Student Activities

National NALSA Moot Court Call for Judges!!!! [UPDATED]

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Volunteer to judge the Competition! Sign up here!

The National NALSA Moot Court Competition is an annual event held by the Native American Law Students Association. On February 25 & 26, 2011, the Competition will be held at Columbia Law School. Teams from law schools across the country will head to New York City to compete against each other. The Competition also provides an opportunity for law students interested in Federal Indian and Tribal law to meet each other and practitioners, and to enjoy New York City.

The Competition begins with the release of the Problem, written each year by a leading scholar in Federal Indian and Tribal Law, in the fall. Team registrations were due Dec. 6, with the late registration deadline Dec. 18. Based off of the Problem, teams of two write an appellate-level brief on behalf of one of the parties in the suit. The Briefs are due in mid-January. At Competition, teams compete against each other in oral argument rounds, arguing for both parties over several rounds. Awards are given out for Best Briefs, Best Oral Advocates, and Best Advocates. For more information, please see the Moot Court Rules.

For more information about Columbia Law School’s NALSA Chapter, please visit our website. For information about how Columbia runs their Moot Court program, please read this pdf.

MSU NALSA Art Fair — Jan. 21, 2011

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Shinnecock Tribal Member Receives First AIGC Fellowship

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From ICT:

The American Indian Graduate Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving cultural and economic well-being for individuals and tribes through undergraduate and graduate education, recently announced that it has awarded its first fellowship scholarship to a Shinnecock Indian Nation member.

Members of the Shinnecock Nation, which became the 565th Native American tribe recognized by the United States government earlier this year, were formerly ineligible for the fellowship program because the tribe lacked federal recognition.

Kelly Dennis, a law student at the University of New Mexico School of Law in Albuquerque, N.M., received the $3,000 fellowship award. A member of the Shinnecock Nation, graduate of the Pre-Law Summer Institute at the American Indian Law Center, and participant in the American Indian Law Certificate Program, Dennis hopes to represent her tribe and other underrepresented American Indian tribes upon her graduation.

“Kelly would like to use her expertise to assist tribes striving to find creative paths that will strengthen and rebuild their nations,” said Sam Deloria, AIGC director. “AIGC recognizes the potential of these dreams and considers it a privilege to lessen the financial burden of paying for a law degree in order to achieve such aspirations. And we like to hope that her award marks the first federal assistance to the Shinnecock Nation.”

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National NALSA Writing Competition Announcement

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the flyer.

William Mitchell NALSA is the host.

National NALSA Moot Court Problem ONLINE Now

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the Columbia NALSA moot court page.

And the direct link to the problem.

2010 Pre-Law Summer Institute Award Winners

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Watch out for this group!

The winners of the book awards for 2010 are:

Overall Best Student: Tanner Amdur-Clark (Citizen Potawatomi)

Advocacy: Victoria Hatch (White Earth Ojibwe) and Aubony Burns (Oklahoma Choctaw)

Oralist: Katie Parker (Oklahoma Choctaw) and Lucas LaRose (Northern Cheyenne and Winnebago Tribe)

Indian Law: Matt Murdock (MHA Nation and Standing Rock)

Property: Tim Cornelius (Wisconsin Oneida)

Civil Procedure: Madison Simmons (Chickasaw)

National NALSA Job Fair: Aug. 26-27 in Denver

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here.

CIC-AIS Graduate Conference Prize Winners

Matthew L.M. Fletcher2 Comments

Dear Colleagues:

Please spread the news that all three of the submitted prize winners at the recent graduate conference were women!!!   FIRST PRIZE went to Nicole Marie Keway for her remarkable paper on Emerson:  “The Piquancy of Particularity: Emersonian Savages and Speaking Beyond the Woods.”  The SECOND PRIZE winner was Sandra Garner for “Rhetorics of Traditions: Troubling Tradition in the Lakota Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality” –  Sandra is completing her degree at Ohio State University and will be at Miami University as a post-doc this fall.  Finally, a law student, Adrea Korthase, received THIRD PRIZE for her work on the “Kennecott Eagle Mineral Project and the Need for a Michigan Religious Protection Act.”

To see these outstanding women, please go to our website —  http://www.msu.edu/~cicaisc/ –  you can see their pictures as well as many of the other participants.  Conference planning, spearheaded by Susan Krouse, the director of the MSU AISP and her able assistant, Sakina Hughes, made this another memorable event.  The University of Wisconsin, University of Chicago, Ohio State, and the University of Michigan added a tremendous variety of  new scholarly approaches to the program – be sure to look at the program, which is on-line at our website.

Susan Sleeper-Smith

Director, CIC-AIS Consortium

Pre-Law Undergraduate Scholars Program at UNM This Summer — Spaces Still Available!!!!

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

UNM School of Law Sponsoring An All-Expenses-Paid Pre-Law Summer Program

for Native American College Freshmen and Sophomores

NA PLUS Flyer

The UNM School of Law, in conjunction with the American Indian Law Center, was awarded a grant through the Law School Admissions Council’s DiscoverLaw.org Plus Program to conduct a four-week pre-law program targeting undergraduate students at the end of their first or second year of college.  Students will attend classes in the UNM School of Law.  Students will engage in academic coursework focusing on Indian Law and Native legal issues, receive career and academic advising, learn more about the law school admission process, and receive mentoring by Native attorneys, judges, law school faculty, and students. The program will run from June 3 to July 6, 2010 on the UNM campus and applicants will come from all across the United States.

The program builds on a very successful pre-law program that has been running for 40 years at the University of New Mexico that is also a joint project between the School of Law and the American Indian Law Center.  That program, which is geared toward students in the summer before they enter law school immediately, has helped the ranks of American Indian lawyers grow nationally from a handful to more than a thousand in the last several decades.  This new DiscoverLaw.org PLUS program is intended to make a similar difference with a younger cohort to create a better pipeline to law school for American Indians.

UNM School of Law Dean Kevin Washburn, a member of the Chickasaw Nation and a graduate of one of the American Indian Law Center’s summer programs, credits the program with helping him complete law school and succeed in practice:  “The Pre-Law Summer Institute at UNM gave me support and direction for what has been a very successful career in the law; I could not imagine my career without this seminal experience and I hope that others find their way through this new program.”

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Michigan Indian Law Day Agenda (UPDATED) — April 2

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

University of Michigan NALSA

2010 Indian Law Day Schedule

Looking Inward: Tribal Governance

Blessing

1:00 – 1:10

Joseph Brave-Heart

Keynote Speaker

1:10 -1:40

Frank Ettawageshik

Former Tribal Chairman, Little Traverse Bay

Bands of Odawa Indians

Tribal Constitutions

1:45 – 2:25

Allie Maldonado, Assistant General Counsel,

Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians

Mike Phelan, Office of the General Counsel

Pokagon Band Potawatomi Indians

Tribal Courts

2:30 – 3:10

Prof. Matthew Fletcher, Michigan State University College of Law

Amy Kullenberg, Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians

Break/Refreshments

3:10 – 3:25

Tribal Economic Diversification

3:25 – 4:05

Zeke Fletcher, Associate, Rosette & Associates

Prof. Matthew Fletcher, Michigan State University College of Law