Gabe Galanda to Talk Tribal Kinship At Harvard University

From Ella Deloria's Speaking of Indians (1944)

Next week, Gabe Galanda will deliver an Insight Blast titled, "Re-Imagining Tribal Citizenship," at Harvard University. 

Gabe will discuss the acute need for indigenous peoples to infuse historic tribal kinship values into modern modes and institutions of self-governance, particularly in regard to belonging.

Gabe's talk will occur at the John F. Kennedy School of Government on May 1, in conjunction with a Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development forum: "The Next Horizon." 

The invite-only forum "will bring together the leaders, the innovators, the thinkers, and the decision makers who are fighting to make Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination realities. The peer-to-peer events of the gathering will help chart the path forward."

Gabriel S. Galanda is the managing lawyer of Galanda Broadman, PLLC, in Seattle. Gabe is a descendant of the Nomlaki and Concow Tribes, belonging to the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Northern California.  He can be reached at (206) 300-7801 or gabe@galandabroadman.com.

Gabe Galanda To Keynote American Indian Law Journal Banquet: "Keeping it Real: Indian Lawyers & Indian Law Scholarship”

Gabe Galanda will be the Keynote Speaker at the American Indian Law Journal's End-of-the-Year Banquet on Friday, April 27th at Seattle University School of Law. Gabe's speech is titled, "Keeping it Real: Indian Lawyers & Indian Law Scholarship.”  He will discuss the growing need for Indian lawyering and scholarship that are rooted in tribal values, morals and ethics.

Gabriel S. Galanda is the managing lawyer of Galanda Broadman, PLLC, in Seattle. Gabe is a descendant of the Nomlaki and Concow Tribes, belonging to the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Northern California.  He can be reached at (206) 300-7801 or gabe@galandabroadman.com.

Dreveskracht, Galanda Publish ABA "Tribal Court Litigation" Deskbook Chapter

The American Bar Association Business Law Section just published the 2018 edition of Annual Review of Developments in Business and Corporate Litigation, which includes a 58-page Tribal Court Litigation chapter co-authored by Indian litigators Ryan Dreveskracht and Gabe Galanda of Galanda Broadman.  An excerpt from the introduction:

“Indian law”—a body of tribal and federal law predominately—is the foundation for every transaction arising in or from Indian Country. Almost every arena of commercial practice now intersects with Indian law, including tax, finance, merger and acquisition, sales, secured transactions, antitrust, debt collection, real estate, environmental, energy, land use, employment, and litigation. Therefore, virtually every business lawyer or litigator needs to have some working knowledge of Indian law. This chapter seeks to provide that basic understanding.

Gabe served as the Editor-in-Chief of Annual Review for the 2007 through 2010 editions, and has co-authored the chapter each year since 2006. This is Ryan’s seventh year co-authoring the chapter.  They collaborated on the 2018 edition of the chapter with Grant Christensen, associate professor at the University of North Dakota School of Law, and Heidi McNeil Staudenmaier, a senior partner with Snell & Wilmer LLP.

Joe Sexton, Yakama Nation Present to Society for American Archaeology Re: Kennewick Man

On Saturday, Joe Sextion presented, along with Yakama Nation Leadership, at the Society for American Archaeology's 83rd Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, regarding: "The Cultural Affiliation of the Ancient One (Kennewick Man)." According to the program description:

The Colville, Nez Perce, Umatilla, Wanapum, and Yakama utilized NAGPRA’s preponderance of evidence standard to demonstrate a relationship of shared group identity with the Ancient One. The tribe’s proactive approach with collaborative partners overcame the hegemonic ideology of a federal agency to repatriate the Ancient One for his final journey to the Creator. For over twenty years, the Claimant Tribes asserted their cultural affiliation. Our purpose here is to illustrate that, although he was repatriated under the WIIN Act of 2016, there does exist evidence of a shared group identity based upon all available, population specific data for the Columbia Plateau. This information provided the evidentiary basis for the identification of an earlier group and cultural affiliation to the Claimant Tribes. The Ancient One falls within the variability exhibited at the same time period and throughout time on the Columbia Plateau. He was not outside of the norm for the population existing during the Early Cascade period and for the populations that followed for which he has a shared group identity. The Claimant Tribes are in fact culturally affiliated to the Ancient One and have never signed anything that legally says they are not.

Joe Sexton is Of Counsel with Galanda Broadman, PLLC.  Joe’s practice focuses on tribal sovereignty issues, including complex land and environmental issues, and economic development matters.  He can be reached at (509) 910-8842 and joe@galandbroadman.com.

Bree Black Horse Elected to National Native Bar Association Board

At its Annual Meeting on April 4th in Scottsdale, Arizona, the National Native American Bar Association (NNABA) elected Bree Black Horse to its Board of Directors.  Bree will serve a two-year term as an at-large member of the Board.

