Christina Stanton

Celebrating Excellence in Community Service: Professor Christina Stanton Honored at Colorado Law School

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 22:15:23 +0000

Celebrating Excellence in Community Service: Professor Christina Stanton Honored at Colorado Law School Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 16:15

Erin Calkins

We are delighted to announce that Professor Christina Stanton, a distinguished member of our clinical faculty, has been honored with the Excellence in Community Service Award at Colorado Law School. This award recognizes her exceptional contributions to the community through her dedicated outreach and legal advocacy work, particularly in collaboration with students.

During the award presentation, it was emphasized that this accolade celebrates those who demonstrate a profound commitment to serving the community's unmet legal needs and fostering meaningful connections through education and outreach efforts. Professor Stanton exemplifies these qualities through her impactful initiatives.

Christina Stanton has been instrumental in supporting the Native community through a wide range of initiatives, both large and small. Notably, as the director of the American Indian Law Clinic, she has championed crucial efforts such as protecting voting rights and providing legal assistance to elderly clients by drafting wills. Her leadership in the election protection efforts enabled 4300 individuals to vote on reservation lands in North Dakota, and her outreach efforts via the NativeVote website reached over 8 million people on social media.

This summer, Professor Stanton continues to expand her community engagement by teaching at CU’s Upward Bound’s summer academic institute. This program brings Native American high school students from Arizona, Utah, South Dakota, and New Mexico to the CU campus for an enriching 6-week experience. Professor Stanton’s course, Introduction to American Indian Law, not only introduces students to the foundations of federal Indian law and tribal law but also cultivates skills in legal reasoning, analysis, persuasive writing, and oral advocacy. Through her mentorship, she inspires students to explore the possibilities of a legal career and its impact on Native communities.

Professor Stanton’s dedication to her students and the broader community exemplifies the spirit of the Community Excellence Award and underscores Colorado Law School’s commitment to fostering impactful legal education and community engagement.

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A Banner Semester for the American Indian Law Clinic

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 22:52:14 +0000

A Banner Semester for the American Indian Law Clinic Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 11/30/2022 - 15:52

The 2022-2023 American Indian Law Clinic (the Clinic) students have already been hard at work; parsing national election laws; digging through historical treaties and local laws; and supporting international clients to elevate Indigenous human rights concerns before the United Nations.

A critical component of the Clinic is to get out of the classroom and into communities. Under the leadership of the director, Christina Stanton, students have been able to directly observe on-the-ground impacts of the laws they have been researching and analyzing on behalf of their clients. This work has helped students to articulate the ways in which laws have disparate impacts on tribal communities. Client work and reflections on the current political climate and important issues facing Native Nations has grounded students in the modern state of affairs and to consider the important role of Indigenous attorneys and their allies in the efforts to uphold Native sovereignty.

Ensuring the Native Vote

Three students, Siena Kalina '23, Michele Manceaux '24, and Kate Newman '24, worked to provide important legal research for the NativesVote 2022 website, a partnership between IllumiNative, Native Organizers Alliance, and First Peoples Worldwide. These students have parsed state and local voting laws; looked at county maps and redistricting efforts; identified many state offices to provide clarity on obscure language; and tracked all active litigation.

The students identified the ways in which Native voters face a unique set of issues when both registering to vote and casting their ballots. For example, in Montana, Native voters on one reservation must drive 120 miles to reach a voter registration site. Without online registration, this is the only option to then be eligible to cast a ballot in November. Although mail-in voting is appealing to many voters, and something that is accessible in the state of Colorado, Native Americans are not always able to take advantage of this due to lack of traditional addressing and postal delivery on reservations.

After conducting this research, the students developed language for the Natives Vote website so that Native voters had a resource tailored to the information they need to vote. This included whether states provide materials in Native languages, state laws on mail-in and absentee ballots, how to get an address if one does not have a “traditional” address as described the state, and what types of identification are needed to register and vote.

For the mid-term November elections, the entire Clinic travelled to North Dakota to provide poll observation to support the Native American Rights Fund’s voter protection efforts. Four groups of clinic students were sent out to polling locations near the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and Spirit Lake Tribes’ reservations.

