Tribal land claims are getting to be big business (see Jan. 12, etc.), and prominent law firms including Philadelphia’s Cozen O’Connor and Roseland, N.J.’s Lowenstein Sandler are among those lining up to assist Indian tribes (and their wealthy non-Indian backers) in filing lawsuits against hapless landowners as leverage for casino schemes. And here’s a choice quote from Robert Odawi Porter, director of the Syracuse University Center for Indigenous Law, Governance and Citizenship:

In cases where land-claim suits are funded by outsiders, the tribe is usually a passive participant in the litigation, says Porter. Such arrangements are permitted under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, which gives states authority to negotiate revenue-sharing agreements with tribal casinos.

“Everything is dictated by the developer — I call it the ‘sit back and take a check approach,'” Porter says.

(Charles Toutant, New Jersey Law Journal/Law.com, Mar. 20).

Also, updates: in late 2004 a federal court granted defendants’ motion to dismiss the Delaware Indians’ claim to land in the Allentown, Pa. area (Northampton County) including Binney & Smith’s Crayola factory (PDF, at Indianz.com)(see Feb. 9, 2004). And, alas, none other than the Bush Justice Department has weighed in with a petition for certiorari urging the Supreme Court to overturn a Second Circuit panel’s landmark ruling (see Jul. 29, 2005) which threw out the Cayugas’ lawsuit as not pressed in a timely enough way, a ruling which (if it stands) would cast doubt on the validity of of most of the new wave of Indian land litigation.

Filed under: Delaware, Indian tribes, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia