Please see Kevin Gover comments on What “Redskin” means to an American Indian.
Category Archives: Faculty
NABA-AZ – Ann Marie Downes – March 2014 Member Profile
NABA-AZ is excited to present Ann Marie Bledsoe Downes as the March 2014 Member Profile. Read below to learn more about this wonderful person. NABA-AZ is grateful she is a member of our organization.
Ann Marie Bledsoe Downes currently serves as the Interim Executive Director of the Indian Law Program at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at ASU. She recently completed a short term appointment as the Interim President of Little Priest Tribal College and has served in various administrative roles at the Indian Legal Program. Ann Marie has taught courses in Advanced Legal Research and Writing in Indian Law and co-teaches Contemporary Issues in Tribal Economic Development. Prior to joining the Indian Legal Program, she served as the Policy Advisor for Tribal Affairs to former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano. Ann Marie previously served as president of Little Priest Tribal College located in Winnebago, NE. As President, she was responsible for the day-to-day administration and program implementation at Little Priest Tribal College and assisted the college in attaining 10 years of continued accreditation. During her tenure as President she was also a member of the White House Initiative on Tribal Colleges and Universities. In the early 1990’s she served as a Gaming Commissioner on the Hoopa Valley Tribal Gaming Commission and then for her own tribe’s gaming commission for a short time in 2000. She is a member of the Little Priest Tribal College Board of Trustees and as a member of the Board of Directors for the tribal corporation, Ho-Chunk, Inc. She is an enrolled member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska.
Q&A
1. Are you a native Arizonan? If not, where are you from? If so, have you spent a significant amount of time living somewhere else different from this state?
I am originally from Nebraska. I grew up on the Winnebago reservation in northeast Nebraska and lived there until I left to attend law school at ASU. I have lived in both northern and southern California but have spent most of my life in either Nebraska or Arizona.
2. How did you decide to become a lawyer? Did you always want to practice Indian law and/or work for a tribe? Why or why not?
I knew I wanted to be a lawyer at a very young age. My tribe had been fighting to have a new IHS hospital built in our community for a number of years and every so often our tribal leadership would come to the public school on the reservation to encourage us to stay in school and get an education. They would regularly mention our fight for this hospital and would emphasize the fact we had treaty rights and sovereignty. I knew that these words, these concepts, had a meaning beyond what even my tribal leadership was expressing. I knew in order to learn more about these legal principles and to be an advocate like my leaders, I had to go to law school. I never thought I would practice law. I was just looking for answers. My undergraduate degree is in 7-12 Social Sciences education so I thought I would be a social studies teacher and spend the rest of my time helping to fight to get resources to our community and to change the way people thought about my tribe. I’ll never forget the first week of my position as President of Little Priest. About my third day on the job I received a card from the tribal council inviting me to the groundbreaking for our new hospital. It was a decades old fight, but we had finally won.
3. To date, what do you think is your most notable accomplishment – either legal or personal?
I am extremely proud of the work I did at Little Priest Tribal College. We completed an accreditation visit during my last year there and were awarded continuing accreditation by the Higher Learning Commission. This work is a total team effort but I was a young professional with a very steep learning curve. To accomplish continued accreditation for my tribe’s Tribal College will forever be a highlight of my professional career. In my personal life I am very proud of my family. My husband and I have worked very hard to create a marriage that is a partnership. My kids are successful and happy and I hope they see our marriage as a good model to emulate in their future relationships.
4. Is there anything in your career that you have not yet accomplished that you have set as a goal for yourself? If so, what is that? If not, do you plan to retire at some point or try another career?
This is the toughest question for me. I’ve been fortunate enough to achieve so much of what I set out to do. I work in Indian legal education, I get to teach, support students as they pursue their goals, work for my community by being on various boards and my family supports me and keeps me balanced. (Well, for the most part. Any working mom knows it is easier said than done!) So, I feel like new goals are a bit greedy. With that said, I do miss being in the classroom and hope I get opportunity to teach again soon. As a long term goal, I have recently considered going back to Nebraska someday and either working for our tribal economic development corporation or even running for our tribal council.
5. Why did you join NABA-AZ? What would you like to see the organization do or accomplish in the near and/or distant future?
I remember when the organization was first started and I was excited to see how it would grow. The website still has elements of those early days when my colleague and friend, Kate Rosier helped to develop the initial webpage. I think the organization has had tremendous growth in such a short time. There is an active and committed group of people who have really allowed the organization to make huge impact with limited resources. In the long term, I think we want to be the organization that students and lawyers think of first when they are looking for a resource to help them connect with other lawyers in the field. Our activities should raise the visibility of Indian law and tribal law both locally and nationally, as well as highlight the number of great lawyers in Arizona who practice in that area.
