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Content provided by the American Bar Association Division for Public Education. Visit the Division for Public Education's website to learn more about the law and its role in society (www.abanet.org/publiced). For more profiles of pioneers in the legal profession, visit the Division for Public Education's Raising the Bar: Pioneers in the Legal Profession website at www.abanet.org/publiced/raisingthebar.html.

Christine Zuni Cruz

Just this year, Christine Zuni Cruz, a member of the Isleta/San Juan Pueblo, became the first pueblo woman to earn tenure as a law professor. A professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law, Zuni Cruz joined the faculty in 1993 to establish the Southwest Indian Law Clinic (SILC). SILC provides hands-on opportunities for law students to represent clients in various state, federal, and tribal courts, and governmental agencies.

Zuni Cruz has said that she enjoys teaching in the clinic because it allows her "to keep one foot in practice" and because she is able to fulfill her lifelong goal of working with clients in indigenous communities who would be would be unable to afford counsel, otherwise. She thrives on her one-on-one interactions with the students, who are required to take a course in Indian Law before engaging in their work at the clinic, where they choose from a variety of projects including land claims, taxation, tribal court development, environmental affairs and prisoners' rights. Under the leadership of Zuni Cruz, SILC emphasizes community involvement and sensitivity, a multi-disciplinary approach to problem-solving, and collaborative lawyering.

As Editor-in-Chief of the Tribal Law Journal, an on-line journal dedicated to providing a reliable forum for the discussion of internal law for indigenous peoples, Zuni Cruz gives native peoples, practitioners and law students an opportunity to contribute their work. The Tribal Law Journal is published one time each academic year, and includes an on-line forum that gives readers and contributors a place to discuss relevant topics and comment on journal items.

In her research and teaching, she explores law and culture, including the impact of law on Indian families, the practice of Indian Law, and lawyering for native communities, as well as the internal traditional and modern law of indigenous peoples, both domestically and internationally. During the summer of 2001, Zuni Cruz traveled to Greenland to help teach an intensive course on international indigenous human rights, at the premier session of the International Training Center for Indigenous Peoples, in a program designed to train indigenous leaders for working at the international level.

In April 2002, when New Mexico became the first state to require federal Indian Law as a subject on its state bar exam, Zuni Cruz was an enthusiastic proponent of the New Mexico Supreme Court's action. Since Indian Law permeates many legal areas in New Mexico, she stated her belief in the importance of lawyers in New Mexico having a minimum level of familiarity with Indian Law in order to deal effectively with related issues.

Zuni Cruz currently serves as an Associate Justice with the Pueblo of Isleta Appellate Court and had served as a tribal court judge with the Pueblos of Laguna, Taos, and as a judge pro tem with Santa Clara. She was a presiding judge with the Isleta Court of Tax Appeals and an appellate judge with the Southwest Intertribal Court of Appeals, (SWITCA). SWITCA is a voluntary court available to tribes in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and west Texas. Organized in 1989, SWITCA provides a variety of support services to tribal courts, including training, research assistance, court evaluation and code drafting for the member tribes. Appellate services are available at no cost to member tribes who have adopted formal resolutions.

Christine Zuni Cruz's personal history shows familiarity with both Native American culture and American society as a whole, She moved from her native village at five, eventually earning an her undergraduate degree at Stanford University, but then returned to her home to stay. She has said that this was her greatest challenge.

She later earned a law degree from the University of New Mexico. Prior to her appointment on the Law School faculty at University of New Mexico, Zuni Cruz was engaged in the private practice of law for ten years.

Zuni Cruz asserts that her greatest achievement has been raising her two sons-Manuel 20, and Fabrice, 5: "Raising two Indian sons has taught me so much about the society in which we live and about what is important." She believes that young people should envision themselves as lawyers, as professors of law, as Justices, as whatever they aspire to be, and to believe in themselves. She also urges youth "not to forget who they are or the people they came from."

(Originally published in 2002)