The Center for Indigenous Law, Governance & Citizenship's Institute for Advanced Sovereignty is premised upon the belief that advocates for Indigenous nations and peoples must move beyond traditional conceptions of law and advocacy.  Effective advocates must not just understand federal Indian control law; they must be well versed in tribal and international law.  Moreover, they must possess lawyering skills that will allow them to pursue new legal and non-legal strategies to promote tribal sovereignty and Indigenous freedom. 

 

The Institute for Advanced Sovereignty is an opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to effectively represent Indigenous clients.  Two courses (one credit each) will be offered during a two week period.  Indigenous Liberation Strategies will focus on skills needed to be effective advocates when protecting and defending Indigenous sovereignty.  Beyond Colonial Indian Law will focus on choosing the appropriate advocacy and forum.

 

 

Robert Odawi Porter, the founding director of the Center for Indigenous Law, Governance & Citizenship, is Senior Associate Dean for Research, Professor of Law and Dean's Research Scholar of Indigenous Nations Law at Syracuse University College of Law. Porter is a citizen of the Seneca Nation (Heron Clan) and was raised in the Nation's Allegany Territory. He earned his undergraduate degree from SU's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and his law degree from Harvard Law School. 

 

Porter's professional experience includes private law practice in Washington, D.C. and government service as the first Attorney General of the Seneca Nation and the first Chief Justice of the Sac & Fox Nation of Missouri. He has been a member of the tenured law faculty at the University of Kansas and the University of Iowa. Porter is also the Senior Policy Advisor and Counsel for the Seneca Nation.  Porter's scholarship has appeared in leading law reviews and has focused on American Indian law and governance (particularly the Haudenosaunee), as well as Indigenous citizenship and political participation, eurocolonialism, and indigenization. His commentary has appeared in national newspapers and newsmagazines, including the New York Times. He is also the author and editor of Sovereignty, Colonialism and the Indigenous Nations: A Reader (Carolina Academic Press 2004).

 

Keith E. Sealing graduated magna cum laude from the Temple University School of Law, where he was a member of the Law Review. Prior to beginning his teaching career he was in private practice with major national and international law firms in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, where his practice emphasis was international tax and trade. He has taught at Emory University School of Law, Georgia State University School of Law, and the John Marshall Law School. He has researched and published in the areas of Constitutional Law and International Law and has published more than fifteen articles in these and related areas, including NAFTA's Elimination of Agricultural Tariffs: Will Globalization be Allowed to Destroy 7,000 Years of Indigenous Culture?, 18 American U. Int'l. L. Rev. 101, which details NAFTA's threat to Mexican indigenous culture.  He is currently working on a book which examines the interrelationship between the evolution of the American Indian Movement and "Red Power" and the anti-war, environmental, Black Power and other movements of the late 60s and early 70s.   He is working with the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar, Adjunct Faculty Committee to help develop a comprehensive Adjunct Faculty Handbook which will be made available to all member law schools in an electronic format that will allow individualized editing.  He has taught Law & Policy: Federal Indian Law at Syracuse for the past three years. 

 

Carrie E. Garrow, the Executive Director of the Center for Indigenous Law, Governance & Citizenship, is a member of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe and was raised at the Akwesasne Territory in New York. She received her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College,  her law degree from Stanford Law School, and a Master's in Public Policy degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. 

 

Garrow is a former deputy district attorney, Chief Judge of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Courts, and the co-author of Tribal Criminal Law and Procedure (Altamira, 2004). Her work has focused on tribal justice issues, including assistance to the Oglala Sioux Tribe with a participatory evaluation of a U.S. Department of Justice initiative (Comprehensive Indian Resources for Community and Law Enforcement) and also to the Grand Traverse Band of Chippewa Ottawa Indians with a juvenile code reform project. She has worked previously as a consultant for the Tribal Law and Policy Institute, the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, and the Native Nations Institute. She is also a beadwork artist and won Best of Division for Beadwork at the 12^th Annual Eiteljorg Museum Indian Market in June 2004. 

 

 

The courses are open to law students.  Participation in both courses is required. Juris doctorate candidates will receive one credit for each course. To foster student interaction and participation, the Institute is limited to 30 students. 

 

Indigenous Liberation Strategies

Representing Indigenous clients requires a different set of skills than other types of clients. Advocates need to be equipped with more skills than basic fluency in federal Indian law. This one-credit course focuses on sovereignty as defined by Indigenous nations, not the federal courts or Congress, and how advocates can assist Indigenous nations with protecting and defending their nations and sovereignty. The course will address the following topics: understanding sovereignty from an Indigenous perspective and how to provide representation that promotes tribal sovereignty; choosing the appropriate forum; ethical issues when representing Indigenous clients; civil disobedience--under whose law?; representation of clients who engage in acts of civil disobedience; and understanding and respecting tribal political processes.

 

 

 

The Institute will provide more than in-classroom lectures. Participants will visit sovereign Haudenosaunee territory to learn from Indigenous leaders how to be better advocates and will engage in discussion groups to analyze how to become more effective advocates.  Small groups will be used to allow participants to develop strategies to address real world problems faced by Indigenous nations. 

 

Date: June 6^th B June 17^th, 2005

 

Location: Syracuse University College of Law

 

Course Cost: $1,436. 

 

Room and Board: Available through Syracuse University

 

Registration deadline:  An initial nonrefundable deposit of $100 is due by May 23, 2005 to reserve a place in the Institute.  Full payment of $2,872 ($1,436 per credit) minus your deposit must be made by May 31, 2005.

 

Carrie Garrow, Executive Director

 (315)-443-9558

ndnlaw@law.syr.edu