By Dean Kellye Testy, SU School of Law

A complicated set of laws first created more than a century ago governs Indian land management and, unfortunately, few attorneys are experienced in that area of practice. A new program at Seattle University School of Law will help ensure lawyers are well trained to provide needed legal services to help Native Americans preserve their land.

The Institute for Indian Estate Planning & Probate has a three-fold mission. First, it will assist Indian people in making informed decisions about their property by providing free and reduced-cost estate planning services to individuals. Second, it will provide estate planning and probate training to tribes, government officials and the legal community. Third, it will serve as a clearinghouse for Indian estate planning information.

The Institute is critical to ensuring Native Americans have access to legal services they need and Seattle University School of Law is proud to be at the heart of service to tribal communities nationwide. It’s a perfect fit with the law school’s mission to train outstanding lawyers for the service of justice and complements an already strong curriculum in the area of Indian law. Seattle University School of Law has for many years offered a popular course in federal Indian law, taught by longtime adjunct professor Allen Sanders.

All law schools in the state will be addressing their own curricula as they prepare students to pass bar exam questions related to Indian law, starting in summer 2007. Washington recently became the second state to require competence in the area of Indian law.

The focus of the Institute is to help provide a unified, comprehensive and efficient approach to estate planning in Indian Country. Estate planning gives Indian land owners the ability to reconsolidate and manage their land. The need is particularly pressing given the passage of the American Indian Probate Reform Act in November 2004 and the announcement in April 2005 that the Bureau of Indian Affairs would no longer be drafting or storing wills for tribal members.

That’s a void the Institute will help fill, under the direction of Douglas Nash, a member of the Nez PercŽ Tribe and an attorney with more than 30 years experience working with Indian law issues. Nash also will teach Indian Law and Natural Resources in which students will explore the basis for tribal ownership of natural resources, the nature and extent of those rights today, tribal management of natural resources and conflicts over the management of those resources.

The Institute is a project of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation (ILTF), a nonprofit corporation that recognized the need for a national program. The Institute oversees existing ILTF projects that provide free or reduced-cost Indian estate planning services to tribes in Washing-ton, Oregon, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

The need for the Institute goes back to the General Allotment Act of 1887, when tribal lands were allotted to individual tribal members on more than 100 reservations. These lands were held in trust by the United States for tribal members, meaning that the United States holds legal title to the land. Between 1887 and 1934, when the allotment policy was repudiated, more than 90 million acres of land were taken from Indian ownership.

Of those lands remaining in Indian ownership, the majority of the original 80- to 160-acre parcels are held today by dozens or, in some cases, even hundreds of interest holders because federal law required that ownership pass according to state laws of intestate succession. Each owner of an undivided interest needs permission from the others and from the United States in order to lease, manage, encumber or improve the land.

The Institute oversees programs that send law students from around the country into reservation communities in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, where most members have limited access to legal services. The externs provide free estate planning and will drafting services under the supervision of a licensed attorney. Seattle University is making plans to start a similar program based at the School of Law.

Cecelia Burke, the deputy director of the Institute and an SUSL graduate, was an extern under that program and current student Stephanie Nichols spent the summer working with tribal members on the Swinomish and Upper Skagit reservations.

The Institute was recently awarded a $519,000 one-year contract from the Department of the Interior to develop and implement an estate-planning pilot project in the Great Plains and Pacific Coast regions. It will send legal services attorneys and paralegals to reservations in each region and will work in coordination with the Institute’s existing externship projects.

The objective of the Institute is to grow into a national program that directly impacts and reduces the fractionalization of Indian lands through education and the provision of estate planning services to tribal members and communities.

Because the American Indian Probate Reform Act is recent and complicated, attorneys, tribal members and tribal officials need to have a clear understanding of its provisions and effects. Training is thus another important part of the Institute’s work.

The Institute will host a two-day national symposium and continuing legal education program on the American Indian Probate Reform Act on March 14 and 15 at Seattle University School of Law. For more information, visit http://www.law.seattleu.edu/cle/events.