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Honoring Native American Heritage Month with the Native American and Indigenous Alliance

In addition to being named to Oprah Magazine’s list of Native American Authors to Read Right Now, Mason alum Kelli Jo Ford’s debut novel, “Crooked Hallelujah,” was recently named one of the best books of 2020 by Publishers Weekly and is on the longlist for the 2021 Carnegie Medal for Fiction, among other accolades.

It’s common to think of Indigenous peoples as living in the past. We may think of them around Thanksgiving or in old films and books. But Native Americans are very much here and now, said Jeremy Campbell, and after decades of struggle, that’s starting to be recognized.

In 2018, U.S. legislation granted federal recognition to six tribes in Virginia. A ����AV team has been partnering with two of them, the Upper Mattaponi and Chickahominy nations, as they embark on being sovereign nations.

Crepelle took it upon himself to start learning Indian law, he said, and published widely on the subject. Now the assistant professor of law at ����AV is also the director of Mason’s new Tribal Law and Economics Program (TLEP), which includes a federal Indian Law course and the Tribal Sovereignty Clinic, where students work directly with tribes.

����AV alum and author Kelli Jo Ford, MFA Creative Writing '07, is the recipient of one of this year's National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowships in Creative Writing.