Angela R. Riley

Angela R. Riley (enrolled member, Citizen Potawatomi Nation) is the Goldberg Endowed Chair of Native American Law at UCLA and Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs. She directs UCLA’s Native Nations Law and Policy Center and the joint degree program in Law and American Indian Studies. She has chaired the UCLA campus Repatriation Committee since 2010. Professor Riley's research focuses on Indigenous peoples’ rights, with a particular emphasis on cultural property and Native governance. Her work has been widely published in the nation’s leading legal journals. She received her undergraduate degree at the University of Oklahoma and her law degree from Harvard.

Professor Riley was raised on a working farm at Saddle Mountain, Oklahoma, located within the original borders of the Kiowa, Comanche, Apache Indian reservation. In 2003 she became the first woman and youngest Justice of the Supreme Court of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and has served as Chief Justice since 2010. She served as Co-Chair for the United Nations - Indigenous Peoples’ Policy Board and is currently a member of the UN World Intellectual Property Organization’s Indigenous Caucus. She also currently sits as an Appellate Justice at the Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians Court of Appeals and at the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians Court of Appeals.

Professor Riley is a member of the American Law Institute and the American Philosophical Society. She has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and is currently a visiting professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She has delivered lectures around the world on Indigenous rights.