 Good afternoon. Welcome to Integrating Doctrine and Diversity Speaker Series, Integrating Content on American Indian Law and Indigenous Identities. My name is Anna Baraza. I am the Director of Diversity and Outreach for the Roger Williams University School of Law. I'm going to read our land and labor acknowledgement. Before we begin, I wanna take a moment to reflect on the lands on which we reside. We are coming from many places physically and remotely and we wanna acknowledge the ancestral homelands and traditional territories of Indigenous and Native peoples who have been here since time immemorial and to recognize that we must continue to build our solidarity and kinship with Native peoples across the Americas and across the globe. Roger Williams University School of Law is located here in Bristol, Rhode Island. And so we acknowledge and honor the Narragansett and Poconocket people and Sawams, the original name of the land that our campus resides on. We also acknowledge that this country would not exist if it wasn't for the free enslaved labor of Black people. And we recognize that the town of Bristol and the very land our campus resides on have benefited significantly from the trade of enslaved people from Africa. The economy of New England, Rhode Island and more specifically Bristol was built from wealth generated through the triangle trade of human lives. During this time of national reckoning with our history of slavery and the disparate treatment of Black people we honor the legacy of the African diaspora and the Black lives, knowledge and skills stolen due to violence and white supremacy. While the movement for justice and liberation is building and we are witnessing the power of the people many are still being met with violence and even being killed. As upholders of justice our hope is to become agents of change for members of our society who have been met with violence physical, mental, emotional, through our privilege. And as upholders of justice we believe that our students who soon will be practitioners of law can be and already are agents of change as well. And for those who are not familiar with this practice why do we do a land and labor acknowledgement? I wanna share with you a statement from Northwestern University's Native American and indigenous initiatives which explains it much better than I could. It is important to understand the longstanding history that has brought you to reside on the land and to seek to understand your place within that history. Land acknowledgements and labor acknowledgements do not exist in a past tense or historical context. Colonialism is a current ongoing process and we need to build our mindfulness of our present participation. Thank you very much. I introduced to you Nicole Dyshlewski who will be our host for the afternoon. Thanks Anna. Hi everybody. Welcome to Integrating Doctor and Diversity Speaker Series. This is our second event in our second year of holding these sessions and I am very excited about today's speaker. Today's speakers. Today's event integrating content on American Indian law and indigenous identities features three experts, Matthew, Monty and Rebecca. I feel really honored to speak with the three of you today and want to dive right in. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights with us. I'm going to start with our first panelist, Matthew Fletcher. Matthew is the Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law at Michigan Law. He teaches and writes in the areas of federal Indian law, American tribal law, Anishinaabe legal and political philosophy, constitutional law, federal courts and legal ethics. He was the lead reporter for the American Law Institute's Restatement of Law of American Indians, completed in 2022 and is the primary editor and author of the leading law blog on American Indian law and policy, Turtle Talk. Matthew is also an author of an essay in our forthcoming follow-up book, Integrating Doctor and Diversity Beyond the First Year. To start us off, I want to point out that so many members of our audience and colleagues beyond our session today are working to integrate diverse content and perspectives into their classes. And the questions I get from the legal education community often come more from a fear or for their being afraid of their own lack of knowledge, then they do from a place of unwillingness to integrate this content. With that stated, my first question is a very basic one, but is one that I have gotten the most often in this area of law. Matthew, can you address how professors should most respectfully be referring to the topic of Indian law and the tribal people involved in the disputes? Should professors be calling this Indian law or is that an antiquated term? Should we be referring to tribe members as indigenous peoples, native peoples? Should we be referring to them by their tribal affiliation? Can you just start us off with some of the best practices in this regard? Yeah, I'll try. I think it's very much how comfortable the professor feels and who the audience is. So Indian, the word Indian, of course, is completely incorrect in every way. This is not India. People in this continent are not Indians, so to speak, but it is what we say and what we do. The classes are typically called federal Indian law, American Indian law, something to that effect. The constitution uses the phrase and the phrase Indian tribes and the term Indians not taxed. Two thirds, I would guess, maybe three quarters of all the statutes pass in Indian fares, use the word Indian. It's just that if you're gonna teach the class, you gotta use the word. It's fair to hedge and say, hey, this is not a correct term. But it's also fair to say, we're gonna use this term and we're gonna use it. We're gonna use it reasonably. It has sort of been recovered by Indian people, going all the way back to the American Indian movement, which took it very seriously to use intentionally and use that term. So it's fine. You probably can't get away with that in Canada. That is not a word that is acceptable in Canada, but in the United States, in most audiences, you'll be just fine. But I won't have to even explain yourself. People in the United States who are native tend to identify themselves as their tribal affiliation. And they'll do that themselves. And when you do a