Indian law scholar visits Elizabethtown College as Native American Heritage month highlight

Rebecca Tsosie speaks Nov. 24 on the 'Politics of Inclusion'

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Rebecca Tsosie

ELIZABETHTOWN, PA (11/19/2014)(readMedia)-- A highly respected scholar of Indian law and a native of the Yaqui tribe visits Elizabethtown College at 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 24, in recognition of Native American Heritage month. The event, free of charge, takes place in the College's Gibble Auditorium.

Rebecca Tsosie, an Indian law professor at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University (ASU), plans to speak on "The Politics of Inclusion: Indigenous Peoples and U.S. Citizenship." While visiting E-town, she'll also have lunch with pre-law students and speak to various classes.

The Yaqui, Tsosie's native tribe, are a people of the Sonoran Desert that covers the Southwestern United States and Northeastern Mexico. Her lecture covers United States citizenship and its relation to Native Americans, while also examining indigenous self-determination, civil rights and the politics of citizenship.

"Right now illegal vs. legal immigration and citizenship are possibly the most pressing domestic issues unrelated to terrorism and war," said Dr. Robert Wheelersburg, professor of anthropology at Elizabethtown, and host to Tsosie. "Most ... don't know much about American Indians or immigration, so they will really be able to benefit from this lecture."

Tsosie joined the ASU faculty in 1993. She teaches Indian law, critical race theory and bioethics and was the executive director of Arizona State's Indian Legal Program from 1996-2011. Tsosie speaks annually at national conferences on tribal sovereignty and self-determination. In 2012, she was named an ASU Regents' Professor, the university's highest faculty honor.

For more information contact Robert Wheelersburg at wheelersburg@etown.edu.

Read about additional events at Elizabethtown College.

Elizabethtown College, located in historic Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, is a private coed institution offering more than four dozen liberal arts, fine and performing arts, science and engineering, business, communications and education degrees. Learn more: http://www.etown.edu/about/

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