There’s a need for an international approach to trust responsibilities, including free, prior, and informed consent, says Stacy Leeds, who serves as the Willard H. Pedrick Dean of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.
Leeds (J.D. ’97) gave the keynote speech at the March 28 Tulsa Law Review Symposium hosted by The University of Tulsa’s College of Law. This year’s theme was “Re-examining the Tribal Trust Relationship in the 21st Century.”
“I also think that there’s some real benefits of thinking about this, stepping back out of the Indian law scenario and really thinking about private trustees and their roles and what are all the realms of responsibilities that must be embedded in this federal trusteeship if it’s ever going to work for Indigenous peoples,” said Leeds, who is a former Cherokee Nation Supreme Court justice and former chair of the Cherokee Nation Gaming Commission.
She spoke about recently taking her students to Hawaii for a seminar, and when they arrived, a memo from the U.S. Department of Interior indicated that the federal government owed trust responsibility to Native Hawaiians. However, within days that assurance had been revoked.
“By Wednesday of that week, the Native Hawaiians were no longer entitled to a trust responsibility by the United States, because that opinion had been withdrawn,” she said. “It showed the students how fleeting that rights can be for Indigenous populations.”
And it’s not just Native Hawaiians feeling the pinch, she said. In the immediate aftermath of Oklahoma’s McGirt ruling, “there was just this general shock that a place called Oklahoma, that’s situated on a place called Indian Territory still might be legally Indian Country,” Leeds said. “And the shock of that, and lack of knowledge of the history of how we get to this point, is just part of our collective reality, and it’s the same thing that caused generations of Tulsans to grow up in the public schools here having never heard about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre until the reconciliation efforts happened around that 100-year anniversary.”
Leeds recounted how UTulsa became the educational institution it is today. Alice Robertson, who previously worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, led a Presbyterian boarding school for Native girls in Muskogee that eventually became Kendall College, which preceded The University of Tulsa.
She also noted that the College of Law sits in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, the only law school in the country located on an Indian reservation.
The first Indigenous woman to serve as a law school dean, Leeds is a trailblazer, said Judge Sara Hill, who currently serves on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma. Hill (J.D. ’03), who previously served as Cherokee Nation attorney general, has been a longtime supporter of the study and exploration of tribal law.
“Her impact is not just what she has done,” Hill said of Leeds. “It is about what it has done for the community and people, her thoughtful commentary, her devotion to tribal communities and her selfless mentorship of young lawyers has already had a real and measurable impact on the world around her.”
The daylong symposium featured many highly regarded panelists, including Kevin Washburn, the assistant secretary of Indian Affairs from 2012 to 2016, and Torey Dolan, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation who previously served as the Native Vote Fellow at ASU’s Indian Legal Clinic, leading election protection efforts and assisting in litigation on tribal sovereignty and voting rights.
Each year, UTulsa law students working on the Tulsa Law Review journal plan and organize the TLR Symposium, which engages academics, legal professionals, and students in conversations and discourse on specific legal issues. Additionally, those who presented at the symposium will have their research published in the Tulsa Law Review’s symposium issue in fall 2025.
“The Tulsa Law Review recently brought back the annual symposium just last year,” said Taylor Pepperworth, who organized this year’s event alongside fellow law student Daisy Eklund. “Given that The University of Tulsa is located on the Muscogee reservation, TLR thought it was imperative to focus this year’s symposium on an important conversation: the tribal trust relationship in the 21st century. We are proud that we partnered with the best in the field to present on this important topic, including notable academics from across the nation – Kevin Washburn, Ezra Rosser, and Matthew Fletcher, among others – as well as local practitioners who have worked on critical cases involving trust relations – Wilson Pipestem, Daniel Carter, and Philip Tinker.”