land acknowledgement like you just did, that helps a great deal. So it's totally fine to use the word Indian, totally fine to focus on the tribal affiliation of people. And it's also, let's be frank, when you have the question, should we use Indian? Who are you? What are you doing? It's usually, not usually, it's to me, often. And unfortunately too often is an effort to put people in their place to say, hey, who are you exactly? And so to sort of recast and associate and reinforce the racial hierarchies that we have in this country. So use the word. It shouldn't be a problem, but just understand and know what you need to know in order to use it effectively and in the right way. Thanks, Matthew. It seems kind of strange to me to be asking such a fundamental question to such respected legal scholars. But like I said, in my experience, people shy away from integrating diverse content and diverse voices because they don't feel like they have the knowledge or skills to do the material justice and to approach the topics with proper respect. And so I want people to hear, hey, you might be hesitant to do this and it might sound wrong, but you need to go and do it anyway. I spent today watching YouTube videos. So I could correctly pronounce things. And if I get them wrong, I hope someone corrects me. My hope is that hearing the answers to these questions from such distinguished legal scholars will help professors have a bit more confidence in themselves while they're doing the work. My next question is for Monty. Monty Mills joined the University of Washington School of Law Faculty in 2022 as the Charles Eyestone Professor of Law and the Director of the Native American Law Center. He teaches American Indian law property and other classes focused on Native American and natural resources related topics. Monty also co-authored an essay in our first integrating doctrine and diversity book. Monty, in that essay, you and your co-authors stated, our professional obligations as lawyers demand that we disrupt and end racism. Unfortunately, our approach to developing the professional identity of law students overlooks the racism endemic in the law, legal system, profession, and legal education. While students may take electives in critical race theory or intern in clinics that take racism head-on, law schools generally do not require them to wrestle with how the legal system created and perpetuates racism, nor do they develop the values and skills necessary to respond effectively to and ultimately dismantle it. The essay was written well before the changes to ABA Standard 303 were adopted. And now all law schools are to some extent wrestling with this very issue. Can you please share some of your perspectives on how to take racism head-on, teach law effectively, integrate Indian law topics and help students develop their professional identities all at the same time? Based on your experiences, are you able to share some specific strategies or thoughts about how to do this within the context of a class which is not specifically on federal Indian law? Sure, I'll offer some thoughts, certainly not any magic bullets or entire solutions. And I think that's an important starting point is that it's about the work and the process and continuing to educate and get better at it. It's impossible I think to ever arrive at the perfect approach to any of this stuff which is part of what makes the challenge so great. I do want to say just thank you for having me on this panel and I particularly appreciated the acknowledgement of land and labor and particularly the recognition of the continuing potential and impacts of colonialism. And I think that's really where we could think about how to integrate these topics into other courses. And for me at least the starting point is recognizing that we're all doing this already. We're all helping develop the professional identity of our students. We are all addressing race and racism in our courses. We are all working toward preparing our students for the practice of law. The question is whether we're doing it with an explicit focus on anti-racism and approaching it in a particularly open and intentional way, or whether as I think the historical and traditional practices of much of our profession in academia has been we're ignoring or excusing a lot of those aspects of the work that we do. And so I would say first and foremost, a step that anybody can take is just recognizing we're all doing this already. And the question is the extent to which we do so with an acknowledgement of the broader context and history and really practices of our profession that for the most part haven't really changed. Particularly since the late 1800s, but even before that. So I think that's a pretty low bar for everybody to sort of think a little bit more deeply about what is explicitly delivered in the curriculum, but maybe more importantly, what's implicitly delivered in the curriculum and what messages we're sending our students. And I'd say that's true with regard to incorporating Indian law topics as well. I like to say that the true test is not whether Indian law can be incorporated into the broader law school curriculum, but whether the broader law school curriculum can be incorporated into Indian law because there really, you mentioned how do you do this? And of course it's not specifically about Indian law. Well, arguably the only reason of course isn't specifically about Indian laws, those parts of that area of the law just aren't being considered or presented. And part of that is the canon and part of that is the research and the textbooks. And I think fortunately, as Matthew, a number of other scholars are beginning to point out that is just leaving out a whole nother part of the story of our legal system and true American law in a lot of ways. And so particularly for folks who are teaching in areas where it may not be explicit, the connection or the relevance or the importance of Indian law or tribal law along those areas, there are ways, even within a specific legal area to explore those overlaps in those connections. And if you're familiar with contract law or you're familiar with secure transactions or you're familiar with intellectual property, you can find ways in which those areas of the law connect up with both federal Indian law and maybe