Integrating Doctrine & Diversity Speaker Series: Integrating Content on American Indian Law and Indigenous Identities
The history, governmental policies, laws, and prejudices that have impacted and continue to impact Native American communities should not be relegated to classes on Federal Indian Law, or Native American Law, comparative law classes, or Tribal Law clinics. These topics, and the rich diversity of issues and identities within them, should be integrated within doctrinal and skills-based law classes. This panel will present ideas on how to effectively integrate American Indian law into classes across the curriculum. This event will also allow you to direclty ask questions of leading scholars, who will provide advice and wisdom.
This event is co-sponsored by Roger Williams University School of Law, City University of New York School of Law, George Washington University Law School, Berkeley Law, and JURIST.
3:00 - 4:00 PM EST
In 2021, RWU Law began sponsoring an ongoing Integrating Doctrine & Diversity Speaker Series in collaboration with CUNY School of Law and JURIST. Each previous installment has been attended by hundreds of legal education professionals from across the country.
Meet the Speakers
Matthew L.M. Fletcher (Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians) is the Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law at Michigan Law. He teaches and writes in the areas of federal Indian law, American Indian tribal law, Anishinaabe legal and political philosophy, constitutional law, federal courts, and legal ethics, and he sits as the Chief Justice of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the Poarch Band of Creek Indians.
Professor Fletcher also sits as an appellate judge for the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, the Colorado River Indian Tribes, the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, the Hoopa Valley Tribe, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians, the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Indians, the Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians, the Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska, and the Tulalip Tribes. He is a member of the Grand Traverse Band.
He previously taught at the Michigan State University College of Law (2006 to 2022) and the University of North Dakota School of Law (2004 to 2006). He has been a visiting professor at the law schools at the University of Arizona; the University of California, Hastings; the University of Michigan; the University of Montana; and Stanford University. He is a frequent instructor at the Pre-Law Summer Institute for American Indian students.
He was lead reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law of American Indians, completed in 2022. He has published articles in the California Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review,and many others. His hornbook, Federal Indian Law (West Academic Publishing), was published in 2016 and his concise hornbook, Principles of Federal Indian Law (West Academic Publishing), in 2017. Professor Fletcher co-authored the sixth and seventh editions of Cases and Materials on Federal Indian Law (West Publishing, 2011 and 2017) and both editions of American Indian Tribal Law (Aspen, 2011 and 2020), the only casebook for law students on tribal law. He also authored Ghost Road: Anishinaabe Responses to Indian-Hating (Fulcrum Publishing, 2020); The Return of the Eagle: The Legal History of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians (Michigan State University Press, 2012); and American Indian Education: Counternarratives in Racism, Struggle, and the Law (Routledge, 2008). He co-edited The Indian Civil Rights Act at Forty with Kristen A. Carpenter and Angela R. Riley (UCLA American Indian Studies Press, 2012) and Facing the Future: The Indian Child Welfare Act at 30 with Wenona T. Singel and Kathryn E. Fort (Michigan State University Press, 2009). Professor Fletcher’s scholarship and advocacy has been cited several times by the United States Supreme Court. Finally, Professor Fletcher is the primary editor and author of the leading law blog on American Indian law and policy, Turtle Talk, http://turtletalk.wordpress.com/(link is external).
Professor Fletcher worked as a staff attorney for four Indian Tribes: the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, the Hoopa Valley Tribe, the Suquamish Tribe, and the Grand Traverse Band. He previously sat on the judiciaries of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians; he also served as a consultant to the Seneca Nation of Indians Court of Appeals.
Monte Mills joined the University of Washington School of Law faculty in 2022 as Charles I. Stone Professor of Law and the Director of the Native American Law Center (NALC). He teaches American Indian Law, Property, and other classes focused on Native American and natural resources related topics.
