Innovating Access to Justice in Tribal Courts: Emergent Supports for Pro Se Litigants and Judges – Webinar – February 5, 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: Innovating Access to Justice in Tribal Courts: Emergent Supports for Pro Se Litigants and Judges
In this presentation, Michele Statz discussed the access to justice crisis in Indian Country and how it affects both Native litigants and Tribal court judges. She then provides an overview of relatively well-established models of Indigenous access to justice from the settler colonial nations of Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand. Finally, in conversation with Stephanie Hudson, she discusses an emergent A2J support in the U.S., the Community Justice Worker model, as a uniquely responsive and culturally, spatially and linguistically representative form of advocacy. Time was built in for audience members to ask questions and evaluate the relevance of these models in their own courts. This presentation underscores the need for systematic, structural change as well as the importance of everyday practices that help tribal court judges elicit good facts, build trust in the courts, and retain the energy needed to administer justice.
