Arkansas hosts 10-day summit for Native American students

The University of Arkansas School of Law recently hosted approximately 100 Native American, Native Alaskan and Native Hawaiian students that belong to 51 tribes for a leadership summit that lasted 10 days.

Students learned how their tribal communities are affected by policies involving food and agriculture.

The annual summit is in its third year of existence and is sponsored and organized by the Arkansas School of Law’s Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative.

The summit hosts multiple speakers, featuring topics such as the history of American Indian Agriculture, business planning, ethnobotany and seed preservation.

Those who spoke at the summit included Janie Hipp, who is Chickasaw and the director of the Agriculture Initiative; Ross Racine, who is Blackfeet and executive director of the Intertribal Agriculture Council; Professor H.L. Goodwin, Dale Bumpers College of Agriculture, Food and Life Sciences; Stacy Leeds, who is Cherokee and dean of the School of Law; Crystal Hawk, who is Pawnee and from EchoHawk Consulting; Justin Wilson, who is Choctaw and from the U.S. Department of the Interior; Mark Tilsen, who is Lakota Sioux and from Native American Natural Foods; and Toni Stanger-McLaughlin, who is Colville and the consulting attorney for the Agriculture Initiative.