View as webpage

UPCOMING EVENTS

December 2

Kid-Friendly Faculty Book Talk with Tessa Dysart and Shalev Roisman

December 3

Giving Tuesday

January 6-25

January in Tucson

Greetings,

As we reach the end of November, we recognize Native American Heritage Month.

In this issue, you will read how our law school partners with the Indigenous communities in Arizona and elsewhere. More importantly, we share some of the many contributions that Native scholars, students and alumni make to our community and to the world.

Until the footnotes,

Marc

On November 7, 2024, the Council on Library & Information Resources (CLIR) announced the award of a $300,000 grant to a library preservation collaboration among the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources (NNDWR), Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environmental and Social Justice at the University of Arizona and LLMC as part of CLIR’s Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives: Amplifying Unheard Voices grant program. 

In recent years, water rights have been headline news as climate change has made water resources more scarce. This problem is acute on the Navajo Reservation, where reports state that 30% of homes lack running water.

In 2023, the United States Supreme Court ruled against the Navajo Nation’s position that the U.S. has an obligation under the 1868 treaty establishing the Navajo Reservation to assess Navajo water needs and develop a plan to meet them. Since then, the Navajo Nation and other tribes have continued to press for settlement of water rights issues, including in pending legislation before the U.S. Senate. 

But even as the Navajo Nation fought to provide reservation residents with safe and accessible water, the documents to help make its case were in jeopardy. Thousands of hard copy documents like maps, water access records and historical documentation were housed in a building that was in ill repair and in danger of flooding. In addition, pandemic shutdowns cut off access to non-digitized records in 2020. 

Now in its fifth year, the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources Library Preservation Project (NNDWRLPP) is digitizing 8,250 print resources from the NNDWR library. Over the next three years, the new grant will enable the project to digitize a total of approximately 1,500 documents, which represents around 10% of the collection. 

For the full story, see here.

AROUND THE COLLEGE

The Huerta Scholarship was established in 2014 in honor of Judge Lawrence Huerta (’53). Judge Huerta, a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, was the first Native American to graduate from University of Arizona Law and be licensed to practice law in Arizona. 

The Huerta Scholarship provides vital support to Indigenous law students attending the University of Arizona College of Law. Indigenous students can realize their dreams of attending law school thanks to the support of Huerta Scholarship donors.

Last year with your support, we raised more than $40,000 for Indigenous law students attending University of Arizona Law. This year our goal is to raise $42,500.

In October, Regents Professor Rebecca Tsosie received the Native American Bar Association of Arizona ’s (NABA-AZ) Lifetime Achievement Award. Each year NABA-AZ honors individuals for their tireless commitment to promoting and advancing legal issues important to Native Americans in the State of Arizona.

Professor Tsosie’s Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes her significant scholarly contributions, her tireless advocacy for tribal communities and her commitment to teaching and mentoring Native students.

For three weeks each year, the January in Tucson accelerated education event brings together distinguished faculty in the field of Indigenous governance, law and policy for an opportunity to teach and hold discussions with Indigenous leaders, practitioners, community members and anyone interested in Indigenous rights.

Hosted by IPLP and the University of Arizona Native Nations Institute, the JIT three-day, one-credit (CEU or graduate) courses not only convey important information backed by research, but they allow space for a crucial dialogue to occur between Indigenous peoples from all over the world. This conversation provides new perspectives to familiar challenges, and helps to make JIT a truly unique educational experience.

A six-credit Continuing Education Certificate in Indigenous Governance is available.

Throughout the month and around the university, there have been many events honoring Native American Heritage Month.

At the law school, these events have included a conversation with Honorable Chief Justice Emeritus Herb Yazzie of the Navajo Nation Supreme Court. Online, Professor of Law and IPLP Director Keith Richotte, Jr. spoke with the National Constitution Center on Native Americans and the Supreme Court.

We echo this message from the IPLP Facebook page:

We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of Indigenous peoples. Today, Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribes, with Tucson being home to the O’odham and the Yaqui. We celebrate the Native American Heritage of our campus each day. Skoden (Let’s go) Wildcats!

The faculty and staff of the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy (IPLP) Program recognize and celebrate the important contributions Indigenous peoples make to our university and law school community and the world at large.

The IPLP Program is committed to teaching, mentoring, and supporting the next generation of Indigenous lawyers, advocates, and legal scholars and protecting and promoting Indigenous human rights across the world. 

If you would like to receive updates, please subscribe to the IPLP Newsletter.

The years of work preserving the Navajo Nation water records – now supported by the significant grant and very welcome recognition from the Council on Library & Information Resources – is extraordinary. Yet for Arizona Law and our library team, it is also in some ways typical.

In other words, for our Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program, for all of our colleagues who write on Indigenous law and policy, and for our library, extraordinary is typical. As one example look at the upcoming courses for January in Tucson. As another look at the recognition of Professor Rebecca Tsosie, who has been a pathbreaking scholar and teacher.

And the term “extraordinary” fits our Native students, indeed all of our students who come to learn Indigenous peoples law and policy, in all its fascinating dimensions. Giving Tuesday and the Huerta Scholars Program is a simple, direct way to support those students. Join me!

Warmly,