“ IF WE GET THIS RIGHT, WE CAN NOT ONLY HELP FEED MORE PEOPLE BUT ALSO BUILD BETTER COMMUNITIES AND MOVE EVERYONE FORWARD.”
—JANIE SIMMS HIPP
Indians and Alaska Natives were unemployed in 2011—about twice the rate of whites. Hipp, meanwhile, has seen fi rsthand the fi nancial
26
ruin of farmers and shuttered agribusinesses in a bottomed-out economy. A Chickasaw Nation citizen, she was working as an affi rmative action offi cer for the state of Oklahoma when her boss challenged her to take the LSAT, apparently envisioning her as a lawyer like himself. As an Oklahoma City University School of Law
graduate in 1984, Hipp’s entry into private practice thrust her into litigation spawned by the national farm crisis. During the 1970s, U.S. commodity prices, agricultural exports, and farming income had soared. Farmers aggressively took out loans to expand. But they eventually sank into debt, partly because of a U.S. grain embargo that President Jimmy Carter imposed against the Soviet Union to protest the 1980 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, banks refused to restructure farmers’ debts. Many mom-and-pop operations from Hipp’s
childhood dried up, and thousands of farms nation- ally slipped into foreclosure. Her grandfather lost his tractor dealership. At Oklahoma law fi rms where Hipp worked,
most of their cases entailed representation of banks along with insurance defense. Although the national crisis devastated farmers of all ethnicities, Native Americans were disproportionately hit. T eir farms were more often in remote areas and therefore further from trucking and shipping destinations than those of whites. So their overhead and other costs usually ran higher, meaning their margin for fi nancial losses was lower. Deepening the anguish among Native Americans who lost land was the fact that historically land was
sacred for cultural reasons such as tribal history, ancestral habitation, and burial sites. Traditional ceremonies often involved land, too. “T ere were so many foreclosures that I couldn’t take
it anymore,” Hipp says of her early years as a lawyer. A mentor helped her get a job in the state attorney
general’s offi ce, where as assistant AG, she became an expert in farming and rural issues. She became a staff attorney in the 1990s at
what is now the National Agricultural Law Center in Fayetteville, Ark., a leader in food and ag law research. T ere, she wrote for legal publications and focused on state surveys reviewing U.S. environ- mental, land use, farmland preservation, animal health, food safety, and poultry production laws. She also taught courses such as ag law and admin- istrative law at the University of Arkansas, where she had earlier earned her LL.M. in ag and food law while working full-time. In 2007, Hipp joined the Department of
Agriculture in Washington, D.C., to administer grant programs focused on improving management of risk among farmers and ranchers. She rose to director of the risk management education division, but remained active in Native American matters, sowing initiatives benefi ting indigenous people. She co-founded the nonprofi t Intertribal Native American Women and Youth in Agriculture, which encourages education and preservation of tribal food systems and culture. “It was tough keeping that ball in the air,” Hipp
says of her Native interests. “But this was my way of staying connected to my roots.” Two years later, she became founding director of
USDA’s Offi ce of Tribal Relations, responsible for government-to-government relations between the USDA and the tribes. She eventually shifted out of the offi ce but remained a senior adviser to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack on Native American issues. Among other things, she infl uenced the $760
million Keepseagle settlement, which resolved a class-action lawsuit covering discrimination claims dating to 1981. Native Americans had alleged that when applying for farm loans at USDA offi ces, they were denied the same kinds of loans and servicing granted to white farmers. Because USDA assistance was typically a last resort, many of the Native farm- ers lost their farms. Hipp plays down her role in settlement talks, but Laverdure calls her presence irreplaceable.
DIVERSITY & THE BAR® JULY/AUGUST 2013
MCCA.COM
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