Stories of people
committed to public purpose and to making a positive difference
in communities throughout the country.
ABOUT
THE PROJECT
|
It was Sadlier's experience
at Standing Rock that motivated her to "actively defend treaty
rights beyond history, and galvanized me to go into law more
seriously." Above, Sadlier with Lakota People's Law Project
member and water protector, Phyllis Young during Sadlier's
summer at LPLP in North Dakota; a teepee overlooking the Oceti
Sakowin Dakota Access Pipeline resistance camp near the Standing
Rock Sioux reservation in 2016. Photos courtesy of Sarah Sadlier
and from iStock
|
SARAH SADLIER, HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS
AND SCIENCES
"Anytime that you can raise awareness,
or address the invisibility of Native American issues in the academy
is incredibly impactful."
For Sarah Sadlier, studying history isn't merely about understanding
the past but about the insight it lends the present and guidance
it provides for the future especially when it comes to law.
"[There's an] incredible amount of connection between the law and
history," says Sadlier, who is currently pursuing joint Ph.D. and
J.D. degrees with a focus on Native American history and American
Indian law at Harvard. "Historical research is often a great asset
when doing legal research."
Sadlier has done a lot of this recently, including using it to
build legal cases and testimonies, updating legal guidebooks, and
working on presidential candidate Joe Biden's Native American Policy
Committee to come up with legislative solutions and protect treaty
rights.
Sadlier's interest in Native American history and law isn't purely
academic. It's also deeply personal.
"I've always been interested in history and the law, largely because
of my family history and involvement within it," says Sadlier. "My
family is Lakota. My grandfather moved from South Dakota to the
Tacoma, [Wash.,] area. And he was one of the first Native American
lawyers. [H]e worked on the Fish Wars cases with the Puyallup [people],"
the successful '60s and '70s litigation and civil disobedience that
challenged the State of Washington's attempt to restrict tribal
fishing rights in violation of treaties from over a century before.
A key to protecting old treaties is educating law school students
about them in the first place. American Indian law is often completely
absent from law school curricula. Sadlier hopes to change this,
in part through teaching.
But educating is not all she plans to do, which is why she decided
to also pursue a law degree in addition to a Ph.D. The move was
inspired by a summer that Sadlier, who is from Washington State,
spent in Bismarck, N.D., working with the Lakota People's Law Project
(LPLP), an advocacy group that works to secure the Lakota people's
rights to autonomy and self-determination, reclaim Indigenous land,
and revitalize their culture.
"I had never thought about attending law school because I'd always
wanted to be a professor," Sadlier recalls. "The moment that changed
my mind was when I was in the Dakotas working with Lakota People's
Law Project and organizers on the ground and realizing how fulfilling
it was to be able to participate in this movement in a meaningful
way."
|
Sadlier spent her summer
2020 legal clerkship working to update the Native American
Rights Fund's Guidebook, the legal guide to the Indian Child
Welfare Act of 1978 which ensures that states do not remove
children from their families or Indigenous communities, and
promotes tribal sovereignty. Photo courtesy of Sarah Sadlier
|
North Dakota is the homelands of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara
Nations, the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation,
the Spirit Lake Tribe, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the Turtle
Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, and other Native nations. While
there, Sadlier contributed legal research related to the No DAPL
Movement at Standing Rock, which sought to shut down construction
of the Dakota Access Pipeline that would run near the Standing Rock
Reservation and threaten important cultural sites and the safety
of the region's water supplies.
"I basically worked on establishing the historical narrative of
what had happened at Standing Rock so [it] could be presented to
the judge in a condensed but understandable, concise history," Sadlier
says, referring to the protests of the pipeline and the arrests
of protestors, including water protector and LPLP lead counsel Chase
Iron Eyes, who was charged with inciting a riot. "I got to interview
and work with tribal members at Standing Rock
[it] was incredible
to be mentored by people there." As an expert witness and scholar
of history, Sadlier can provide the historical context of a law,
treaty, or event to help a judge understand all the factors that
are at play.
Since her time with the LPLP, Sadlier has conducted historical
and scholarly research for other legal projects. Recently, she updated
the Indian Child Welfare Act Handbook, the legal guide to the Indian
Child Welfare Act of 1978, enacted to ensure that Native American
and Native Alaskan children who were up for adoption would be placed
in Native American homes. This was especially personal for Sadlier,
whose own family from the Dakotas were sent to the Hampton Institute,
which some consider to be the first of the "Indian boarding schools",
institutions founded in the late 19th century to strip Native children
of their culture and language and forcibly assimilate them.
"The legal issues affecting tribes do span the gamut, from environmental
law to criminal law," Sadlier says. "Native American history is
often omitted, both from scholarship, but even statistics." And,
she adds, Native Americans are startlingly underrepresented in the
legal field. "Native Americans make up roughly 0.2 percent of lawyers,
and around 1.5 percent of the national population. So those statistics
are suggesting that there needs to be much more representation of
Native people in this field."
Native Americans need to be included when it comes to decisions
that affect their communities, Sadlier says, and historically, they
haven't been. "Any work that you can do to raise awareness can be
helpful moving forward in getting people energized," Sadlier says,
"or at least [getting them] to acknowledge
that Native Americans
are part of our broader community as well, and should be included
in policy conversations."
ABOUT SARAH SADLIER
Sarah Sadlier is a joint Ph.D. and J.D. candidate at Harvard Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Law School, respectively.
She specializes in American and Native American history and American
Indian law, with a secondary focus in studies of women, gender,
and sexuality. In the future, Sadlier plans to teach and to serve
as an expert witness for cases related to American Indian law.
Lakota
People's Law Project
LPLP aims to assist in the reclamation of Indigenous lands and to
stop all threats to the Lakota culture. We understand that Native
peoples possess inherent sovereignty and the right to autonomous
rule and self-determination.
https://lakotalaw.org
|