KGOU: Tribes urged to keep cases away from Supreme Court

John Echohawk (Pawnee), Executive Director of the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) and Jefferson Keel (Chickasaw), president of the National Congress of American Indians, joined together to create the Tribal Supreme Court Project.

“We clearly saw, as tribal leaders did, this developing disturbing trend in the U.S. Supreme Court to basically rule against Indian tribes and Indian interest in virtually any case that came to the Supreme Court such that the winning record we had had beginning in the 1970's, when the Native American Rights Fund started, had turned into a losing record where basically three out of every four Indian law cases argued before that Court resulted in significant losses,” Echohawk said.

“Tribal leaders wanted to try to do something about that so they formed this project and basically what we do is, together with the National Congress of American Indians, is to work with tribal attorneys and tribal leaders and Indian law professors and supreme court practitioners across the country on each of these cases as it approached the Supreme Court or gets accepted by the Supreme court,“ Echohawk said.