Fall/Winter 2006 Issue: Volume 5, Issue 1

Authors

Cecelia E. Burke
Cecelia E. Burke is Deputy Director of the Institute for Indian Estate Planning and Probate at Seattle University School of Law, in addition to that, she teaches an Indian Estate Planning Clinical Course. Ms. Burke is the author of Indian will and estate planning training materials, templates, and charts illustrating intestate succession under the new American Indian Probate Reform Act, and provides estate planning training to tribal communities, legal services attorneys, and the private bar nationwide. She worked for the University of Idaho Indian Estate Planning Project, providing estate-planning services to tribal members on the Upper Skagit and Swinomish Reservations in Washington State. She received her B.A. summa cum laude from the University of Washington, and her J.D. cum laude from Seattle University School of Law.

Jessica A. Cohen

Jessica A. Cohen is a 2007 J.D. candidate at Seattle University School of Law where she serves as an Article Editor for the Seattle Journal for Social Justice. Ms. Cohen received her B.A. cum laude from Smith College in 2001. Before law school, Jessica’s summer work at the D.C. Central Kitchen sparked her interest in food waste issues and food recovery programs, which prompted her to write this article. She has lived abroad in Israel and Argentina, and is focusing her legal career in public interest advocacy.

Beth A. Colgan
Beth A. Colgan is the Managing Attorney of the Institutions Project at Columbia Legal Services. For over thirty years, the Institutions Project has represented people confined in Washington's jails, prisons, juvenile detention facilities, mental health facilities, and facilities for the developmentally disabled. That representation has focused on institutional conditions of confinement, discrimination, alternatives to institutionalization, sentencing and placement issues, access to courts, adequacy of rehabilitation, and issues related to rehabilitation, re-entry, and reductions in recidivism. Prior to joining Columbia Legal Services, Ms. Colgan practiced at Perkins Coie, LLP, where she engaged in pro bono representation of individuals in personal restraint petitions and clemency procedures, and of a class of pre-trial detainees in obtaining a landmark settlement that required the transformation of a Washington county's public defense system. Ms. Colgan received her B.A. from Stanford University and her J.D. cum laude from Northwestern University School of Law. Ms. Colgan is the recipient of the 2005 Northwestern University Children & Family Justice Center Alumni Award, the 2004 Washington State Bar Association Washington Young Lawyers Division Thomas Neville Pro Bono Award, and the 2003 Perkins Coie Pro Bono Leadership Award. She has previously co-authored several articles and a chapter regarding false confessions and problematic interrogations, as well as the effects of economic and educational deprivation on street children in sub-Saharan Africa.

Michael J. Finkle
Michael Finkle is a supervising prosecutor in the Public & Community Safety Division of the Seattle City Attorney’s Office, and he previously practiced as a municipal prosecutor and a civil practitioner in Los Angeles. Mr. Finkle graduated from the UCLA School of Law in 1981, where he served as Managing Editor of the UCLA Law Review. He holds an M.B.A. from Seattle University (1995) and a B.B.A. from Loyola Marymount University (1978). A significant part of Mr. Finkle’s practice involves mental health issues. He served on the task force that recommended creating Mental Health Courts in Washington and participated in forming the Seattle Municipal Court’s Mental Health Court. He has supervised his office’s participation in that Court since its inception in 1999. Mr. Finkle has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law since 1998, teaching Law & Mental Health and Trial Techniques. He has presented papers on competency to stand trial and on mental health courts to judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and mental health professionals. He serves on the Mental Illness and Sex Offender Civil Commitment Subcommittee of the Washington State Bar Association’s (WSBA) Committee on Public Defense, and has served on the State’s Designated Mental Health Professional Protocol Advisory Committee. A past president of the Washington State Association of Municipal Attorneys, Mr. Finkle received that organization’s inaugural “Outstanding Service Award” in 2003. The WSBA has recognized him for “Exemplary Contributions” to the development of its members for his work with the WSBA’s Trial Advocacy Program (1997).

