing issues such as tribal banishment, child welfare and custody, and domestic violence? How do restrictions on non-tribal habeas affect Indians in the that justice system? How do tribal courts facilitate habeas corpus petitions within the tribal justice system? This course is structured as a weekly seminar for a 13-week semester, with one class reserved for guest speakers and one reserved either for student presentations or a review session, depending on the assessment method chosen.

Higaonon Tribe Justice System

The tribal justice processes are part of a well-structured, time-proven social system geared towards reconciliation, maintenance, and social relationships improvement. The purpose of the study was to give an insight to the readers about the Higaonon Tribe Justice System. This study utilizes descriptive and qualitative approaches, specifically observation and immersion. The findings concluded that all violations that had happened within their tribal community should be settled within their tribal justice court. The result also revealed that the proven guilty should pay according to the gravity of the offense. However, when the suspect cannot afford the victims’ side’s demands, all Datu/Tribal Leaders will help. It was recommended that the legal department of the Municipality of Buenavista would conduct a Para- Legal Justice training to build the capacities of recognized mediators and potential leaders in the tribal criminal justice system to enhance their existing local knowledge. Through the Barangay officials and Police officer, the government shall introduce ‘’jail’’ into the tribal community to help government solve jail congestion. Moreover, the tribal council should appoint members of the barangay to record the settlement (paghusay) by having a hard document. These records will contain the date, time, and venue, persons attending during the hearing, and agreements or decisions. Thus, this record will significantly help for future reference.

Native Family Law, Indian Child Welfare Act and Tribal Sovereignty

There has been historical abuse of Native American children in the U.S. which began in the late 19th century in what is known as the residential school movement. It led to their forced integration on pain of removing and eradicating traces of their Indian heritage. The lack of protection for Indigenous children in being transferred from the reservations to non- Indian foster parents caused the U.S. Congress to use their legislative power and enact the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 [ICWA]. This has intervened in a process that is aimed at keeping Native American children within the tribe of their parents over the last 35 years. The result of the ICWA is that it has led to the greater supervision by tribal courts over children but it has caused a conflict to arise with the state courts due to jurisdictional reasons that allows guardianship and supervision to non-Indian parents. The Arizona Court of Appeals has recently ruled in Navajo Nation v. Arizona Department of Economic Security (2012) CA-JV 11-0123 that an Indian child can stay with his non-Native foster parents despite the protests of the tribe that it was infringing the provisions of the statute. This article is intended for the practitioner and policy makers and brings to the fore the issues of the preservation of children on reservation lands, and the need for a greater care consideration in the determination if they should be transferred to foster parents outside the tribe’s jurisdiction. It also conducts a comparison with Canada where First Nations children have also suffered abuse and where there is an ongoing debate about the course of action to prevent the appropriation of children from the reserves to live with the non-Native foster parents.

Tribal family healing court: A culturally sensitive approach to child welfare in tribal communities

ABSTRACTTribal Family Healing Court is a new concept that provides an alternative way to address dependency cases in the tribal child welfare system. This article serves as a conceptual proposal and provides an implementation framework for the Tribal Family Healing Court, designed for tribal sovereign courts. This approach intends to propose a way to address child maltreatment in tribal communities and reservations. It applies the family court model in tribal court with two unique contributions: education of historical trauma and infusion of the tribe’s culture into all aspects of the dependency case.

Dismembered: Native Disenrollment and the Battle for Human Rights by David E. Wilkins and Shelly Hulse Wilkins

