Thomas Norton Tureen (born 1945[1]) 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).[2] According to Time, in Passamaquoddy, Tureen was "[p]lotting what could become the most celebrated Indian victory since the Little Big Horn."[1]
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.[2]
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Tureen's father was a wealthy businessman in St. Louis, Missouri.[1]
Tureen graduated from Princeton University in 1966 and George Washington University Law School in 1969.[2] At Princeton, Tureen majored in literature and poetry.[1] While an undergraduate, he spent a summer working at a BIA-run boarding school in South Dakota.[2][3] Bored, Tureen considered dropping out of law school in his second semester, but was convinced not to after attending a speech by Edgar Cahn.[4] Tureen served as a research assistant to Cahn on an expose of the BIA titled: Our Brother's Keeper: The Indian in White America.[5] Tureen also worked at Cahn's Citizens' Advocate Center.[6] 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.[7]
Tureen married Susan Albright in 1968; their honeymoon was a "field trip to most of the Indian reservations in the country."[1][5] Tureen's first wife is the mother of his daughter, Phoebe.[1] In the 1970s, Tureen got a pilot's license and his own single-engine Cessna.[1][2] From 1997 to 2003, he lived on a $5.57 million, 35-acre estate in Falmouth Foreside designed by John Calvin Stevens.[2] In 2003, he moved to Freeport.[2]
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.[2] In 1971, Tureen co-authored with Francis J. O'Toole an article in the Maine Law Review 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.[8]
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.[2] Time referred to Tureen at this time as a "tireless young antipoverty lawyer."[1]
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.[9][1] Tureen was fired as a financial adviser by Penobscot Nation governor Francis Mitchell in 1989.[2]
By 1975, Tureen was the head of the Coalition of Eastern Native Americans (CENA), a nonprofit organization he had founded.[10] 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).[11] As of 1977, Tureen had acquired 14 eastern tribes as clients for NARF and was "[t]he principal attorney in all but one case".[1] 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.[12]
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.”[13]
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.[14]
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 Benedict who is critical of both Tureen and the Pequots, whose indigeneity the author doubts.
Tureen has invested in many startup companies, including Brunswick Technologies (now part of CertainTeed), Intellicare, and Envisionet (now part of Microdyne).[2]
After a heart attack in 1995, Tureen retired and reduced his cigar consumption.[2]
In 2002, Tureen returned from retirement to represent the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes in their proposed plans to build a $650 million casino.[2] The tribe's ballot measure failed in 2003.[15]
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.[15] Tureen's daughter, Rose, was born in 2010.[15] Tureen currently works as a financial consultant in San Francisco.[15]