Tom Tureen
Encyclopedia
Thomas Norton Tureen is a prominent American lawyer, known for his work with Native American tribes and the Native American Rights Fund
pioneering the use of the Nonintercourse Act to challenge post-1790 acquisitions of Native American lands
by state governments without federal approval.
Tureen litigated Joint Tribal Council of the Passamaquoddy Tribe v. Morton
(1975) and negotiated the $81.5M settlement, codified by Congress in the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act (1980). According to Time, in Passamaquoddy, Tureen was "[p]lotting what could become the most celebrated Indian victory since the Little Big Horn."
Tureen also represented the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe
, resulting in their 1983 federal recognition and the construction of the Foxwoods Resort Casino
, the largest casino in the world.
.
Tureen graduated from Princeton University
in 1966 and George Washington University Law School in 1969. At Princeton, Tureen majored in literature and poetry. While an undergraduate, he spent a summer working at a BIA-run boarding school in South Dakota. Bored, Tureen considered dropping out of law school in his second semester, but was convinced not to after attending a speech by Edgar Cahn. Tureen served as a research assistant to Cahn on an expose of the BIA titled: Our Brother's Keeper: The Indian in White America. Tureen also worked at Cahn's Citizens' Advocate Center. The next year, Tureen spent a summer in Maine working for the Passamquoddy with the Law Students' Civil Rights Research Council under attorney Don Gellers.
Tureen married Susan Albright in 1968; their honeymoon
was a "field trip to most of the Indian reservations in the country." Tureen's first wife is the mother of his daughter, Phoebe. In the 1970s, Tureen got a pilot's license and his own single-engine Cessna
. From 1997 to 2003, he lived on a $5.57 million, 35-acre estate in Falmouth Foreside designed by John Calvin Stevens
. In 2003, he moved to Freeport
.
titled "State Power and the Passamaquoddy Tribe: A Gross National Hypocrisy," which questioned Maine's exercise of sovereignty over the Passamquoddy in contrast to the situation of Native Americans in the rest of the country.
Tureen moved to the Native American Rights Fund
(NARF) to work on what would become the Passamaquoddy case. Tureen did not earn a commission on the $81.5 million settlement, only his $31,500/year salary. Time referred to Tureen at this time as a "tireless young antipoverty lawyer."
Following the settlement, Tureen worked as a financial adviser for the tribes, who used one third of the settlement to purchase 300,000 acres, another third to provide an annuity to each Passamaquoddy and Penobscot household, and invested the remainder. In 1983, Tureen founded Tribal Assets Management with Daniel Zilkha, an investment banker who attended Princeton with Tureen, which at one time in the 1980s handed $250M in investments for tribes across the US. Tureen was fired as a financial adviser by Penobscot Nation governor Francis Mitchell in 1989.
Tureen is credited with forming litigation strategies centered around the Nonintercourse Act:
According to Fromson, after the Passamaquoddy decision:
who is critical of both Tureen and the Pequots, whose indigeneity the author doubts.
), Intellicare, and Envisionet (now part of Microdyne).
In 2002, Tureen returned from retirement to represent the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes in their proposed plans to build a $650 million casino. The tribe's ballot measure failed in 2003.
Tureen left Maine for San Francisco in 2005, and married Erin Lehane, his second wife and a former spokeswoman for the casino campaign in 2006. Tureen's daughter, Rose, was born in 2010. Tureen currently works as a financial consultant in San Francisco.
Native American Rights Fund
The Native American Rights Fund, also known as NARF, is a non-profit organization that uses existing laws and treaties to ensure that state governments and the national government live up to their legal obligations...
pioneering the use of the Nonintercourse Act to challenge post-1790 acquisitions of Native American lands
Aboriginal title in the United States
The United States was the first jurisdiction to acknowledge the common law doctrine of aboriginal title...
by state governments without federal approval.
Tureen litigated Joint Tribal Council of the Passamaquoddy Tribe v. Morton
Joint Tribal Council of the Passamaquoddy Tribe v. Morton
Joint Tribal Council of the Passamaquoddy Tribe v. Morton, 528 F.2d 370 , was a landmark decision regarding aboriginal title in the United States...
(1975) and negotiated the $81.5M settlement, codified by Congress in the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act (1980). According to Time, in Passamaquoddy, Tureen was "[p]lotting what could become the most celebrated Indian victory since the Little Big Horn."
