federal courts.” Attorney’s Process & Investigation Servs., Inc. v. Sac & Fox
Tribe of Mississippi in Iowa, 609 F.3d 927, 943 (8th Cir. 2010). That other tribal
officials—most notably the Nooksack Council and police departments—viewed
6 Wash. Ct. of Appeals oral argument, Rabang v. Gilliland, No. 83456-8-I
(July 19, 2022), 18 min., 35 sec., video recording by TVW, Washington State’s
Public Affairs Network, https://www.tvw.org/watch/?eventID=2022071054
10
For the current opinion, go to https://www.lexisnexis.com/clients/wareports/.
No. 83456-8-I/11
Judge Dodge as acting under color of tribal law is as far as this court can or
should inquire into the propriety of his appointment. State and federal courts
have a long and shameful history of ignoring tribal sovereignty, and we will not
add to that history today. See generally Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, ___ U.S.
___, 142 S. Ct., 2486, 2505-27, ___ L. Ed. 2d ___ (2022) (Gorsuch, J.
dissenting) (summarizing history of American judicial interference in tribal affairs).
Second, the Rabangs’ reliance on the DOI’s December 2016 letter is
misplaced. The DOI’s 2016 letter stated that any actions taken by the tribal court
after March 2016 were “not valid for purposes of Federal services and funding.”
In the letter, the DOI explained that evictions and other Nooksack government
actions taken after March 2016 would not be recognized as lawful by the
Department “pursuant to [their] government-to-government relationship.” This
language appears to relate only to the federal governments’ provision of services
to the Nooksack, it does not purport to invalidate relevant Nooksack actions for
all purposes. Nor have the Rabangs demonstrated that the DOI even has such