Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Land Rights Cases Still Being Brought



          For this modules blog entry, I have decided to highlight the online report by Thomas P. Schlosser entitled “2008-2011 Case Law on American Indians”. I decided to highlight this report because I found it interesting that in only four years, the author was able to compile so many court cases involving Native Americans. I was surprised to see how many cases are being brought for and against Native Americans to this very day. I was particularly surprised by how many of them pertained to land claims. In just four years alone, there were 22 highlighted cases involving disputes to land rights of Native American tribes. Many of these cases focused heavily on whether or not the lands in question were considered disestablished reservations, such as the case of Yankton Sioux Tribe v. Podhradsky. In this case, the Yankton Sioux Tribe wanted an injunction relief against the State of South Dakota as they believed the state encroached on their reservation boundaries. This current case relied heavily on cessions that the tribe agreed to in 1894. The argument before the judge was whether the cessions that took place in 1894 diminished or disestablished the reservation. The court ruled that these cessions diminished but did not disestablish the reservation. This finding was crucial to the case as by recognizing the reservation as diminished rather than disestablished, it allowed for the Yankton Sioux Tribe to keep claim to most of the land in question. This case and similar cases brought up in Thomas P. Schlosser’s report prove that land rights of Native American tribes continue to be threatened and these cases must be watched carefully by all Native American Nations to ensure that their sovereignty and land rights remain intact.

Schlosser, T. 2008-2011 Case Law on Native American Indians. http://www.schlosserlawfiles.com/Indianlawseminar0310.pdf

2 comments:

  1. I enjoyed your post. It brought some light into the current issues that Nations faced today regarding their land. Land in this country is always sought after especially because we are no limited to it. By the sounds of it, Indian Nations still struggle to this day to keep the little land they have in their hands. Which is a shame since they lost almost all of it and many other tribes are no longer residents in their original tribal locations. Once "Indian Territory" was created, many Indians in the Plains were forced to relocate to desolate areas that offered hardly any resources. The plentiful land they once had was stripped from them. So I can see how important these cases are to the Native Americans.

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  2. I found your post to be very insightful and informative. It's unfathomable that Natives are still having to deal with the issues of land rights in this day and age. Hopefully as more court cases are brought forth there can be an established legal precedent that could help expedite some of these issues and finally bring justice to the Natives involved in these land rights cases.

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