Jewish lawyer earns lifetime achievement award from Native American Bar Association of Arizona

SHANNON LEVITT | STAFF WRITER

Glenn M. Feldman received a lifetime achievement award in 2022 from the Native American Bar Association of Arizona, whose mission is to assist in the development of Indian attorneys and improve the practice of Indian law in the state.

Feldman is not Native American but rather a Jewish lawyer who has spent his entire professional career representing the interests of Indian tribes and tribal entities.

“That’s all I have done in my career for more than 40 years,” he told Jewish News.

When Feldman started out, it was a fairly lonely corner of the law. In the late 70s and 80s, he represented tribes across the nation. Now, he represents tribes in Arizona, California and Washington. In Arizona specifically, it’s the Cocopah Indian Tribe near Yuma; the Hopi Tribes’ public utility companies; the San Carlos Apache Tribe’s telephone company east of Globe; and the Kaibab Band of

Paiute Indians on the Utah border near Colorado City.

“My practice is about as varied as it could be because my clients look to me for advice in a broad range of activities,” he said.

Those include drafting and reviewing contracts, working with land, lease and right-of-way issues and a lot of gaming work for tribal casinos.

“I’ve got my fingers in a lot of pies for different tribes and tribal entities,” he said.

A tribal gaming case, California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, gained Feldman acclaim.

The Cabazon Band, a small tribe near Palm Springs, had a tiny poker room and a bingo hall in the 1980s where they offered bingo games with prizes that exceeded California’s legal limit and the state sued. The case eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Feldman represented Cabazon in December 1986.

“To argue a case in front of the Court, the stars have to align correctly, and even more astoundingly, we convinced six of the nine justices that we were right,” he said.

The decision came down in February 1987 and led to Congress passing federal legislation regulating tribal casinos in 1988. Those two events directly influenced the establishment of several tribal casinos around the country.

“Not surprisingly, I had a lot of people wanting my legal help regarding casinos and the bulk of my practice involves that,” Feldman said.

Tribal gaming today generates around $35 billion. However, Feldman is quick to point out that a small minority of the roughly 500 casinos that exist, those close to large urban centers, make the bulk of that money. Most are located in rural locations, and while they do make money, it is more modest than people assume.

On the other hand, casinos have provided jobs for tribal members, programs and services and scholarships for high school and college students.

“I know for a fact that there are now dozens of young Native lawyers who wouldn’t have had the chance to go to law school without these funds,” he said.

In addition, “tribes are very, very charitable and contribute significant portions of their revenue to local charities,” he said. Depending on the state, sometimes that is actually a requirement of the casino. Regardless, Feldman said that casinos have been a net gain for the tribes and the communities near reservations.

“The tribes are good neighbors trying to share the benefits, which has helped the non-Indian community understand and appreciate their Native neighbors better than they did before.”

Though Feldman works exclusively on Native American issues now, they weren’t on his radar when he started law school at Georgetown University. After graduation, he became a staffer to several elected officials in the U.S. Congress. It was James Abourezk, the Democratic senator from South Dakota, who introduced him to Indian affairs.

Abourezk had grown up on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South

Dakota, and though he is not Sioux, he developed a great interest in, and affinity for, Native Americans. He helped create the American Indian Policy Review Commission and the Select Committee on Indian Affairs, which he was chair from 1977-79, before he left the Senate.

Abourezk was also the author of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), passed by Congress in 1978 to preserve Indian families and tribal culture, by arranging for the placement of Indian children in homes of their cultures, as well as to reunite them with families. It gives preference to tribal courts with custody of Indian children living on reservations and presumptive jurisdiction in cases of children living off the reservation.

When Abourezk left the Senate, Feldman followed him into private practice and worked as his associate. Due to his boss’ reputation and expertise, Feldman wasn’t surprised that some tribes hired him as their lawyer.

“That was how I got involved,” Feldman said. “He brought in the clients and I did most of the work.”

Feldman and his wife, Linda, left D.C. for Phoenix in 1986. By then, he had a full-blown law practice full of clients who were all west of the Mississippi and more than 1,500 miles away from the nation’s capital.

Many members of Linda’s family were already in Arizona, and Feldman decided it would make sense to live closer to his clients, even though he didn’t have any in Arizona at that time. People were coming to him from Alaska, California the word gets around and others come knocking on your door,” he said. and Oklahoma, but he was becoming well known across the west.

At 75, Feldman still goes into the office every day and has no plans to retire. He continues to discover new issues and problems, all of which he finds fascinating.

Nation. They brought a case in 2018 against Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, arguing that ICWA, Abourezk’s signature legislation, is unconstitutional. The Department of the Interior helps administer ICWA.

It boils down to whether Congress had the authority to pass a law giving specific preferences to tribes and other tribal members without running afoul of certain Constitutional provisions, Feldman explained.

His answer is yes.

“Congress has been doing this for hundreds of years. Indian tribes are political groups because they are governments. If the court rules against the tribes in this case, it could have major ramifications for lots of things having to do with Indian tribes — and create a lot of confusion and havoc in my field,” he said.

The Feldmans are members of Congregation Kehillah in Cave Creek.

Feldman is also the past chair of the Indian Law Section of the Arizona State Bar.

“If you do good work for a tribe,

“There aren’t simple answers and we need to convince people that our view is correct,” he said.

One case he’s keeping an eye on is Brackeen v. Haaland. The Brackeens are a white couple who adopted a Native child after a prolonged fight with the Navajo

Some of his clients have filed amicus briefs on Haaland’s behalf. The case is complicated and nobody is quite sure which way the court will rule, he said.

Feldman joked that although he spends a lot of time in casinos, his wallet never comes out of his pocket.

“I watch, but I know the house always wins,” he said. JN

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