Maire Corcoran, J.D. ’09
Oklahoma Indian Legal Services
Oklahoma City, OK
Having never been to Oklahoma, I had visions of a Grapes-of-Wrath-esque dustbowl -hot, dry, and barren. Having never studied or encountered Federal Indian law, I really had no idea what to expect, even after putting myself through a crash course before I arrived at my summer 2007 internship at Oklahoma Indian Legal Services (OILS), a legal aid organization serving indigent tribal members in the state of Oklahoma and headquartered in Oklahoma City. Ultimately, I was surprised on both counts; Oklahoma, at least during the 2007 summer, was fairly lush and green as a result of an extremely unusual amount of rainstorms. And Federal Indian law, as well as the tribal court system and the problems dealt with by the various Oklahoma tribes, was nothing like I had expected.
Granted, the most in-depth experience I had with Federal Indian law related to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), an act passed in response to the overwhelming number of Native children removed from their family home and placed in non-tribal environments. ICWA sets standards for when Indian children can be removed from their home and placed in an adoptive or foster care home, and also sets standards for the nature of that adoptive or foster care home. Tribes or the parents involved can request that an ICWA case be transferred to tribal court - which, as I observed, is frequently what the parents desire. OILS dealt with numerous ICWA cases, most often appointing one of the staff attorneys as a guardian ad litem for the child or children in question. This meant that I accompanied various OILS staff attorneys to numerous hearings in tribal court all across the state of Oklahoma; this also meant that one of my tasks during the summer was to actually act as the guardian ad litem for two cases and speak in Kickapoo tribal court on behalf of the children.
Although I found my work with ICWA fascinating, if not at times distressing given the difficult lives that some of the children led, the most amazing aspect of my summer was interacting with the clients. Because tribes in Oklahoma are scattered across the state (with most tribes located in the eastern half), OILS attorneys travel significant distances from the office headquarters in Oklahoma City to visit clients and conduct home visits. As a non-Indian going to school in the East I occasionally had to field questions about my reasons for wanting to work in Oklahoma with Indian issues, but on the whole I felt comfortable visiting clients in their homes and interacting with tribal officials. I learned a huge amount about the disparity in the economic conditions of the various tribes; some tribes are able to provide extremely efficient health and social services for their members and even run side enterprises - the Chickasaw Nation, for example, has a great chocolate factory - while other tribes struggle to even maintain their tribal buildings.
One summer working with OILS helped me realize how absolutely ignorant I was - and, really, still am - about Native culture, Federal Indian law issues, and the tragic effect that decades of paternalistic and discriminatory governmental policy has had on tribes. Additionally, some of what I did learn is particular to Oklahoma tribes; I can only speculate about what life might be like on the Rosebud Sioux reservation in South Dakota or on the reservations in Arizona. I can, however, be satisfied with what I have come away from this summer with: a little less ignorance and a lot more awareness about an area of the law and a set of cultures that I had never had any substantive experience with before.
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