On September 30, 2025 the University of Oregon's Environmental and Natural Resources Law (ENR) Center and cross-campus partners presented the 19th Annual Rennard Strickland Lecture, featuring Ms. Amy Bowers Cordalis (Yurok), Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group, as this year's speaker.
Amy Bowers Cordalis is a mother, fisherwoman, attorney, and member and former General Counsel of the Yurok Nation—the largest Indigenous Nation in California. She is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group, a nonprofit advancing Indigenous sovereignty through the protection of cultural and natural resources, including the undamming of the Klamath River. She is the recipient of the United Nations' highest environmental honor, Champion of the Earth Laureate, and has been named to the second annual TIME100 Climate List (2024), featuring the one hundred most influential leaders driving business to real climate action. Her book, The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family's Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life, will be published by Little, Brown/Hachette on October 28, 2025, and is currently available for preorder.
Through its Native Environmental Sovereignty Project, the ENR Center established the Rennard Strickland Lecture series in 2006 to honor the legacy of former Oregon Law Professor and Dean Rennard Strickland, who retired that year and passed in 2021. An Osage citizen of Cherokee Nation, Strickland contributed mightily to the field of Indian Law, the practice of legal education, and Oregon Law's ENR and Indian Law programs, throughout his lifetime. In keeping with his assertion that "[i]f there is to be a post-Columbian future—a future for any of us—it will be an Indian future..." (Tonto's Revenge, 1997), the Rennard Strickland Lecture series has a thematic focus on Indigenous environmental-legal leadership and Tribal sovereignty in the twenty-first century.
The 19th Annual Rennard Strickland Lecture was co-sponsored by the University of Oregon Department of Native American and Indigenous Studies, the Native American Law Students Association, and the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics.
Past lecturers include:
Professor Mary Wood, University of Oregon School of Law
Professor William Rodgers (1939-2023), University of Washington School of Law
Professor Rebecca Tsosie, University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law
Former Assistant Secretary Larry Echo Hawk, U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs (currently Special Counsel and Advisor for Indian Affairs, Utah Attorney General's Office)
Former Solicitor Hilary Tompkins, U.S. Department of the Interior (currently Partner, Hogan Lovells)
Former Deputy Solicitor Patrice Kunesh, U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs (currently Director, Pehin Haha Consulting)
Former Professor Robert Anderson, University of Washington School of Law (currently Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School)
Former Assistant Secretary Kevin Washburn, U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs (currently Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley School of Law)
Professor Robert Williams, Jr., University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law
Professor Carole Goldberg, University of California, Los Angeles School of Law
Former Dean James Anaya, University of Colorado Law School (currently Professor of International Law, University of Colorado Law School)
Professor Gerald Torres, Yale Law School
Mary Kathryn Nagle, Pipestem Law PC
Former President Fawn Sharp, Quinault Indian Nation and National Congress of American Indians (currently Global Board Member, The Nature Conservancy)
Professor Stacy Leeds, Arizona State University, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law
Professor Matthew L.M. Fletcher, University of Michigan Law School
Dean Elizabeth Kronk Warner, University of Utah, S.J. Quinney College of Law
Former Director Charles F. "Chuck" Sams III, U.S. National Park Service (currently Oregon Council Member, Northwest Power & Conservation Council)