KU News Release

Tribal law conference to explore economic development, property issues

Philip P. Frickey

LAWRENCE — As Kansas moves ahead with its plan to open state-owned casinos – and other states potentially follow suit – American Indian tribes that depend on gaming revenue will have to get creative with their economies.

“There’s this idea that the only economic development for tribes is gaming,” said Professor Stacy Leeds, director of the Tribal Law & Government Center at the University of Kansas School of Law.

Alternatives – such as health care, construction, banking and insurance – will be one of several topics explored during the 12th annual Tribal Law & Government Conference from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 1 at the Courtside Room in the Burge Union, 1601 Irving Hill Road.

Tribal attorneys, judges, CEOs and leading scholars will convene for the event, which Leeds said represents the only recurring national conference to address actual tribal practices rather than federal law that dictates to tribes.

“Legal scholarship has not much concerned itself with how federal Indian law functions ‘on the ground’: how it affects tribal institutions, governance in Indian country and so on,” said Philip P. Frickey, who will deliver the keynote address, titled “Local Knowledge, Tribal Institutions and Federal Indian Law” at 12:30 p.m. “The increasing hostility of federal courts to claims of tribal authority may be rooted in misapprehensions about such contextual factors.”

Frickey, the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, graduated from KU in 1975 with a bachelor’s in political science and earned his law degree from the University of Michigan in 1978. He clerked for Judge John Minor Wisdom of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He then practiced law for three years in Washington, D.C., before joining the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School, where he taught for 17 years. He has been at Berkeley since 2000.

Other conference presentations will include:

• “Who Owns This Land?” at 9:15 a.m. by Howard D. Valandra (Sicangu Lakota), vice president of grants and programs, Indian Land Tenure Foundation.
• “The Aftermath of Crow Nation Land Cessions and Allotment: What Now?” at 9:45 a.m. by Del Laverdure (Crow/Little Shell), chief legal counsel, Crow Nation.
• “Property Disputes and the Role of the Tribal Court” at 10:30 a.m. by the Hon. Steve Aycock, chief judge, Colville Tribal Court, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.
• “Strengthening Tribal Jurisdiction for Economic Success” at 2 p.m. by Lance Morgan (Winnebago tribe), president and CEO, Ho-Chunk, Inc., of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska.
• Panel on creative avenues for tribal economic development at 2:30 p.m., moderated by Angelique EagleWoman (Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota Oyate), visiting professor of law and indigenous nations studies at KU. Andrew Torrance, associate professor of law at KU, will be among the panelists.
• Recent developments in tribal constitutional law at 3:45 p.m. by David Prager III, tribal attorney, Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, and Stacy Leeds, KU professor of law.

The conference is free, but registration is required by sending an e-mail to triballaw@ku.edu. More information is available online at http://www.law.ku.edu/tribal/2007_2008_Conference.shtml.

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