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Faculty

Professor Melissa Tatum has produced a CD of Celtic tunes – for which she wrote all the lyrics – as a project of support for the Michael J. Fox Foundation.  The Foundation works on finding a cure for Parkinson’s Disease and, in the meantime, seeing that everyone gets the best possible treatment.

In Professor Tatum’s own words:
"In putting together the songs and artists for this CD, I wanted to share two messages. The first is simply to share the rich diversity that is Celtic music. From ballads to history to sly humor to just sheer fun, this genre covers the spectrum. The second is that defeating Parkinson’s is possible if we work together. With the help of my friends and family, I defeat Parkinson’s every day as I refuse to let it define who I am. Every song on this CD bears witness to my success, because I co-wrote every song and not a single one is about Parkinson’s. Instead, they are simply songs about life and friends and family."

The CD’s sell for $20 apiece and are available both online at www.cdbaby.com or in Prof. Tatum’s office on the 3d floor of Rountree Hall.  More about the project can be found at www.cathbenefitcd.org and videos of some of the songs are posted at www.youtube.com/cathbenefitcd

Academics

The Continuing Education Certificate in Indigenous Governance is a joint program of the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program, the Native Nations Institution and the Native Peoples Technical Assistance Office.  The certificate is a 12-credit continuing education (presently non-degree) program designed for those who work with and for indigenous governments.  Faculty from IPLP and NNI team up to teach classes giving the certificate students and those they work with knowledge to help them build successful Native nations.

Coming up this January, the certificate program offers seven short classes, which would give a student 7 credits toward the 12 credits needed to complete  program.  Included among those classes are an Introduction to Nation Building, Defining and Protecting Identity and Making Change Happen.

Anyone interested in taking classes or learning more about the certificate program should go to the website www.indigenousgovernance.net.  The application deadline for students who are interested in taking one or more of the January classes is December 1, 2012.

Upcoming Events

On Saturday, November 17, IPLP will hold a Fall Festival to celebrate three decades of program excellence and to raise funds to benefit its scholarship fund, as well as NALSA (Native American Law Students Association) and the AISGSC (American Indian Studies Graduate Student Council).

The festival is open to all, and families and children are encouraged to attend. Participants will have opportunities to dunk their favorite professors at the dunk tank or stump them at the stump-the-professor booth. Kids will be able to dig buried treasure, work on crafts or toss pennies at the coin toss. A fun photo booth will be on site, as will a caricature artist. There is no admission charge, simply a charge for tickets to participate in the activities.

The festival starts at 10 a.m. on Saturday November 17th and goes until 1:00 in the afternoon. Naturally there will be snacks available for purchase, a raffle and a trivia contest as well. Parking is unrestricted in the law school lot on the weekends, so no excuse for not attending! More details (including sponsorship forms) are available at www.law.arizona.edu/iplp/festival.

Students

IPLP's LLM student Renee Racette comes to the program from Duncan, British Columbia, a short drive north of Victoria, B.C. on Vancouver Island. The law was not her first profession – for several years she taught 4th, 6th and 7th graders in remote Aboriginal communities in northern Saskatchewan. After returning to school herself, Renee obtained a joint J.D./Masters in Indigenous Governance from the University of Victoria in 2002. Since 2004 she has been working either as house counsel or independently for the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group (HTG), in connection with its negotiations with the provincial and federal governments over treaty rights.

The Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group began its treaty negotiations with Canada and B.C. in the mid 1990's. As the negotiations continued unsuccessfully HTG filed a petition before the Inter-American Commission to protect their land and other aboriginal rights as the negotiations progressed (or didn't). Renee's work with HTG has included negotiations preparation, community consultations, preparation of evidence and drafting arguments for the treaty group. She has advised HTG concerning language to be contained in the treaty documents. And Renee has traveled to Washington D.C. for presentations to the Commission on HTG's Petition.

She is back in school now, pursuing her LLM and studying critical race theory in order to "have her own understanding" of racism in the Canadian governments' dealings with Indigenous peoples, and to "enhance her ability to evaluate the law and promote change."

Outreach

UANativeNet has reached out to the Yavapai Apache Nation and together they are working on a project to get the Nation’s appellate court decisions summarized, digested and published on UANativeNet.  Each of the students in Professor Austin’s Tribal Courts Clinic is working on cases, as is LLM student Kevin Kemper.

The students’ first task is to write a one-paragraph summary of the court’s decision.   Then from a list of almost 200 Topic Headers they pick all the topics that apply to their particular case.  Every listed topic is condensed into a brief Research Point so that readers may see at a glance what issues the case discusses and how those issues were resolved. The case summary, topic headers and research points all appear immediately after the case caption.  Then the language of the case itself follows.

The Yavapai Apache Court of Appeals was created in the mid-1990's.  In its years of existence the three-judge court has decided approximately 45 cases, which will now be published.  There will be an index to the cases when the project is complete, along with an index of all topics covered and the research points from each case.

Alumni

A significant number of IPLP alumni put their degree to work teaching the next generation of lawyers and leaders. One such alum is Sarah Morales (LLM 2006), a member of the Cowichan Tribe in Canada, who now serves as an Assistant Professor in the Common Law section at the University of Ottawa. While at Arizona Law, Professor Morales served as the Department of Justice Congressional Fellow, clerked for the Pasqua Yaqui Tribal Appellate Court, and worked on a petition to the Organization of American States on behalf of the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group (a project which is still ongoing). Professor Morales has worked for numerous First Nation organizations in British Columbia throughout her studies, including the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group, the National Centre for First Nations Governance and Cowichan Tribes. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of Victoria, where her research focuses on Coast Salish legal traditions and the development of a process to reconcile conflicts between these and outside legal traditions.