By Katie Mimini. Katie Mimini is a JD/MPP student at Columbia Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School.

“What is ICWA?” asked the visiting speaker, sitting in the front of a packed classroom at Columbia Law School.

He was not familiar with the Indian Child Welfare Act, a federal law enacted in 1978 to protect Native families and communities after decades of government-sanctioned child separation. A lawyer and graduate of a prestigious law school, the speaker was discussing impactful cases the Supreme Court would decide in the 2022–2023 term. But when a student raised his hand to ask about Haaland v. Brackeen, an upcoming Supreme Court case that could have declared ICWA unconstitutional, the speaker was not familiar.

The student who raised his hand was Eldred Lesansee—a member of the Pueblo tribes of Jemez and Zuni, one of a handful of Native law students at Columbia, and someone who has often found himself educating other students, professors, and even visiting speakers about Indian law. In elite legal circles and in law schools across America, Indian law issues are commonly ignored, waived away, or simply unknown. For students like Lesansee, the labor of educating others can create a deep sense of loneliness and burden. And because of the systemic failure across law schools to uplift Indian law and Native law students, many non-Native law students will never get to hear Native perspectives on the law at all.

“The foundations of law were used on Native tribes, Indian nations,” says Lesansee. “And so that presence in itself is so integral to American jurisprudence that without a Native student in the classroom, you wouldn’t think twice about, ‘Oh, that’s just how it is.’” Meanwhile, cases such as Haaland v. Brackeen, which had gained an unusually high profile for a case about Indian law, have increased interest in the subject, at least temporarily.

But law professors often skip over Indian law issues, leaving them off exams and thereby sending a direct signal to students that this is not something they need to know. “It’s a really hostile thing to do,” says Matthew Fletcher, the Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School and member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. “It’s a direct insult, frankly, to Native students or any student interested in learning more about Indian law and policy.”

The insult is particularly damaging given the low numbers of Native law students across the country and the isolation many of them face in their institutions. In 2023, about 0.5% of all J.D. students were Native (aggregating the categories American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and Other Pacific Islander). According to mandatory reports to the American Bar Association (ABA) in the same year, only nine law schools out of 196 had more than ten Native law students enrolled. The highest number by far was at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Minnesota, with 42 Native law students out of 1,209 total J.D. students, or about 3.5%.

Outside of a few law schools that have dedicated resources to Indigenous scholarship, few law schools create robust offerings or cultures that are welcoming and inclusive of Native students. “There are probably tiers,” says Makalika Naholowa’a, the 2023–2024 president of the National Native American Bar Association (NNABA) and a Native Hawaiian. NNABA’s Young Lawyers Committee prepares a scorecard that evaluates Indian law offerings at ABA-accredited law schools, including whether the school offers a class on Indian law, whether it has any Native law professors, and whether it provides experiential opportunities in Indian law. “I think top tier is the [schools that] . . . . have true centers for this. And then I think there’s a second tier where they have more than nothing,” Naholowa’a says. “And then I think there’s a steep cliff where if you’re a Native student, [it’s] NALSA.”

NALSA refers to an individual law school chapter of the National Native American Law Students Association (National NALSA), an organization run by Native law students that provides many of the opportunities and services that law schools themselves will not. In April 2023, Eldred Lesansee was elected president of National NALSA for the 2023–2024 school year. Founded in 1970, National NALSA oversees 43 registered chapters at law schools across the country. “Unfortunately, not every law school can have a chapter, just because there are very few Native American law students generally,” Lesansee explains. “Usually there’s no Native American professor, or faculty, or staff member to help with the organization, to keep the knowledge going.”

For that reason, Lesansee sees National NALSA’s role as filling gaps: the gap between what Native law students need and what their law schools provide, and the gap between Native law students who may feel isolated and the larger Native legal community.

