KU alumna named MacArthur Fellow

A Kansas University alumna who has become a national leader in the effort to protect Native American women from sexual and domestic violence has been named a 2014 MacAruthur Fellow.

Sarah Deer is a legal scholar and advocate who has helped shape federal law to increase the power of tribal authorities to prosecute and sentence abusers.

Sarah Deer

“Native women experience the highest rate of violent victimization in the United States,” said Deer, who received a bachelor of arts degree and law degree from KU.

Abuse of native women had been an “invisible” problem, Deer said.

In 2007, Deer worked with Amnesty International to put together a report, “Maze of Injustice,” that made sexual violence within Native American communities an international human rights issue.

Deer, 41, a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma will use her MacArthur Fellowship award of $625,000 over five years to work more on helping victims of violence get justice. She is among 21 people who received the 2014 stipends.

A native Kansan who grew up in Wichita, Deer said it wasn’t until she arrived at the KU School of Law that she made the connection between federal law and a history of injustices against native women.

“Taking Federal Indian Law with Rob Porter the fall of my second year was a pivotal point in my career,” she said. “I suddenly realized, ‘This is my calling.’ Right there in one of the small KU law seminar rooms, things changed for me.”

After law school, Deer worked for three years at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., then became a victim advocacy legal specialist and staff attorney at the Tribal Law and Policy Institute in Los Angeles. In 2009, she joined the faculty of the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn. where she is a professor and co-director of the Indian Law Clinic.