With Indigenous Peoples critically underrepresented in law, the renamed Northwest Center for Indigenous Law launches a new plan to increase access.
This story originally appeared in Lawyer, Spring 2025.
In a profession with few Indigenous practitioners, the field of law urgently needs more people like Justin Mack.
A member of the Agdaagux Tribe of King Cove, Alaska, who lives in Anchorage, Mack aspires to become a lawyer so he can serve as a powerful advocate on behalf of his fellow Alaska Natives. Like many Indigenous peoples, he faced a host of barriers – including where he lived and the overall cost –which made attending law school seem impossible.
Fortunately, Mack was able to overcome these challenges with crucial support from Seattle University School of Law and he is now a student in its hybrid-online Flex JD program, bringing him within reach of fulfilling his ambition.
Using his path as a blueprint, the law school’s Northwest Center for Indigenous Law, formerly known as the Center for Indian Law and Policy (CILP),has forged a strong vision and comprehensive plan that it hopes will pave the way for many more Indigenous students to enter the field.
“This is really important because Native lawyers are necessary to do the work of serving Tribal Nations, and the need is so great,” said Brooke Pinkham, who has served as the Center’s director for nearly a decade and who is Nez Perce.
Developing a vision
Last year, the law school hired Nazune Menka, an Alaska Native (Koyukon Athabaskan) and Lumbee assistant professor, whose expertise includes Indigenous law, tribal law, constitutional law, and environmental law.
Menka also became the center’s new faculty director. Upon arrival, she initiated a process to chart its future direction. After consulting with key stakeholders and CILP’s founders to gather input, she and Pinkham developed a strategic plan that articulates a clear vision: that Seattle U Law will become the leading law school for Indigenous Law in the Pacific Northwest.
“Our law school’s location makes this a natural goal to pursue,” she said, given that the states of Washington and Alaska span the ancestral homelands of 258 federally recognized tribes, amounting to nearly half of all tribal nations in the United States.
Further, the center’s plan spells out a mission to emphasize Indigenous Peoples’ Law in the curriculum, projects, and elsewhere, provide unique opportunities for law students to learn about tribal nations, and conduct research in and increase awareness of Indigenous legal issues.
“Our goal is to build a stronger Indigenous Law Program that can become the foundation to attract many more Indigenous students, offering them the best possible education and preparation for a rewarding career by practicing in this area,” Menka said.
“This strategic plan will serve the needs of our next generation of tribal leaders and members,” said Bree R. Black Horse ’13, who serves as the first Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Washington and is also an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. “It will equip students who go on to advocate for Indian tribes.”
To become more inclusive and appeal to as many potential students as possible, Menka and Pinkham are broadening the center’s focus by adopting the phrase “Indigenous law” in place of “Indian law,” which is a legal term that dates to an earlier era. This was part of the impetus for renaming the center.
“I like the idea of Indigeneity being broad enough to include everyone across the U.S. and beyond, inclusive of Canada and Mexico, Alaska and Hawaii, or American Samoa, Guam, and Puerto Rico, for example,” Menka said.
Barriers to entry
The field of law’s longstanding representation problem is particularly acute among Indigenous peoples.
According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the Indigenous population grew to its largest size in generations, with 9.7 million people identifying as Native American or Alaska Native, either alone or in combination with another race. This is a 160% increase from 2010, and some tribal advocates believe that it’s an undercount. Overall, they make up nearly 3% of the total U.S. population.
Yet this group is woefully underrepresented in the field of law. According to 2022 data from the American Bar Association, just 0.5% of the country’s approximately 1.3 million active lawyers identify as Native American, a ratio virtually unchanged over the past decade. Only 0.4% of law students nationally identify as such.
Indigenous students face several barriers that explain these low numbers.
The cost of legal education is a gigantic hurdle. High poverty rates among Indigenous communities mean students and their families may struggle to make ends meet, let alone devote scarce funds to professional education. Borrowing a substantial amount of money may be their only option.
“Being straddled with that much debt when you are just getting started is a difficult realization,” said Gina Steiner ’04, a member of and administrative director of judicial services for the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe. She is still paying off her student loans after 20 years of practice.
Location also limits access. Mack lives and works in Alaska, the only U.S. state without a law school.
“As a firefighter with a wife and two young daughters, leaving the state for several years to earn a law degree — and uprooting my family in the process — just wasn’t feasible,” he said.
Even tribal members in the lower 48 find that distance is often a barrier. For Steiner, who grew up on her reservation on the Kitsap Peninsula, leaving her tribal community and the support it provided, even temporarily, was a non-starter. Instead, she commuted daily via ferry and bus to campus — a grueling two hours each way—to attend classes.
“Even though Seattle is not that far away, I would be gone 14 hours or more a day,” she said. “As a single mom raising two young kids, it was one of the most difficult things. I felt very alone.”
“Indigenous communities also have the highest high school dropout rates of any racial or ethnic group,” Black Horse added, which equates to fewer Indigenous students who attend and complete college, a requirement to enter law school. Additionally, many students are the first in their families to attend college, which means they may need to navigate, on their own, an often-confusing labyrinth of applications, testing, financial aid, and more.