6. Do you have any advice for new lawyers? If so, what is it?
Find a good mentor and be patient. The role you are to play as a lawyer doesn’t always reveal itself the first, second or even third year out of law school. Find someone who will help guide you both personally and professionally. Use your law degree to do good.
Ferguson-Bohnee receives national appointments from Lawyers’ Committee, ABA
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| Patty Ferguson-Bohnee |
Professor Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, Faculty Director of the Indian Legal Program, was recentlyappointed National Commissioner for the Commission on Voting Rights by the organization Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under the Law.
According to the Lawyers’ Committee, the Voting Rights Commission is dedicated to the struggle to achieve equality and protect advances in voting rights for racial and ethnic minorities and other traditionally disenfranchised groups.
Ferguson-Bohnee was also recently appointed by the American Bar Association (ABA) to the Coalition on Racial and Ethnic Justice and named Vice Chair of the ABA’s Committee on Native American Concerns of the Individual Rights and Responsibilities Section.
Ferguson-Bohnee has substantial experience in Indian law, election law and policy matters, voting rights, and status clarification of tribes. She has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, and has represented tribal clients in administrative state, federal, and tribal courts, as well as before state and local governing bodies.
Changes in Indian law, reservations to be examined at College of Law’s annual William C. Canby Jr. Lecture
For Immediate Release
For more information contact:
Julie Gunderson, 480-727-5458, julie.gunderson@asu.edu
Changes in Indian law, reservations to be examined at College of Law’s annual William C. Canby Jr. Lecture
Reid Peyton Chambers, a former Associate Solicitor for Indian Affairs with the U.S Department of Interior and founding partner in a law firm dedicated to representing Indian tribes nationwide, will deliver the Seventh Annual William C. Canby Jr. Lecture on Friday, Jan. 31, at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Chambers, who has dedicated his career to teaching Indian law and representing Indian tribes, will give a talk titled, “Reflections on the Changes in Indian Law and Indian Reservations from 1969 to the Present.”
“It’s a personal story for me,” Chambers said. “I’ll be giving my assessment of the changes I’ve seen on reservations and in Indian law since I first began my career in the late 1960s.”
Chambers said one of those significant changes began when Indian leaders on reservations began pushing for tribal sovereignty.
“Before the 1960s the federal government was paternalistic when it came to how they controlled Indian reservations,” Chambers said. “Tribal leaders wanted to get rid of that kind of control and establish their own governments.”
Chambers said that beginning in the late 1960s, the federal government for virtually the first time ever became willing to listen to the demands of Indian leaders, and policies from both Lyndon B. Johnson’s Administration and Richard M. Nixon’s Administration led to tribal governments reasserting sovereignty over their reservations. Chambers said it then became the goal of lawyers representing tribes to affirm in court that tribes did have a right to govern their reservations, as well as to protect tribes’ other treaty rights such as to water and to hunt and fish.
The lecture, presented by the Indian Legal Program (ILP) at the College of Law at Arizona State University, is scheduled to begin at 4:30 p.m. in the Great Hall of Armstrong Hall on the Tempe campus. It is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a reception in the Steptoe & Johnson Rotunda.
The lecture honors Judge William C. Canby Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a founding faculty member of the College of Law. Judge Canby taught the first classes in Indian law there and was instrumental in creating the ILP.
Chambers, served as Associate Solicitor of Indian Affairs of the U.S. Department of the Interior from 1973 to 1976. He was the Department’s chief legal officer responsible for Indian and Alaska Native matters. Chambers then joined the late Marvin J. Sonosky, a longtime attorney for Indian tribes, and Harry R. Sachse to found the law firm that is now Sonosky, Chambers, Sachse, Endreson & Perry, LLP. The firm specializes in Indian law.
Robert Clinton, Foundation Professor of Law at the College of Law, who invited Chambers to speak at the College of Law said Chambers experience in the field over the last four decades makes him the ideal candidate to speak to the changes that have taken place.
“He has the broadest and widest perspective of anyone in the country, on how Indian law has developed,” Clinton said.
Chambers has taught a seminar on federal Indian law at Georgetown University Law Center and at Yale Law School. He also co-authored the 1982-revised edition of Felix S. Cohen’s landmark treatise on federal Indian law and has published numerous articles.
Chambers taught law for three years as a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and worked extensively with the Native American Rights Fund and California Indian Legal Services.
For more info or to RSVP to attend in person: please visit http://conferences.asucollegeoflaw.com/canby2014/
If you cannot attend a live webcast of this event will be available at law.asu.edu/CanbyLecture2014.
Congrats to ILP’s Alum & Faculty member Diane Humetewa who has been nominated for U.S. District Court Judge
President Obama Nominates Eight to Serve on the United States District Courts
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Barack Obama nominated Judge Cynthia Ann Bashant, Stanley Allen Bastian, Diane J. Humetewa, Justice Jon David Levy, Judge Steven Paul Logan, Judge Douglas L. Rayes, Manish S. Shah, and John Joseph Tuchi for District Court judgeships.
