As part of the MCC Lecture Series, Matthew L.M. Fletcher, professor of law at the Michigan State University College of Law and director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center, will discuss “Indian Children in American History” on Thursday, Nov. 17, at 7 p.m. in Stevenson Center Room 1100.
“Indian children have been a focus of federal Indian affairs at least since the Framing of the Constitution,” explained Fletcher, who is a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians located in Peshawbestown, Michigan.
“The Founding Generation initially used Indian children as military and diplomatic pawns, but eventually undertook a duty of protection to Indian children. Sadly, the United States then catastrophically distorted that duty of protection by deviating from its obligations through imposing abusive boarding schools upon Indian children, and then by breaking up Indian families.”
“The Indian Child Welfare Act embodies the modern duty of protection, now characterized as a federal trust relationship. The federal trust obligation to Indian children is now as closely realized as it ever has been throughout American history.”
Fletcher is the reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement, Third, The Law of American Indians. He sits as the Chief Justice of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians Supreme Court and also sits as an appellate judge for the Grand Traverse Band, the Hoopa Valley Tribe, the Lower Elwha Tribe, the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Indians, the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, and the Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska.
He co-authored the sixth edition of Cases and Materials on Federal Indian Law (Thomson West 2011). He also authored American Indian Tribal Law (Aspen 2011), the first casebook for law students on tribal law The Return of the Eagle: The Legal History of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians (Michigan State University Press 2012); and American Indian Education: Counternarratives in Racism, Struggle, and the Law (Routledge 2008).
He co-edited The Indian Civil Rights Act at Forty (UCLA American Indian Studies Press 2012), and Facing the Future: The Indian Child Welfare Act at 30 (Michigan State University Press 2009).
Fletcher has published articles with American Indian Law Review, Arizona Law Review, California Law Review Circuit, University of Colorado Law Review, Harvard Journal on Legislation, Michigan Law Review First Impressions, Yale Law Journal Online, and many others. He is the primary editor and author of the leading law blog on American Indian law and policy, “Turtle Talk.”
“Professor Fletcher’s expertise and experience make him a thoughtful addition to all of MCC’s activities for Native American Heritage Month,” said MCC Instructor Any Wible, who coordinates the MCC Lecture Series. “Professor Fletcher is a great speaker and scholar.”
He graduated from the University of Michigan and the University of Michigan Law School.