Wearing a light green pantsuit and beaded earrings dangling past her shoulders, Savannah Francis, a University of Oklahoma law student, took a deep breath before addressing a panel of three people who were meant to act as United States Supreme Court judges.
Francis, a citizen of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, was one of more than 100 law students nationwide to attend the National Native American Law Students Association Moot Court Competition at the University of Montana on Friday.
In the competition, teams of two students study a fictitious case. Then, with just a few minutes’ warning, they are assigned a side to argue in front of a panel of practicing judges.
The National Native American Law Students Association (NNALSA) aims to train people interested in pursuing Indian law at the appellate level. The Moot Court Competition is in its 32nd year. This year marked the first time a Montana school hosted the event.
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Sapphire Carter, Chippewa Cree, is the NNALSA treasurer and university chapter president. She said Native Americans make up less than 1% of attorneys nationwide.
“We’re often an invisible class of people,” she said. “We need more Native American attorneys at every level — people who understand the experience of growing up on the reservation and the experience of being Native American.”
Federal Indian law is a field of law that regulates relationships between Native American tribes, individual states and the United States as a whole.
Carter said she hopes the event will inspire more people to pursue Indian law.
“Native Americans are the ones who are affected by the laws that are governing tribes,” she explained. “This is valuable because when you have someone who has lived that experience, they’re able to really advocate for tribal interests. We do this to ensure Native American law students can thrive.”
Monte Cole, a law student at UM who helped put on the event, said the competition is also valuable as it brings people from all over the country together.
“People will make friends here that they’ll work with for the rest of their lives,” Cole said.
‘I want to help tribes’
Savannah Francis’ assigned case had to do with the fictional Northern Tribe and the fictional Dakota Farm Bureau. The mock setting considered a dispute between the tribe and bureau regarding the co-management of a river.
Francis and her co-council, Ivy Chase, argued the tribe could not be sued due to its sovereign status. Competitors — Tori Shiraki and Lia Cook from the University of Hawaii — argued the tribe could be sued.
Each competitor presented an oral argument, as judges on the panel interrupted with questions.
Afterward, judges Dawn Gray, managing attorney for the Blackfeet Nation, Jessica Wiles, an Oregon-based attorney, and Daniel Rey-Bear, partner at a Washington law firm, gave competitors feedback. They encouraged the students to pause before responding to questions and to familiarize themselves with the tribe, its history and values.
As the judges deliberated, the law students let out sighs of relief in the hallway, laughed about particularly hard questions and congratulated each other on a job well done. Each of them hopes to one day specialize in Indian law.
“I want to help tribes,” Francis said. “I want to work for a tribe in Oklahoma and strengthen the relationships between the tribes and the state.”
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