The preservation and regulation of forests, water, wildlife, and oil, gas, and mineral resources are of paramount importance to most tribes, as are off-reservation treaty rights to these resources. Our extensive experience in the areas of resource management, treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather, natural-resource-damage claims, and environmental issues makes us uniquely qualified to represent Indian tribes and tribal departments.
Firm attorneys have litigated numerous treaty, hunting, fishing, and gathering cases, drafted resource codes, evaluated complex biological and historical issues and expert reports, and developed species-by-species management protocols. Our attorneys have successfully litigated trust-land management issues, boundary and use issues, leasing disputes, and the validity or cancellation of rights of way.
In the environmental area, we have dealt with a number of hazardous materials situations, including evaluating mold and other infestations in tribal housing. Our lawyers have handled clean-up issues, clean water and clean air issues, tribal treatment as a state for environmental purposes, and various drainage and watershed issues.
We negotiated a settlement among a tribe, a tribal entity, and a railroad for restoration of the grade and the environment along a line of rail through the reservation, including prevention of the establishment of a public trail along the line of rail.
We represented a tribe in a first-of-its-kind cooperative agreement under the Clean Water Act to regulate waters over which both the tribe and a state claimed jurisdiction. We also represented a tribe against a state's attempt to claim diminishment of the tribe's reservation in order to exercise permitting authority under the Clean Water Act.
