GIFT FROM GRATON RANCHERIA TRIBE BOLSTERS NATIVE

CREATING COMMUNITY, BUILDING SYNERGIES Gift from Graton Rancheria Tribe bolsters Native Nations law at UCLA

On a Friday in October, Greg Sarris, the tribal chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, met with UCLA Law’s Graton Scholars, a group of students whose full scholarships were made possible by a $15 million gift from the tribe Sarris leads.

Over breakfast, the students told Sarris about their backgrounds and goals. In a conversation later that day, Sarris was enthusiastic about meeting the students and repeatedly described the encounter as heartwarming.

“I felt, ‘Boy, have we done the right thing in funding the scholarships,’” Sarris says. “I just felt they were so eager, so serious and dedicated to what they were studying and what they wanted to do with their lives.”

In 2022, the tribe followed its initial gift with $4 million to endow two professorships. The original gift was the largest ever by a tribe to a law school and one of the largest from a tribe to a university. The Graton Rancheria gifts not only continue the law school’s legacy of centering Native Nations law, they also bolster the ongoing work of its Native Nations Law & Policy Center.

According to 2L Shara Burwell, a member of the inaugural class of Graton Scholars, who arrived on campus in fall 2021, “UCLA is a unicorn” for its Native-focused classes and opportunities for student involvement. She credits Sarris and the tribe for expanding those opportunities and for allowing her to pursue her interest in federal Indian law.

From UCLA professor to tribal leader

In 1977, Sarris earned an undergraduate English degree from UCLA. After college, he went on to earn a Ph.D. in modern thought and literature from Stanford University; he later returned to UCLA as a professor. From 1989 to 2001, he taught courses including creative writing and American Indian literature. Eventually, he stepped away from academia to work with his biological father’s tribe to regain status as a federally recognized tribe. Sarris became an unlikely expert on Native law, as well as the tribe’s chairman.

When the tribe began discussing a major gift to a university, it was not a foregone conclusion that UCLA would be the recipient. The tribe “didn’t want to just give [the gift] to an institution that I felt [was] so important and [that I] had a longstanding relationship with,” Sarris says, “but I wanted to make sure for the good of all of us, that we gave the money to the institution that would most assure success.”

Breadth of opportunities in Native law

UCLA Law was a good choice for the tribe’s gift because of the breadth and depth of its Native Nations Law & Policy Center and related programs. Two of the major catalysts of those programs are Professor Emerita Carole Goldberg and Professor Angela Riley, whose backgrounds and experience illustrate the many opportunities available in Native Nations law at UCLA.

Goldberg grew up in a Jewish community in Chicago and didn’t learn about Native law until she took a Native American law course at Stanford Law School. Her research for that class resulted in a 100-page article that influenced tribal litigation up to the Supreme Court and led to a career in tribal law.

Riley, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, was raised on a working farm on former Native lands in rural Oklahoma, where her family was often below the poverty line. As an undergraduate at the University of Oklahoma, she was a “voracious student” with an interest in Indian rights and racial justice. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Riley came to California and eventually became the director of the Native Nations Law & Policy Center at UCLA Law.

Riley and Goldberg emphasize that Native law is a broad field. “I’ve pivoted from civil rights to criminal jurisdiction to cultural property,” says Riley. “I learn new things all the time.”

Of the Graton Rancheria gifts, Goldberg says, “What I’m excited about is both the increased expansion of the subject areas that can be given serious attention and the synergies among our scholars and areas of attention.”

UCLA Law alumna Christina Snider ’13—a member of the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians—is the tribal affairs secretary to Governor Gavin Newsom. She credits her career success in large part to the UCLA network.

“What UCLA had before [the Graton gifts],” she says, “is this massive network of both Native law students and attorneys and alumni and non-Native allies that were there to be a resource and be a network for you to lean on. Now you’ll really be able to see that kind of work and opportunities supported in a way that we’ve never seen before.”

Future lawyers will tackle “big challenges”

Sarris says the gifts are particularly important in light of “big challenges that Native people are facing.” He says current challenges include a case pending before the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act, as well as laws relating to Native-run gaming facilities.

“More and more we need legal rights,” Sarris says. “We need lawyers, advisers, to help chart our battle against those who would undo what we’ve worked so hard to achieve.”

As one of those future lawyers, Burwell says she was influenced to pursue Native law after working with Indigenous women for a nonprofit in Peru and by reconnecting with her own family history and the story of her grandmother, a member of the Ojibwe tribe who was taken from her reservation as a child and adopted into a white family. Burwell says she is fortunate for the Graton Scholarship and UCLA Law’s strong community of Native students and professors. “I feel very, very lucky to go here,” she says. “I wouldn’t have gone anywhere else. I feel lucky to know the people who work here and Chairman Sarris.”

