University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law Research Professor Heather Tanana has been named “lawyer of the year” by the Energy, Natural Resources & Environmental Law (“ENREL”) Section of the Utah State Bar.
The award was announced at the ENREL Annual Business Meeting Oct. 6.
Tanana is experienced in state, federal, and tribal courts and clerked at the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah. She also founded the Indian Law Section of the Utah State Bar Association.
Tanana’s research interests include exploring the overlay between environmental and health policy, promoting better practices in Indian child welfare, and criminal justice in Indian Country.
She has participated in organizing extensive relief efforts during COVID-19. (Learn more about these efforts on the U Rising podcast).
“The Stegner Center was thrilled to learn that Heather Tanana received this award. Heather’s pro bono initiative bringing medical, financial and other aid to Utah’s Native American tribes during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic was in the best public service tradition of the legal profession and reflected her deep scholarly interests in Indian health and the environment, a principal focus of her work at the Stegner Center,” said Robert Keiter, director of the Wallace Stegner Center at the College of Law.
The ENREL Section of the Utah State Bar was established in 1977 for the purpose of seeking the participation of all interested members of the Bar and of other state and local bar associations in order to benefit such members by providing continuing legal education, a forum for the interchange of ideas in the areas of natural resources, oil, gas and mining, public lands, energy, Native American, water, and environmental law; initiating and implementing common projects; and to undertake such other services as may be of benefit to the members, the legal profession and the public.