Felix Clary
ICT + Tulsa World
OKLAHOMA CITY — A new institute focused on tribal sovereignty is opening at the Oklahoma City University School of Law, in hopes of training students in not only state and federal but also tribal law.
This institute will function as a library and research center, filled with materials and coursework related to the history of tribal governments.
“We are going to be the only kind of institute in the state and region that is really focusing on tribal sovereignty issues, as well as a place for research and support for sovereignty,” said Jennifer Stevenson, assistant dean at OCU School of Law, in a Tuesday Tulsa World and ICT interview.
The Law Forms Tribal Sovereignty Institute at Oklahoma City University offers courses on tribal sovereignty to Oklahoma City University law students.
“The academic side of the Institute… will be for law students and will be a part of their JD degree program,” said Stevenson. “However, our hope, once an executive director is selected,… the school will develop programs, trainings and scholarships that would be available to tribal leaders, tribal members, judges, lawyers, and other policy makers.”
Students at OCU School of Law will graduate with an educational background in tribal law, in hopes to provide more context and understanding in their work as attorneys in Oklahoma.
“Policymakers need more independent, credible information on this topic. All government entities, law firms, and tribes need attorneys who are knowledgeable in these areas,” said David Holt, OCU’s School of Law dean, in a Tuesday press conference at a Sovereignty Symposium event in Oklahoma City.
Holt said that tribal leaders are encouraged to utilize the institute for legal training, as well as people who want to pursue sovereignty initiatives beyond the legal realm. These initiatives would be cultural preservation, language revitalization, economic development, and more.
Choctaw Chief Gary Batton said he appreciates OCU for opening this institute because “anytime people become more knowledgeable about tribal law and state law, and how they can come together, that’s the key to success, whether it’s regarding taxation or whatever the case is.”
Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican and Cherokee Nation citizen, and Oklahoma tribal leaders have struggled to cross-deputize their jurisdictional areas since the McGirt decision, and this may be due to a lack of understanding tribal law, according to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes Lt. Gov. Hershel Gorham.
“Regarding the McGirt issue, I’ve always been very curious as to why Oklahoma has been slow in terms of grasping and understanding how that concept works,” Gorham said at the symposium.
“If you look across the country, there’s reservations everywhere: California, Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota, New Mexico, Arizona. And lo and behold, the sky is not falling in those states, right? So those states have figured out a long time ago how that concept works between state and tribal relations,” he said.
The new institute was announced during the 36th annual Sovereignty Symposium on Tuesday. About 600 people attended the rotating panels on topics related to tribal sovereignty that goes through Wednesday. The institute will host next year’s symposium.
The institute is different from the University of Oklahoma’s tribal law programs and Tulsa University’s tribal law center because OCU is a private institution.
“We have an advantage that public schools don’t have. We can stand strongly for sovereignty, choosing where to invest our funding, because we are not owned by the state or any of the tribes,” Holt said.
This story is co-published by the Tulsa World and ICT, a news partnership that covers Indigenous communities in the Oklahoma area.
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