Matthew L.M. Fletcher
Matthew L.M. Fletcher is an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University College of Law and the Director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center. He also sits as an appellate judge for the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, and the Hoopa Valley Tribe, and is a consultant to the Seneca Nation of Indians Court of Appeals. Professor Fletcher graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1997 and the University of Michigan in 1994. He has worked as a staff attorney for four Indian Tribes—the Pascua Yaqui Tribe (1998 to 1999), the Hoopa Valley Tribe (2000 to 2001), the Suquamish Tribe (2001), and the Grand Traverse Band (2001 to 2004). Professor Fletcher is an enrolled member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, located in Peshawbestown, Michigan. He is married to Wenona T. Singel, a member of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, Assistant Professor of Law at the Law College, and associate director of the Center. They have a son named Owen.

Alvin L. Gilcrist
Alvin L. Gilcrist is an ex-convict who has served more than thirty years in Washington State and various other prisons across the United States during two incarcerations, the first beginning in 1972 at age sixteen and the second starting in September of 1992 after a fifteen-month parole failure. He was released from the United States Penitentiary in Lompoc, California to a Halfway House/Work Release Facility in June 2005. During this time, he began working for a Seattle law firm. After his release from the Halfway House to the community in September 2005, he continued his employment in the Seattle area until he rejoined his wife and daughter in May 2006 in Vancouver, Washington, where he currently resides with his family.

Debra Harry
Debra Harry is Northern Paiute, from Pyramid Lake, Nevada. She serves as the Executive Director of the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (IPCB), which is organized to assist Indigenous peoples in the protection of their genetic resources, Indigenous knowledge, and cultural and human rights from the negative effects of biotechnology. She produced the 2003 documentary film The Leech and the Earthworm, an IPCB/Yeast Directions production. She authored a chapter entitled, “Acts of Self-Determination and Self-Defense: Indigenous Peoples Responses to Biocolonialism,” as a contribution to a book entitled Rights and Liberties in the Biotech Age, (edited by Sheldon Krimsky and Peter Shorett, Roman and Littlefield, 2005), which is an original volume of essays by leading scientists, policy experts, and public interest advocates on the impact of genetic technologies on individual and collective rights. In 1994, she received a three-year Kellogg Foundation leadership fellowship and studied the field of human genetic research and its implications for Indigenous peoples. She earned a master's degree in community economic development from New Hampshire College, and she is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Auckland, School of Education.

Le'a Malia Kanehe
Le'a Malia Kanehe is a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) attorney born and raised in Honolulu, Hawai`i. Since 2004, she has worked as a legal analyst with the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (IPCB), a non-profit organization based on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation in Nevada. IPCB assists Indigenous peoples to protect their genetic material, Indigenous knowledge, and cultural and human rights from the negative effects of biotechnology. Her previous experience includes advocacy work with Kanaka Maoli community organizations on issues of Native Hawaiian land rights, self-determination, and genetic material and Indigenous knowledge protection. Ms. Kanehe holds a B.A. in Hawaiian Studies and a J.D. from the University of Hawai`i, as well as a Master of Laws (L.L.M.) from the University of California-Berkeley. Currently, she is a fellow at the Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law at the University of Hawai`i Richardson School of Law.

Kelly Kunsch
Kelly Kunsch is a Reference Librarian and Adjunct Professor at Seattle University School of Law. He has written numerous works on Washington law, including several pieces on Washington legal history. He graduated from Gonzaga University summa cum laude and from the University of Washington’s School of Law and School of Information Science.

Peter A. Meyers

Peter A. Meyers is a lawyer in private practice in Portland, Oregon, specializing in estate planning, business formation, various plaintiffs’ matters, and volunteer work with the Oregon ACLU. He graduated from Seattle University School of Law, cum laude, in 2005, after serving as editor in chief of the Seattle University Law Review. Prior to law school, he wrote software documentation for Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard and was a business journalist. Mr. Meyers holds an M.A. in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary and a B.A. in Pastoral Studies from North Central University.

