chair of the Department of Political Science, 308.865.8759
UNK- “Broken Landscape: Indians, Indian Tribes and the Constitution” will be the topic of a Constitution Day presentation Wednesday, Sept. 17, on the University of Nebraska at Kearney campus.
Dr. Frank Pommersheim, a professor of law at the University of South Dakota, will speak beginning at 6 p.m. in Copeland Hall, Room 142, on the campus. The presentation is free and open to the public.
Pommersheim has a book coming out in 2009 on the topic of his presentation. Before joining the faculty at the University of South Dakota, where he specializes in Indian law, he lived and worked on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation for 10 years. Currently, he is on a number of tribal appellate courts throughout Indian country, including serving as chief justice for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Court of Appeals and as associate justice for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Supreme Court.
Dr. Pommersheim writes extensively in the field of Indian law. The author of Braid of Feathers (American Indian Law and Contemporary Tribal Life) and numerous scholarly articles, he is also a poet and most recently published “East of the River: Poems both Ancient and New.”
His teaching has earned him the University of South Dakota Belbas-Larson Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the South Dakota Peace and Justice Center Reconciliation Award.
In 2005, he was a contributor to “Felix Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law” and in 2006, he received the John Wesley Jackson Award as the Outstanding Professor of Law.
His presentation is sponsored by the UNK Department of Political Science, Ethnic Studies Program, American Democracy Project, Phi Alpha Theta history honor society, Locke & Key Society and the UNK Department of History.
