Shauna Coons is an enrolled member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Shauna is an attorney at Hogen Adams PLLC, where she assists tribal governments with real estate, business, and governance matters and a variety of tribal and federal Indian law issues. Most recently, she secured a historic reservation proclamation that added over 2,000 acres to the Lac Courte Oreilles reservation.
Shauna is on the Board of Regents for the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Community College and serves as its treasurer. She is active in the Indian Law Section of the Federal Bar Association and served as a co-chair of the National Indian Law Conference in 2017. She is also a member of the Minnesota American Indian Bar Association and past Co-Chair of its Continuing Legal Education Committee, Scholarship Golf Tournament Committee, and past board member. Shauna is a member of the Minnesota State Bar Association Real Property Law Section and has been a presenter at its Real Estate Institute.
Shauna received her undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities and went on to serve as a social worker handling Indian Child welfare cases for the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Shauna graduated from William Mitchell College of Law (now Mitchell Hamline School of Law) in 2007. While in law school, Shauna served as President of the Native American Law Student Association (NALSA) and coordinated the National NALSA Moot Court Competition, which was hosted in 2007 by all four Twin Cities law schools.
After graduation, Shauna clerked in Hennepin County District Court for the Hon. Robert A. Blaeser, drafting orders and memoranda on civil and criminal matters. She served as Deputy Solicitor General for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe from 2009 into 2013. As Deputy Solicitor General, Shauna handled litigation matters in a number of different substantive areas including housing, loan defaults, and child protection proceedings. She also negotiated contracts and advised the Band on a wide variety of internal and external matters. Shauna went on to an associate position at Best & Flanagan, where her practice focused on serving businesses, governments, and tribal entities on real estate, financing, economic development, and governance issues.
Shauna lives in Hugo with her husband and two active children. Shauna’s husband works in the Indian community, so the family frequently discusses Indian law and policy issues together at home and with their children’s schools. She enjoys knitting and running and successfully completed the Rebel Challenge at the Disney Star Wars Half Marathon in 2017.