more importantly and maybe more powerfully tribal law. And that's an easier avenue potentially than to get into seeing other ways in which these other governments and the American legal system has addressed questions of indigenous rights and Indian law more broadly. So I'd say start there and just start with the recognition that whatever choices you make in your curriculum you're doing something about these questions and it's just what you wanna do with it and recognizing, last thing I'll say, acknowledging you may not be an expert in federal Indian law or tribal law, that's okay. I think there's a tendency for all of us to wanna have the answer to every question and be the expert on the stage and make sure that our students don't ask anything that we can't answer. But I think just taking time to do the work, even if that comes from a position of your own expertise and then expands into these other areas can really be fruitful in terms of opening up other ideas and avenues that then you can pursue. Monty, that was such a great answer because you're explicitly asking law professors to be vulnerable and we are not good at that. And I like that you bring that up. It's really important to me and through this whole series that we talk about it's not that we have to be the expert at everything and it's okay to say when we're not and I know that that impacts different professors with different identities differently but I do think it's important that as a profession we start to lean more into vulnerability and less into stage on the stage. So the question I asked is how to weave content about Indian law and indigenous identities into doctrinal classes. But I admit that weave is the wrong word. So is the word inject or integrate or infuse and the words are improper because Indian law and indigenous identities are in the law and are the law in ways that I am insufficiently describing. And really what I feel like I'm suggesting and what I think Monty is alluding to is how we stop whitewashing the curriculum instead of how we figure out how to add something. So it becomes less about well, how do I get one more case or one more idea and more about how do I have an honest reckoning with the material that's been there the whole time. Another question that sort of runs alongside this for me is how not to do this. I was really struck Matthew by your 1998 piece, Listen, about your experiences as a law student in the classroom. I'm gonna read an excerpt from it. So those engaging here with us today can fully understand the question I'm about to ask. Quote, at eight o'clock in the morning on a freezing January day, my brain is rusted and struck. The professor talks to us law students for 20 minutes about Johnson v. Macintosh. His tone is somber, but his voice is soothing. It is a story that we will just have to get through, he says. True, it is unpleasant and sad, but it will be over soon. Sometimes law takes a bad road, the professor acknowledges. Let's move on. The story of Johnson v. Macintosh, the story of conquest, murder, starvation, disease, betrayal has been laid down for all of us to hear. No reason to go over it again. The lesson has been learned already. It's a real downer. Why dwell on it at eight o'clock in the morning on a freezing January day when there is so much ahead to learn an almost unimaginable amount of information about property to master in only four months. I can hear the students now agreeing silently with the professor. We already know this story. We've heard it before. Let us not waste time. Let's move on. The 20 minute talk about Johnson v. Macintosh lasts only about 10 seconds in the weird temporal scene in Hutchins Hall. Before it sunk in, the professor began talking about the property issues of Bob Sultan. When I read this, it really struck me to my core. It is not just about how we introduce these topics or when in the classroom, but it is about the time and energy and passion and respect and honor we give these topics. Matthew, can you talk a bit based on your experiences as a law student and a law professor about how professors should engage with the materials in a way which is respectful and honors those cultures, peoples, and traditions who have been marginalized? Thanks, I'll try to call. Thanks for digging up that extremely old law review article, the first one I ever published. And so it's hard to answer that question in a short period of time, but I'll give it a shot. Let me tell you a little bit about Johnson v. Macintosh. And at the time I took the class certainly in 1995, January 95, and wrote this paper in 1998. I didn't know this, but Johnson v. Macintosh had only recently entered the canon, so to speak, of property case books. 70s, 80s, maybe even into the early 90s, more progressive property professors were trying to incorporate some Indian law into their property classes. And the reason they really wanted to do that, and in some respects now I think about it, is as kind of a proto-land acknowledgement that the sense that all lands in the United States originated originally were belonged to indigenous peoples and somehow were alienated to the European powers, the colonizing powers that came in with the prime beneficiary being the United States and the citizens of the United States, mostly the wealthy, already wealthy citizens of the United States, even to this day. And so I think what happened was that Johnson v. Macintosh was taught in the most superficial way possible for so many of us who took property in the 90s and aughties and maybe even today to some extent. And what I mean by that is we were introduced to the ideas of Johnson v. Macintosh as this is, and I remember this specifically was in my casebook and also the professor who by the way was the first time my professor had taught property, he was very open about that. In a lot of respects I liked him because of his willingness to acknowledge his own vulnerabilities and insecurities even and certainly an experience. But he said, look, this is where all property in the United States comes from. It all comes from this case, Johnson v. Macintosh, which is not true at all. The principles of Johnson v. Macintosh for the most part, the most important things that you actually learn are not really property principles. They're about federal control and federal power over