Alumni Profiles
Kristen Carpenter
Kristen Carpenter is an Assistant Professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law where she teaches Property and Indian Law. Professor Carpenter previously clerked for Judge John C. Porfilio, United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, CO, and worked as an associate at Hill & Barlow in Boston, MA. She has represented Indian tribes and businesses on various issues including federal recognition, regulatory jurisdiction, subsistence rights, economic development, and cultural property protection. Her research and publications focus on legal protection for indigenous property and cultural interests. Carpenter is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School.Ray Halbritter
Ray Halbritter, Nation Representative of the Oneida Indian Nation since 1975 and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of its enterprises since 1990, has led the Oneida people to an economic and cultural renaissance over the past 30 years. His accomplishments include achieving federal government recognition of the Nation’s traditional form of government, creating numerous health and social programs for Nation Members, constructing new housing, and establishing education and culture programs. Halbritter earned his law degree from Harvard Law School and a bachelor of science degree in business administration from Syracuse University. He also holds an honorary doctorate degree of humane letters from SUNY Institute of Technology at Utica/Rome.
Halbritter serves on the boards of directors of the International Native American Center for the Performing and Visual Arts and of the Harvard Native American Law Board. He is a member of the National Advisory Council for the American Indian Program at Cornell University; the National Congress of American Indians in Washington, D.C.; the United South and Eastern Tribes, based in Nashville, Tennessee; and the Canadian Native Arts Foundation in Toronto. He also served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, where he taught Native American Law at the graduate level from 1993 to 1994. He also served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the New York University Law School and Syracuse University College of Law.
Heather Kendall Miller
Heather Kendall Miller (Athabascan) received a history degree, magna cum laude, from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks prior to receiving her J.D. from Harvard Law in 1991. While in law school, Kendall Miller served as President of the National Native American Law School Association and was chair of the 1989 Harvard Indian Law Symposium.
Upon graduation Kendall Miller clerked for then Alaska Supreme Court Justice Jay Rabinowitz before receiving a two year Skadden Fellowship to work with Alaska Legal Services Corporation and the Native American Rights Fund on Native rights litigation. She became a permanent NARF staff attorney in 1993 and has practiced as a public interest litigant on behalf of Alaska tribes in the areas of subsistence rights and tribal sovereignty for nearly 15 years.
In 1997 Kendall Miller became the first Alaska Native (and the 4th Indian woman) to argue before the United States Supreme Court in a case that asserted Indian country in Alaska. Other litigation experience includes the successful prosecution of the Katie John subsistence hunting and fishing rights case and a challenge to the “English Only” law. Her work more recently has been focused on climate change impacts to indigenous peoples in the Arctic.
Kendall Miller serves on the Honoring Nations Advisory Board of the Ford Foundation and is on the Governing Council of the Wilderness Society.
Wenona Singel
Wenona Singel is an assistant professor at Michigan State University College of Law and Associate Director of the Indigenous Law Program. She is also Of Counsel with Kanji & Katzen, PLLC, a firm that specializes in representing tribes in Indian law matters. Before joining the Law College, Professor Singel was an assistant professor at the University of North Dakota School of Law and a fellow of the Northern Plains Indian Law School. Prior to teaching at UND, she was an associate with the law firm of Kanji & Katzen, PLLC. As part of her work at Kanji & Katzen, Singel served as general counsel to the tribally-owned Grand Traverse Resort, participated in the Indian gaming litigation of
At the Law College, Professor Singel teaches Federal Indian Law, Advanced Topics in Indian Law, Natural Resources Law and an in experiential learning class in which students participate research and writing assignments for tribal governments and judiciaries. Her recent publications include
Professor Singel is an enrolled member of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, and she also serves as an appellate judge for the Little Traverse Bay Bands Appellate Court. She graduated
Rob Williams
Rob Williams (Lumbee) is a professor of Law and American Indian Studies and Director of the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona. Professor Williams received his B.A. from Loyola College (1977).
Professor Williams is the author of The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest, which received the Gustavus Meyers Human Rights Center Award as one of the outstanding books published in 1990 on the subject of prejudice in the United States. He has also written Linking Arms Together: American Indian Treaty Visions of Law and Peace, 1600-1800 and is co-author of Federal Indian Law: Cases and Materials (5th ed., with David Getches and Charles Wilkinson). His most recent book, Like a Loaded Weapon: The Rehnquist Court, Indian Rights and the Legal History of Racism in America, was published in 2005.
Williams has represented indigenous plaintiffs and communities before United Nations and Inter-American human rights bodies and the United States Supreme Court (Nevada v. Hicks, 2001 term). Professor Williams serves as Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals, Pascua Yaqui Indian Reservation. He also serves as Justice for the Court of Appeals and judge pro tempore for the Tohono O’odham Nation.
Susan M. Williams
Susan M. Williams is a shareholder in Williams & Works, P.A., an Indian-owned and woman-owned law firm in Corrales, New Mexico. Ms. Williams, an enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota Nation, is a graduate of Radcliffe College of Harvard University (B.A., Magna Cum Laude , 1976) and of Harvard Law School (J.D. 1981). Upon graduation from law school, Ms. Williams joined Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Kampelman, where she worked in the Indian Banking and Law department for five years. She was the Executive Director of the Navajo Tax Commission in Window Rock, Arizona and served as Chairperson of the Commission (1976-1978). She returned to Harvard Law School as a lecturer in Indian Law for five years and lectured at Stanford Law School for one year.
Ms. William serves on several Boards of Directors and National Advisory Committees on state-tribal relations, resource development and environmental protection, including the World Wildlife Fund, the American Bar Association, Water Resources Committee, the American Indian Resources Institute, St. Michaels Indian School, Indian Law Resource Center and the Grand Canyon Trust. Ms. Williams also serves on the Board of Directors of the Harvard Alumni Association. As a lead lobbyist in several successful Indian legislative efforts, Ms. Williams has impacted amendments such as one to treat Indian Tribes as states under the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Indian Tribal Governmental Tax Status Act. In April of 1989, Ms. Williams successfully argued the Big Horn case before the United States Supreme Court. She represents numerous Indian tribes on their water rights and other matters and is a member of the District of Columbia Bar, the New Mexico Bar, the American Bar Association, and the United States Supreme Court Bar.