Professor Jessica Shoemaker is one of five University of Nebraska-Lincoln faculty members to be named Fulbright scholars. She will serve as Fulbright Canada research chair in aboriginal legal and resource rights at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law in Edmonton, Canada.
Shoemaker’s work as a legal scholar focuses on the intersection of property, law and development in Native American reservations in the United States. Her research examines the complex legal and social challenges generated by these modern land tenure systems and the difficult regulatory systems that overlay these lands and land uses. Through her Fulbright project, Shoemaker will study and learn from recent indigenous land reform efforts in Canada and how they may be used to guide policy efforts in the United States and around the globe.
In addition, Professor Shoemaker's article, Transforming Property: Reclaiming a Modern Indigenous Land Tenure, has been accepted by the California Law Review. The California Law Review is committed to publishing the most “innovative and insightful legal scholarship.”
In Transforming Property, Shoemaker builds on her prior work on the unique and complex challenges of modern reservation property systems and, for the first time in the literature, opens a new pathway to reclaim tribally driven property regimes within reservation boundaries. This article makes unique contributions to property theory, provides a robust analysis of property system dynamics, and powerfully situates this entire property project in the broader context of indigenous rights.
In July, Professor Shoemaker presented at the Rural Sociology Society annual meeting. She presented on a panel about extractive industries and environmental justice in relation to recent pipeline protests.