Bree, at center, with Lloyd Miller, Heather Kendall-Miller, Gabe Galanda and Eric Eberhard, at the FBA Annual Indian Law Conference in Scottsdale on April 4

Bree is an associate in the Seattle office of Galanda Broadman and an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma.  Her practice focuses on defending individuals’ civil rights in federal, state and tribal courts. She can be reached at (206) 735-0448 or bree@galandabroadman.com.

Bree Black Horse Featured in Seattle Times #MeToo Story: "Us Too"

Bree Black Horse is featured in a Seattle Times Pacific NW Magazine story (here) regarding "the different ways women from minority and marginalized populations connect with the #MeToo movement’s outpouring of stories about sexual harassment and violence."

Described as "a rising Native American attorney in Seattle" and "a legal advocate for indigenous women at the law firm Galanda Broadman," Bree explains the "crisis of domestic violence and sexual assault against women in Indian country."

Black Horse points out that while over two-thirds of violence against indigenous women happens at the hands of nonnative men, it has been difficult for tribal courts to prosecute nonnative people accused of assault on reservation land.

She’s pushing for greater attention to the disappearance and killing of indigenous women, including Muckleshoot tribal member Renee Davis, who was fatally shot by King County deputies in 2016. Davis was pregnant at the time.

She says it’s also important for indigenous communities to address the other sad fact that indigenous men are responsible for a significant portion of harassment and violence against native women.

Bree's "been talking to her mom a lot about the traditional importance of women within families as well as in tribal ceremonial functions, and how that high esteem has been eroded by European influence."

Black Horse wants to retrieve what has been lost.

“I think it’s time for us to come together as a people and return to those traditional values,” she says. “I want us to remember who we are.”

Bree is an associate in the Seattle office of Galanda Broadman and an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma.  Her practice focuses on defending individuals’ civil rights in federal, state and tribal courts. She can be reached at (206) 735-0448 or bree@galandabroadman.com.

Gabe Galanda to Talk Lawyer Ethics/Disenrollment at NNABA Annual Meeting

On Wednesday, April 4, 2017, at the National Native American Bar Association's (NNABA) Annual Meeting, which is being held in conjunction with the Federal Bar Association's 2018 Indian Law Conference, Gabe Galanda will deliver the "Update on NNABA Formal Ethics Opinion No. 1: 'Ensuring Due Process For All Native Americans Targeted For Disenrollment.'"

NNABA adopted Formal Ethics Opinion No. 1 in 2015 in reaction to the tribal disenrollment epidemic and, in particular, "to remind lawyers and any bar associations to which they belong that lawyers’ ethical obligations to their licensing jurisdictions do not stop at reservation boundaries."

Disenrollment scholars have cited lawyer involvement in disenrollment crusades, and the resulting void in due process at law, as a contributing cause of the epidemic.  As Dr. David Wilkins wrote in his seminal book, Dismembered: Native Disenrollment and the Battle for Human Rights:

Certain recurrent themes became evident in the course of examining these and other [disenrollments, including] the powerful role played by lawyers who work for tribal governments....

Lawyers were cited several times as being the culprits in crafting disenrollment policies, revising enrollment procedures to make it easier to disenroll, and in pursuing lawsuits that enrich law firm coffers while financially crippling those facing disenrollment.

Although disenrollment seems to be waning nationally, thanks in significant part to NNABA's ethics position according to Dr. Wilkins, the unethical lawyer dynamics that he identifies, persist in certain ongoing disenrollment sagas and in other tribal contexts.

Lawyers, especially Big Law attorneys, continue to draft tribal resolutions and ordinances that deny due process to disenrollees (here, for example); and to cause "the tribe" to otherwise violate indigenous human rights. Those lawyers, including Native attorneys, forsake their ethics and morals in order to "save the tribal client" and the lucrative billable hours--and salaries and bonuses--that comes with tribes as clients. Those lawyers give dishonest--even illegal--advice, rather than difficult, ethical advice. Those lawyers sell snake oil to the tribal client.

And those shady lawyer dynamics are not unique to disenrollment. They exist in "intra-tribal" leadership disputes, too.  There, the lawyers count votes on Tribal Council or otherwise handicap which faction will win; place their bets on that faction; and then aid and abet that's faction illegality. Because that faction controls the tribal treasury, the lawyers' bets generally don't fail.

With state bar disciplinary bodies still finding their way in Indian Country, this unethical lawyering occurs way too frequently within tribal communities. But with the likes of NNABA shining a bright light on such lawyer malfeasance, there is hope that those lawyers will eventually be rooted out.

Gabriel S. Galanda is the managing lawyer of Galanda Broadman, PLLC, in Seattle. Gabe is a descendant of the Nomlaki and Concow Tribes, belonging to the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Northern California.  He can be reached at (206) 300-7801 or gabe@galandabroadman.com.