American Indian Law: When Two Sovereigns Collide

Matthew L.M. Fletcher is Professor of Law at Michigan State University College of Law and Director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center. 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 of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians, the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, the Hoopa Valley Tribe, the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Indians, and the Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska. He is a member of the Grand Traverse Band, located in Peshawbestown, Michigan.

He is the Reporter for The American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law of American Indians. He published a hornbook, Federal Indian Law (West Academic Publishing 2016). Matthew coauthored the sixth and seventh editions of Cases and Materials on Federal Indian Law (West Publishing 2011 and 2017). With Wenona Singel and Kathryn Fort, Matthew is under contract with the American Bar Association to write a tribal law practice guide. 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 coedited The Indian Civil Rights Act at Fortywith Kristen A. Carpenter and Angela R. Riley (UCLA American Indian Studies Press 2012), and Facing the Future: The Indian Child Welfare Act at 30 with Wenona Singel and Kathryn Fort (Michigan State University Press 2009). Matthew’s scholarship has been cited twice by the United States Supreme Court; in more than a dozen federal, state, and tribal courts; in dozens of federal, state, and tribal court briefs; and in hundreds of law review articles and other secondary legal authorities.

Matthew graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1997 and the University of Michigan in 1994. He has worked as a staff attorney for four Indian Tribes – the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, the Hoopa Valley Tribe, the Suquamish Tribe, and the Grand Traverse Band. He previously sat on the judiciaries of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians; and served as a consultant to the Seneca Nation of Indians Court of Appeals. He is married to Wenona Singel, a member of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, and they have two sons, Owen and Emmett.

Wenona Singel is an Associate Professor of Law at Michigan State University College of Law and the Associate Director of the Indigenous Law & Policy Center; she is currently on leave to work as deputy legal counsel to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. She teaches courses in the fields of federal Indian law and natural resources law, and her research and publications address the development of tribal legal systems and tribal accountability for human rights.

She has served as the Chief Appellate Justice for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians and as the Chief Appellate Judge for the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. From 2006 to 2009, she served as President and Board Member of the Michigan Indian Judicial Association. On March 29, 2012, the United States Senate passed by unanimous consent President Barack Obama's nomination of her to serve as a member of the Advisory Board of the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation. Wenona is also an elected member of The American Law Institute, where she is the Associate Reporter for the project to develop a Restatement of the Law of American Indians.

Prior to joining MSU College of Law, Wenona was an Assistant Professor at the University of North Dakota School of Law and a Fellow with the Northern Plains Indian Law Center. Before teaching, she worked in private practice with firms that included Kanji & Katzen, P.L.L.C. in Ann Arbor, MI, and Dickinson Wright in Bloomfield Hills, MI. She served as a member of the Economic Development Commission of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians and as General Counsel for the Grand Traverse Resort, a tribally owned resort in northern Michigan. She is also a citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians. Wenona received an A.B. from Harvard College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.