News Archive
Professor Hoffmann Publishes New Book on "Third Way" in Indian Law
09/03/2020
Professor Hillary Hoffmann is co-author of a new book, A Third Way: Decolonizing the Laws of Indigenous Cultural Protection.
Professor Hoffmann is the Robert H. McKinney Family Chair in Environmental Law at IU McKinney School of Law, a visiting position for the fall 2020 semester. The book, co-authored with Professor Monte Mills of the Alexander J. Blewett School of Law at the University of Montana, outlines a framework for decolonizing the laws affecting indigenous cultures, including the First Amendment, various environmental statutes, cultural protection laws like the Antiquities Act and the Native American Graves Protection & Repatriation Act, intellectual property laws (including those that protect racist imagery in mascots, music, and clothing), and more.
The book includes a chapter dedicated to Professor Hoffmann’s work in environmental and natural resources law relating to Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and other conflicts between tribal values and non-tribal values on public and tribal lands, such as the Dakota Access Pipeline controversy near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. This chapter explores the tensions that arise when mineral development and other extractive, resource-intensive uses occur in locations of significant cultural value to tribes. It also highlights how existing environmental laws do not always provide adequate protections for the special legal rights of tribes, such as treaty rights and other sovereign rights.
The book was recently reviewed and Professor Hoffmann was interviewed in High Country News.
Professor Hoffmann is Professor of Law at Vermont Law School. Her recent scholarship analyzes the systems governing natural resource uses on federal and tribal lands and explores the conflicts that arise from Constitutional and other systemic challenges facing indigenous nations in the United States. She has also lectured and published extensively on the topics of energy development, mining, livestock grazing, and other extractive uses of public lands and tribal lands.
