The Case Of Sovereign Immunity: Seminole Tribe Of Florida V. Florida 1996

When it was all said and done the Supreme Court ruled with the Federal government because they believed the Cherokees has the right to their national territory

Under the Michigan Indian Land Claims Settlement Act, lands bought with funds from a congressionally established trust are Indian lands. On November 3, 2010, the Bay Mills Indian Community, a federally recognized Indian tribe with a reservation located in northern Michigan, opened a small casino in the town of Vanderbilt, Michigan, on lands purchased with funds from this trust. The state of Michigan sued for closure of the casino by claiming that the Bay Mills casino violated state gaming laws, as well as various provisions of its Tribal-State compact. The district court entered a preliminary injunction ordering Bay Mills to stop the gambling at the Vanderbilt casino. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit vacated the injunction and held that the district court lacked jurisdiction over some of the plaintiffs' claims, while Bay Mills' sovereign immunity bars the others” ("Michigan vs Bay Mills Indian

The name "Seminole" came about from the tribe's original name of yat'siminoli meaning "free people". That was the name the Seminoles had referred to themselves as because of their refusal to be conquered and converted by the "white man". The Seminole Tribe has long had a unique history with both the land of the Southeastern United States, and with the government of the United States. Their relationship with the land has been drastically altered as the result of three Seminole wars which displaced and relocated the Seminole tribe. As a result of the persecution by President Andrew Jackson, members from a variety of tribes in the Southeast United States began migrating into Spanish Florida to seek refuge.

Settlers were against any treaties that didn’t include either the “extermination of the Seminoles or the relocation of all surviving Indians to the west. Any attempts by the army officers to make peace that would allow the Seminoles to remain in Florida was opposed by settlers and whenever possible they attempted to persuade Congress to accept nothing less than relocation. This is shown by the memorial the citizens of St John sent to Congress in 1841. They sent the message as a response to rumors of a treaty with the Seminoles which would allow the Seminoles to keep living in Florida. The settlers made it clear that they were against the treaty.

The Iroquois Constitution In the passage The Iroquois Constitution it is obvious that historical dilemmas would occur throughout the story and it talks about how this tribe was able to overcome it. In the passages that we read before it showed the Natives as being some sort of salvages or people who like to stir up trouble. Some may say that they had a very derogatory mood or way of living as well. When we look over this passage we see that the natives could have became pretty flagrant towards the viewing on their people, but we must also keep in mind that each tribe has their own beliefs and their own rituals.

Seminole defiance of federal and Creek tribal pressures contributed to their right to govern themselves, define their own membership and property; and regulate their business and domestic

In 1988, the Indian Regulatory Gaming Act was passed (Sparks, 2017). This act allowed Native tribes to create gaming halls and casinos in spite of state laws (aside from complete disallowance of gambling, as in the case of Utah) (Sparks, 2017). However, the act also put in place rules to regulate class III gaming (casinos) (Sparks, 2017). These rules established that Native casinos may only use the gained funds for certain pursuits, such as economic development or donations to charities, and must have their financial plans approved by the state (Sparks, 2017).

Florida, described by one disgusted Army officer as "the poorest country that ever two people quarreled for," went to the victors. The Seminole Wars was the most costly Indian war in history costing the U.S an estimated 40 to 60 million dollars and the highest solider death count in an Indian War. The Seminoles were an Indian tribe made up of Creek Confederacy, mostly Creeks and Hitchiti, that settled into the Spanish territory of Florida. They were later joined by other refugee Indians and runaway slaves as a safe haven. Most black people who escaped to the Seminole Nation were escaped slaves and became a considerable portion of the Seminoles population.

The issue faced with this case all comes down to the previously stated: Is the Cherokee Nation a foreign state, or is it a part of the Untied States. The answer according to the Supreme Court determines if the Eleventh Amendment takes place and if the Courts could hear the case, or if they had any jurisdiction. In the end, the Court deemed that the Cherokee Nation was indeed a dependent nation amongst the U.S. and did not hear the case. The conclusion came from Article III of the U.S. Constitution.

The argument selected by Dylan was really interesting since I have native heritage. The argument “Ned Blackhawk, argues that Native American sovereignty is being threatened by a recent appeal to the Supreme Court by the Dollar General Corporation.” (Morales-Dacy, 2015). After reading the article myself I can agree with Dylan that the claim is valid in the argument.

The assertion that the land should still belong to the Lakota because the United States violated the Fort Laramie treaty by acquiring the land without Lakota approval has been undermined however by the United States Supreme Court. In the case United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians (1980) the 8-1 ruling was that the United States’ “sole legal shortcoming was the failure to pay just compensation” for the land (Pommersheim 116). Although the land was seized using moral justifications that ranged from questionable to outright egregious, the Lakota were just as expansionist when they arrived on the land less than 100 years before (Kurkiala 449). The United States continued to honor the law however, and proposed paying $17.5 million to the Lakota as compensation for the land. The court later revised this number to $122.5 million by compounding a 5% interest annually (Churchill 135) but the Lakota response to this was that they were no more willing to take the new offer than the old one.

They were fighting against the claim, which ended as the verdict, that since they had been so integrated into modern society by marriage, migration, language, and religion, that they no longer held the tribal culture needed to be considered a legal tribe. A culture that had been decided and discovered by

The Native American societies according to federal law are sovereign territory under federal law, which means in general that states cannot enforce their civil statues on the reservation, which are inside the borders of the particular state ("Native American Casinos," n.d., para. 2) In the 1980’s in the state of Florida, Native American societies began to open bingo and gambling salons as a way to generate revenue-earning millions of dollars annually. During this period there was numerous budget cuts that affected the Native American societies, and the revenues that were generated by the bingo and gambling salons, were a main source of revenue throughout the 1980’s (Hewitt & Beaucar, n.d.).

The Oglala Lakota Indians felt their needs or “interests” weren’t being met by their tribal chairman or the United States Government, and decided to take action.

These new tribal casinos were permitted by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988, which allowed for tribes to gamble on their reservations in the same way Americans do everywhere else in the US. In 1988-IGRA (Indian Gaming Regulatory Act) was passed. This establishes the gaming commission and the rules of gaming in the United States.