Tureen also represented the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe
Mashantucket Pequot Tribe
The Mashantucket Pequot are a small Native American tribal nation of the Algonquian language community in the state of Connecticut. Within the tribe's Reservation, in Ledyard, New London County, Connecticut, the Mashantucket Pequot operate Foxwoods Resort Casino, the world's largest resort...
, resulting in their 1983 federal recognition and the construction of the Foxwoods Resort Casino
Foxwoods Resort Casino
Foxwoods Resort Casino is a hotel-casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut, United States. Together with the MGM Grand at Foxwoods, it is one of the largest casino complexes in the world in terms of floor space for gaming. The entire resort comprises of space. The casino has over 380 gaming tables...
, the largest casino in the world.
Early life and education
Tureen's father was a wealthy businessman in St. Louis, MissouriSt. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
.
Tureen graduated from Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in 1966 and George Washington University Law School in 1969. At Princeton, Tureen majored in literature and poetry. While an undergraduate, he spent a summer working at a BIA-run boarding school in South Dakota. Bored, Tureen considered dropping out of law school in his second semester, but was convinced not to after attending a speech by Edgar Cahn. Tureen served as a research assistant to Cahn on an expose of the BIA titled: Our Brother's Keeper: The Indian in White America. Tureen also worked at Cahn's Citizens' Advocate Center. The next year, Tureen spent a summer in Maine working for the Passamquoddy with the Law Students' Civil Rights Research Council under attorney Don Gellers.
Tureen married Susan Albright in 1968; their honeymoon
Honeymoon
-History:One early reference to a honeymoon is in Deuteronomy 24:5 “When a man is newly wed, he need not go out on a military expedition, nor shall any public duty be imposed on him...
was a "field trip to most of the Indian reservations in the country." Tureen's first wife is the mother of his daughter, Phoebe. In the 1970s, Tureen got a pilot's license and his own single-engine Cessna
Cessna
The Cessna Aircraft Company is an airplane manufacturing corporation headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, USA. Their main products are general aviation aircraft. Although they are the most well known for their small, piston-powered aircraft, they also produce business jets. The company is a subsidiary...
. From 1997 to 2003, he lived on a $5.57 million, 35-acre estate in Falmouth Foreside designed by John Calvin Stevens
John Calvin Stevens
John Calvin Stevens was an American architect who worked in two related styles — the Shingle Style, in which he was a major innovator, and the Colonial Revival style, which dominated national domestic architecture for the first half of the 20th century...
. In 2003, he moved to Freeport
Freeport
-Place names:Bahamas*Freeport, BahamasCanada*Freeport, Nova ScotiaHaiti*Freeport TortugaUnited States*Freeport, California*Freeport, Florida*Freeport, Illinois*Freeport, Kansas*Freeport, Maine*Freeport, Michigan*Freeport, Minnesota*Freeport, New York...
.
Passamaquoddy and Penobscot
Tureen moved to Maine in 1969 to work with the Passamaquoddy for Pine Tree Legal Assistance, earning $9,000/year; Tureen worked on federal grants and civil actions for individual tribal members. In 1971, Tureen co-authored with Francis J. O'Toole an article in the Maine Law ReviewMaine Law Review
The Maine Law Review is one of the two student run legal journals at the University of Maine School of Law. Members are chosen by class rank and an annual writing contest. Only second and third year full-time law students are eligible for membership...
titled "State Power and the Passamaquoddy Tribe: A Gross National Hypocrisy," which questioned Maine's exercise of sovereignty over the Passamquoddy in contrast to the situation of Native Americans in the rest of the country.
Tureen moved to the Native American Rights Fund
Native American Rights Fund
The Native American Rights Fund, also known as NARF, is a non-profit organization that uses existing laws and treaties to ensure that state governments and the national government live up to their legal obligations...
(NARF) to work on what would become the Passamaquoddy case. Tureen did not earn a commission on the $81.5 million settlement, only his $31,500/year salary. Time referred to Tureen at this time as a "tireless young antipoverty lawyer."
Following the settlement, Tureen worked as a financial adviser for the tribes, who used one third of the settlement to purchase 300,000 acres, another third to provide an annuity to each Passamaquoddy and Penobscot household, and invested the remainder. In 1983, Tureen founded Tribal Assets Management with Daniel Zilkha, an investment banker who attended Princeton with Tureen, which at one time in the 1980s handed $250M in investments for tribes across the US. Tureen was fired as a financial adviser by Penobscot Nation governor Francis Mitchell in 1989.