“These men and women have had distinguished legal careers and I am honored to ask them to continue their work as judges on the federal bench,” said President Obama. “They will serve the American people with integrity and an unwavering commitment to justice.”
The Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law is honored to have 3 SDOC alums in the 8 nominees!
See full release at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/09/19/president-obama-nominates-eight-serve-united-states-district-courts
ILP Welcome Dinner
Tsosie publishes article in Colorado Law Review
Regents’ Professor Rebecca Tsosie recently authored an article, “A Philosophy of Hope 
and a Landscape of Principle: The Legacy of David Getches’s Federal Indian Law Scholarship,” that was published in the University of Colorado Law Review.
David Getches, the Dean and Raphael J. Moses Professor of Natural Resources Law at the University of Colorado School of Law in Boulder, died of pancreatic cancer in 2011. He taught and wrote on water law, public land law, environmental law, and Indian law.
Tsosie teaches in the areas of Indian law, property, bioethics, and critical race theory, as well as seminars in international indigenous rights and in the College’s Tribal Policy, Law, and Government Master of Laws program. She has written and published widely on doctrinal and theoretical issues related to tribal sovereignty, environmental policy and cultural rights, and is the author of many prominent articles dealing with cultural resources and cultural pluralism.
Tsosie publishes book chapter
Regents’ Professor Rebecca Tsosie recently authored a book chapter,
Climate Change 
and Indigenous Peoples: Comparative Models of Sovereignty in the book, Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples: The Search for Legal Remedies.
and Indigenous Peoples: Comparative Models of Sovereignty in the book, Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples: The Search for Legal Remedies.
The book, published by Edward Elgar Publishing, Ltd., in 2013, was written and edited by Randall S. Abate and Elizabeth Ann Kronk. Abate is an Associate Professor of Law at Florida A&M University College of Law, where he is the Director of the Center for International Law and Justice, and Project Director for the Environment, Development and Justice Program. Kronk is an Associate Professor of Law at The University of Kansas School of Law, where she is Director of the Tribal Law and Government Center.
Tsosie’s chapter will be republished as an article in the Tulane Environmental Law Journal.
Tsosie teaches in the areas of Indian law, property, bioethics, and critical race theory, as well as seminars in international indigenous rights and in the College’s Tribal Policy, Law, and Government Master of Laws program. She has written and published widely on doctrinal and theoretical issues related to tribal sovereignty, environmental policy and cultural rights, and is the author of many prominent articles dealing with cultural resources and cultural pluralism.
Professor Robert N. Clinton interviewed on AZ-TV
04/04/2013
Professor Robert Clinton of the College’s Indian Legal Program, was interviewed recently by AZ-TV 7 about a controversial tribal proposal to build a casino in Glendale.
In 2009, the Tohono O’odham Tribe made plans to construct a casino on land in Glendale that they acquired through a congressional act that was a result of damage done to their land by a dam.
First, the tribe would have to get the chosen land taken into trust, which has been opposed by the City of Glendale, Arizona, Governor Jan Brewer and other tribes in Arizona. Clinton said this is due in part to the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which generally prohibits the acquiring of new land for casinos.
Next, he said, the proposal would have to qualify under the very limited circumstances listed in the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.
“A large number of tribes have announced these kinds of plans,” Clinton said. “I think in the history of the Act, only five of them have ever succeeded.”
To see the interview, click here.
Clinton teaches and writes about federal Indian law, tribal law, Native American history, constitutional law, federal courts, cyberspace law, copyrights and civil procedure. He is an Affiliated Faculty member of the ASU American Indian Studies Program. He also is a Faculty Fellow in the Center for Law, Science & Innovation.
Sad News about Professor Joe Feller
Dear Alumni and Friends:
I write with incredible sadness to inform all of you that, last evening, our friend and long-time member of our community, Professor Joe Feller, was struck and killed by a car. I know this must come as a shock to all of you, and this is certainly a terrible loss to the College of Law.
Many of you knew Professor Feller personally; some may remember fondly class trips to the Grand Canyon with him. For those who didn’t know him well, he was an incredible teacher and advocate for environmental causes. He will be greatly missed. In the days to come, we will make plans to honor Professor Feller’s memory and service, and we welcome any thoughts or suggestions on how you might want to see him honored.
We invite you to reach out to members of our law school community during this difficult time.
by ILP staff on behalf of
Dean Doug Sylvester
Joe Feller was a great friend, mentor and advocate for the Indian Legal Program and many ILP students over his years at the law school. He will be greatly missed by ILP faculty, staff and alums.