Professor Robert Miller will be a featured speaker at the All Roads Lead to Chaco Canyon conference in Louisiana. The conference will be hosted on Coushatta land in Kinder, Louisiana, March 11-13. We have a conference website which has the agenda and registration. Right now, early bird registration is going on and we do offer student rates.
Find out more information here.
Wednesday, January 29
9 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Ak-Chin Indian Community Conference Center, Room 544
Beus Center for Law and Society, Phoenix, AZ
The new Indian Gaming and Tribal Self-Governance Programs will host a conference on the fundamentals of Indian Law.
Topics covered:
Presenters:
Register now and receive complimentary conference materials.
Standard Registration rate of $250 ends 1/23
Register at: law.asu.edu/indianlaw101
In this month’s episode of the Talking Stick, Conversation with Stacy Leeds, host Derrick Beetso (’10) gets to know visiting Professor Stacy Leeds who taught federal Indian law at ASU Law for the fall 2019 semester. The Vice Chancellor for Economic Development, Dean Emeritus and Professor at the University of Arkansas discusses her recent experience as the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community Distinguished Visiting Indian Law Professor at the ASU College of Law, as well as current work she is undertaking which looks at the legal underpinnings of the Indian Civil Rights Act.
Listen to the podcast here.
At Professor Trevor Reed’s celebratory dinner in honor of the end of semester, Shawn Attakai (’00) was invited to present on the importance of preserving culture as a wrap-up of Reed’s class on Nov. 22. Attakai gave an extensive look into how Navajo traditions and the outlook on those traditions have changed over time.
Thank you for the captivating presentation!
We hope you join us for this special lecture by ASU American Indian Studies Associate Professor David Martínez about #VineDeloriaJr!
Free & open to public. Please send your RSVP to ilp@asu.edu.
What was it like to start law school?
Your professors were once law students too! We asked our Indian Legal Program faculty and staff what it was like to be a law student in their time, and our faculty responded with a variety of experiences.
We are so much stronger when we know effective work is being done so close to home and our ILP faculty are truly instrumental in their work and with their tribes.
Professor Patty Ferguson-Bohnee (Pointe-au-Chien) has been advocating for her tribe to be
federally recognized for years.
Beside the 573 federally recognized tribes, Pointe-au-Chien is one of the
nearly 300 who have not been permitted that status according to federal
criteria. Federal recognition allows for self-government and other permits that
are restricted from federally unrecognized tribes.
Ferguson-Bohnee is featured in an MSNBC video that discusses the need for
tribal recognition, which Pointe-au-Chien has been pursuing for over 20 years.
Watch the full video here.
In The Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma: Resilience through Adversity, Professor
Robert Miller (Eastern Shawnee) wrote the chapter, “Tribal, Federal, and
State Laws Impacting the Eastern Shawnee Tribe, 1812 to 1945,” in which he
discussed the legal and constitutional history of his tribe.
Despite the distinct laws that separated the Eastern Shawnee Tribe into at
least five separate nations in the 18th century, the Mixed Band of Senecas and
Shawnees “operated under established governmental leaders, laws, governing
mechanisms and traditional practices” in the early 19th century.
While going through the history when the U.S. government began to take over,
Miller notes every important legal development and act made by the tribal
governments and the federal government that has been recorded.
“The Eastern Shawnee Tribe has governed itself and its people since time
immemorial,” Miller said in his chapter. “The Eastern Shawnee people are
citizens of three political entities: the United States, the states in which
they are domiciled and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe. The Eastern Shawnee nation
continues today to exercise its inherent sovereign powers and to govern its
territory, its citizens and all who enter its jurisdiction.”
Professor Trevor Reed (Hopi) has conducted extensive research about his tribe’s
struggle to reclaim culture from museums, archives, universities, government
institutions, and more.
In his upcoming publication Reclaiming Ownership of
the Indigenous Voice: The Hopi Music Repatriation Project in the Oxford
Handbook of Musical Repatriation, Reed discusses his efforts to
reclaim Hopi ceremonial song recordings and their associated intellectual
property rights back to the Hopi Tribe.
In his repatriation work, he poses the following
questions: “is repatriation best conceived through an appeal to
property principles, or are there other principles of ownership and circulation
on which repatriation might be more effectively based? And, if Indigenous
principles should be the basis for the ownership and circulation of the
archived Indigenous voice, to what extent should repatriating institutions be engaged
in Indigenous “community politics” as part of their repatriation efforts?”
More on this publication will be coming soon.
____
Miranda Cyr
Communications Aide, Indian Legal Program, ASU Law
Professor Patty Ferguson-Bohnee is an associate judge for the Hualapai Tribal Court in
Peach Springs, Arizona.
“I was appointed Associate Justice on the Hualapai Court of Appeals in 2015,”
Ferguson-Bohnee said. “Tribal judges must have a strong handle of the Tribal
law and should spend time learning the Tribe’s law to be effective. Tribal
courts shouldn’t be a carbon copy of state and federal courts. Tribal courts
are really a pillar of Tribe’s sovereignty and self-determination. I’ve
learned a lot from listening to the practitioner’s arguments, and conferring
with my colleagues.”
Professor Robert Miller is a justice and chief justice on the court of
appeals for the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Indian Community, and
was appointed the interim chief justice for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe Court of
Appeals.
Miller has been a tribal court judge since 1994. He was hired as a pro tem
appellate judge with the Northwest Intertribal Court System based in Washington
just three years out of law school. “Judging gives one an entirely different
viewpoint on litigation and of the operation of courts than just acting as an
attorney,” Miller said. “Many Indian nations still need legally trained judges,
and all tribes will continue to need such judges in the future.”
Professor Paul Bender is the chief judge of the Fort McDowell Supreme
Court, chief judge of the San Carlos Apache Court of Appeals, justice of Salt
River Pima-Maricopa Court of Appeals, and justice of the Tonto Apache Court of
Appeals.
Bender started his pathway to tribal judging in the late 1980s with the Hopi Court
of Appeals. “I got involved with tribal courts when I was dean of the law
school [ASU Law] and we decided to put together an Indian Law Program, which
has matured into the current ILP,” he explained. “I did a study of the Hopi
court at the tribe’s request as the ILP began, and that led to their asking me
to be on their court. Invitations from the other tribes followed. I was
teaching Indian Law when I started tribal judging, and it helped a lot to
improve my understanding of tribal law in connection with that course.”
The beautifully colored landscape that many recognize as one of the natural wonders of the world — Grand Canyon National Park — is also a sacred place for many surrounding tribes. ASU Law Professor and Hopi tribal member Trevor Reed provides his insight in ASU Now. Read article here.
The latest podcast! 🎧
This month’s episode of the Talking Stick, Cultural Resources Protection, explores potential tribal copyright claims tribes may have to pre-1972 recordings, as well as cultural protection in other areas with Professor Trevor Reed.
To listen, click here.