Indian affairs. And that includes who is going to be authorized to purchase lands from Indians and Indian tribes. And the only property principle that shows up in Johnson v. Macintosh is the introduction of a principle that had been kicking around in theory up until that time, which was that at the time of the arrival of the colonizing nations, the colonizers, Indian tribes didn't really own their property in a way that the colonizers owned their property. And the reason for that, of course, was that Indian tribes under this theory were subhuman. They were not actually, they were not human enough to actually own property in a way that was respected by the colonizers. So those are the two key principles of that case. And how do you teach the principle of property to law students in their first year when the only principle or real principle of property in the case was that Indian people, indigenous people were subhuman and therefore they didn't really own their land effectively. So there's a lot of obfuscation, there's a lot of denial. There's an effort, I think, by property professors or was and maybe still is to just get past it as soon as you can and say, yeah, it's sort of like a land acknowledgement. We know that this used to be Indian land, let's move on. Let's talk about foxes, let's talk about anything else, but where the chain of title that exists and every single piece of property in the United States. And that's the real harm of introducing Johnson v. Macintosh, I think it comes from a really good place, but I think the outcome itself was very alienating for somebody like me. I'm pretty sure I was the only native person in my first year property section. Property was really, really a difficult thing for me emotionally, knowing that most of the property in the United States doesn't belong to a very small number of people. And that's totally irrespective of the fact that I was a descendant of indigenous peoples. So it was very difficult. And I know it was difficult for my professor who was just trying to get out of there without suffering any real huge embarrassment. And I also know, I strongly suspect that virtually everyone else in that classroom wanted to move on from talking about Johnson v. Macintosh and Indian peoples because one of two reasons are both. One reason is that Johnson v. Macintosh is not on the bar exam. And most people take property now because of the intellectual curiosity about theories of property, but because it's on the bar exam. And the other reason, of course, is that you don't want to talk about Indians. I wrote a whole book called Ghost Road where I explained my thoughts about why people really don't like Indians very much. And the one thing about Indians that people really don't like is that they know that Indian people are still here and this land used to belong to them and all of the resources upon the land. And that's a sense of shame and embarrassment for pretty much everybody in the United States who is a beneficiary of all of this. So it's a terrible emotional struggle. And if it done improperly, done wrongly, can cause a lot of damage. And I'm not here to blame my property professor for any of that stuff. I haven't spoken to him since the class. I barely remember his name, but it's very difficult to do that. Now, broadly, how do you put this material in a way how do I do this as a professor? What I do is I play around with something called historical gossip. So thankfully for Johnson versus McIntosh, there are entire books written about all of the stuff involving historical gossip about Johnson versus McIntosh, how Johnson was actually a former Supreme Court justice, how the case was a sham, that the parties were actually both attorneys for each party were paid for by a third party to create a sham Supreme Court decision, all sorts of good stuff. And the way that you can delve into the materials in any case, any class that has a case involving indigenous peoples is to, you really have to look beyond the four corners of the textbook. It's more work for a professor, but there are cases involving Indians that find themselves into casebooks. Notoriously, there's a case in torts, which is about, and if you read it, you'll think it's about parents who refuse to take their kid to the hospital and the kid dies. I can never remember the name of that case. Hopefully somebody in the Q and A can remember it. Virtually for 30 years, 40 years, it's been in virtually every torts casebook. Everybody reads it. Everybody hates those parents. They're the worst people of all time. Those people were native people who knew that if they took their sick child to the hospital, that they would never see that child again. The state would remove that child and put them in foster care and adopt them out and they would never see their kid again. And so maybe or maybe not in terms of whether it was justifiable to remove that child and take that child to the hospital is a harder question than you would know from reading the materials. And that's the real rub. I do this at Indian Law as well. It helps to sort of humanize the cases in a way that's respectful to all the parties. And that's sort of my personal take on how to do this really difficult stuff in terms of dealing with these cases that have a lot of disrespectful overtones is to try to humanize and to learn about the people involved. Thank you so much. I'm gonna turn to Rebecca to hear your perspective on this topic. Rebecca Plovel is a reference librarian and teaches in the 1L Legal Research Analysis and Writing Program at the University of South Carolina Law School. Rebecca practiced law in Arizona for 30 years. She was the chief prosecutor for the Gila River Indian Community, a deputy county attorney for the Maricopa County Attorneys Office, the Action Indian Community Prosecutor, the Pasqua Yaqui Tribal Prosecutor and Assistant General Counsel with the White Mountain Apache Trap. Rebecca still serves as a justice pro tem for the Pasqua Yaqui Court of Appeals. Rebecca, can you talk a little bit based on your identity and your experiences as a law student and a law professor about how professors should engage with the materials in a way which is respectful and honors the cultures, peoples and traditions which have been marginalized? Sure. I won't repeat everything that Matthew