2022 Native Law Conference Speakers and Panelists

Professor John P. LaVelle (Santee Sioux Nation)

John P. LaVelle is a professor of law at the University of New Mexico School of Law and the director of UNM’s Law and Indigenous Peoples Program. He received his A.B. from Harvard College and his J.D. from the UC Berkeley School of Law. He serves as a member of the board of directors of Native American alumni of Harvard University. Professor LaVelle served on the executive editorial board for the 2005 and current editions of Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law, the comprehensive treatise in the field of Indian law. He also has chaired the Association of American Law Schools section on Indian Nations and Indigenous Peoples and co‑chaired the Native American Faculty Council at the University of New Mexico. Professor LaVelle is an enrolled member of the Santee Sioux Nation and an associate justice of the Santee Sioux Nation Supreme Court, his tribe’s highest judicial tribunal. His law review article Of Reservation Boundary Lines and Judicial Battle Lines was recently published in the Indigenous Peoples’ Journal of Law, Culture, and Resistance, based at UCLA School of Law. Download ‘Of Reservation Boundary Lines and Judicial Battle Lines’. Professor LaVelle resides in Albuquerque with his husband Monte Deer Carden, an artist, actor, and enrolled citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.

Professor Kekek Stark (Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe)

Kekek Stark is an assistant professor of law with the Alexander Blewitt III School of Law at the University of Montana where he is the co-director of the following programs: the Indian Law Program; the Margery Hunter Brown Indian Law Clinic; and the American Indian Governance and Policy Institute. He is a Turtle Mountain Ojibwe and member of the Bizhiw (Lynx) Clan. Kekek is a former president of the Minnesota American Indian Bar Association, a forum Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow and alumnus of Hamline University School of Law. Kekek worked as an assistant professor with the American Indian Studies department at the University of Minnesota Duluth as well as an adjunct faculty member at several institutions. Kekek served as the attorney general for the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, as a policy analyst in the division of intergovernmental affairs for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, and as a policy analyst for the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians. As a practitioner of Indigenous law, Kekek has firsthand experience in training students in how to work productively with Indigenous principles and procedures. Along the way, he has helped build institutions grounded in Anishinaabe law and has helped students and communities forge better relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous institutions and peoples, strengthening tribal sovereignty.

Ojibwe legal traditions panel: “Anishinaabe Legal Traditions Guiding Modern Day Justice: a Best Practices Approach for Tribal Courts in Ojibwe Country”

Judge Paul Day

Chief Judge Paul W. Day is a member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and grew up in Walker, MN. After completing high school, he attended St. Cloud State University where he received his Bachelor’s Degree. He went on to receive his Juris Doctorate from the University of Minnesota Law School in June 1978.

Chief Judge Day has quite an extensive career in Law, first being in private practice right out of law school. He then became an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Minnesota, was Sr. Counsel for Honeywell, Inc. for 11 years and then became a District Judge of the Tribal Court for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe in 2001. Prior to becoming Leech Lake’s Chief Judge in 2012, he was the Executive Director for Anishinabe Legal Services.

Chief Judge Day is a keeper of the family big drum, sweat lodge and pipe. Judge Day incorporates traditional ceremonies as a means of reuniting children and families.

Judge Mary Ringhand (Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians)

Judge Megan Treuer (White Earth Nation)

Judge Megan Treuer, the daughter of a citizen of the White Earth Nation and an Austrian Jew and holocaust survivor, has spent the majority of her life living in the Leech Lake community in Northern Minnesota and now resides in the Fond du Lac area. Judge Treuer has devoted her legal career to fighting for the rights and well-being of Native Americans, first as an attorney representing indigent tribal members in civil and criminal cases and now as the chief judge for the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe. Judge Treuer also serves as an associate judge for White Earth Band of Ojibwe.

Judge Treuer earned her B.A. in history from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2001. Judge Treuer completed her first year of law school at the University of California, Hastings College of Law, then earned her J.D. from Hamline University School of Law in 2005. Judge Treuer immediately returned home to Leech Lake and began working at Anishinabe Legal Services (ALS) where she represented indigent Native Americans from the Leech Lake and Red Lake Reservations. In 2007, Judge Treuer went to work at the Regional Native Public Defense Corporation (RNPDC) as a staff attorney defending tribal members in criminal cases in state district court in northern Minnesota. Judge Treuer became the executive director of RNPDC in 2009.

In 2013, Judge Treuer joined the bench at Leech Lake and since has performed judicial duties there as well as Bois Forte Tribal Court, Fond du Lac Tribal Court, Lac Courte Oreilles Tribal Court and White Earth Tribal Court. Judge Treuer is admitted to the Minnesota bar and is a career-long member of the Minnesota American Indian Bar Association.

When not on duty, Judge Treuer studies the Ojibwe Language at Fond du Lac Tribal College and enjoys spending time with her family (Rebekah, Elias, Matilda and Xavier).