Douglas R. Nash
Douglas R. Nash is the Director of the Institute for Indian Estate Planning and Probate at Seattle University School of Law. He previously served as a professor at the University of Idaho’s College of Law where he was the first recipient of the James E. Rogers Fellowship in American Indian Law. Mr. Nash obtained his B.A degree from the University of Idaho in 1969, and earned his J.D. degree from the University of New Mexico School of Law in 1971. He has worked at the U.S. Department of the Interior, Solicitor’s Office Honors Program; as a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund; and in a solo private practice for fourteen years in Pendleton, Oregon, where he represented the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Mr. Nash served for ten years as Chief Counsel to the Nez Perce Tribe and then with the law firm of Holland & Hart, where he headed the Indian Law Practice Group within the Litigation Section. He is admitted to practice before the state and federal courts of New Mexico (inactive), Oregon, Idaho and Washington as well as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the United States Supreme Court. Mr. Nash is a member of the Nez Perce Tribe.

Joshua Osborne-Klein

Joshua Osborne-Klein currently works as an environmental attorney for Earthjustice in Seattle. Before joining Earthjustice, Mr. Osborne-Klein was a law clerk for Washington State Supreme Court Justice Susan Owens. In 2005, he graduated summa cum laude from Seattle University School of Law with a focus in environmental law. During law school, he was cover editor for the Seattle University Law Review and published an article on election law. In 2002, Mr. Osborne-Klein graduated with honors from the University of California at Santa Cruz with a B.A. in environmental studies and a minor in legal studies.

Michael Posner
Michael Posner, President of Human Rights First, has been at the forefront of the international human rights movement for almost thirty years. He is a frequent public commentator and his opinion essays have appeared in such newspapers as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune. Mr. Posner has testified dozens of times before the U.S. Congress. In 1980, he played a key role in proposing and campaigning for the first U.S. law providing for political asylum, which became part of the Refugee Act of 1980. He also proposed, drafted, and campaigned for the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), which was adopted by Congress and signed into law in 1992. In 1998, Mr. Posner led the Human Rights First delegation to the Rome conference at which the statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was adopted. As a member of the White House Apparel Industry Partnership Task Force, he helped found the Fair Labor Association in 1997 to promote corporate accountability for working conditions in the apparel industry. Mr. Posner lectured at Yale Law School from 1981 to 1984, and has been a visiting lecturer at Columbia University Law School since 1984. He received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley Law School (Boalt Hall), and a B.A. from the University of Michigan.

Terry Ann Thaxton
Terry Ann Thaxton is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Central Florida (UCF) where she founded and directs UCF’s Literary Arts Partnership. This partnership is an interdisciplinary, university-wide project that promotes literacy through the craft of creative writing and empowerment through self-expression. The workshops develop pride among community members and inspire UCF students to recognize their potential to bring about positive changes in their communities. The workshops combine the university’s resources with children, youth, and adults in greater Orlando, greatly expanding research in the study of the connection between the literary arts and literacy, expanding and fostering community partnerships, and outreach. Through writing, the partnership gives voice to the voiceless, and builds self-confidence through imaginative literacy. She has received grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women, Youth Service America, the Florida Humanities Council, and United Arts of Central Florida. Ms. Thaxton holds a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Vermont College, and her collection of poetry, Getaway Girl, won the 18th Annual Frederick Morgan Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from Story Line Press.

Heather E. Williams

Heather E. Williams is a 2007 J.D. candidate at Seattle University School of Law where she is currently the Associate Research & Technical Editor for the Seattle Journal for Social Justice. While in law school, she has served on the board of the Public Interest Law Foundation, and as a founding member of a new student organization, 21st Century Lawyers, aimed at encouraging lawyering from a holistic perspective. Prior to law school, Ms. Williams worked in development and fundraising for various non-profit organizations. She earned a B.A. in Economics from Wittenberg University, spent a year of undergraduate study at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and is an enthusiastic student and instructor of Hatha yoga.