and Monty just said because, yes. Excuse me, sorry. First of all, I'm a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation which is part of Oklahoma Indian Territory. But I only spent a few summer vacations at my great grandmother's home in Dixby just south of Tulsa. But I got to spend time with my extended family there in Oklahoma. My great-aunt, my grandmother's sister worked for the tribe for most of her adult career work before she retired as an executive assistant in the principal chief's office at Muscogee Creek. And so I had those connections but I grew up in Arizona and California away from my own community. And I knew it was there. It was just part of my history. And when I went to law school, I lucked out in being assigned to Professor Rob Williams, one L property law class. And if anybody knows who he is, I think he's now one of the author, lead authors I think on the Getchies Indian law book. But he started property law with papal bulls, manifest destiny and talking about land thefts in the colonies from here in the US that came out of that colonization by the Spaniards which started with Columbus's ill-fated trips. And there were a whole lot of students in my class that didn't appreciate that we were getting that much more complete history about property here in the United States and where these lands came from is a bad way to put it but that was kind of, I can remember several of the students in that class just shaking their heads going, when are we gonna actually talk about property law? And my thinking was that's what we're talking about property law. And so I got that cloak, that mantle, that immersion into Indian law really early in my law career, my one L year. And I thank Rob every day for it. I clerked for a tribal judge at Pasquiyaki. I did an internship. Professor Williams actually found me some fellowship money so I got to spend another semester out there clerking for the judge helping him draft rules of court, helping they were working on a juvenile code. So I helped doing some of that drafting for the tribe and for the tribal court, which is great. And then the end of my two L year Dural Virena came out from the Supreme Court which said that one Indian tribe cannot prosecute a non-member Indian in tribal court for a crime committed on that reservation. And it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me given what I knew at that point. And that just went, okay, this is where I wanna be. This is what I need to be doing. I went into law school thinking juvenile. I was gonna be a juvenile lawyer. And this piece pushed me to wanting to do tribal law. I planned to write my substantial paper on how to fix that Dural Virena decision while Congress fixed it well before my paper was written. So I had to come up with a different process but I talked to Dural's attorney who was a flag staff attorney. A classmate of mine was from Flagstaff, Newen that made the introduction. So I interviewed him in preparation of writing my paper. At the time I didn't understand how he could be arguing against tribal jurisdiction and sovereignty. Dural was, I don't remember which tribe in Northern Arizona the crime was committed at Gila River. And now that I have been through a long career in the law, I get, and I understand where it is coming from representing his client to the best of his abilities. He was actually a court appointed attorney to represent Dural and federal court. And so, and he was basing his arguments on the Supreme Court's prior to precedence that kept shrinking tribal jurisdiction and sovereignty. He was doing a lot of criminal defense at the time and something I did later on doing criminal defense. But his viewpoint gave me a much better understanding of why he made the arguments he did as I learned more. I got to know him because I worked in Flagstaff. He was a good attorney. But it was one of those things like, how can you do this? But his focus was his client, not the bigger picture. And as Matthew just said, personalizing all that stuff, personalizing the cases, the parties, because I was seeing, you know, Dural he ran as a law school problem and he was saying Dural as a client, as a person who was getting, had been convicted in tribal court of a pretty heinous crime. So it just is one of those things where finding out that history, that information, that personalization cases. And one thing they've talked a little bit about is what I found and still finds all of the subjects I studied in law school. All of my areas of practice, whether I did those in or around or out of Indian country, juvenile, criminal, torts, contracts, property, employment law, con law, evidence, civil and criminal procedure, all of that goes on in tribal court. It's maybe a slightly different angle on stuff. You've got a different community and traditions and a different sovereign, but you're still practicing law. And it's really not that different in a lot of ways. And so I think I got way off your question here and I apologize. It's a recognition. We're working here on a land and labor acknowledgement and the struggle that I'm having with it is that whether the university or the law school can and will recognize and acknowledge their part in that dispossession and do something to make it better. Because I think that has to be there. That has to be a part of it. And I know that's kind of a later question, but I get to be retired from practice now as of the end of this summer and just be a law teacher and a librarian and loving it because I get to impart some of that history that I've learned to my students. Thanks, Rebecca. I'm actually going to follow up with that. So you teach research skills to 1Ls. Can you talk about the ways in which you integrate tribal law and indigenous issues into this instruction? Do you specifically show 1Ls where to find tribal law and West Law and Lexis? Do you use Indian law issues in your research assignments? And have you encountered any hurdles doing this work? The biggest hurdle I have with it right now is I'm so constrained with our current curriculum. Our 1L legal research program has a bunch of different sections and we all teach basically the same curriculum. So they all have the same kind of writing problems throughout the semester. And so I don't have a whole lot of time to add extra stuff. What