UW-Madison Annual Report 2002

"Courts are privileged sites where societies examine their values." -- Larry Nesper

Lawyers may examine tribal court systems to understand American Indian laws and codes, but anthropologists like Larry Nesper, a UW-Madison professor, study these systems to understand American Indian cultures and the place of law in changing societies.

"Courts are privileged sites where societies examine their values," says Nesper. "Here, societies work out their cultural identities." By studying debates about the rules individuals follow within a society, Nesper says, one can begin to understand processes of identity formation and cultural change.

Nesper is one of some 120 new faculty members who are part of the university's strategic hiring initiative, which is designed to bring together researchers and scholars who are interested in similar topics but approach them from different perspectives. From these clusters of faculty come new opportunities for research, additional course offerings for students, and outreach efforts to enhance the community beyond the UW-Madison campus—all part of the university's strategic plan to promote research. Clusters are studying such topics as economic sociology, energy sources and policy, food safety, and visual culture.

Nesper is part of the "American Indian Studies" cluster, in which he is merging his expertise on tribal governance with faculty who study, for instance, the health problems affecting Native Americans or the challenges of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. During the last 70 years, he says, as tribal courts have gained jurisdiction over more aspects of daily life on reservations, American Indians have struggled to balance their spiritual beliefs with institutional laws. These changes, he notes, can lead to shifts in cultural identity.

Nesper has always been interested in the legal issues surrounding American Indians. "I was originally drawn in during the late 1980s as an activist and supporter of Ojibwe Indian treaty rights in Wisconsin," he says. "That's when I started to witness the revitalization of what had been considered a dying culture. So much was going on that was anthropologically significant, and I wanted to study it."

He spends much of his time in the field—in tribal courts on different reservations, in coffee shops talking to tribal judges, and even on lakeshores, where legal battles over spearfishing rights have surfaced.

"When you study American Indians, you cannot rigidly separate one area of their lives from another," says Ada Deer, director of UW-Madison's American Indian Studies program. "Their history, culture, laws, and politics are all interwoven. To truly study this group, one must take a holistic approach."

During the next two years, three additional faculty members will be invited to join this cluster. Says Deer, "We are on the cusp of developing a world-class American Indian Studies program at a world-class institution."

A report by the Southern Growth Policies Board and funded by the National Science Foundation recognizes UW-Madison as among the top 12 of all U.S. universities that seek to invigorate state economies through technology transfer and start-up companies born from university research. The report describes UW-Madison as "a story of an extraordinarily successful research university that has also nurtured a long-standing mission of service to its state, while at the same time creating a very entrepreneurial culture and some novel approaches to technology transfer."