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Bozho,
Congratulations to all for an inspiring, immersive, and stimulating 2021-2022 school year! As we head into the summer months, NNLPC celebrates our Class of 2022 graduates. We are planning ahead for our Summer Speaker Series, which will include some significant Supreme Court decisions coming down the pipeline. Stay tuned for the dates of those events.
We are also celebrating Lauren van Schilfgaarde, our current Tribal Legal Development Clinic Director, on her appointment to tenure-track faculty for the Native Nations Law & Policy Center and the American Indian Studies Program at UCLA. We are excited to be growing our program, and we will be hiring a new clinic director and a post-graduate fellow. See the job announcements below.
Read below about our 3 NNLPC graduates and their UCLA law school experiences and future plans. We are excited for their future legal profession and offer our heartfelt congratulations to them.
Megwetch,
Angela R. Riley (Citizen Potawatomi Nation)
Professor of Law and Director, Native Nations Law and Policy Center
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Lauren van Schilfgaarde joins NNLPC & AIS as tenure-track faculty
Lauren van Schilfgaarde (Cochiti Pueblo), currently the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians Tribal Legal Development Clinic Director, will be joining UCLA School of Law and UCLA American Indian Studies as a new tenure-track faculty member next year.
Lauren brings a wealth of knowledge to this position, having spent years working with tribal communities as the Tribal Law Specialist at the Tribal Law and Policy Institute (TLPI), teaching and mentoring students as the director of the Tribal Legal Development Clinic at UCLA School of Law, and passionately advocating on behalf of Native peoples in the national arena. She will be an incredible asset to the Law School and to AIS
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Tribal Legal Development Clinic | |
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The Tribal Legal Development Clinic welcomes 3 summer students this year:
Kristen Stipinov, UCLA Law '24, Alexander Roider, George Washington University Law School '23, and Brett Roberts, Ave Maria School of Law '23.
Law students will work under the direction of the clinic director, Lauren van Schilfgaarde on tribal projects that include child welfare, intellectual property, restorative justice, and cultural resource protection. As always, the Clinic welcomes project solicitations from tribes and tribal organizations. Inquire here!
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The Native Nations Law and Policy Center hosted an outdoor graduation dinner for our UCLA School of Law 2022 NALSA graduates. Graduates and their guests listened to remarks from Professors Goldberg, Riley, and van Schilfgaarde, and our graduates were honored in a blanket ceremony orchestrated by UCLA NALSA Co-Presidents Alyssa Sanderson and Paton Moody. | |
Class of 2022 Graduate Spotlights | |
Grace Carson
Grace Carson is a Diné and Chicana first-generation college and law student from Choctaw, Oklahoma. Grace holds a B.A. in Journalism and Political Science from the University of Denver. She specialized in Critical Race Studies, Public Interest Law & Policy, and International & Comparative Law at UCLA School of Law. During her time at UCLA School of Law, Grace was a Senior Editor with the UCLA Law Review, competed in the NNALSA Moot Court, and worked as an RA. A 2022 Skadden Fellowship recipient, Grace's post-graduate plans are to work at Tribal Law and Policy Institute to work with tribes on developing restorative justice systems and practices as alternatives to incarceration and punishment. Eventually, she hopes to pursue legal academia where her research will focus on ethnic studies, critical Indigenous studies, decolonization theory, and abolition theory.
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Jessica Govindu
Jessica Govindu was born and raised in Oklahoma and is an enrolled member of the Wichita & Affiliated Tribes and a descendent of the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma. Jessica holds a B.A. in History from the University of Central Oklahoma. The summer before law school, Jessica attended the American Indian Law center’s Pre-Law Summer Institute where she received a Felix Cohen Book Award for earning the highest grade in the Civil Procedure Class. Jessica returned to the PLSI program during her 1L summer to work as a Teaching Assistant for the Indian Law class. During her time at UCLA School of Law, Jessica was awarded the National Congress of American Indians Law and Policy Scholarship, the California Indian Law Association Scholarship, the Kitikiti’sh Scholarship, and the National Native American Bar Association Bar Prep Scholarship. She served as the Vice President of the UCLA NALSA and the Area 1 Representative for NNALSA during her 2L year. During her 3L year, she served as President of the National Native American Law Students Association, the Alumni Relations Chair for UCLA NALSA, the Secretary for the First-Generation Law Students Association, and the past two years has worked as an Articles Editor on the Indigenous Peoples Journal of Law, Culture, and Resistance. Jessica will be working for Hobbs Strauss Dean and Walker, an Indian law firm, in Oklahoma City beginning this fall.
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Please join us for our Summer Speakers Series as we engage Indian country on
cutting-edge issues in the field. More information will be forthcoming!
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Heather Morphew writes the NNLPC newsletter with editing from Angela Riley and Lauren van Schilfgaarde. Please send any feedback to nativenationslaw@law.ucla.edu | | | | | |
