Empowering Tribal Courts through Self Help Resource Development – Webinar – February 19, 2025
Tribal Law and Policy Institute (TLPI) along with their training and technical assistance partners – the Tribal Judicial Institute (TJI), and National American Indian Court Judges Association (NAICJA) presented a webinar titled: Empowering Tribal Courts through Self Help Resource Development
A shared goal of tribal justice systems is to provide access to justice for their tribal community and many are working to develop pro se or self-help resources. This webinar provides a working roadmap for the development of self-help resources in both the civil and criminal arenas. This session will highlight holistic defense and holistic justice, resource mapping, and how to create pro se resources for individuals coming into the civil or criminal systems. The focus of this session is to empower tribal communities via their courts to provide access to justice for the community when there are limited or no local or tribal resources available. Attendees learned how to resource map for a tribal community through examples. After learning the skill, attendees had a chance to flex their knowledge by working in small groups to practice resource mapping. To conclude the session, attendees learned about creating pro se resources such charts for the life of a criminal case and response forms for an Order to Show Cause.
Materials shared:
- Christine Folsom Smith, Enhanced Sentencing in Tribal Courts: Lessons Learned From Tribes, National Tribal Judicial Center (January 2015)
- Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) Defenders
- Nevada Legal Services
- Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone Tribal Court: Pro Se Packet for Order to Show Cause
- Life of a Criminal Case at the Fort McDermitt Tribe
- Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribal Court: Criminal Case Flow Chart
- ITC 2025 – Navigating the Digital Maze: Empowering Justice with Online Support
- National Center for State Courts | Tech for All: Applications of AI
