Duthu, N. Bruce 1958(?)-

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Duthu, N. Bruce 1958(?)-

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1958. Education: Dartmouth College, B.A., 1980; Loyola University School of Law, J.D., 1983.

ADDRESSES:

Home—VT. Office—Vermont Law School, P.O. Box 96, Chelsea St., South Royalton, VT 05068. E-mail—bduthu@vermontlaw.edu.

CAREER:

Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, director of the Native American Program, 1986-89, associate dean of freshmen and director of the Intensive Academic Support Program, 1989-91; Vermont Law School, South Royalton, VT, professor of law, 1991—, associate dean for academic affairs, 2002-05. Served as a visiting fellow at the University of Wollongong Faculty of Law, Australia, 1999; visiting professor at Harvard Law School, 2000, and at University of Trento, Faculty of Law, Italy, 2003. Member of Houma Tribe of Louisiana; member of board of directors, Earthjustice: The Joint Committee on Racial and Ethnic Diversity; advisory board member, New Hampshire/Vermont Albert Schweitzer Fellowship Program.

MEMBER:

Association of American Law Schools (Native Americans and the Law section).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Parsons Visitorship, University of Sydney Faculty of Law.

WRITINGS:

American Indians and the Law, Viking (New York, NY), 2008.

Contributor to various law journals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Writer and educator N. Bruce Duthu is an expert on issues relating to the Native American peoples, particularly tribal sovereignty and recognition of Indian tribes by the federal government. A member through enrollment of the Houma Tribe of Louisiana, Duthu attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where he earned his undergraduate degree in Native American studies. From there he continued on to earn his juris doctor (J.D.) degree from the Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans, Louisiana. He worked briefly as a trial attorney after graduating, but ultimately determined that he could do more for Native American tribes by working on their behalf through the education system. He returned to Dartmouth where he first took a position as the director of the college's Native American program. Later, he moved on to become the associate dean of freshmen, as well as the director of the Intensive Academic Support Program. In 1991, Duthu left Dartmouth for the Vermont Law School, where he remains a professor of law. He continues to work as an advocate for Native Americans, consulting with tribes, the U.S. government, and various academic institutions, as well as with legal experts on tribal law and legislation that governs Native Americans specifically. He has served as a visiting professor at several universities, including the University of Wollongong in Australia, Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and at the University of Trento in Italy. He also traveled to Guangzhou, China, with a group from the Vermont Law School in an effort to establish an agreement with the Sun Yat-sen University School of Law for student exchanges and research projects run by both institutions. In addition, Duthu is the author of American Indians and the Law.

American Indians and the Law, published in 2008, serves as a primer on how legal principles on both a U.S. federal and state level affect Indian tribes, which by definition are also sovereign bodies with their own governments that must be dealt with on an entirely different level. This duality has played a major role in interactions between Native American tribes and the U.S. government over the past two centuries, and in his book, Duthu attempts to clarify the issues and what they mean. Duthu also addresses some age-old issues pertaining to Native Americans and their rights, such as the traditional tribal homelands and what rights they have to certain parcels of land, and how individual rights of Native Americans are maintained within the overall ruling body of the tribe. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly stated that Duthu's "dense, dry survey" analyzes topics, such as "tribal jurisdiction over non-Indians living on reservations, tribal natural resources and environmental policy." John Burch, writing in Library Journal, called American Indians and the Law an "outstanding overview of the morass that is the legal relationship between Indian nations and the United States [and] is highly recommended."