National NALSA’s annual flagship activities include a national moot court competition, a national writing competition, two conferences, awards, and several scholarships to support Native students. The moot court competition attracts teams of law students, Native and not, from across the country to work on a federal Indian law issue. “Where do you learn the substantive legal skills of being a lawyer in an Indigenous-governed space as a law student? I don’t think there is one other than the moot court” for most students, says Naholowa’a, who helped lead the Columbia NALSA chapter and participated in the moot court during her time in law school. “[National] NALSA creates opportunities for people to connect, to network in ways that are culturally sensitive, that are honoring of their identity,” she says.

These opportunities also include numerous events—broadcast widely to membership on Zoom and social media—highlighting substantive federal Indian law issues, professional advancement, and cultural celebration, says Lesansee. For Indigenous Peoples’ Day in October 2023, Columbia’s NALSA chapter, also led by Lesansee, worked with the administration to install a Native land acknowledgement plaque at the law school. And as a celebration, they hosted a dance performance by a Pueblo cultural dance group, with a live broadcast bringing close those who may have felt far.

More generally, National NALSA allows students to pursue opportunities for advancement that might not be available to them locally, even through their school’s NALSA chapter (if they have access to one). National NALSA “is really important for creating a network and a cohort of people that you can always reach out to,” says Fletcher, who serves as the faculty advisor for the NALSA chapter at Michigan Law School. “It also provides a lot of opportunity for leadership positions. And I think you see a lot of people that maybe even in their own institution feel sort of overwhelmed or not really a part of the law school. But through National NALSA, they can find a spot and they can rise above and shine.”

In this way, National NALSA and its local chapters help fill perhaps the biggest gap of all: the gap between the number of lawyers Native communities have and the number they need. “So many of the most important battles for our peoples in the last two hundred years have not been fought out on the fields in combat, but in courtrooms and legislative sessions,” Jasmine Neosh, Director of Public Relations for National NALSA and a citizen of the Menominee Nation, explains over email. “And often we have had to go in with little to no defense (if we are present at all).”

For Native communities, then, growing and nurturing more Native law students is existential. “It’s funny that we’re on this desperate journey for proportional representation—that’s nowhere near in sight,” says Naholowa’a. “And, actually, that probably is not enough. Because there’s so much stacked against that, actually, you need more hands in all the different places activating on this really complex, mature, mature system to effect change.”

And for Native people who make it to law school and become lawyers, participating in NALSA allows them to embrace their identities in the face of immense pressure to assimilate. Many people, argues Naholowa’a, assimilate in the professional sphere “so that cultural difference, as much as possible, is not the reason that you’re not successful.”

But “it’s unfair to ask Native people to assimilate, even professionally, because the existence and perpetuation of our cultures is so fragile,” she continues. “You might be one of five practitioners that have been vested with the knowledge of some cultural practice. You might have learned how to speak your language from one of the last native speakers on earth. So, asking them to assimilate so that they can be accepted professionally is tantamount to asking them to be the last of their kind, even if genetically they perpetuate their genes. You’re asking them to be a part of their genocide.”

For this year’s National NALSA board, the focus is on the future—both for the organization and for the community. “It is an amazing time to be a Native law student because it’s clear that things are changing,” writes Neosh. “Thanks to all the great people who have paved the way for us and the amazing students who are taking things even further.”

And for Lesansee, who has recently been re-elected for a second year as National NALSA’s president, embracing this bright future means recognizing how National NALSA is paving the way for others right now. “National NALSA, we’re at our 55th year this year,” he explains. “But as we move for the next 55 years, a lot of the work that we’re doing is reaffirming the foundation and really building out that foundation.”

Since long before he started law school, Lesansee knew he wanted to be a part of National NALSA and his NALSA chapter. “This has really been a love letter to Indian country, the Native law community,” he says. “But also those that are coming up behind me.”

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National NALSA is celebrating its 55th anniversary this academic year. Please visit www.nationalnalsa.org to learn how to get involved and how to support Native American law students.