Tribal law expert Professor Matthew Fletcher will speak at Penn State Law

American Indian law and policy expert Professor Matthew Fletcher will visit Penn State Law on September 19 to present "American Indian Education: Counternarratives in Racism, Struggle, and the Law." Professor Fletcher is the chief editor of the leading law blog on American Indian law and policy, Turtle Talk. 

"Professor Fletcher’s talk will help people understand the challenges inherent in Indian education and will appeal especially to those with an interest in educational leadership and issues related to the education of American Indian and Alaska Native students," said Dr. Susan Faircloth, associate professor of education at Penn State. 

Dr. Faircloth is the director of Penn State’s American Indian Leadership Program, the nation’s oldest continuously operating education leadership program for American Indians and Alaska Natives. Her research focuses on the overrepresentation of American Indian and Alaska Native students in special education programs and services.

"This event will challenge participants to think about the importance of tribal sovereignty to American Indian education," said Penn State Law professor Carla Pratt, who studies both Indian law and the experience of minorities in law school and the legal profession.

Matthew L.M. Fletcher is Professor of Law at Michigan State University College of Law and Director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center. He is the Chief Justice of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians Supreme Court and also sits as an appellate judge for the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, the Hoopa Valley Tribe, and the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Indians. He is a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, located in Peshawbestown, Michigan. In 2010, Professor Fletcher was elected to the American Law Institute.

Professor Fletcher recently published the sixth edition of Cases and Materials on Federal Indian Law with David Getches, Charles Wilkinson, and Robert Williams, and American Indian Tribal Law, the first casebook for law students on tribal law. His book, the Return of the Eagle: The Legal History of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, will be published later this year by Michigan State University Press. He is also the author of American Indian Education: Counternarratives in Racism, Struggle, and the Law (Routledge, 2008). 

Professor Fletcher's talk is sponsored by the American Indian Leadership Program, the College of Education, and Penn State Law . His presentation begins at noon on September 19 in the auditorium of the Lewis Katz Building. The public is welcome.