Representing clients in all aspects of law affecting Native Peoples

The attorneys at Luebben Johnson & Barnhouse have decades of experience dealing with land and water rights, natural and cultural resources and environmental concerns. The firm has extensive experience in representing Indian tribes and Native American organizations in litigation and administrative proceedings on a wide variety of environmental matters.

Because the firm's land claim work involves highly complex litigation and negotiation, we have special expertise in the review and analysis of complicated, and often overlapping, systems of federal, tribal, state and local laws and regulations affecting land tenure. Mr. Luebben has negotiated and obtained sponsorship and passage of Congressional legislation that returned aboriginal Indian title land. Mr. Barnhouse is lead counsel in a case pending in federal court seeking to recover tribal lands taken by the City of Los Angeles in the 1930s, and Mr. Johnson represents the same client in a major ancestral land recovery effort against the federal government.

The firm has been involved in major Indian water rights litigation and adjudication over the last twenty-five years. Of particular note, Thomas Luebben litigated and settled a claim against the United States for breach of trust and failure to protect the water supply of the Soboba Indian Reservation in California. Mr. Luebben and Karl Johnson then litigated and settled the remainder of the Soboba Band's water related claims, which is currently waiting approval by Congress. The firm also represented the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians against the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to prevent the district from draining away the reservation water supply in the process of constructing a large underground aqueduct near the Reservation. The firm's efforts have forced Metropolitan to redesign and reconstruct the aqueduct, employing new technology, to prevent adverse effects on the reservation. We also have extensive experience with the water rights of New Mexico Pueblos, and with the water rights of allotted Indian landowners through our role in the negotiation and now implementation of the Southern Arizona Water Rights Settlement Act.

Mr. Luebben has a professional degree from the Colorado School of Mines in geophysical engineering and has worked as a geophysicist and attorney in the oil and gas and mining industries. The firm and its attorneys have negotiated oil and gas development agreements, mining agreements for commodities ranging from gold and copper to gravel; and right-of-way agreements, including construction easements, and borrow pits and water supply arrangements. Our current representation includes allottees in oil and gas royalty issues; a California tribe with respect to gravel lease compliance and reclamation issues; and Arizona allottees regarding a variety of issues arising from their copper leases.

Mr. Luebben represented a Native Hawaiian religious organization in successfully opposing the development of a very large geothermal power production complex on the Big Island of Hawaii with opposition based primarily on religious, cultural and environmental reasons. Mr. Johnson serves tribal clients in California and New Mexico as environmental counsel dealing with issues arising from the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. Mr. Barnhouse recently represented a California tribe in its successful effort to receive Treatment as a State status from the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Currently, we represent individuals and Alaska native villages in a fishing rights case pending in federal district court in Alaska. The case involves rights in the marine waters of the Tongass National Forest, and traditional and commercial fishing rights in those waters.

The firm represents tribes in enforcement of state and federal cultural resources protection laws against local governments and developers. We also advise tribes regarding their rights under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and ways to assert and protect traditional use rights in their aboriginal territory.