From the Tulsa World:
At the Native American Rights Fund, we have always hired the best and the brightest to advocate for Indian rights and the orderly development of Indian law. One of the most outstanding lawyers to ever work with us is Keith M. Harper, who has been in the news lately as a potential nominee for a position on the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
No Native American lawyer has ever served on an appellate court in the federal justice system. I do not know if it is true that my colleague will be nominated to serve on the 10th Circuit. If it is true, President Obama is to be commended on his fine choice. I do know that Harper is highly qualified and deserves to be nominated and confirmed.
During my 40 years in the practice of American Indian law, we Native attorneys have worked toward the day that one of us would break through the glass ceiling and be named as an appellate judge. At 64, I and most other Native lawyers of my generation are not seeking judicial appointments, because those should go to younger people who can serve on the bench for a long time. Harper is 43 and could have an extended future as an appellate judge.
I know Harper and his work very well and can attest to his upstanding character and his diligent work ethic. He has a first-rate mind, a compassionate heart and an even temperament. He enjoys the respect of his peers and a well-deserved reputation as a thorough litigator and a fair judge. He was a NARF senior staff attorney for 11 years and his success as a litigator is a matter of public record.
Today, he is a partner with Kilpatrick Stockton LLP and chairman of its Native American Practice Group. He served the Obama-Biden presidential transition on the energy and environment cluster and served Obama for America on the National Finance Committee and as chairman of the Native American Domestic Policy Committee.
Named one of 50 “Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America” by the National Law Journal, he also has been recognized as one of 14 “Rainmakers” nationwide by Diversity and the Bar Magazine, one of the Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America and a Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation of Leaders Fellow. He earned his juris doctorate from New York University School of Law, where he was president of the NYU Native American Law Students Association. He has won prestigious legal fellowships and has taught law at American and Catholic Universities.
He clerked at the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and served as appellate justice, Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Court, and justice, Supreme Court of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians.
Love of the law runs in his family. His great-great-grandfather, the Honorable David Rowe, was elected as judge of the Northern Judicial Circuit shortly after the Civil War, following a distinguished career as clerk in the Northern Circuit, and as assistant principal chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1876. Rowe and myriad Harper ancestors were born in the Cherokee homelands and moved or were removed to Indian Territory in the 1820s and 1830s.
Harper is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and his roots in Oklahoma are deeper than statehood, by nearly a century. Military service drew Harper’s father away from Oklahoma, but his large extended family lives throughout the state and he returns often to represent Cherokee and other clients and for social and ceremonial purposes. He married Shelby Settles Harper (Caddo), also an attorney, in Muskogee, the home of his father-in-law, Oklahoma Special District Judge A. Carl Robinson.
Keith Harper is a stellar candidate for the 10th Circuit. His credentials and character are impeccable and his manner is balanced and collegial. If he should be installed as the first Native American ever to sit on a U.S. appellate court, I will celebrate this as an important milestone in American history.
John E. Echohawk, a citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, is a founder of the Native American Rights Fund, headquartered in Boulder, Colo., and has served continuously as its executive director since 1977.
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