Thursday, October 21, 2010
Page 3
Indian Legal Services Group to Honor Escondido Attorney
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The National Association of Indian Legal Services said yesterday that it will honor California Indian Legal Services Senior Staff Attorney Dorothy Alther with its Pierce-Hickerson Award for outstanding contributions to the advancement or preservation of Native American rights.
The group, in partnership with the National Legal Aid & Defender Association, announced that Alther will receive the award Nov. 12 at the NLADA’s Annual Conference in Atlanta.
It said that it was honoring Alther, who works in CILS’ Escondido office, for a nearly 30-year career spent working for Indian legal services programs and advocating on behalf of individual Native Americans as well as tribes and tribal entities.
The award pays homage to the legacies of Julian Pierce and Robert Hickerson for their advocacy in pursuit of justice for Native Americans.
Pierce was a Lumbee Indian who served as executive director of Lumbee River Legal Services in Pembroke, N.C., from 1978 until 1988. Hickerson served as director of Alaska Legal Services Corporation for 20 years, and before that was director of the Oklahoma Legal Services Center.
Alther joined the State Bar of California in 1989 after attending the University of South Dakota and Northeastern University School of Law in Boston. She served as a staff attorney and later managing attorney of DNA Legal Services before moving to Washington in the early 1990s to work for the Suquamish Tribe.
In 1993, she moved to California and joined CILS’s Bishop office. Alther relocated to the group’s Escondido office in 2003, but continues to serve as directing attorney of the Bishop office.
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