GIFT FROM AGUA CALIENTE BAND OF CAHUILLA INDIANS

When critical cases on the U.S. Supreme Court docket are poised to undermine tribal sovereignty—such as this summer’s decision in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, and the upcoming Brackeen v. Haaland, which threatens to overturn the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act—the need for timely, rigorous scholarship on federal Indian law is more crucial than ever. Thanks to a five-year, $600,000 gift from the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, UCLA Law’s Native Nations Law & Policy Center created the Richard M. Milanovich Fellowship in Law, which was awarded to Alexandra Fay. A recent graduate of Yale Law School, Fay stepped into her new fellowship on Sept. 1, with responsibilities that include leading research projects to develop her own scholarly portfolio, assisting with the Tribal Legal Development Clinic, and coaching the moot court teams of the UCLA Native American Law Student Association.

The Native Nations Law & Policy Center addresses broad public policy concerns in the field of Indigenous rights, while the Tribal Legal Development Clinic aids Native American communities directly through nonlitigation support and guidance. The combination gives students a comprehensive grounding in Indigenous concerns as well as practical lawyering skills.

The fellowship is named for the late Richard M. Milanovich, a revered leader and mentor who served as Agua Caliente’s tribal chairman from 1984 until his death in 2012. During his tenure, federally recognized tribes won groundbreaking legal victories—in particular, the right to operate casinos, thus ensuring economic selfsufficiency for generations to come. Agua Caliente’s ancestral lands encompass what is now known as Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage and Cathedral City, extending into the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains. Milanovich guided implementation of land-use agreements that became a model for tribes elsewhere.

Milanovich was personally committed to education—he went back to school in his 50s to earn a bachelor of science degree in business and management from the University of Redlands. His obituary provided insight into his convictions: “Chairman Milanovich strongly believed that our younger members of the Tribe must understand the battles that were fought and won. Only through understanding our past can we forge a progressive future for our people and the generations to come.”

It was a legal battle that brought Agua Caliente and UCLA School of Law together. In 2020, Lauren van Schilfgaarde, who at the time was the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians Tribal Legal Development

Clinic director, needed assistance with a dual taxation policy project. She was aware of Agua Caliente’s litigation on possessory interest taxation and reached out to confer with General Counsel John Plata and his staff. The relationship evolved over the next year, with the tribe eventually becoming a client of the clinic. Students took on realworld issues, from drafting court documents to brain storming ideas to address food and beverage taxation on reservations. Van Schilfgaarde and John Plata, general counsel for Agua Caliente, describe how this groundwork will benefit both the legal field and Indian country. “Tribes are engaged in law building and lawmaking every single day, and they’re doing it in a complex legal landscape,” van Schilfgaarde says. “There’s a huge need for practitioners that are versed in the complexities of federal Indian law but also in the complexities and increasing nuance of tribal law—building out tribal law that’s going Richard M. Milanovich to be responsive to local community need but also applicable in everchanging federal, state, and local sovereign-to-sovereign interactions.” She points to the Castro-Huerta decision as an example of the Supreme Court’s unfamiliarity with Indian law. “There’s such an ignorance,” she says, “about federal Indian law, about tribes, about the historical position of tribes within American law and the ways in which tribes are engaged with the law today. That is having dire consequences.” Plata agrees. “It’s not just SCOTUS decisions but decisions at every level of the judiciary,” he says. “Tribal sovereignty—and the very idea that tribes are sovereign governments—is attacked on a daily basis. Protecting the unique status of tribes in the law requires 24/7 vigilance. “As tribal government and business become more complex and farreaching,” Plata adds, “there is a correlating, exponential increase in the need for more and better trained attorneys. We are starting to see tribes ‘stretch their governmental legs’ and organize business in a way that we never have before.” Founded in 1998, the Tribal Legal Development Clinic is one of the oldest Indian law clinics in the country, and it and the Native Nations Law & Policy Center offer an unparalleled level of expertise, making UCLA Law a good fit for clients like Agua Caliente. With rapidly increasing demand for legal research in the field, however, it’s unclear whether one fellowship will be enough. “There’s so much scholarship that needs to be written that there’s an almost over whelming amount of opportunities,” van Schilfgaarde says. “I very much hope that this is just the beginning, the first of many Fellows that we will be able to host and help launch into academia. “The best protection for tribal sovereignty is education,” she adds. “The more that people are exposed to tribes, Native peoples, and tribal law, the better advocates they are. That puts the onus on places like UCLA to ensure that all law practitioners have a basic awareness of Indian law.”

Tribal sovereignty long predates the U.S. Constitution, but the study of Indian law has historically been overlooked by law schools—until now. A heightened attention to the field is attracting a surge of smart, young advocates who are eager to dive into the work—and they are coming to UCLA Law to do so.

