Gary Forrester - Representation of US Indian Tribes

Representation of US Indian Tribes

Forrester, a descendant (on his mother's side) of Cherokee tribal members and Appalachian Melungeons, learned bluegrass music in the early 1980s from two members of the Lakota tribe, Cheeto Mestes and Mervin Frazier, while defending Indian tribal rights in South Dakota. During these years, while living on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, he also advised members of the American Indian Movement, including activist Kenny Kane and others, and assisted Lakota clients, including Kane, Russell Means, Madonna Thunder Hawk, and spiritual leader Sidney Uses Knife Keith, prepare for interviews and participation in Peter Matthiessen's landmark 1983 book, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.

As Director of the Native American Program for Oregon Legal Services (NAPOLS) in the mid-1980s, he represented several American Indian tribes, notably as tribal attorney assisting the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Klamath Tribes before the United States Congress in securing federal legislation restoring treaty rights following generations of "termination." In advocating before Congress for the restoration of these tribal governments, he worked with activist (and later Congresswoman) Elizabeth Furse, tribal leaders Kathryn Harrison (Grand Ronde) and Charles Kimball (Klamath), Congressman Les AuCoin, and Senators Mark Hatfield and Ted Kennedy.

Forrester represented Indian clients in a number of litigated cases, including State v. Charles (custody of Indian child under the Indian Child Welfare Act); Medberry v. Hegstrom (Klamath Tribe's rights under Indian Claims Commission); Red Bird v. Meierhenry (unemployment statutes must be strictly construed in favor of Indian claimant); and Quiver v. Deputy Assistant Secretary, Indian Affairs (collection and distribution of Klamath lease payments under Indian trust allotments). He also argued successfully before Judges Richard Posner, Diane Wood, and Daniel Anthony Manion in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Cavalieri v. Shepard, establishing that where the police were "deliberately indifferent" to a prisoner's health and safety, they had violated his constitutional rights (where the former prisoner was now in a permanent vegetative state following an unsuccessful suicide attempt behind bars). The Seventh Circuit in Cavalieri further held that the police were not entitled to "qualified immunity," as the law regarding "deliberate indifference" had been established before the attempted suicide, so the police were on notice that their conduct was unconstitutional. Following the Seventh Circuit's decision, Forrester successfully opposed the writ of certiorari filed on behalf of the police in the U.S. Supreme Court.

His 1990 text Digest of American Indian Law: Cases and Chronology (republished in 2012 by William S. Hein & Co. as part of its online American Indian Library) derived from his Oregon lectures at the Northwestern School of Law in Portland. He also taught law at the University of Melbourne, the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, and Victoria University of Wellington, and wrote extensively on indigenous rights and other matters.

Forrester was given the honorary Lakota name "Jeshel" (meaning both "meadowlark" and "messenger") following an unusual incident at a sundance in Green Grass, South Dakota, in the summer of 1981. During piercing day, which was guided by Yuwipi medicine man Frank Fools Crow, a meadowlark glided down to Forrester's shoulder from the tall cottonwood Sun Pole at the center of the sundance circle. Fools Crow paused at the cauldron, and quietly bestowed the name Jeshel. The sundance continued.