Gabe Galanda Via Above The Law Re: Indian Lawyer Authenticity, Passion & Relentlessness

Leading lawyer blog, Above The Law, has published the transcript of Ari Kaplan's recent interview of Gabe Galanda, the co-founder and managing lawyer of Galanda Broadman. Aimed at young lawyers and students, the interview is titled: "How To Find And Pursue Your Passion In the Law."

A few excerpts: 

• "First, be authentic. Second, be relentless. By authentic, I mean you have to be yourself. Folks don’t want to associate with somebody who is trying to be something other than himself or herself. . . . And, being yourself is the only way you’ll ever find passion in the law and without passion, I suggest that a lawyer is simply mediocre. Unless you’re passionate, you will never play to your ultimate strengths."
• "In terms of our focus and choosing cases, we watch and listen very carefully to what’s happening throughout Indian country. We look for opportunities that will help us advance budding social justice causes that will eventually benefit all of Indian country."
• "[W]e took on tribal disenrollment before any other law firm would do that in any concerted way, and took on Indian prisoner religious freedoms seeing the rise in religious discrimination throughout state and local prisons. We’ve now taken on federal state and local law enforcement officers and agencies [who are killing Natives]."
• "[W]e place a lot of emphasis on our social media marketing, which is a 24/7/365 effort. The hallmark of my career and now my law firm’s business development is and always has been writing....[W]hether it is a Tweet or an occasional blog post that one of my partners or associates is writing, we share and allow our ideas to reach as far and wide as we can in Indian country."

Gabe also addresses disenrollment, taking the opportunity to educate Above The Law's Big Law readership about the troubling subject:

Tribal disenrollment is a process designed by the United States over the last 200 years, but unknowingly, co-opted by tribal governments and tribal officials that leads to Indians being exiled from their own tribal communities. Since the advent of Indian gaming and its success over the last couple of decades many Indians losing their identities, livelihoods, and sense of belonging by way of this process. Indian gaming represents relatively new wealth in Indian country that has, unfortunately, has caused greed to grip certain tribal politicians, who create cohorts of tribal members or factions or tribal members to then get rid of their own relatives. Over the last five years, we have represented about 600 Indians from Washington, Oregon, and California, among other areas, in these matters.

In the process, we have re-educated ourselves about what it really means and does not mean to belong to a tribal community, and have also tried to help re-educate Indian country about those ideals before it’s too late because what we’re witnessing really is Native Americans self-terminating or self-annihilating with devices created by the federal government.

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.  

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!

Gabe Galanda Podcast: "How to Find and Pursue Your Passion in the Law"

Ari Kaplan---author of Reinventing Professional Services: Building Your Business in the Digital Marketplace and The Opportunity Maker: Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development--interviewed Gabe Galanda for his Reinventing Professionals podcast series. Listen to the interview here.

As Ari explains his chat with Gabe on his ABA award-winning blog:

I spoke with Gabe Galanda, the co-founder and managing lawyer of Galanda Broadman, an Indian Country law firm, with headquarters in Seattle.

We discussed his background and the genesis of Galanda Broadman, how he identified his preferred practice area, his approach to case selection, his firm’s commitment to addressing tribal disenrollment, how he divides his time between business development and practicing law, and his recommendations for lawyers seeking to build a practice or students interested in striking out on their own.

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.  

Dwyer Inn of Court Profiles Galanda Broadman: "Courage and Civility" in Disenrollment Defense

On Tuesday, the William L. Dwyer American Inn of Court--an exclusive assembly of judges, lawyers and other legal professionals in Seattle--profiled the disenrollment advocacy of Galanda Broadman as part of its program series, "Profiles in Courage and Civility: Washington Lawyers.”

Members of the Dwyer Inn were provided Gabe Galanda and Ryan Dreveskracht's Arizona Law Review article, "Curing the Tribal Disenrollment Epidemic: In Search of a Remedy," and witnessed a skit loosely based on a prominent disenrollment controversy in the Pacific Northwest.

Galanda Broadman, PLLC, was recently named a “Best Law Firm” by U.S. News - Best Lawyers in the arena of Native American Law and Gaming Law, for the sixth year in a row.  With eight lawyers and offices in Seattle and Yakima, Washington and Bend, Oregon, the firm is dedicated to advancing tribal legal rights and Indian business interests, and defending Indian civil rights.

