CHAPTER 10 THE BALANCE OF POWER IN INDIAN COUNTRY -- THE COURT, THE STATES, THE TRIBES: HOW WILL JURISDICTION BE DEFINED?

• Jurisdiction: United States

Natural Resources Development in Indian Country
(Nov 2005)
CHAPTER 10
THE BALANCE OF POWER IN INDIAN COUNTRY -- THE COURT, THE STATES, THE TRIBES: HOW WILL JURISDICTION BE DEFINED?
Kevin Gover
Arizona State University
College of Law
Tempe, Arizona

Kevin Gover is Professor of Law and Affiliate Professor of the American Indian Studies Program at Arizona State University College of Law in Tempe, Arizona. He is a member of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. Professor Gover comes to the College of Law from Steptoe & Johnson, a national law firm with offices in Washington, D.C. and Phoenix, where he headed the Indian Practice Group.

He earned his J.D. from the University of New Mexico School of Law (1981) and his A.B. in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University (1978). After graduating from Princeton, where he majored in Public and International Affairs, Professor Gover worked as a specialist for the American Indian Policy Review Commission, a research group chartered by Congress to study a wide range of issues important to Native Americans. Private practice followed, first with a large firm in Washington, D.C. and then, forming a firm in New Mexico with two other highly regarded Indian Lawyers. The firm grew into one of the largest Indian owned law firms in the country. Gover served as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs under Interior Secretary and former Arizona Governor, Bruce Babbitt, from 1996-2001. As Assistant Secretary he concentrated on upgrading Indian law enforcement, rebuilding decrepit Indian schools, reforming trust services and overhauling the Bureau of Indian Affair's management system. His reform efforts coupled with an eloquent and moving apology to the nation's Indian Communities for the wrongs done to them by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the past, on the occasion of the 175th anniversary of the Bureau's founding, won him wide approval in Indian country and Congressional praise.

Selected publications: "Survey of Tribal Actions to Protect Water Quality and the Implementation of the Tribal Amendments to the Clean Water Act, Report to the National Indian Policy Center" (September 1994); co-author, "Commercial Solid and Hazardous Waste Disposal Projects on Indian Lands," 10 Yale J. on Regulation 229 (1993); co-author, "Tribal-State Dispute Resolution: Recent Attempts," 36 S. Dakota L. Rev. 277 (1991); co-author, "Tribal Environmental Regulation," 36 Fed. Bar News & J. 438 (1989); co-author, "Avoiding Santa Clara v. Martinez: The Litigation in Federal Court of Civil Actions Under the Indian Civil Rights Act," 8 Hanline L. Rev. 543 (1985).

Life after Lara: Indian Jurisdiction in the 21%gst%g Century
The Pendulum of Federal Indian Policy

Sustain & Nurture	Elimination of
Tribal Sovereignty	Tribal Sovereignty
%w
Autonomy	Assimilation
Permanence	Dissolution

Effects of Federal Indian Policy: Twentieth Century Context

By 1900, Indian population had collapsed to 300,000

Indians owned 52.4 million acres

Indians had lowest national average income

Indians had lowest life expectancy, only 2/3 that of Non-Indians

Recent unemployment rates exceed 70%

Excluding Alaska, over 200 Reservations in 27 states ranging in size from 15.4 million acres to 1/4 acre.

Coercive Assimilation Period

General Allotment Act (1887)

Checkerboard land ownership on some reservations

Creation of over 200 Indian Boarding Schools (1880s-1930s)

Forced Fee Patents

Competency Commissions

"A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. . . . In a sense, I agree with this sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the man."

--Richard Henry Pratt, Founder, Carlisle Indian Industrial School

Land loss

1883: 138 million acres

1928: 48 million acres

Substantial loss of cultures & languages

Disruption of Indian families caused by boarding schools

Replaced traditional tribal governments with federal authority

Indian Reorganization Period

John Collier appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs (1933)

Collier announces Indian sovereignty/equality policy (1933)

Indian Reorganization Act (1934)

Indian Reorganization Act of 1934

Federal recognition of tribal governments organized under IRA

Ended allotment of Indian land

Promised repurchase of Indian lands

Promised economic development in Indian country

Indian preference in BIA employment

Indian...