Indigenous Peoples Law Clinic

Introduction - Memoranda - Codes - Additional Activities

"All of the clinic's projects unashamedly
embrace the discourse of rights, and the
discourse of indigenous human rights
in particular, as an organizing and empowering
strategy for indigenous peoples."
Robert A. Hershey
Director of the Indigenous Peoples Law Clinic

The University of Arizona Rogers College of Law's Indigenous Peoples Law Clinic, under the auspices of the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy (IPLP) Program, provides domestic and international legal assistance to the Indigenous peoples of the southwest and the world. To that end, the Indigenous Law Clinic had established a court-appointed guardian-ad-litem program for the Tohono O'odham Indian reservation which involved the representation of abused and neglected children before their tribal courts in dependency proceedings. We have supervised law students in such areas as Native Hawaiian Sovereignty, Tribal Environmental Law, Tribal Probate, Criminal Code revisions, Cultural Protection, Rules of Court Legislation, Legal Research for Tribal Judges, International Intellectual Property and Human Rights Advocacy, Reorganization of Tribal Criminal Justice Systems, Foreign Trade Zone and Tribal Economic Development, Tribal Torts Claims Legislation, and Litigation Based Support for Federal Court Cases Involving Treaty and Other Tribal Rights. We have provided legal resources to the Tarahumara and Tepehuan Indians of Mexico. Our Law and Policy Program has hosted the United Nation's Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in his conference to assess annual reports from indigenous leaders from around the globe.

The clinic has developed pro se representation manuals for the Urban Indian population, has drafted cultural and sacred sites protection legislation, and has furnished students to work with the advocates, prosecutors and Attorney General's staffs of the Tohono O'odham Nation. Students have also been placed as criminal prosecution defenders for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and have worked in their Tribal Prosecutor's and General Counsel's Office. Students have clerked for the Navajo Nation Supreme Court, the White Mountain Apache Tribe's courts, the San Carlos Apache Tribe, the Gila River Indian Community's Tribal Court, and the Pascua Yaqui Tribal Court Judges. We are available on call to assist all Tribal Judges in the southwest. Clinical students have helped indigenous communities from Australia, Belize, Canada and Nicaragua. Students have played a role in the development of the Hopi Rules of Civil Procedure and proposed amendments to the Village of Upper Moenkopi's constitution on the Hopi Indian Reservation. We have created manuals for Youth Justice Programs and have developed a comprehensive practitioner's guide to the National Historic Preservation Act. Students further work on independent projects for Professors Hershey, Williams, Anaya, Austin and Hopkins and in organizing conferences such as Environmental Dispute Resolution, the State, Tribal and Federal Court Judges Conference, Symposiums on Indian Languages and Metaphor, Comparative Issues in Domestic Violence, and the Global Economy and Its Effect Upon Indigenous Cultures.

Professor Williams writes that "[a]ll of our projects are approached as efforts aimed at decolonizing United States law and international law relating to indigenous people's rights. Students are encouraged to try to understand how the legacy of European colonialism and racism are perpetuated in contemporary legal doctrine, to expose that legacy at work in the project they are working on, and to develop strategies which delegitimate it, literally clearing the ground for the testing and development of new legal theories.

"All of the clinic's projects unashamedly endorse the discourse of rights, particularly the emerging discourse of indigenous human rights, as an organizing and empowering strategy for indigenous peoples.

"Finally, we globalize wherever possible to make linkages with indigenous communities around the world. Transcommunality--whether it's just using the program's Internet homepage to update developments on clinic projects, or to take requests for research or information gathering assistance from an indigenous organization in Australia or Canada--is a big part of what we do.

"Before [you] ever step into a courtroom, however, [you will] understand that [your] participation in this program is part of an immersion experience in the most important aspects of critical race theory. First, in the classroom seminar component of the program, we globalize and historicize the dimensions of the problem of tribal control over tribal [resources]. [You] have to understand the nature and meaning of the historic struggle of indigenous peoples to exercise their cultural sovereignty...[You] learn how tribal courts in the United States function as the front line institutions in articulating a tribal vision of the law as it should be applied to tribal [issues]. [You] come to understand that when [you] finally step into that tribal courtroom, [you] are responsible to the tribal community as an invited participant in an important human rights struggle to reverse the history of ethnocide and genocide....

"[T]his whole process teaches [students] how to be effective advocates for indigenous peoples--and other disempowered groups, for that matter--in a multicultural world. [You] come to understand that [your] job as Critical Race Practitioners (whether they are yellow, black, red or white) is to figure out how indigenous peoples' stories matter, and to find ways to make them matter through community institution building.

"All of our projects are organized like that, and if a project can't be organized in that way, we don't take it on. For example, we draft a lot of legislative codes for tribal governments, and before we do a probate code or an appellate procedure code, or a cultural resources protection code, students first learn about the tribe and its relevant traditions and culture and history, spend time on the tribe's reservation talking with the people who are going to have to work with and live with the code, and then come back and figure out what they've got to do as Critical Race Practitioners to draft legislation for that tribal community. Our litigation support activities are organized around the same principles, as are our internship and externship placements and the workshops we put on for tribal communities on issues like environmental justice and child advocacy.

"Our students learn many valuable lessons in the Tribal Law Clinic, but first and foremost, [students] come to understand that Critical Race Practice is mostly about learning to listen to other peoples' stories and then finding ways to make those stories matter in the legal system."

Course Structure:

We have settled into a combination of a skills workshop, an Advanced Indian/Indigenous Law class, and an in-house colloquia. We have begun major collaborations with the Native Nations Institute and the Udall Center.

Students are placed directly under the supervision of Professors Robert Alan Hershey, Robert Williams, S. James Anaya, Raymond D. Austin and James C. Hopkins, who in turn both individually supervise the students and, when the scope of the work is in the nature of an internship, require their on-site supervisors to provide training and experience. The on-site supervisors' relationship and extent of training is constantly monitored by the faculty. Professor Hershey schedules personal conferences with each student throughout the term.

There is a classroom component to the Indigenous Law clinic. In addition to discussing the students' work for the various indigenous communities in a round-robin fashion (we construct these discussions so as to avoid any ethical problems involving confidentiality issues), students are given seminar lectures by the professors on a host of subjects including:

• American Indians and Courtroom Practice
• International Intellectual Property and Human Rights
• American Indian Language and Metaphor
• Cultural Sensitivity/Diversity
• Reservation Protocols
• Indian Gaming
• International Indigenous Environmental and Comparative Law
• Indian Religious Freedoms
• Indian Civil Rights Act and Sovereign Immunity Issues
• Imagery and American Indian Policy
• Economic Development and Taxation on Reservations
• Contracts and Procurement
• Criminal Law Enforcement on Reservations

During the course of the semester, the students are also shown videos of Indian issues. Guest speakers on pressing topics of concern routinely visit the Clinic seminars to speak on such diverse topics as Aboriginal Title Litigation, the Indian Claims Commission, and NAGPRA. Tribal Court Judges speak to their tribe's concept of justice.

The IPLP Program requires completion of a skills workshop as part of its graduation requirements. Successful completion of the Indigenous Law Clinic satisfies this requirement. Due to the complexity and extensiveness of areas of concern to tribal societies and the attendant legal formalities and practitioner skills required to navigate Indian issues, it is strongly recommended that students take two semesters of Indigenous Law Clinic.