TRIBE PLEASED WITH BOUNDARY LITIGATION RULING

May 14, 2009

The Tribe is pleased with Judge Lundington's order granting the Tribe's "motion to strike" filed in the reservation boundary litigation. The judge granted the Tribe's motion, and a related motion made by the United States Department of Justice, in his order of April 29, 2009.

The State of Michigan, City of Mt. Pleasant, and Isabella County had argued as a defense to the litigation that the Treaty of 1855 diminished the boundaries of the Isabella Indian Reservation.

The court held that Indian reservations may only be diminished by a subsequent act of US Congress. Since there was no such act of Congress in this case, the reservation was not diminished. The court's ruling excludes the witnesses proposed by the defendants that would have discussed the modern jurisdictional ramifications of the reservation boundary related to the jurisdictional theory proposed by the defendants.

The court's order squarely focuses this lawsuit on the interpretation of the treaties of 1855 and 1864 entered into by the Tribe and United States. Judge Ludington granted the motions of the Tribe and United States "because persuasive authority directs that the 1855 and 1864 treaties are governed by their language and the signatories' intent at the time the treaties were entered."