BREANN NU’UHIWA

ADVOCATE FOR INDIGENOUS RIGHTS

Above: Breann Swann Nu‘uhiwa To the right: Nu’uhiwa with her family. By Diane Krieger How did an aspiring fiction writer from Hawai‘i go on to graduate from the USC Gould School of Law and become a leading resource on tribal law?

It all started in Professor Ron Garet’s constitutional law class, says Breann Swann Nu‘uhiwa, (JD 2004), who last May joined the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs as senior counsel for the majority. Twenty years earlier, Nu‘uhiwa had come to USC thinking she might pursue sports law. But a dissertation assignment under Garet’s supervision was a turning point. Her topic: proposed tribal law provisions in amending the 1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

“Actually, today was a full-circle moment for me,” she says, speaking on Zoom from the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. “Members of our staff were over at the White House as President Biden delivered his remarks on the reauthorization of VAWA, which he just signed into law [March 15].”

From writing her dissertation in 2004 “to going through this long and winding road of my career, and now getting to contribute to the actual legislation…I’m just over the moon,” she says.

At the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Nu‘uhiwa is on an eight-person team of lawyers and policy analysts who research, advise and draft language on topics ranging from broadband infrastructure to USDA programs to violence against women.

Nu‘uhiwa helped draft a key portion of the 2022 VAWA reauthorization—the part that expands special criminal jurisdiction of tribal courts over non-Native perpetrators of sexual assault, child abuse, stalking and sex trafficking on tribal lands. Under the previous law, certain perpetrators and ancillary charges fell into a gray area of jurisdiction. With the new amendments, tribal courts can take a more comprehensive approach and rely less on state or federal partners to prosecute charges.

A Yale graduate originally from Pearl City, a Honolulu suburb, Nu‘uhiwa chose a Southern California law school to be closer to home. At Gould, she got involved in student government through the Student Bar Association. She was executive editor of the Interdisciplinary Law Journal, and joined La Raza (now the Latinx Law Students Association), the Asian Pacific American Law Student Association, and the Middle Eastern South Asian Law Student Association, “because my best friend is Armenian,” she says.

“I had all these networks of wonderful people who really helped me to grow as a person and a professional, and who I consider to be great friends to this day,” she says.

Her experiences include working in labor and employment law at Thelen LLP; the Salt River PimaMaricopa Indian community in Scottsdale, Ariz.; the Office of Hawaiian Affairs in Honolulu; the labor and employment group of Reed Smith LLP in Los Angeles; and as senior associate general counsel with the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians in Temecula. She assumed her current role in D.C. in May 2021.

“The day-to-day work we do is fascinating. There’s never a dull moment,” Nu‘uhiwa says.