Reviewed by: Dismembered: Native Disenrollment and the Battle for Human Rights by David E. Wilkins and Shelly Hulse Wilkins Jeffrey Shepherd Dismembered: Native Disenrollment and the Battle for Human Rights. By David E. Wilkins and Shelly Hulse Wilkins. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017. Pp. 208. Notes, bibliography, index). David E. Wilkins and Shelly Hulse Wilkins state that two events in 1996 sparked their awareness of banishment and disenrollment in Native communities. The first was the banishment of George Whitecalf from the Monacan tribe in Virginia, primarily due to a change in political leadership, and the second was the appeals court ruling in Poodry v. Tomawanda Band of Seneca Indians that the federal government could review the banishment of tribal members. Whitecalf's banishment was eventually reversed, and he regained full tribal membership. But the Poodry ruling remained largely ignored by courts who gave preference to an earlier Supreme Court decision favoring the broad powers over tribal membership held by Native governments. Thus, we learn that membership and banishment are part of a wide array of complicated relationships associated with tribal sovereignty and treaty rights, human rights, individual liberties, cultural tradition, economic transformation, and political power. As the authors note, belonging to a Native community or nation is critical to the meaning of the word "Indigenous." Determining membership has typically been a function of Native traditions and customs, language, and other factors. Such methods remained resilient until the federal government placed Indians on reservations, introduced boarding schools, [End Page 383] launched assimilation policies, and implemented blood quantum measurements. While the cumulative effect of these processes threatened tribal identity, the authors argue that the past forty years have seen an historic erosion of those older systems. New conflicts have emerged as banishment and disenrollment have spiked. In response, tribal members have demanded clearer rules defining membership, access to redress of and appeal for banishment, and greater restraint on tribal governments. The authors support their work with extensive research and data. Early chapters summarize U.S.–Native relations during the late nineteenth century through the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. The 1887 Dawes Allotment Act, for example, implemented blood quantum as a metric for assessing Indian identity along a spectrum from traditionalism to progressivism; where "white blood" implied fitness to hold private property, Native people quickly began losing land. Land allotment included the systematic use of tribal censuses as "base rolls" to which membership in a tribe was anchored. Because the rolls contained estimates of blood quantum, which decreased as ensuing generations were born, the process increasingly threatened the survival of Native people as sovereign bodies. Later chapters investigate the Indian New Deal and the Indian Reorganization Act, particularly the undemocratic imposition of boilerplate governments onto Native people. These governments sustained the use of blood quantum as a central variable for tribal enrollment. By the late twentieth century, blood quantum politics were exacerbated by the rise of casino gaming as a source of revenue for Native communities. With this new income, some tribal governments contended with increased numbers of enrollment requests from people who held no enrollment or were enrolled in poorer communities. This pressure overlapped with partisan politics on reservations as families jockeyed for access to jobs and profit associated with casino revenues. The result of this friction was a painful uptick in disenrolling or revoking memberships to ensure that remaining individuals received large per capita payments from casino revenues. Tribal members contested these decisions and demanded access to appeals within and outside of the tribal courts on reservations. For better or worse, the broader U.S. court system has been wary of intervening in these decisions. This book is a powerful and painful analysis of the abuses of tribal governments against their own people and the rights of individuals against their leaders. The authors investigated hundreds of cases across the United States and offer aggregate data as well as interviews with people who have been harmed by this trend. Though the book will probably not see a wide readership outside academic and legal circles, readers who do delve into its troubling contents will have a deeper understanding of the challenges facing tribal peoples in the twenty-first...

Incorporation Without Assimilation: Legislating Tribal Civil Jurisdiction Over Non-Members

For the last 40 years the Supreme Court has been engaged in a measured attack on the sovereignty of Indian tribes when it comes to tribal court jurisdiction over people who are not members of the tribe asserting that jurisdiction. The Congress has already enacted legislation partially restoring some tribal courts’ criminal jurisdiction over non-members. This Essay proposes to legislatively reconfirm the civil jurisdiction of tribal courts over such non-members. After examining the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in this area and summarizing the Court’s main concerns with such tribal jurisdiction, this Essay explores various legislative options before settling on a preferred course of action. The proposal set forth in the last part of this Essay would reconfirm tribal court civil jurisdiction over non-members provided the tribal courts has established personal jurisdiction over the parties. However, tribal courts’ determinations on this subject would be appealable to federal courts. Furthermore, the Essay proposes to allow non-members being sued in tribal courts the option of removing their cases to federal courts under certain conditions.