Spring 2009 At Last

Reservation for One

By Neil Leifer ’81

MY BEST FRIEND IN LAW SCHOOL scored the big firm co-op and called to tell me he was doing an "all nighter" on some huge corporate merger. I was listening from a cramped ground-floor legal services office on an Arizona Indian reservation, when I heard something behind me. "Hang on. I think someone's looking in my window." I slowly turned around. Pressed up against the screen were two huge nostrils—a horse. I literally jumped over my desk. "Are you all right?" asked my friend. All I could say was, "You're not gonna believe this."

City skyscrapers and Indian country were part of the broad spectrum of co-op choices at the law school. For my first co-op, I chose to be closer to the ground, and a summer co-op on a reservation seemed the perfect antidote to Boston's winter. In Arizona, I learned about leveraging law to empower people, but I also learned another valuable lesson: that of being the "other" in a different culture.

I was one of a handful of whites living on the reservation. I felt no hostility, just indifference. For the first time in my life, I was invisible. My feeble attempts to sympathize with the "plight" of Native Americans only made me more invisible. It wasn't until weeks into the co-op, totally bored and lonely, that I saw some guys playing basketball and decided to play. The next day, it seemed everyone on the reservation knew who I was, some thinking I had a pretty good jump shot. Treating people as people was how I became un-invisible.

The cases were also fascinating. One involved a white couple who took two Indian children on a picnic, but didn't return. This was when a lot of Indian children were being "saved," placed in non-Indian homes off reservation. This evangelical couple had apparently decided to "rescue" these children.

I worked with the FBI and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to get the kids back. This was summer 1979, a few years after the occupation of Wounded Knee, when the federal government was viewed as an enemy in Indian country. But, the FBI did locate the couple. The next day, I was alone in the office when the couple called. The husband was clearly agitated and at some point, after learning my name, asked if I was Jewish. When I demurred, he exploded that my background prevented me from understanding that he was saving these children, and maybe he'd just keep them. Worried my ethnicity might undermine the case, I raced to find my supervising attorney. Together, we called the couple back and were very clear about the law. The children were returned the next day.

While other cases on that co-op were not as serious, together they taught the enduring practice to listen, identify legal issues and communicate realistic objectives. But I won't deny that on the night when the horse sent me catapulting across my desk, I would've given anything to be having a cold one in Quincy Market. In hindsight, however, I wouldn't trade that co-op experience for all the beer in Boston.

Neil Leifer '81 is a partner with the Boston firm Thornton & Naumes. He is an expert in the areas of lead paint poisoning and tobacco litigation, and handles childhood lead poisoning cases throughout the nation.