The Harvard Law School (HLS) Native Law Students Association (NALSA) is excited to present the 2025 HLS Indian Law Symposium, titled”De-Othering Indian Law: Indigenous Topics as Canon Legal Doctrine.”
The symposium will be a day-long event on Friday, February 28, 2025,from 9am – 5pm. The symposium is open to the publicand free to attend forregistered attendees. You can register using the form link located on the symposium website.
Join the Native American Law Students Association (NALSA) to learn more about the law school application process. Current NALSA members will provide tips, best practices, and answer general questions about SLS and admissions. This event is open to the public.
On January 13, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the Walen v. Burgum redistricting lawsuit and affirmed the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota decision that preserves North Dakota House District 4A, a subdistrict that gives Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation voters a long-awaited opportunity to elect representatives of their choice. The lower court determined that state legislators were endeavoring to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and redistricting best practices by creating an election subdistrict along the boundaries of the MHA reservation as part of 2021 redistricting.
While the MHA Nation sided with the state to defend subdistrict 4A, North Dakota abandoned its own win during the appeal to the Supreme Court, failing to advocate for the state legislature’s voting map and citizens’ rights.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is the leading international instrument articulating the individual and collective rights of Indigenous Peoples. It recognizes that Indigenous Peoples have fundamental rights to freedom, equality and non-discrimination, as well as rights related to self-determination, life, land, religion and culture. The UNDRIP underscores the interrelatedness of efforts to ensure that Indigenous Peoples can live free from violence, take care of their children, revitalize their languages, and participate in lawmaking that affects them, among other rights and interests.
The product of decades of advocacy by Indigenous leaders, the UNDRIP is now embraced by all 193 Member States of the United Nations, including the United States. In 2014, at the conclusion of the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, the United States joined a consensus resolution of the United Nations General Assembly committing to take measures to achieve the ends of the UNDRIP.
More specifically, the United States committed to “taking, in consultation and cooperation with Indigenous Peoples, appropriate measures at the national level, including legislative, policy and administrative measures, to achieve the ends of the Declaration and to promote awareness of it among all sectors of society, including members of legislatures, the judiciary and the civil service.” The United States further committed to “cooperate with Indigenous Peoples, through their own representative institutions to develop and implement national action plans, strategies or other measures, where relevant, to achieve the ends of the Declaration.”
Consistent with this commitment, during the Biden-Harris administration, the Interior Department along with other federal agencies have undertaken certain measures to achieve the ends of the UNDRIP, and advance the rights of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian peoples.
It will be important for the United States, working with Indigenous Peoples, to continue to take measures to achieve the ends of the UNDRIP going forward.
This online workshop will offer valuable insights and guidance as you prepare to apply and matriculate into law school.
Facilitated by Shelbi Fitzpatrick 1L, Stanford Law School, Gabriella Blatt, 1L, Stanford Law School, Erica Mendez 1L, University of Wisconsin Law School, and Manuel Lewis 1L, University of Michigan Law School
Turtle Talk 
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