“It really was the product of a lot longer legacy of work that folks here in the Law School had done. There were professors here—Ralph Johnson was one, Bill Rogers was another, and others, too—who were doing work with Tribes, with Tribal folks in the 60s and 70s, and Ralph Johnson in particular, he tells a story about how one day he came back to his office at the Law School, and there were a bunch of Native folks kind of standing around his office; And they said, look, we need your help because we have these treaties and we want them to be enforced, and so he talked to them for a while and then ended up working on some of the treaty litigation that became the major treaty cases here both in Oregon and Washington. And he did a bunch of research and writing about that stuff, a lot of that work was happening in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s.”

Ralph W. Johnson was a groundbreaking legal advocate and professor who developed and taught the first Native law class in the United States at the University of Washington, and introduced Native law to the Harvard Law curriculum during his time as a visiting professor. Johnson was an instrumental figure in the infamous 1974 Boldt Decision, a Washington State case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit which upheld Tribal Nations’ rights to 50% of the fish catch. This decision was a major win for Tribal sovereignty efforts, and was supported by Johnson through his public advocacy for the Tribes. His work was so influential, in fact, that Judge Boldt cited Johnson’s article “A United States Supreme Court Error” in his decision, aligning with Johnson’s arguments that the U.S. Supreme Court case Puyallup Tribe v. Department of Game vindicated the off-reservation treaty fishing rights of Puget Sound tribes. Shortly after writing his decision, Judge Boldt wrote a note to Professor Johnson, saying, "I want to express my personal appreciation to you for the fine Law Review Article you published on Indian fishing rights in the Washington Law Review. It was a great help in providing me with a useful framework for an analysis.” Johnson’s legacy remains in the amazing work of the NALC, and in the work of Johnson’s alumni advocating for Tribal clients and legislation. 

“The idea of the center was to have a kind of coming together— like a focal point for a lot of that work that was already happening. So the center was started in the late 90s, early 2000s, and the mission was really to continue to do that work in service to Tribal Nations and individual Tribal people, but also to provide educational opportunities for students, particularly connecting students with that service and to sort of be a resource for broader public education about Tribal sovereignty, about Tribal issues as well as a home and support for native students and other students interested in the field, but particularly Native students here at the law school and across campus.”

When asked about the attitude of the University of Washington as a whole towards the NALC, and support received by the School of Law, Mills responded…

“I think partly because it's been such a foundational part of the school and is so long standing it's been identified as a pillar of the school. I've been here just about two years and the reason I came was that sort of legacy and reputation. And it was identified by the faculty and across the university, too, that when the prior director left—he'd been here a long time, couple of decades—there's a need to kind of refocus on and support the center coming back. I think that's an indication of support both by the school and the university at large, that they want to move this into the future and continue to support the center. I mean, there's always—I'm sure any director of any center anywhere on campus would tell you—there's always a need for more, right, we could always support more, more promotion, whatever cause. So, always more room for support, but I think particularly the law school and the university more broadly has recognized the importance of the center and been supportive.”

The NALC continues to support Tribal Nations and individuals through advocacy, education, and representation. The NALC is one of the few major programs in the United States offering an Indigenous Rights Track in both its Master of Laws (LL.M.) and Master of Jurisprudence (M.J.) programs. The NALC also hosts a Tribal Court Clinic in partnership with the Tulalip Tribes to allow law students to gain experience and serve as the primary public defender in criminal cases filed in the Tulalip Tribal Court. Another major part of the NALC is the annual Indian Law Symposium, an event which began in 1987 and is one of the largest annual two-day symposiums focusing on natural resource law, economic development, health, Tribal courts, gaming, and other topics. The NALC also boasts a number of other programs and projects like the Clinic Trip to Navajo Nation and Acoma Pueblo, Native Nations and the Energy Transition, and Empowering the Original Stewards (in conjunction with the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development).