10 questions. Community Contribution

• Author: Jenny B. Davis
• Pages: 12-13

Community Contribution

This Native American judge has devoted her legal career to creating remedies

that incorporate tribal values

THE CHALLENGES FACING LITIGANTS in Chief Judge Abby Abinanti’s court are gr eat: poverty, geographic

isolation, addiction and a legac y of occupation and oppression. Yet there is hope. And success. Abinanti presides

over the Yurok Tribal Court in Kla math, California, and her communit y-based, restorative approach to justice ,

along with initiative s she helped launch and lead, are i mproving lives across this remote Northern C alifornia

reservation. There’s a wellness progra m to help drug oenders, a community restitution progra m, and even a

program for those accu sed of domestic violence that has a recidivism rate of z ero. Abinanti’s accomplishments

have been covered in a documentar y film, written about in leadi ng news outlets and, perhaps most impressively,

are inspiring new approaches t o jurisprudence across the nation.

Tell me a bit about the Yurok

tribe, and where do t he tribal

courts come in?

Yurok means “down river”

in another language. We were

called that by other tr ibes in

the area, so that ’s where the

name came from. We were

formally recogn ized and got

our constitution in 1993, and

today there are over 6,000

members, making us the la rgest

surviv ing tribe in the state. We

are a village so ciety. We are very

tied to salmon, very t ied to the

Klamath R iver. We are a world-

renewal people; we believe we

have a responsibility to protec t

the earth. We were very for-

tunate in that we were never

removed from our land, so we are

still on the land that wa s always ours. The land is

very rugged. For inst ance, we don’t have electricity

yet on the eastern end of the reser vation. At times, it

has had its dicu lties, but it contributed significantly

to our ability to sur vive. We still suered massacres,

indentured servit ude, forced removals of kids to go

to school; and those are hard t o get over, but it’s our

responsibility to get over t hat and move forward.

Our judicial syst em is based on the values of the

villages.

Did you always want to be a law yer?

No, it never occurred to me. I would never have

picked it for myself.

How did you end up pursuing a JD?

When I was graduati ng from college, it was at the

time when they were star ting to oer the Economic

Opportunity P rogram for kids of color, and there were

scholarships for Native America ns to go to law school.

There was an advi sory group at my college made up of

primarily Native women, a nd they

said, “You will go to law school.”

It’s very hard to win an a rgument

with old Indian women.

You graduated from the

University of New Mexico

School of Law at a time when

there weren’t many Native

American law yers in the

West or nationally. In fact,

you were the first Native

American woma n to pass the

Californi a bar exam. Were

you ever tempted to go the

BigLaw route—to go for the

big city and the big paycheck?

I never intended to go anywhere

but home. I felt a responsibility

to my community. I went to

work for the California India n

Legal Serv ices, and eventually

I went into private practic e.

But I still worked for tribes, for Native clients , and

I did dependency work before and after the Ind ian

Child Welfare Act. Those were w ild times.

In what way?

People weren’t used to seeing Native Americans

in court if they weren’t wear ing orange jumpsuits.

Some lawyers and judges had negat ive views of

Native Americans, a nd that wasn’t the easiest.

It sounds like you exper ienced discriminat ion

and harassment . Did that make you mad? Did you

ever feel discoura ged?

The whole point of being in court was to st and

next to people who had no one standing nex t to them.

At least they could have someone with t hem who

cared and understoo d what they were going through.

Someone who knows their familie s. Sometimes I would

get angry, but I would feel like my obligation was to

them and not to myself. It’s dierent if you’re walking

down the street and someone is a jerk to you; you have

Chief Judge Abby Abinanti

PHOTO COURTESY OF ABBY ABINANTI

10 QUESTIONS

12 || ABA JOURNAL MARCH 2018

Opening Statements