North Dakota is the only state that does not have voter registration. The students imagined this would make voting easier as it removed one large obstacle for Native voters, but the reality was much different. The students noted that many people showed up to the wrong polling place, because the state had not notified them of the correct polling location. Others faced challenges squaring their address on their ID with the address the election officials had on file in their electronic system. While they observed confusion about specific election laws, the students also observed a sense of community familiarity and a willingness to help people cast ballots if they chose. They met individuals who were voting for the first time or voting with a tribal ID they had obtained just the previous day.

Building Capacity within our Colorado Community

Students have also had the opportunity to work on building outreach programs in addition to clinical practice. These moments not only help to grow awareness of contemporary Indigenous issues and ways to build allyship, but they also hone the students' presentation skills. Ms. Manceaux has also contributed to these efforts. She said,

“Learning American Indian law really changed my legal perspective and what I want to do with my career. It also inspired me to be involved in outreach programs where I and other students can teach the community about the importance of understanding Native American history and how current events impact all of society.”

Ms. Manceaux and Joshua Bertalotto '24 presented to local company, Rowdy Mermaid, on Indigenous Peoples’ Day in October 2022. They discussed the ramifications of critical moments in history, such as allotment and removal, and offered employees ways to engage with Native American tribes and support tribal sovereignty in their professional and personal lives. “It was rewarding to meet people where they were and give them solutions on how to make positive, individual changes,” Manceaux said.

Following her participation in the Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law Constitution Day Project in September, Ms. Manceaux organized a day to discuss tribal sovereignty with high school students at Northglenn High School in Broomfield, CO. To anchor the conversation in modern issues, she taught students about what tribal sovereignty looks like in practice by addressing the case Brackeen v. Haaland, which is currently in front of the United States Supreme Court. Ms. Manceaux watched how students grappled with the concept of tribal sovereignty within the complex case of Brackeen, highlighting multi-party interests and the duty that the United States has to tribes.

As the clinic students gain the practical experience of lawyering on behalf of Indigenous Peoples, they are also encouraged to consider how to best live the values of client-centered lawyering.

“We approach this work with a constant reminder of our north stars: tribal sovereignty and self-determination. I ask that each student interrogate how they show up as lawyers, as students, and as humans and how we can do better to incorporate these north stars in our practice,” Stanton said.

Thanks to Siena Kalina, Michele Manceaux, and Kate Newman for their contributions to this article.

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Getting to Know Clinical Prof. Christina Stanton ‘15

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 02:21:11 +0000

Getting to Know Clinical Prof. Christina Stanton ‘15 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/17/2022 - 20:21

This fall, Colorado Law alumna Christina Stanton ’15 joins the faculty as an associate clinical professor and director of the American Indian Law Clinic. Stanton previously served as an adjunct professor at the law school, interim director of the American Indian Law Clinic, and director of operations at First Peoples Worldwide, an organization housed in the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Colorado. There, she led targeted international strategy on behalf of Indigenous partners in parallel with market-based corporate advocacy and directed the student research program, which seeks to develop early career professionals and Native leaders in the field.

She earned a JD with an American Indian Law certificate from the University of Colorado and a Bachelor of Arts from Johns Hopkins University.

Q: Thanks so much for speaking with us, Prof. Stanton!

You’re quite welcome!

Q: After the last two years of hybrid and remote learning due to the pandemic, what are you most looking forward to about the fall semester?

I think like many of my colleagues, I'm looking forward to continuing to teach and connect with students—and everyone at Colorado Law, for that matter—in person. For the clinic specifically, a return to in-person can mean the opportunity to meet with clients face to face. I am always so grateful for the ability to connect with clients and partners around the world via Zoom, but there is something special about the return to sharing space. There is so much that is said beyond the confines of the Zoom squares, and I'm excited to navigate that again.

Q: What originally got you interested in American Indian law?

