HONORING SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR

By Vivian LaMoore, Inaajimowin Editor

United States Supreme Court Justice Sondra Day O’Connor served the United States Supreme Court from 1981 to 2006. She was the first women in history to serve the High Court. During her term on the Court, O'Connor was regarded as among the most powerful women in the world. She passed away on December 1, 2023, at the age of 93.

Of the cases during her tenure that are likely at the top of the list of important cases in Indian country, is the Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Treaty case. This landmark case lasted over a decade and on March 24, 1999, the Supreme Court decision in a 5-4 vote affirmed the hunting, fishing, and gathering rights for the Mille Lacs Band and other Chippewa tribes of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

After her passing, on December 4, 2023, Matthew Fletcher wrote in Turtle Talk, that decision was a “truly impressive achievement in favoring the law.” He added that “all she was doing was following the law (it’s treaty rights after all).”

Marc Slonim was the attorney hired by the Band to oversee that case. His remarks after O’Connor’s passing are as follows:

“Our case rested on a complex historical record, and she took the time to understand the record and detail it in her opinion. To me, her attention to the historical record was the most important part of her decision. It reflected an understanding of the importance of hunting, fishing, and gathering rights to Indian people, the harsh realities of removal efforts in the nineteenth century, and the profit motivations that fueled efforts to remove Indian people from their homelands even when there was no lawful basis for such removals.

“I would also add that her decision in the Mille Lacs case is a part of her legacy that has survived, unlike some of her other decisions (most prominently, on abortion and affirmative action). As Matt notes in Turtle Talk, her decision in our case was cited in, and the basis for, the Court’s decision in Herrera, a case involving Crow treaty rights, in which the Court expressly overruled its early 1900s decision (Ward v. Race Horse) that Indian treaty rights are extinguished upon statehood. In Herrera, the Court held that the decision in our case, not Race Horse, was controlling. The decision in our case has been cited by the Court in other recent decisions, cementing its legacy in the Indian law canon.

“For the Bands, her decision secured the ability to preserve and keep alive rich cultural and subsistence practices that had been suppressed both in Wisconsin and Minnesota. The Bands fought hard for those rights over many decades, and her decision secured them once and for all.”

This year, the Mille Lacs Band and GLIFWC will celebrate the 25th anniversary of this landmark decision. Watch for details to come.