Pioneering Nonintercourse Act litigation
By 1975, Tureen was the head of the Coalition of Eastern Native Americans (CENA), a nonprofit organization he had founded. In the five year delay between the First Circuit decision and the Settlement Act, Tureen was involved with eighteen lawsuits in six states (New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Louisiana). As of 1977, Tureen had acquired 14 eastern tribes as clients for NARF and was "[t]he principal attorney in all but one case". According to Prof. Cramer:However, in the 1970s, a revolution in Indian law was under way. Attorneys Tom Tureen and Barry Margolin were pioneering the use of Non-Intercourse Act claims to retrieve Indian lands in the Northeast, and to force the federal government to acknowledge a relationship with, and responsibility to, the Northeastern tribes. As part of a proactive outreach to Indian Country's unrecognized tribes, Tureen sent contacts out to talk with every unrecognized tribe he could locate.
Tureen is credited with forming litigation strategies centered around the Nonintercourse Act:
A key fork in the legal road occurred when a young, brash, and thoroughly inexperienced attorney named Tom Tureen transformed the case from a “money” opportunity into a quest for restoration. Tureen discovered—with the skip of a heartbeat that all would-be reformers know—the Indian Trade and Nonintercourse Act of 1790. This act states that “no sale” of lands by Indians “shall be valid” unless “duly executed” under authority of the United States. Tureen was not content with discovery of the means for restoring the State of Maine to its tribal sovereigns. He aspired to see it happen. He stubbornly refused to allow his case to become a cash cow for the Indian claims lawyers who circle the resting places of historic tribal misfortunes. As this young attorney said to Arthur Lazarus, Jr., of Fried & Frank, one of the deans of Indian claims cases, “Mr. Lazarus, this is not an Indian Claims Commission case, this is a Nonintercourse Act claim.”
According to Fromson, after the Passamaquoddy decision:
Pine Tree possessed the only list in existence that showed every group of Indians along the Eastern Seaboard that might now be able to bring a land-claim suit in federal court. Seventeen pages long with more than 200 Indian groups named, the document was a virtual client list for a pro bono firm like Pine Tree. No one was more excited by the Gignoux decision than Tureen, the senior attorney and driving force behind Pine Tree. . . .
An exuberant Tureen sent scouts up and down the Eastern Seaboard looking for similar suits to file. He was in particular looking for groups with reservations. A land base implied tribal existence, which was, according to the Gignoux decision, a prerequisite for bringing a suit in court. By spring 1975, Tureen had compiled a list of potential Indian groups for Pine Tree to represent, which included the Ledyard Pequots.
Mashantucket Pequot
Tureen's role in creating Foxwoods is featured in Without Reservation: How a Controversial Indian Tribe Rose to Power and Built the World’s Largest Casino by Jeff BenedictJeff Benedict
Jeff Benedict is an author, teacher, and public speaker. He currently teaches at Southern Virginia University, teaching classes on writing and mass media, and contemporary issues....
who is critical of both Tureen and the Pequots, whose indigeneity the author doubts.
Business career
Tureen has invested in many startup companies, including Brunswick Technologies (now part of CertainTeedCertainTeed
CertainTeed Corporation is a North American manufacturer of building materials for both commercial and residential construction. It is the largest manufacturer of building materials in North America and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Compagnie de Saint-Gobain SA of France...
), Intellicare, and Envisionet (now part of Microdyne).
Retirement
After a heart attack in 1995, Tureen retired and reduced his cigar consumption.In 2002, Tureen returned from retirement to represent the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes in their proposed plans to build a $650 million casino. The tribe's ballot measure failed in 2003.
Tureen left Maine for San Francisco in 2005, and married Erin Lehane, his second wife and a former spokeswoman for the casino campaign in 2006. Tureen's daughter, Rose, was born in 2010. Tureen currently works as a financial consultant in San Francisco.
Further reading
- Dean J. Kotlowski, Out of the Woods: The Making of the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act, 30 Am. Indian Culture & Res. J. 63 (2006).
- Robert H. White, Tribal Assets: The Rebirth of Native America (Henry Holt, 1991).