Frank Pommersheim | |
---|---|
Born | 12 December 1943 80) Queens, New York, U.S. | (age
Occupation(s) | Attorney Professor Author |
Known for | The Camden 28 |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Columbia Law School Harvard University Colgate University [1] |
Academic work | |
Discipline | American Indian Law |
Institutions | University of South Dakota School of Law |
Frank Pommersheim (born December 12,1943) is an American professor,author,and poet specializing in the field of American Indian law. Pommersheim is serving on several tribal appellate courts and serves as the Chief Justice for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Court of Appeals and the Rosebud Sioux Supreme Court [2] and is also notable for his involvement in The Camden 28. [3] [4]
Frank Pommersheim was born in New York City but moved to the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in 1974 where he worked for 10 years before joining the University of South Dakota faculty in 1984. [1] Pommersheim graduated in 1965 with a Bachelor of Arts from Colgate University. He earned a J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1968 and a MPA from Harvard University.
Pommersheim was employed as the Director of Dakota Plains Legal Service from 1980 to 1983. As a Senior Consumer Law Specialist for the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs from 1971 to 1973 and as an Attorney and Volunteer Leader for the VISTA program in Alaska from 1968 to 1970. [1]
Frank Pommersheim began teaching at the University of South Dakota School of Law in 1984 where he is currently a professor specializing in American Indian law. [5] Pommersheim has also taught at the Lewis &Clark Law School,University of Tulsa College of Law,College of Law in Dublin,Ireland,Sinte Gleska University,and the University of New Mexico.
Pommersheim serves on tribal appellate courts and is currently the Chief Justice for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Court of Appeals as well as Associate Justice for the Rosebud Sioux Supreme Court. [1]
University of South Dakota Belbas‐Larson Award for Excellence in Teaching, [6] South Dakota Peace and Justice Center Reconciliation Award,[ citation needed ] and the John Wesley Jackson Award as the Outstanding Professor of Law. [7]
The Camden 28 were an eclectic group of anti-Vietnam War activists. The group included young students,blue-collar workers,four Catholic priests and a Protestant minister. In 1971 they planned and executed a The Camden 28 raided a Camden,New Jersey draft board and destroyed records containing Class 1-A status draft registrants. [8] Pommersheim,who was appropriately 28 at the time,was a member of this group's anti-Vietnam War activists. The group faced felony charges for their actions,but subsequently were acquitted by a jury in 1973. The high-profile trial against the activists that was seen by many as a referendum on the Vietnam War and as an example of successful use of jury nullification. [9] In 2007,PBS produced The Camden 28 ,a documentary on the event and the events surrounding it. Howard Zinn testified at the trial and Supreme Court Justice William Brennan called it "one of the great trials of the 20th century". [10]
Frank married a fellow member of the Camden 28,Anne Dunham. The couple left the East coast and lived and worked on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota for 10 years. Anne and Frank later moved to Vermillion,South Dakota. They have three children. [11] Pommersheim is personal friends with Bob Dylan and a passionate fan of folk music.
The Lakota are a Native American people. Also known as the Teton Sioux, they are one of the three prominent subcultures of the Sioux people, with the Eastern Dakota (Santee) and Western Dakota (Wičhíyena). Their current lands are in North and South Dakota. They speak Lakȟótiyapi—the Lakota language, the westernmost of three closely related languages that belong to the Siouan language family.
The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations people from the Great Plains of North America. The Sioux have two major linguistic divisions: the Dakota and Lakota peoples. Collectively, they are the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, or "Seven Council Fires". The term "Sioux", an exonym from a French transcription of the Ojibwe term Nadowessi, can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or to any of the nation's many language dialects.
Mission is a city on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in northern Todd County, South Dakota, United States. The population was 1,156 at the 2020 census.
William John Janklow was an American lawyer and politician and member of the Republican Party who holds the record for the longest tenure as Governor of South Dakota: sixteen years in office. Janklow had the third-longest gubernatorial tenure in post-Constitutional U.S. history at 5,851 days.
The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, also called Pine Ridge Agency, is an Oglala Lakota Indian reservation located in the U.S. state of South Dakota, with a small portion of it extending into Nebraska. Originally included within the territory of the Great Sioux Reservation, Pine Ridge was created by the Act of March 2, 1889, 25 Stat. 888. in the southwest corner of South Dakota on the Nebraska border. It consists of 3,468.85 sq mi (8,984 km2) of land area and is one of the largest reservations in the United States.