Gabe Galanda: Will the NIGC Help Stop Disenrollment in 2018?

Indian Gaming magazine included Gabe Galanda forecast in its "Predictions for the Indian Gaming Industry in 2018."  The text of Gabe's contribution is below.

In 2017, the National Indian Gaming Commission took the unprecedented step of intervening in a tribal disenrollment dispute, when it shuttered the Nooksack Northwood Casino for the summer.

The NIGC had previously shut down gaming facilities amidst so-called “internal tribal disputes”—at Elem, Sac and Fox and Picayune, to name a few—but never where disenrollment was at the heart of a tribe’s implosion.  As explained by Dentons—the lawyers who appeared before the NIGC on behalf the purported Nooksack Indian Tribe—the Commission’s closure of Northwood was “unprecedented.”

Only time will tell if the NIGC’s intercession at Nooksack is a bellwether.  In May 2017 the NIGC hosted Indian legal historian, Professor Robert Williams, for a lecture on disenrollment and the deconstruction of federal Indian law at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, DC.  The NIGC closed Northwood the next month.

Although, NIGC Chairman Jonodev Chaudhuri generally toes the conventional line that the Trustee should play no role in disenrollment disputes.  He also rejects the premise that the NIGC should at all regulate gaming per capita payments to tribal members—even when illegally paid or otherwise misappropriated in the disenrollment context.  While illegal gaming per capita checks were issued at both Picayune and Nooksack, the NIGC looked away from that malfeasance, closing each tribe’s casinos on other grounds.

There are, however, countervailing winds emanating from Washington, DC and Indian Country. 

Past U.S. Department of the Interior Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs, Professor Kevin Washburn, opined this year that one federal solution to the “vexing problem” of disenrollment is “to assert diplomatic consequences, which could be fiscal in nature, equivalent to international economic sanctions, or political in nature, such as loss of federal recognition.”  The NIGC’s temporary closure of Northwood last summer does fall within that paradigm.

In the same vein, former NIGC Chairman Harold Monteau proclaimed this year that the Interior Department, including its NIGC, owes a tribe and its members a trust responsibility “to not let an illegitimate organization take, spend and distribute tribal gaming revenues, unless they are a bona fide tribal government”—especially in the disenrollment context.  To remedy such federal illegality, he recommends NIGC facility closure (or Inspector General inquiry), and FBI criminal investigation and prosecution.

Meanwhile, the Chairpersons of several gaming tribes—like Yakama, Spokane, Graton, Coyote Valley, Robinson, Ramona and Ft. McDowell—have either lent their power to the #StopDisenrollment visual advocacy movement; or publicly expressed that disenrollment is not their tribe’s way.  The Spokane and Graton tribes have gone so far as to outlaw disenrollment.  Other tribal leaders are privately denouncing disenrollment, most notably the insanity at Nooksack, to each other and to Interior and NIGC officials. 

As 2018 approaches, hopefully the NIGC will hear and heed these policy proclamations.

After all, at the end of the day, federal regulatory enforcement is a policy call. 

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.  

Navajo Times Tackles Disenrollment; Cites Diné Kinship As its Foil

The Navajo Times covered Gabe Galanda's recent lecture to students at UNM-Gallup, publishing a column titled: "Lawyer: Disenrollment Threatens Indian Country."  The article makes the point that disenrollment is not the way the Diné People; instead kinship is the norm on Navajo Nation.

An excerpt:

To mitigate disenrollment Galanda suggested kinship and a Navajo student who saw his talk pointed out that the Dine certainly have a word for that.

'We call it k'e,' Vanessa Leonard, a sophomore at UNM, said.

For Galanda, k'e is the natural foil of the imposed system of enrollment and disenrollment based on so-called 'blood quantum'...

He recognized that changing the view from blood quantum to kinship to deter disenrollment could take a ling time, but he saw a means by which Navajo could provide a kind of model as a tribe that doesn't have disenrollment.

'It seems that tribes that are still rooted in their traditions, specifically their language, their songs, their customs, aren't [disenrolling] themselves.'

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.