I did do is we have a textbook that the program here has created. So we've got our own legal research text. It's online. It's on the LibGuides platform. And it's now actually open and I can send the link on here in a minute. But we rewrite or we update it every year. And so all of us librarians that teach in the program get a couple of units to update each year. And one of those that I updated this year was our US legal systems. I was like, yay, I can put tribal law in there. And I did it. I basically put a little piece in. You don't wanna quote this right. I don't wanna misquote myself. Is that the US legal system includes three systems of government, federal, state and tribal. And that each has its own sets of laws. That there aren't just the two systems for state and federal. And then I also talk about the four sources of law that we all kind of study. Constitution, states, statutes and ordinances, rules and regulations and case law. And then I add that you also have to be aware that tribal laws also come from those same four sources but they have a fifth source as well which is customs and tradition. And each tribes is different and each tribe has a different weight that they put on that. And we don't get to get in too much discussion. Students ask and I will tell them what my experience is. I have no problem doing that. You got totally off track one day in class. I'm like, okay, you guys have more homework now. And so I put in a little bit of a short explanation about kind of those foundational concepts that I quoted out of Cohen's handbook about tribal powers being inherent rather than coming from the federal government. And so I give them a little bit but I don't have time in our 1L class to really get into it. There just isn't time to do it in the program. If I can wrangle it out and do it, I would love to teach and advance a little research on Indian research and do a little bit of federal stuff but also talk about the tribal law stuff. I'm also updating for our spring semester federal regulations and just using examples in the federal regs, the Bureau of Indian Affairs various regulations and using some of those examples in our exercises. So they'll at least have some exposure that there's stuff out there that they can use. So looking at my notes here. The other thing I do is, like I said, I got off track one day in class because students were asking me questions. And so I was talking to them about my experience and working in Indian country. And I'm more than willing to do that. I got called by a librarian at another law school saying our professor that teaches American Indian law would love to have you come talk to her class. So I did a Zoom class with them. I'm gonna talk to one of our professors here, talk to her conflicts of law class about Indian law which is great. Okay, thanks, Rebecca. So my next two questions are for everybody on the panel who would like to answer them and they're more holistic to legal education generally. The first question is, how do you all advise law professors and administrators to deal with the issue of Columbus Day within and beyond the classroom? And whoever wants to start can start. Hi there. My law school just asked me to write an essay about Columbus Day. So I did. And it's sort of my own idiosyncratic take on what it's about, but I think I can probably give you a link to the thing I wrote, but I'm not really sure what to say. I think I don't spend a lot of time talking about it. So it's Indigenous People's Day for a lot of people, but it's a Columbus Day for a lot of other people. And my sense is that the fights over whether or not to have a Indigenous People's Day or Columbus Day tend to be more about Indigenous People's sort of going down their road of calling it Indigenous People's Day and totally in support of that. And on the Columbus Day end, it's not really about Columbus anymore. It's really about, for many people, it's about an Italian-American identity. There's really no holiday for Italian-American persons except for Columbus Day and they've really glommed onto it. And it's hard to disrespect that. They don't really care as much as you would think about Columbus is my sense. Columbus Day, they're losing a sense of who Columbus really is. So the main thing that I try to remember to tell people is that there was no person named Christopher Columbus. That was never his name. There was an Italian version of his name. There's a Spanish version of his name. There was no Christopher Columbus. That was a made-up thing at the beginning of the United States by a small group of people who believed that the term for America was sort of the male version of the United States and the term for Columbia or Columbus was the female version of the United States. These are things that nobody pays any attention to at all anymore. So to me, it's sort of a big nothing burger but really what it is for a lot of native law professors and even those of us who do Indian law who are not native that it's like an extra day of labor because we're always asked to speak on Indigenous People's Day or to write something about it or to do something. And this year I wrote something and I was on three panels, so it's just extra work. And I don't mind doing it. And an extra holiday is not a problem but I still have to work. I mean, I've never been at a law school that takes Indigenous People's Day off. So that, I don't know. To me, it's like it's not that big of a deal but it is definitely a deal. So it's like paying the bills, you gotta do it. Monty and then Rebecca? I would only add to that. I think it's helpful to investigate and talk more about the historical reasons why there is a Columbus Day, the reasons why it was nationalized as Matthew mentioned sort of the connections to anti-Italian immigrants and violence against immigrants. I think there's some reason to think more for those folks who are interested in talking about Columbus Day to understand why it is a holiday and to Matthew's point, what it means and what it doesn't mean and where it came from. So that would be one other option but I think that's only to the extent that folks care about Columbus Day as opposed to Indigenous People's Day. Rebecca, anything to add? Not really. I mean, I think, I know growing up to history, I got in grade school about Columbus