Lakota, also referred to as Lakhota, Teton or Teton Sioux, is a Siouan language spoken by the Lakota people of the Sioux tribes. Lakota is mutually intelligible with the two dialects of the Dakota language, especially Western Dakota, and is one of the three major varieties of the Sioux language.
The Treaty of Fort Laramie is an agreement between the United States and the Oglala, Miniconjou, and Brulé bands of Lakota people, Yanktonai Dakota, and Arapaho Nation, following the failure of the first Fort Laramie treaty, signed in 1851.
The Sicangu are one of the seven oyates, nations or council fires, of Lakota people, an Indigenous people of the Northern Plains. Today, many Sicangu people are enrolled citizens of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of the Rosebud Indian Reservation and Lower Brule Sioux Tribe of the Lower Brule Reservation in South Dakota.
The Rosebud Indian Reservation is an Indian reservation in South Dakota, United States. It is the home of the federally recognized Rosebud Sioux Tribe, who are Sicangu, a band of Lakota people. The Lakota name Sicangu Oyate translates as the "Burnt Thigh Nation", also known by the French term, the Brulé Sioux.
Spotted Tail was a Sichangu Lakota tribal chief. Famed as a great warrior since his youth, warring on Ute, Pawnee and Absaroke (“Crow”), and having taken a leading part in the Grattan Massacre, he led his warriors in the Colorado and Platte River uprising after the massacre performed by John M. Chivington's Colorado Volunteers on the peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho camping on Sand Creek, but declined to participate in Red Cloud's War.
Joseph M. Marshall III son of Joseph Nelson Marshall Sr. and Hazel Lorraine Two Hawk-Marshall, is a historian, writer, teacher, craftsman, administrator, actor, and public speaker. He was a founding board member in 1971 of Sinte Gleska University, the tribal college at the Rosebud Indian Reservation.
The Lower Brule Indian Reservation is an Indian reservation that belongs to the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. It is located on the west bank of the Missouri River in Lyman and Stanley counties in central South Dakota in the United States. It is adjacent to the Crow Creek Indian Reservation on the east bank of the river. The Lower Brule Sioux are members of the Sicangu, one of the bands of the Lakota people. Tribal headquarters is in Lower Brule.
Sinte Gleska University (SGU) is a public tribal land-grant university in Mission, South Dakota, on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. It is a Brulé Lakota Indian Reservation home to the Sicangu. SGU has an enrollment of 828 full and part-time students. It is regionally accredited by the Higher Learning Commission.
South Dakota v. Bourland, 508 U.S. 679 (1993), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that Congress specifically abrogated treaty rights with the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe as to hunting and fishing rights on reservation lands that were acquired for a reservoir.
Crow Dog was a Brulé Lakota subchief, born at Horse Stealing Creek, Montana Territory.
Ex parte Crow Dog, 109 U.S. 556 (1883), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that followed the death of one member of a Native American tribe at the hands of another on reservation land. Crow Dog was a member of the Brulé band of the Lakota Sioux. On August 5, 1881 he shot and killed Spotted Tail, a Lakota chief; there are different accounts of the background to the killing. The tribal council dealt with the incident according to Sioux tradition, and Crow Dog paid restitution to the dead man's family. However, the U.S. authorities then prosecuted Crow Dog for murder in a federal court. He was found guilty and sentenced to hang.
Albert White Hat was a teacher of the Lakota language, and an activist for Sičháŋǧu Lakȟóta traditional culture. He translated the Lakota language for Hollywood movies, including the 1990 movie Dances with Wolves, and created a modern Lakota orthography and textbook.
Doris Leader Charge, was an American translator and educator. She taught Lakota language and culture courses at Sinte Gleska University for 28 years, and worked on the film Dances With Wolves (1990) as a translator and dialogue coach; she also appeared on-screen in a minor part.
Lionel Raphael Bordeaux was a Sicangu Lakota educator, advocate, and president of Sinte Gleska University (SGU) from 1973 until his death in 2022. At the time of his death, he was the longest-serving college or university president in the United States. During his time as university president, SGU became the first tribal university in the United States, and became the first tribal higher learning institution to achieve both bachelor's and master's degree accreditation.