One of the newest is Alexandra Fay, the inaugural Richard M. Milanovich Fellow at UCLA Law’s renowned Native Nations Law & Policy Center, who started her fellowship on Sept. 1. Under the supervision of Angela Riley, professor of law and the center’s director, she will conduct scholarly research, provide support to students, and assist with the overall program.

The Richard M. Milanovich Fellowship in Law was made possible by a five-year, $600,000 gift from the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. The goal is to help create a new generation of Indian law scholars and advocates.

Riley and the hiring committee looked for a fellowship candidate with scholarly potential, voracious curiosity, high intellect and a collaborative nature—someone who’d make a good colleague well into the future. Fay met all these criteria and more.

Fay grew up in the Bay Area as the daughter of immigrants. She earned her B.A. from Columbia University in 2018, and then enrolled in Yale Law School.

Toward the end of her law school years, she took an advanced Indian law seminar. It introduced her to the depth and complexity of the field and sparked an enthusiastic response.

“The field is framed by tribes’ inherent sovereignty. It’s a different way of looking at the United States,” Fay says. “If you want to understand our federal system and American public law generally, reading fundamental, classic Indian law cases is essential. That’s part of our system and it always has been. It’s something that’s been long neglected by law schools—but that’s changing.”

Fay thinks she’ll begin by meshing her past interest in criminal justice with the urgent and real need for tribes to have full criminal jurisdiction over their territory, including the power to prosecute non-Natives. This area of inquiry aligns well with the considerable work Riley has published on the topic as well as the groundbreaking writing on Public Law 280 from UCLA Law’s Carole Goldberg, a distinguished research professor and the Jonathan D. Varat Distinguished Professor of Law Emerita.

As the fall semester began, Riley and Fay were busy setting up meetings with the faculty and peers who will support Fay’s work. “The opportunity showed up a lot faster than I expected,” Fay says. “It’s all brand new and very exciting, and we’re going to figure it out together.”

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Speaking at the Manaus conference, Wilson Lima, the governor of Amazonas, Brazil’s largest state, explicitly invited investment. “Come and generate income and opportunity for people who live in the Amazon,” he said. “Our people are hardworking, talented, brave. We want and need everyone’s help to keep the forest standing and keep progressing to improve the lives of our children.”

Deforestation is commonly thought of as a concern for developing economies, but it’s a problem for the United States too, particularly in the Western states. In 2020, for example, the worst fire season on record, more than four million acres burned in California alone—roughly 4% of the state’s land area—and greenhouse gas emissions from those fires were greater than those resulting from California’s power generation.

California, of course, does not have tropical forests, but the state’s climate initiatives represent an important catalyst for the GCF Task Force. “California is the most important example of climate leadership in the world today,” says Boyd. “The state’s clean energy and transportation programs, its efforts to show how forests can be included within climate policy, its assessment of how to leverage programs and finance to reduce emissions from its own forests and land sector—these initiatives help shape how the GCF Task Force’s member states and provinces assess policies and tools that could work for them.”

UCLA’s support of the GCF Task Force is essential to its ongoing evolution and to the successful implementation of jurisdiction-scale strategies that will benefit people, forests and the climate.

“I’m proud of UCLA’s institutional engagement with the global climate crisis, at the law school and the university as a whole,” Boyd says. “The GCF Task Force is another initiative that demonstrates UCLA’s broad commitment to mobilizing research for applied problem solving.”

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That was definitely part of the draw for Branden Nikka ’23: “I was curious about entrepreneurship, and the competition was a great way to scratch that itch.” Nikka and Devin Yaeger ’23 were the law school representatives on team Kommu. “Winning the prize was validating,” says Yaeger. “We were able to test our legal knowledge in a business setting rather than a legal one, and to put our skills to practical use.” Yeager is already a serial entrepreneur. “Before law school,” he says, “I started a fairly successful attorney recruiting company. I’m currently working on a renewable energy startup in Africa that has me really excited!”

“The Lowell Milken Institute–Sandler Prize provides a great opportunity for law students to collaborate with students throughout the UCLA campus,” says Feuer, “including the business school and the engineering school. Law students get real-life, hands-on experience with understanding business opportunities and risks. Learning to think like an entrepreneur and to craft and deliver an effective pitch is invaluable.”

Diana Yen ’22, a member of team Vite.st, agrees. “This opportunity has given me an idea of what it is like to be a lawyer and how much there is that I have to learn,” she says. “The structure of having possible real-life implications to my answers also helped me learn more and gave me a greater appreciation for the business side. And I really appreciated this rare opportunity to get to know students in the other schools and work with them in a simulated real-life environment.”