Notes on Representation of Native Clients

Abstract

Native people, whether influenced by traditional approaches to dispute resolution or by their pragmatic experience with local courts and dispute resolution or by their pragmatic experience with local courts and law enforcement, do not see justice as being done within the forum offered by the state. In search of an authoritative locale for rational dispute resolution, they find arbitrary and apparently irrational treatment in magistrate courts. Conversely, they have found in conciliation before the village council a forum where misconduct is measured against the world that the defendant immediately affects. They find a comprehensible forum in the village to solve their problems or no forum at all. Can participation in a functioning advocacy and adversary system be taught and utilized along with continued functioning of a sub-legal conciliatory system that handles de minimus matters effectively? This paper offers guidance to public defenders and legal services attorneys in representing Alaska Native clients.