Monte's research and writing focuses on the intersection of Federal Indian Law, Tribal sovereignty, and natural resources as well as race and racism in the law and legal education. He has published several law review articles and serves as a co-author on two textbooks: American Indian Law, Cases and Commentary (along with Robert T. Anderson, Sarah A. Krakoff, and Kevin K. Washburn) and Native American Natural Resources Law (with Michael Blumm and Elizabeth Kronk Warner). Monte also co-authored A Third Way: Decolonizing the Laws of Indigenous Cultural Protection, which was published by Cambridge University Press in July 2020.
Prior to joining the UW faculty, Monte was a professor and Co-Director of the Margery Hunter Brown Indian Law Clinic at the Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana. Prior to joining that faculty, Monte was the Director of the Legal Department for the Southern Ute Indian Tribe in Colorado, an in-house counsel department that he helped organize and implement in 2005 following completion of a unique two-year in-house attorney training program. As Director of the Tribe's Legal Department, Monte represented and counseled the Tribe on a broad array of issues, including litigation in tribal, state and federal courts, legislative matters before the Colorado General Assembly and the United States Congress, and internal tribal matters such as contracting, code-drafting, and gaming issues.
Rebecca Plevel (Muscogee Creek) is a Reference Librarian and teaches in the 1L Legal Research Analysis and Writing program at the University of South Carolina Law School. She joined the University of South Carolina Law Library in 2021 from the University of Arizona where she was a fellow at the Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library at the James E. Rogers College of Law while pursuing her Master of Arts in Library and Information Science. While at the UA she worked with several Professors at the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy program, supporting faculty research and student learning, updating their Resource Guide, and developed two additional Resource Guides for the library on researching Tribal Law and Tribal Court resources. Rebecca did her library master’s internship as a researcher for the Native Nations Institute and Indigenous Data Lab evaluating tribal research codes and is still part of the team completing the research. The Morris K. Udall and Steward L. Udall Foundation supported project focuses on Indigenous self-determination in US research governance, analyzing law, policy and mechanisms Tribes have implemented to control, support, and create standardized guidelines for researchers who want to conduct research on or about a Tribe, its people, and its land. The project centers on Indigenous standards in research, data sovereignty, and tribal self-determination in both legal and scientific fields. One article has appeared in Frontiers in Genetics, and another for the same journal is accepted for publication. Additional papers from the project are in the works.
Before joining the law librarian cadre, Rebecca practiced law in Arizona for 30 years. She was in Flagstaff, Arizona for almost 20 years; first at the Coconino County Attorney’s Office, then with the Hopi Tribe as deputy general counsel, and ultimately as a solo practitioner. She was also the chief prosecutor for the Gila River Indian Community, a deputy county attorney for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, the Ak-Chin Indian Community prosecutor, the Pascua Yaqui Tribal prosecutor, and an assistant general counsel with the White Mountain Apache Tribe right after law school. Rebecca served as a judge pro tem for the Flagstaff City Court and the Coconino County justice courts and still serves as a justice pro tem for the Pascua Yaqui Court of Appeals.
Rebecca’s scholarship interests lie in tribal and indigenous law, as well as social and access to justice. She grew up in Tucson and in her spare time, she is exploring her new home state on her motorcycle and taking long walks along the river with her Corgi.
Meet the Moderator
Nicole P. Dyszlewski is one of the editors of Integrating Doctrine and Diversity: Inclusion and Equity in the Law School Classroom. She currently serves as the Director of Special Programs, Academic Affairs at RWU Law and as an adjunct professor. She received a B.A. from Hofstra University, a J.D. from Boston University School of Law, and an M.L.I.S. from the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. She is a member of the Massachusetts State Bar and the Rhode Island State Bar. Her areas of interest are mass incarceration, access to justice, and systems of race and gender inequality in law. Nicole was the 2020 recipient of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Volunteer Service Award and the 2015 recipient of the AALL Emerging Leader Award.
Twitter:@LibrariaNicole