Native American Rights: 5 Game-Changing Decisions of the Supreme Court

This presentation selects 5 cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court during the past 200 years that established significant principles of law regarding the rights of American Indians and Tribes. The presentation is interactive and fun! I give the facts of each case and ask the audience to guess as to how the Court decided the case, and members of the audience are given an opportunity to explain why they voted the way they did. I then reveal the actual ruling and use a PowerPoint to give quotations from the decision. This is a 60-minute presentation. 

Stephen Pevar began his legal career in 1971 as a Legal Aid attorney on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where he lived and worked until 1974. He then worked for 45 years on the National Staff of the American Civil Liberties Union, retiring in 2022. During that time, Mr. Pevar litigated more than 175 civil rights cases, focusing on Indigenous rights, freedom of speech, and the rights of prisoners.

In addition, Mr. Pevar taught Federal Indian Law for 16 years at the University of Denver School of Law, for 5 years at NYU Law School, and currently teaches Advanced Federal Indian Law at Yale Law School. He has lectured extensively on Indigenous justice issues and is the author of The Rights of Indians and Tribes. Mr. Pevar graduated from Princeton University in 1968 and from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1971. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, Laurel. They have two children, Lianna and Elena.