The University of Oregon's Environmental and Natural Resources Law (ENR) Center and cross-campus partners will present the 20th Annual Rennard Strickland Lecture—featuring Bryan Newland (Ojibwe), former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs—via Zoom Webinar (link forthcoming) from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m. PST on Wednesday, September 30, 2026.
Bryan Newland is a citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community, where he served as Tribal President from 2017 to 2021 and Chief Judge from 2013 to 2017. From 2021 to 2025, he served as Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs in the U.S. Department of the Interior, where he led the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Indian Education, and Bureau of Trust Funds Administration. As Assistant Secretary, Newland helped coordinate a historic $45B investment in Indian Country; led the development of a co-stewardship policy to promote public-land management agreements between federal agencies and Tribal Nations; and worked to implement the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, a comprehensive effort to recognize the troubled legacy of federal Indian boarding school policies and to address these policies' intergenerational impact. Today, Newland is a principal attorney at Powers, Pyles, Sutter & Verville, PC, where he represents Tribal governments, Tribal business entities, and inter-Tribal organizations on a broad range of legal and policy matters. Newland received a JD from Michigan State University (MSU) College of Law, where he also earned an Indian Law Certificate, and a BA from James Madison College at MSU. He is a recipient of the National American Indian Court Judges Association's Judicial Excellence Award (2024) and the Clean Water Action Great Lakes Protectors Award (2020).
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 the 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 20th Annual Rennard Strickland Lecture is co-sponsored by the University of Oregon Department of Native American and Indigenous Studies, Oregon Law's 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)
Ms. Amy Bowers Cordalis, Co-Principal, Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group