Strengthening Outreach
Over the last 10 years, the percentage of Indigenous students comprising Seattle U Law’s incoming first year classes ranged from a high of 6% in 2015, representing 12 students out of a total class of 201, to just 1.5% last year, only three of 203 students.
Menka and Pinkham plan to boost these numbers through proactive outreach. The fact that they are both Indigenous will help them establish new relationships with tribes throughout the region.
“As someone who grew up in a tribal community in the state, that goes a long way,” said Pinkham, who was raised within the community of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation in Eastern Washington. “We know the importance of outreach and being with those communities and representatives and just listening.”
In the short-term, they will connect with Indigenous student organizations at area colleges and universities to build awareness of Seattle U Law’s programs. To strengthen the high school to college-to-law-school pipeline, they will make frequent visits to tribal schools to introduce the idea of becoming a lawyer, a longer-term strategy.
A model for this outreach is a program that Seattle U Law — in partnership with the University of Washington and Gonzaga law schools and the Law School Admission Council —launched several years ago to demystify the law school admission process for Indigenous and Latinx students in the Yakima Valley.
Opening doors
Awareness is one element, but enrolling and graduating substantially more Indigenous students requires addressing systemic challenges.
The law school awards the full-tuition Douglas R. Nash Scholarship to promising Indigenous incoming law students. Mack is a recipient who said the scholarship has substantially decreased the financial burden of his legal education to his family.
“As helpful as this scholarship is, we only have the resources to help at most one student each year and we know that the need is so much greater,” Menka said. To create more scholarships, the center plans to strengthen its fundraising efforts.
Given his location and position in life, Mack thought his window to attend law school had closed for good. Then he heard about the law school’s Flex JD program, with a hybrid-online structure that would enable him to complete most of his coursework from his home in Alaska. He would only need to travel to Seattle a few weekends per year for required in-person class sessions.
“It was the difference between going to law school and not going,” Mack said of the 3.5-year program.
Mack’s experience aligns with the law school’s vision of accessibility for Flex JD, with an innovative structure that allows anyone — including Indigenous students, no matter their location— to earn a law degree while remaining in their communities and with their families and support systems. This means students can continue working to support themselves while in law school, which dramatically lowers the overall cost of their education.
Menka is currently developing an Indigenous Law Certificate for JD students as another strategy to boost enrollment.
“The accomplishment of completing this certificate will increase the interest of students who come from or seek to serve tribal nations and enhance our school’s ability to recruit prospective students,” she wrote.
Black Horse believes the certificate is a tool for future graduates to easily demonstrate their expertise, providing “tangible, marketable skills they can use to pursue careers serving tribes and tribal communities.”
Other initiatives provide students with real-world experience in Indigenous law. This ranges from a long-running partnership with the Tulalip Tribes, located in Marysville, where students clerk for tribal court judges, to a recent grant secured in concert with Skagit Legal Aid that will enable students to participate in clinics serving the Swinomish Tribe, in Skagit County, and the Makah Nation, on the Olympic Peninsula. A multitude of externship opportunities with tribes are also available, and Menka and Pinkham hope to develop more.
Cultivating a sense of community is vital to helping Indigenous students succeed in law school. Since its creation in 2009, the center has been instrumental in supporting Indigenous students.
“The center really served as my home base,” said Black Horse, who was the only Native student in her 1L class. “I knew that the people in the center understood my lived experience as a Native student and what I wanted to do serving tribal communities.”
Additionally, the law school hosts an active chapter of the Native American Law Student Association (NALSA), which organizes a variety of events and activities to foster a sense of community and advocate for their interests. The American Indian Law Journal, started by Black Horse when she was a student, is one of just two accredited student-run publications in the nation solely dedicated to Indian Law.
Menka and Pinkham believe that as more Indigenous students enroll, the community within the law school will become even stronger.
Fulfilling the vision
The paths of both Mack and Steiner are emblematic of the center’s vision to enroll and educate many more Indigenous students.
Mack will soon begin an externship with the Aleut Corporation, one of 13 regional entities created to settle land and financial claims made by Alaska Natives and provide economic opportunities for their shareholders, of which he is a shareholder. The experience will serve as a key element of his legal education, and a possible preview of his post-graduation career.
“Alaska is short on attorneys, and even shorter on attorneys who get into Indian and tribal law,” he said. “In a way, I am coming full circle, with my Native background and bringing that to the corporation. They are building me up by establishing a new externship with Seattle University School of Law, which is incredibly rewarding.”
“As a tribal member and an attorney representing my own tribe, I feel like I understand the values of my community and am able to make recommendations and give advice that others may not be able to,” said Steiner, who for many years served as her tribe’s in-house general council prior to transitioning into a new role. “No one can care for our people better than us.”
If you are interested in supporting the Northwest Center for Indigenous Law, please contact Feven Teklu, Assistant Dean for Development and Alumni Relations, at fteklu@seattleu.edu.