UND Pedagogy Conference Announcement

UND Indian Law Conference – “The Pedagogy of American Indian Law”

UPDATED August 23, 2006

October 13-14, 2006
University of North Dakota School of Law, Grand Forks, ND

The teaching methods used by the more experienced Indian law professors who earned their bones in treaty and civil rights cases and in legal aid might vary a great deal from the less experienced professors. Professors who became interested in Indian law from their scholarship in constitutional law, property, federal courts, and so on might have yet more views. It is time again to reflect on the pedagogical aspects of American Indian Law.

The teaching of what we call Indian law to law students is a new art, beginning with Professor Ralph Johnson’s first classes at the University of Washington (his teaching materials still an integral part of many law libraries, including UND) and Monroe Price’s Native American Law Manual, reproduced by the California Indian Legal Services in the late 1960s and early 1970s. We now have several pages of Indian law professors listed in the AALS Directory of Law Teachers, over 125 by our count, and many more professors that teach Indian law either not listed in the Directory or who teach primarily in other disciplines. And, as far as we can tell, there at least 35 American Indians that now teach Indian law in law schools and possibly many more.

Previous symposia in this vein have focused on the justification for teaching Indian law, as in the 1995 New Mexico symposium, or on the education of scholars unfamiliar with Indian law, such as the 2001 Tulsa symposium on integrating Indian law into the law school curricula. The North Dakota symposium, in contrast, would urge Indian law scholars and teachers to speak to each other. There are more of us every year and we have a lot to learn from each other, specifically as to how we teach our classes.

The North Dakota Law Review has agreed to publish the papers from this symposium in a special issue of its Volume 82.


Presenters (in no particular order):

Alexander Skibine, S.J. Quinney College of Law – Utah

Gloria Valencia-Weber, University of New Mexico School of Law

Carole Goldberg, UCLA School of Law -- “Compared to What? Teaching Federal Indian Law in Relation to Legal Doctrine Outside the Field”

Jim Grijalva, University of North Dakota School of Law

Aliza Organick, Washburn University School of Law

Christine Zuni Cruz, University of New Mexico School of Law

Duane Champagne, UCLA -- “Justice, Culture, and Law: Teaching Law Students”

David Wilkins, University of Minnesota -- “The ‘Actual State of Things:’ Teaching About Law in Political-Historical Context”

David H. Getches, University of Colorado School of Law -- “Teaching the Trilogy”

Matthew L.M. Fletcher, Michigan State University College of Law -- “The Iron Cold of the Marshall Trilogy”

Kristen A. Carpenter, University of Denver Sturm College of Law -- “Stories of Allotment: Using Law and Literature to Illuminate Indian Property Losses”

Robert Laurence, University of Arkansas School of Law – Fayetteville -- “Indian Treaty Interpretation and the Rule against Perpetuities”

Bill Rice, University of Tulsa College of Law -- "Teaching Decolonization: Re-Acquisition of Indian Land Within and Without the Box"

Angela Riley, Southwestern Law School -- “Tribal Sovereignty in a Post-9/11 World”

Frank Pommersheim, University of South Dakota School of Law

All titles are tentative.