Angela R. Riley (Citizen Potawatomi Nation) is an internationally-renowned indigenous rights scholar. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Oklahoma and her law degree from Harvard Law School. In 2003, she became the first woman Justice of the Supreme Court of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation of Oklahoma. In 2010, she was elected as Chief Justice. She also works as an Evidentiary Hearing Officer for the Morongo Band of Mission Indians and sits as an Appellate Judge for both the Rincon Tribe Court of Appeals and the Pokagon Potawatomi Court of Appeals. She previously served as Co-Chair for the United Nations - Indigenous Peoples’ Partnership Policy Board, with a goal of implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Angela is a Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law and serves as Director of both UCLA's J.D./M.A. joint degree program in Law and American Indian Studies, and the Native Nations Law and Policy Center. She is Special Advisor to UCLA’s Chancellor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs, and Chair on the UCLA Campus Repatriation Committee. She previously served as the Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and currently teaches a Nation Building class at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Her research focuses on issues related to Indigenous peoples’ rights, with an emphasis on cultural property and Native governance. Angela’s work has been published in the nation’s most elite legal journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, California Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal and many others.
She was raised on a farm at Saddle Mountain in southwestern Oklahoma where she learned to butcher chickens, chop cotton, castrate hogs, and live free. She now resides with her family in Los Angeles, California.