NPTC STAFF: Charles Abourezk

Charles Abourezk is a longtime trial lawyer, psychodramatist, group psychology/dynamics trainer for behavioral, mental health and addiction treatment staffs and Native American organizations, a documentary film maker, and political strategist and campaign consultant. He is from South Dakota, growing up on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation. He is a former member of the South Dakota Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He is an author of numerous journal publications and magazine articles, many of them focusing on the psychological aspects of trial work or on Native American justice issues, as well as native American epidemiology and health issues. He is completing a soon-to-be published book on jury selection, and a second book entitled Creativity in the Court Room. He also is a member of the faculty of several trial schools and organizations, including the Trial Lawyers College, and the former Three Sisters Trial Advocacy, Western Trial Advocacy Institute, and National Trial Laboratories. He previously taught at the Judicial College at Thunderhead Ranch.

Charles is currently the Chief Justice of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Supreme Court, and an appellate justice of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe Appellate Court, the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe Appellate Court, and a Special Trial judge for the Oglala Sioux Tribal Court (formerly the Chief Judge of the Court), and a retired Justice of the Supreme Court of the Oglala Sioux Nation. He is a former newspaper editor, contributing editor of the national magazine Native Nations, Minority Affairs Producer (SD Public Television) and the on-air host for South Dakota Public Television, and director, producer and on-air host of the nationally syndicated "First Person Radio" in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was the human rights specialist for an indigenous NGO at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland and New York from 1979-1983, focusing on the rights of the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere.