AIS Vision Talk – Professor Lauren van Schilfgaarde on “Self-Determining Tribal Law”
The UCLA American Indian Studies Center and the UCLA School of Law are conducting a joint search. Please join us for the upcoming job talks in American Indian Studies.
Self-Determining Tribal Law
Monday, April 4, 2022
2:00 – 3:30 pm PST
RSVP Link
(Zoom link will be provided when you RSVP)
In this Vision Talk, Lauren van Schilfgaarde (Cochiti Pueblo) will discuss her research agenda regarding Indigenous self-determination and tribal law. Tribal legal structures exist primarily as a product of settler colonial pressures to assimilate to the Anglo-model of governance. Tribal sovereignty has largely been tolerated to the extent tribes have been willing to assimilate. However, tribes are leading the transition of federal Indian law into a self-determination model. Lauren’s research agenda includes an examination of how tribes are, can, and should innovate their own legal structures to achieve internal and external legitimacy and how external legal structure can and should interact with tribes.
Lauren van Schilfgaarde (Cochiti Pueblo) is the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians Tribal Legal Development Clinic Director at UCLA School of Law. van Schilfgaarde supervises live-client projects concerning tribal governance and justice systems, ethics, cultural resource protection, voting, child welfare, and more. She received her undergraduate degree at Colorado College and her law degree from UCLA School of Law.
van Schilfgaarde previously served as the Tribal Law Specialist at the Tribal Law and Policy Institute (TLPI) in West Hollywood, CA. At TLPI, van Schilfgaarde coordinated training and technical assistance to tribal courts, focusing primarily on Tribal Healing to Wellness Courts, restorative justice, tribal court infrastructure, and federal Indian law. At TLPI, van Schilfgaarde worked with over eighty tribal nations on various legal infrastructure projects. van Schilfgaarde served as a law clerk for the Native American Rights Fund and Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. She was a Public Interest Fellow at American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado.
van Schilfgaarde currently serves as a board member for the National Native American Bar Association, as Vice-Chair for the Native American Concerns Committee of the American Bar Association, as a Commissioner for the Lawyers Network Commission of the Center for Reproductive Rights, and as a Board Member of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Child Well-being Program.