was totally not the truth. And I think that's a lot less true now that there is a lot more information out there about really what happened. He didn't discover America. And he's not a nice person at all. In my work with tribes, none of them, of course, recognized it as Columbus Day. It was Indigenous People's Day or it was something else that they called it. Whether we got it off as a vacation day or not dependent on the tribe, I had worked for some tribes that we got all the federal holidays, whatever they were called, plus extra tribal holidays. And then I worked for a tribe that their main enterprise was farming. And so we got four holidays a year. Christmas New Year's, 4th of July and I don't know what the other one was but so we didn't get any of the other holidays. So, you know, it's, I don't celebrate it. I think I wore one of my Indigenous state slogan t-shirts that day to class and told my students, Happy Indigenous Day. But yeah, it's just one of those things that nobody's asked me what they should be doing. And so I, other than I wore my t-shirt that day I didn't do much of anything. Thanks, we have a question from the audience that hopefully someone can jump in on. A small group of us, two L's at CUNY Law, have been advocating for more Indian law doctrine programming, et cetera, as part of our strategy. We're looking to engage with our faculty curriculum committee. My question is whether an institutional requirement for integration of this material into doctrinal classes helps or hurts the cause. Does anyone wanna take that one? Yeah, I'll offer my two cents. Here's a couple of things that students should remember when they approach their faculty. Number one is that faculty members tend to be really protective of their, what they call their academic freedom. So if a faculty member doesn't want to incorporate Indian law, actively wants to avoid it, there's almost nothing you can do to force them to do that. And I think it can be counterproductive if you try to make, to mandate it. I think the better way to incorporate, to get a law school to incorporate more Indian law is to persuade the law school to hire people to teach the class, teach a class or classes in the field. I also think that the administration of the law school is would be open and receptive to knowing what the market for Indian lawyers is like, that there are almost 600 federally recognized tribes. They all have need for lawyers. States with significant Indian country, including New York, have significant need for lawyers within the state. Federal state, local governments need Indian lawyers. A lot of native attorneys who go to kind of law schools and maybe have the kind of profile that don't generate a lot of attention from big-time AM law, 100 law firms tend to get hired at those firms. It's the kind of thing that there's so much work in Indian law and it's high profile work that a law school is hurting itself by not opening those doors. That's the kind of argument that you need. You know, Derek Bell would have called it interest convergence, right? How do you get people in power to do the things you want them to do, find out that what your interests are and how they align? And that's something that law schools respond to. There's a reason I'm teaching, I'm now a faculty member at the University of Michigan. It's because students spent years making all of those arguments. And if you go to them and say, you have to do this because it's the right thing to do, I'm gonna tell you right now almost every law school will be like, well, we're a law school, we don't do right things. We do things that are to our benefit. And so make that argument. So this is an incredibly self-serving answer. However, I think that things like today are the way forward. I think that you can browbeat professors to an extent or I think you can make available and give them resources to figure out if they wanna lean into this work and how to lean into this work in a way that makes them confident that they can do it. Manage a classroom when it happens and see how important it is to the students and to our profession. One of the things that most convinced me that we need more of this is to look at the statistics about the number of attorneys who are with Indigenous heritage. The numbers are staggeringly low. And so I don't know what the most effective way is but I would say giving professors the tools to empower them to do this work themselves. They already are in the position to do it. So just giving them the tools to allow them to do it and some persuasion of how important it is. And then I think add to that that there's an open job market that is in the interest in everyone. I think that is the way forward. Monty, did you wanna jump in on this? No, I think what Matthew advised in your input is spot on. I think there's benefit in having those discussions sort of whatever form it takes. The only other thing I would mention is just that idea that proposing the integration of Indian law into courses can serve to perpetuate this idea that it's somehow outside of what law school is normally about and needs to be brought in. And I think just recognizing that in the context of these discussions helps reduce if not eliminate that marginalization, which has gone on. The idea that somehow this is a niche area of law that nobody's ever gonna practice in reality is not true. And so the more we can do to make that go away, the better. Rebecca? I was gonna just say, I got hired here at South Carolina as a librarian and they knew what my background was. Heartland, I think they hired me because I was also told but South Carolina doesn't do Indian law. Well, we are doing it and we're doing, I do it every day. And I'm adding to our textbook. I'm offering to talk to students, to talk to teachers, to come to their classes. And so I'm doing it every day, you know? It's like, yeah, law schools just need to hire the people that have some of the background and that are willing to do it. I think you're right, Matthew, that students are gonna be able to browbeat any professor into incorporating stuff in their class if they're not comfortable doing it but making the resources available that can give them that information that can help them. Add to their classes. Okay, my last question is, so I imagine most of those on today's