In college, I was a creative writing student and was fortunate to attend the school where Louise Erdrich received her MFA. Love Medicine was so inspiring to me as a writer, but it also unlocked something else. The Round House was published right before I began law school. Its depiction of the epidemic of violence against Indigenous women, as well as the jurisdictional maze that allows these crimes to occur without real recourse, drove me to Colorado Law's American Indian Law Program. Faculty like Kristen Carpenter, Charles Wilkinson, and Carla Fredericks allowed me to grapple with the legal complexities of this history, as well as the very real challenges of the present moment. They allowed me the space to consider where I fit into this work as a law student. A year later, the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization of 2013 was passed and I observed in real time how Indigenous leaders, Native lawyers, and allies were pivotal to the success and how they worked to continue this momentum.

Q: How fascinating. Can you expand on that?

Of course. This moment was activating for me, as these were the same years that my own LGBQTIA community was fighting for marriage equality. I worked in Washington, D.C., that same summer and waited in line overnight to be in the Supreme Court to hear the decisions about the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 cases. These two threads of my experience may seem disparate, but to me, have always pointed me towards this path. I know that my rights as a queer person, the rights of my trans and non-binary siblings, the rights of all LGTBQIA2S people, are interconnected with the rights of everyone who have been historically marginalized and subjected to systems that were not built to serve us.

At the 1985 United Nations Decade for Women Conference, Lilla Watson delivered this quote on behalf of an Aboriginal rights group based in Australia: "If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." It is this sentiment that once sparked my interest in this field of law, but it is also the sentiment that has kept me doing this work and inspires me to continue critiquing how I can be a better advocate and ally. Working to support Indigenous peoples is a privilege and I am so grateful to step into this work and strive to uphold the sovereignty and self-determination of Native nations.

Q: What has it been like teaching at your alma mater? Have you observed changes in the law school since your days as a student? What has remained the same?

It has been wonderful to come back and teach at Colorado Law and contribute to the American Indian Law Program. The best part about being a student at Colorado Law was studying alongside others that were committed to service and thinking about how they could use their law degree as a tool to better the world. It is incredibly energizing to be back in the halls with another generation of students who are asking the same questions with a new set of facts. Colorado Law continues to attract these students and it is an honor to teach them, knowing that one day soon I will be working alongside them.

Q: Has anything surprised you?
There are so many new spaces around the law school—the Solidarity Suite, the new journal offices, the garden level conference room—that I have been discovering, and so jealous that I didn't get to use as a student! But I was happy to see that Charles Wilkinson's espresso machine was still alive and well in the (now renamed) Foolish Craig's cafe.

Q: Can you share a bit about what you’re working on now?

Right now, as I wrap up at First Peoples Worldwide (First Peoples) and join Colorado Law full-time, I am working to transition the international advocacy strategy and program that I've built into a project for the students. Recent responses from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD)'s early warning and urgent action procedure have been exclusively focused on human rights allegations from Indigenous peoples. These inquiries identify rights violations attendant to trans-national business development, climate change mitigation and adaptation measures that exclude Indigenous peoples, and the violence and harassment that Indigenous human rights defenders are subjected to.

Q: Your work is quite interdisciplinary, with crossover into climate change and natural resources, energy, and the environment. Can you expand on that?

As the world continues to chase green energy to mitigate the effects of climate change, these specific rights violations will continue at increased levels because there will be increased mineral extraction on Indigenous lands. This means there will be even more violations of Indigenous rights, including the right to free, prior, and informed consent. My work at First Peoples has been to support a global campaign to ensure that Indigenous rights are considered and prioritized in the growing demand for minerals that are often found on their lands. And there are so many examples of this in our own backyard—Thacker Pass, the Back Forty Mine, the Big Sandy River Valley. Each of these projects directly impacts Indigenous peoples.

How would the conversation about green energy change if consumers understood the impacts to Indigenous peoples at the start of the supply chain for their electric vehicles? How could U.S. policy better uphold Indigenous human rights and treaty rights? How could transnational companies integrate a rights-based framework in their internal policies? I am interested in the ways that recent responses from the United Nations, through CERD, for example, can support advocacy efforts drive better consideration of Indigenous rights into domestic law and routine business practice, especially as we turn to greener policies and practices.

Colorado Law alumna Christina Stanton ’15 joins the faculty as an associate clinical professor and director of the American Indian Law Clinic. Stanton previously served as an adjunct professor at the law school, interim director of the American Indian Law Clinic, and director of operations at First Peoples Worldwide, an organization housed in the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Colorado.

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