James Botsford

Director, Indian Law Office

Wisconsin Judicare (Wausau)

After graduating from the University of North Dakota in 1984, James Botsford began his legal career as the only practicing Indian law attorney in a small legal aid office on an Indian reservation in Nebraska. During the seven years he ran that office he was admitted to practice in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska (State and Federal) and the two tribal courts in Nebraska; the Winnebago and the Omaha. Also during those years James served on the Board of Directors of the Nebraska Civil Liberties Union and the Indian Rights Advisory Committee of the ACLU nationally.

In 1991 James accepted the position of Director of the Indian Law Office of Wisconsin Judicare, based in Wausau, serving low-income Native Americans in Indian rights issues statewide.

James also serves as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, a part-time position that is near and dear to his heart. He’s on the Steering Committee for the National Association of Indian Legal Services; the Board of the Indian Law Section of the Wisconsin Bar; and the Wisconsin Supreme Court created State Tribal Judicial Forum. As a Forum member he was active in successfully seeking a new Wisconsin Supreme Court rule that provides for the transfer of certain cases from the state courts to tribal courts. 

            

James is one of the primary authors of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act Amendments of 1994, a federal law that overturned a 1990 U.S. Supreme Court Decision (Oregon v. Smith) that had stripped Native Americans of their First Amendment protections to use peyote in their traditional religious ceremonies. He has been honored and published in recognition of this major Indian rights victory, which restored the legal dignity of 250,000 Native American practitioners of their old religion, including over 1,000 here in Wisconsin. 

             

James is known throughout Wisconsin’s Indian Country, and even nationally, for his work in “the re-emergence of Indigenous Justice” – also called Peacemaking – which is akin to what we know as mediation. Through his work with the Wisconsin Tribal Judges Association on this initiative, most of the 11 tribal courts in Wisconsin now have some form of Peacemaking as a component of their judicial systems. This increases access to justice in the tribal communities, especially where most cases are otherwise handled pro se. His work in this area resulted in an opportunity to teach at the National Judicial College.

As an active participant in the evolution of state and tribal judicial relations in Wisconsin, James deserves some of the credit for Wisconsin being considered a national model of comity and mutual respect between state and tribal courts.