William C. Canby Jr. Lecture

Justice as Healing:
Native Nations and Reconciliation

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Guest Lecturer

Rebecca Tsosie
Regents Professor, James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona
Special Advisor to the Provost for Diversity and Inclusion

Professor Tsosie, who is of Yaqui descent, is a faculty member for the Indigenous Peoples’ Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona, and she is widely known for her work in the fields of Federal Indian law and indigenous peoples’ human rights. Prior to joining the UA faculty, Professor Tsosie was a Regents’ Professor and Vice Provost for Inclusion and Community Engagement at Arizona State University. Professor Tsosie was the first faculty Executive Director for ASU’s Indian Legal Program and served in that position for 15 years. Professor Tsosie has published widely on sovereignty, self-determination, cultural pluralism, environmental policy and cultural rights. She teaches in the areas of Federal Indian Law, Property, Constitutional Law, Critical Race Theory and Cultural Resources Law. Professor Tsosie is a member of the Arizona Bar Association and the California Bar Association. Professor Tsosie serves as a Supreme Court Justice for the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation and as an Associate Judge on the San Carlos Tribal Court of Appeals. She received her B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles.

The State Bar of Arizona does not approve or accredit CLE activities for the Mandatory Continuing Legal Education requirement. This activity may qualify for up to 1 hour toward your annual CLE requirement for the State Bar of Arizona.

About the lecture

This annual lecture is named in honor of William C. Canby Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a founding faculty member of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and the Indian Legal Program. 

Judge Canby was born in St. Paul, Minn., and graduated summa cum laude from Yale University in 1953, and from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1956, Order of the Coif. He served two years as a Judge Advocate General in the U.S. Air Force, then clerked for Associate Justice Charles Evans Whittaker on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1958-59. During his tenure as a law clerk, the Supreme Court decided Williams v. Lee, a case that sparked Judge Canby’s lifelong interest in Indian law. He returned to Minneapolis and practiced law at Oppenheimer, Hodgson, Brown, Baer & Wolf.

In 1962, Judge Canby and his wife, Jane, helped establish the Peace Corps in Africa, serving first in Ethiopia, then as a Director in Uganda. Returning to the United States, he served as Special Assistant to Sen. Walter F. Mondale, then as an assistant to Harris Wofford, President of State University of New York at Old Westbury.

Judge Canby came to Arizona in 1967 as a founding faculty member of ASU’s College of Law, taught the first classes in Indian law, and was instrumental in the creation of the Indian Law Program. He also devoted numerous hours to assisting Arizona farmworkers and other citizens in need of legal help. While at ASU, Judge Canby visited Uganda as a Fulbright Professor of Law at Makerere University (1970–71). In 1999, he returned to Ethiopia in an attempt to facilitate peace during the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He was elected as new member of the American Law Institute in 2013.

As both a professor and a jurist, Judge Canby has become known as an expert in American Indian law. He has testified before Congress, and authored law review articles, a major textbook, and Canby’s American Indian Law in a Nutshell, now in its fifth edition. While still a professor at ASU, he successfully argued Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that the First Amendment allows lawyers to advertise in a manner that is not misleading to members of the general public.