MOOT COURT FLOURISHING AS A STUDENT-RUN VENTURE

In the challenging past few years for oral advocacy, with the infamous cat-filter lawyer and the Supreme Court’s mysterious toilet flush, the UCLA Law moot court team didn’t just survive—it thrived.

The members of last year’s Moot Court Honors Board—the student group that manages the university’s moot court program— began law school in 2019. Many of them took part during their first year, before the pandemic, in the Skye Donald Memorial Moot Court Competition, UCLA Law’s internal competition, which is open exclusively to 1Ls. This past spring, after two years of remote competitions, the moot court year at UCLA culminated in the Roscoe Pound Moot Court Competition, back in person.

In the interim, the team smoothly ran the school’s four annual intramural competitions and UCLA Law’s 10th Annual Cybersecurity Moot Court Competition, in addition to winning accolades in competitions across the country.

Honors Board members Ariana Bustos and John Cagan recently won the 2022 Uvaldo Herrera National Moot Court Competition sponsored by the Hispanic National Bar Association. Bustos also received the competition’s award for best oral advocate.

At the Duberstein Bankruptcy Moot Court Competition, hosted by St. John’s University School of Law, Kaitlyn Hittelman, Rachel Berman and Matt Snyder took home second place out of 56 teams and were awarded for one of the top four best briefs. Isabelle Geczy and Kimaya Abreu advanced to the semifinals of the Giles Sutherland Intellectual Property Moot Court Competition, sponsored by the American Intellectual Property Law Association.

Students run the show

The moot court program’s accomplishments are even more remarkable because the program is almost entirely run by students.

“You’re an entrepreneur,” says Cagan of the juggling act of running a moot court competition. In addition to writing the problem—a “perfect storm” of Fourth Amendment gray areas—for one of last year’s two upperclass competitions, he and the other board members organized seating, meals, fundraising, and all other aspects of the competition.

“It’s not a skill set they normally teach in law school,” notes Lecturer in Law David Babbe ’81, the moot court’s adviser.

Acknowledging similarities between the practice of law and the hectic process of organizing a moot court competition, Honors Board member Andrew Hill remarks, “No matter how much you plan for everything, you can’t really plan for everything.”

Despite the challenges, last year’s Honors Board left its unique mark on the program.

The Roscoe Pound Competition—in which the winners from the two internal upperclass competitions compete—featured an honors reception. It was a first for the 71-year-old competition, which this year concluded with Samantha Lonergan ’23 being named the winner after a highly competitive final round.

The board also secured an all-star panel of guest judges, which included Judge John B. Owens and Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw ’79, both judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, and Justice Joshua Paul Groban, an associate justice of the California Supreme Court.

Before the Skye Donald Competition for 1Ls last fall, the board hosted a series of training workshops for the first time. A competition for first-year students is a relative rarity among law school moot court programs, and according to Hittelman, almost a third of the 1L class participated in the 2022 event.

From left: Samantha Lonergan (Champion), Sophia DiFilippo, Adam Swank, and Alex Sibirzeff

Wide range of opportunities

The 1L competition is designed to be as friendly to beginners as possible. After the first year, a range of opportunities are available for competition and leadership. “If you want to get involved in moot court, generally everyone can,” says Hittelman. This variety has led to a diverse range of students participating in the program.

Bustos, last year’s Honors Board president, was involved in moot court in college and had her sights set on moot court from day one at UCLA.

Hill, on the other hand, worked as an engineer and hadn’t always planned on law school. In his first year, he sometimes felt that he was at a disadvantage because his background was somewhat unorthodox. Moot court helped him develop as an advocate and “be the lawyer I really wanted to be.”

Moot court a leg up for new lawyers

After graduation, Hill, Bustos, and Hittelman started as associates at large law firms, while Cagan began a clerkship with Judge Wardlaw.

“The first couple of years [in practice], it’s hard,” says Babbe, who participated in UCLA Law’s moot court as a student and litigated for several years before transitioning to academia. Given the steep learning curve, the moot court experience gives new lawyers a leg up. “[You know] what you should be doing,” Babbe says, “when you step up in a courtroom and represent actual clients.”

Hittelman says she appreciates the willingness of the UCLA Law community to come together, including all the students and alumni it took to pull off the first in-person moot court event at the law school since the pandemic.

“If you’re an attorney,” Bustos adds, “and you get an email from moot court that says please come judge, we’d love you to judge.”