Hello and welcome to Amicus Slate Supreme Court podcast. I am Dahlia Lithwick, Slate Supreme Court correspondent.

Earlier this month, the High Court heard a case called Dollar General Corporation versus Mississippi Band of Chokhtaw Indians.

It's an incredibly important Native American rights case, and it involves an alleged

sexual assault of a 13-year-old Choctaw boy on Choctaw land by the non-Indian manager

of a Dollar General store located on tribal lands.

Now, at the core, the big legal question here is one of

jurisdiction. Specifically, who has the jurisdiction to hear certain kinds of civil suits

against non-Indians about matters that occur on Indian lands? Should these cases be heard by

Indian tribal courts or U.S. or federal courts?

And how do we decide it?

It's all kind of complicated by a 1981 case, Montana versus United States, that sets out the rule that sovereign powers of an Indian tribe do not extend to the activities of non-tribe members unless it fits into one of two

exceptions, so-called Montana 1 or Montana 2. Now, we will get to Montana 1, Montana 2 and the history

of tribal rights in America, but I just want to flag for you that Dollar General happens to be one

of several cases about Native American rights that the Supreme Court has agreed to take up this term.

So we thought we would devote the entire episode of today's show to the fascinating area of Native American law, one that really does not get as much attention as it should in the mainstream media.

And joining us to help sort through the complicated history of Indian sovereignty rights

and Native American rights in general is Mary Catherine Nagel. She's a partner at Pipestam

Law Firm, PC. She wrote a friend of the court brief in the Chakta Indian case on behalf of the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center.

She's also a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a nationally acclaimed playwright.

Mary Catherine, welcome to Amicus.

Thank you so much. I'm very happy to be here.

Mary Catherine, we're going to get to the Dollar General case in a minute, but we want to

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