Meet Angelique EagleWoman

(Wambdi A. WasteWin)

In the fall of 2008, Angelique EagleWoman began teaching at the law school in her primary area of expertise, Native American Law.  Prior to joining the University of Idaho College of Law faculty, she taught in a one-year visitor joint appointment at the University of Kansas School of Law and the Indigenous Studies graduate program, and prior to that at the Hamline University School of Law. As a practicing attorney, highlights of Angelique's career included serving as General Counsel to her Tribe, the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation; working at an appellate specialty firm in Washington D.C. for tribal interests; serving as the Public Defender for two Tribes in Oklahoma; and appointment on a Pro Tem basis for several Tribal District and Appellate Courts.

Building on prior course offerings and student interest, Professor EagleWoman developed the Native Law program as comprised of four components: an academic Native American Law Emphasis; her faculty presentations and scholarship; the Native American Law Student Association (NALSA); and strong positive relationships with the Tribal Nations in Idaho. In additional to directing the Native Law Program, Angelique is included in the faculty cohort for the Natural Resources and Environmental Law Program.

She teaches the Native American Law curriculum courses: Native American Law, and Native American Natural Resources Law and Tribal Nation Economics & Law.  In addition, Professor EagleWoman is a frequent guest speaker in courses across the University curriculum on Native Law topics and at national conferences. All of the Native Law courses are also available to non-law students on the University of Idaho campus through the American Indian Studies program on a pass/fail basis to promote legal educational opportunities beyond the law school.   Her recently published book, Mastering American Indian Law (co-authored with Stacy Leeds), provides a readable text on the complexities that form the doctrines developed in the relationship between Tribal Law, Federal Indian Law, and international Indigenous legal principles.

In the field of Native American Law, Professor EagleWoman has written extensively in two primary areas: the legal aspects of Tribal Economics and the advancement of international Indigenous legal principles. Her scholarship spans topics on the Tribalist Economic Theory, which she proposed as a value-based framework for contemporary economic development to examining Federal Indian Law policies that have served to cast tribal peoples into intergenerational poverty along with proposing major U.S. policy reforms to alleviate such conditions. Further, she has focused on the original Tribal-U.S. relationships established under international legal agreements to advocate for a contemporary readjustment incorporating international human rights norms and self-determination principles.