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GRASPING THE TENUOUS, hardscrabble nature of farming and ranching, Hipp became a leading agricultural advocate in law, higher education, and public policy, especially for Native Americans. More recently, Stacy Leeds, an acclaimed law


school dean, professor, and tribal courts judge whose service to Indian Country has sometimes drawn widespread attention, noticed how tribal nation policies involving agriculture were limited in number and scope even though the ranks of Native-owned farms were multiplying. T is pattern intrigued Leeds, an expert in tribal


sovereignty and trust land reform. She and ag law experts such as Hipp discussed the prospect of helping tribes craft laws and policies that grow and protect Native farms, ranches, and fi sheries. Leeds decided to not only reach out to tribal leaders but to institutionalize such eff orts through academia. T is year, she and Hipp launched the Indigenous


Food and Agriculture Initiative at the University of Arkansas School of Law, where both women now teach. T eir consultancy and think tank aim to sup- port tribal food systems throughout the country and steer young people into agricultural careers. “It’s a logical step nowadays for tribes to focus on governance issues related to agriculture, and Janie


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and I are very excited to be working with them long-term,” says Leeds, who’s dean of the law school, which has a world-renowned master’s degree program in ag and food law. T e initiative, she says, is the fi rst of its kind at any U.S. law school. Being the fi rst to do something is a recurring


theme for her. A Cherokee Nation citizen raised in Muskogee,


Okla., Leeds watched with fascination the growing interaction between tribal and state governments in the 1980s. She especially admired then-Principal Chief Wilma Mankiller, whose tenure saw the Cherokee Nation membership numbers grow dramatically and healthcare and children’s initiatives expand. “It was as if I grew up at the same time that the


Cherokee Nation grew up,” Leeds says. Leeds’ decision to pursue a career in Indian law was


cemented during a college class assignment in which she had to prepare mock testimony advocating for Indian child welfare and domestic violence victims. A University of Tulsa College of Law gradu-


ate, she enjoyed scholarly life so much that she pursued jobs in the professoriate. At the University of Wisconsin Law School, she was a William H. Hastie fellow, a program aimed at increasing the number of minority law faculty. She taught at the


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rowing up in rural Oklahoma, Janie Simms Hipp was surrounded by small family farms that produced plenty of peaches, soybeans, and tomatoes as long as drought, hail, or fl oods didn’t strike. Mom-a nd-pop cattle ranches and egg farms were


prolifi c if livestock vaccinations were successful. And at her grandfather’s tractor dealership, customers bought spare parts or made payments on their equipment— unless hard times left them strapped for cash.


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