Young John Echohawk felt no particular call to destiny in the spring of 1967, when he graduated from the University of New Mexico. Even when he won a scholarship under a federal program to fund law school for Native Americans, he didn’t see himself as bearing the collective hopes of the nation’s indigenous people.
“I didn’t know exactly what I would end up doing,” he recalls. “Maybe I was going to be a rich lawyer, I don’t know.”
That quickly changed, when Echohawk discovered there was a rich body of law in place, dating back to the country’s beginnings, to protect the rights of Native Americans. If he could use the law as a tool to better their lives, Echohawk was all in.
“That,” he said, “became my dream.”
The American Bar Association is honoring the fruits of that dream, naming Echohawk the winner of this year’s , in recognition of a lifetime of work advancing the civil rights, liberties and general well being of indigenous Americans.
Through his leadership of the, the Boulder-based public interest group he co-founded in 1970, Echohawk has stood vigil for more than half a century over the legal rights and sovereign interests of the 3.7 million American Indians and Alaska Natives in the nation’s 574 federally recognized Tribes.
Their lives, and the lives of us all, have been made immeasurably better by his work.
It was hardly what Echohawk, a Pawnee, imagined in 1970, when he became the first graduate of the University of New Mexico’s special program to train Indian lawyers.
What impressed him then was the gap between the extensive body of Indian law and the paucity of advocates across Indian country that understood the law and its potential for protecting and empowering Native American people.
“I was just hoping I’d be able to help the tribes assert their rights and continue to be the people they are,” Echohawk explains. “We’ve had laws that are favorable to us, for the most part. We just had to bring it to the courts.”
Unique among legal structures anywhere, Indian law in this country is an intricate, at times bewildering, body of statutes, court precedents and constitutional precepts, grounded in the principle that tribes are independent and sovereign governments with the sole power to manage their internal affairs.
That vision is enshrined in more than 400 treaties, agreements and conventions stretching back to 1775, congressional acts dating to 1790 and at least two centuries of Supreme Court rulings.
Much like a great river, though, law is never static, never truly settled, never still.
Itap one thing to enshrine a people’s rights in legal code. To avail themselves of those rights, faithfully expressed through their daily lives, people need access to skilled legal advocates.
Echohawk found his calling in standing toe to toe with those who would challenge the privileges, benefits, rights and obligations set forth in Indian law.
Just this summer, his work helped bring about a favorable Supreme Court decision in one of the most consequential Indian law cases in decades. At risk was the protecting the sanctity of Native American families and the rights of Indian children to be raised in the communities that embody their culture.
Congress passed the law in 1978, when more than a quarter of the nation’s Indian children were being forced from their homes for placement in foster care or adoption, mostly by non-Indian families.
In a disgraceful effort to turn back the clock to those days of systemic abuse, Texas and other plaintiffs asked the Court to overturn the law, asserting that it was unconstitutional.
On behalf of hundreds of Indian tribes, Echohawk’s group helped author an amicus brief to the Court, arguing in favor of the essential protections provided by the Indian Child Welfare Act, which the Court, in the end, upheld.
It was only the latest effort he led in a long career dedicated to reducing poverty, advancing social justice and preserving the very existence of Native Tribes and the traditions and cultures that sustain them.
Itap been Echohawk’s mission to help protect aboriginal lands, to defend the waters, hunting, fishing and gathering grounds and timber rights Indigenous peoples depend on for their survival; to promote human rights for Native Americans, by protecting religious freedom, for example, and improving access to quality health care, education, and housing; and to hold state, local and federal governments to account for abiding by, and enforcing, Indian law.
For the hard truth is that, after generations of having their lands desecrated and stolen, their families displaced and massacred, and their culture denigrated and even denied, the first Americans must still fight to uphold their rights under U.S. law.
That has been the great calling of John Echohawk’s career, the great passion animating his life’s work. In standing up to insist that this nation honor its promises, make good on its word and live out its core ideals, he’s made this country a better place – for all of us.
Manish Bapna is president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group with more than 3 million supporters nationwide. John Echohawk serves on the group’s board of trustees.