session are not seasoned Indian law professors and instead are trying to integrate these identities, ideas and concepts into classes, not specifically on Indian law. So if the three of you could give some advice on what advice would you give our audience today generally on places to start or resources on which to rely to do more of this within their own classes? Well, I'll say, I think that there are Indian law cases in the case books already. When I was in law school, I took a class called remedies, you know, fit into my schedule, I didn't know what remedies were. And it was a half semester class. And I thought, hey, I'll be done with this class by the end of February and I was. And what I noticed by looking at the case book years later, because again, focused only on the things aside, was that the professor that assigned all the materials skipped over all the Indian law cases. It's remedies. There were a half a dozen or more cases about that involved Indian tribes. And the professor skipped every single one of them. So, you know, embrace those cases. Indian law is all over the place in constitutional law. It's all over the place in federal courts and federal jurisdiction. It can be all over the place in property and other classes. Find those cases and embrace them. Don't skip over them. By the way, the next edition of that case book, my lovely wife used, when she was at Harvard, we didn't know each other then. I looked for her edition of the case book. All of the Indian law had been scrubbed from that case book in the next edition. So, the faculty who did that case book took all the Indian law out, probably hearing from the people who adopted the case book. We don't want to do Indian law. And, you know, that's the 90s, but, you know, it's time to move on to that. So, you find those cases, embrace them. They're fun. The Indian law stuff is not boring. That's the great thing about Indian law, whether you're afraid of it or whatnot and worried about irritating somebody or, you know, embarrassing somebody or even upsetting somebody, just go for it. Those are really fun cases. They really are. And, you know, they're really, you know, what Indian tribes are doing is dramatically different than what corporate entities are doing or what state and local and federal governments are doing. They're doing things that are designed to save the world, right? And you want to teach those cases. You want to normalize the cases where you have this small, tiny Indian tribe, say in upstate Wisconsin, that is fighting, say, Enbridge. They had River Ojibwe versus Enbridge right now. If I were teaching remedies, I would open with that case. There's a case pending right now where the Enbridge pipeline is totally in trespass on this reservation. What happens when you have something that has a piece of property on somebody else's reservation? The remedy is you take it off and pay damages. The federal court said, no, we're not taking it off because it's just Indians and who cares? This is a case we should all be talking about all the time. I would only supplement that answer by suggesting that if you read those cases then you feel like you don't have background or context in the area. There's a ton of good resources on that end too. Check out Fletcher's comic book. He's got his work, his warm book, tribal law book, Ghost Road, which you mentioned earlier. I mean, all of these things are there to help provide more background and more comfort with understanding some of the principles of Indian law that you may come across in a case about remedies that you don't know too much about. That's what they're there for. So there's other resources too that can help you feel a little bit more at ease in teaching courses in your area that implicate these federal Indian law or tribal law issues. My two cents is to reach out to your librarians. Law librarians are some of the most resourceful, smart, well-researched, genius people on our campuses, in our world really. But reach out to your law librarians and say, hey, I need some resources on this. And I would bet in every school or almost every school, they would trip over themselves to help you identify the content. And you as professors have the skills. And I think your law librarians are a good match because they can get you the support and resources that might be helpful. Rebecca? Yes. I mean, when you sent the announcement out and send this out and I sent it to all of our faculty here at South Carolina, I got a couple of surprises, replies back to me just to sending it out to the listserv going, oh my gosh, I didn't realize that you had that background. I would love to pick your brain. I would love to have you come to maybe talk to my class. Can you look at my syllabus and see what else I need to add? And I was like, yay. But, which was odd because they all should have known what my background was, but I guess I weren't paying attention. I'm just a librarian. I'm a regular faculty member, but yeah. I'm sorry, Rebecca, I'm gonna interrupt you because this is my show. Please do not ever say you're just a librarian. That's what they say. Right, not on this panel. No, I don't feel like I'm just a librarian at all. So thank you. There are questions that we didn't get to. There are questions in the chat we didn't get to. And I feel like we just got the ball rolling and time is up. I wanted to say thank you to the panelists today. You were so good that I will email you all and ask you to come back again. Please don't dodge my emails. Thank you to our hosts, Roger Williams, CUNY Law, Berkeley Law, GW Law, and Jurist. Thank you especially to those behind the scenes like Chelsea and Morgan who do so much work. We don't see them, but they're there. And finally, thanks to you to our attendees. We're doing this work because we think it's important and we're hoping that this content really interacts with you and moves you forward and you want to ask questions and have feedback. And so I would welcome to hear from you all. If you have thoughts, ideas, feedback, comments, need resources, please reach out to me and I can sort of get you where you need to go. Our next session is in November on the topic of teaching diversity skills in bar-tested classes. Thanks everyone for spending some bit of their afternoon with us and have a great rest of the day.