Keynote Speakers - Dispute Resolution Center

Summit Keynote Speaker

Thursday October 30, 9:15 AM - 10:30 AM

Fania E. Davis is a leading international voice on the intersection of racial and restorative justice. She is a long-time social justice activist, civil rights trial attorney, author, and educator with a PhD in Indigenous Knowledge. Davis came of age in Birmingham, Alabama during the social ferment of the civil rights era. These formative years, particularly the murder of two close childhood friends in the 1963 Sunday School bombing, crystallized within Fania an enduring commitment to social transformation. For the next decades, she was active in the Civil Rights, Black liberation, women’s, prisoners’, peace, anti-racial violence, economic justice and anti-apartheid movements.

Apprenticing with African indigenous healers catalyzed Fania’s search for a healing justice, ultimately leading her to become the Founding Director of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth and Co-Founding Board Member of the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice. Her numerous honors include the Lifetime Achievement award for excellence in Restorative Justice, the Black Feminist Shapeshifters and Waymakers’ award, the Tikkun (Repair the World) award, the Ella Jo Baker Human Rights award, and the Ebony POWER 100 award. The Los Angeles Times named her a New Civil Rights Leader of the 21st Century. She recently received the Open Society Foundations Justice Rising Award recognizing 16 Black movement leaders working towards racial justice in the United States. Among Davis’ publications is theLittle Book of Race and Restorative Justice: Black Lives, Justice, and U.S. Social Transformation.

Davis, who resides in Oakland, CA., writes and speaks internationally on restorative justice, racial justice, truth processes and indigeneity. She is a mother, grandmother, dancer, meditator and a yoga, qigong and African spirituality practitioner.

Dr. Fania E. Davis is a Leading National Voice on Restorative Justice and brings deep experience, spiritual grounding, and visionary practice to the work of repair and reconciliation.

Purchase the book from Living Justice Press!

Summit Plenary Speaker Panel

Thursday October 31, 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM

What is our responsibility in this moment?

Jason Wesaw

Jason Wesaw (Turtle Clan, Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians), began his journey of learning about Native justice over 20 years ago and became the first Peacemaking Coordinator for his Tribe in 2021.

Jason has dedicated his life to learning the traditional ways of his ancestors and is often called upon to help the community with ceremonies, teachings, and celebrations. He is also a contemporary artist who has shown his work internationally and is in the permanent collections of many major institutions throughout the Great Lakes region.

Jason has three children and lives near the historic Potawatomi settlement of Rush Lake in southwestern Michigan.

Stacey Rock

Associate General Counsel | Advocate for Tribal Sovereignty and Peacemaking

Stacey L. Rock is a proud citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the mother of two extraordinary young men. She currently serves as Associate General Counsel for the Pokagon Band, where she provides legal guidance on a wide range of matters impacting tribal governance, justice systems, and community initiatives. Her work is rooted in a deep commitment to strengthening tribal sovereignty and ensuring that law serves as a bridge between governance and community well-being.

Stacey was admitted to the State Bar of Michigan in February 2023 after earning her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School. During her time at WMU Cooley, she contributed to the WMU Cooley Innocence Project, reinforcing her dedication to justice and systemic reform.

With over a decade of service in the Pokagon Band Tribal Court, Stacey held multiple roles including Assistant Court Administrator, Tribal Court Clerk, Probation Officer, and Peacemaking Support Staff. In these capacities, she led staff development, implemented policy, and supported culturally grounded peacemaking and probation programs. Her leadership extended to the Pokagon Band’s Curriculum Committee, where she championed educational advancement and cultural preservation.

Stacey’s legal and community service also includes her advisory role with the American Indian Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan, where she contributes to policy development affecting Indigenous communities. She holds certificates in mediation, leadership, and law enforcement information systems, blending legal acumen with practical, community-centered training.

Through every role, Stacey remains dedicated to advancing justice, empowering tribal communities, and honoring the traditions and future of the Pokagon Band.

Edward C. Valandra, P.h.D

Edward C Valandra, Ph.D., is Sicangu Titunwan, born and raised on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation. He received his B.A. in chemistry from Mankato State University, his M.A. in political science (public policy) from the University of Colorado-Boulder, and his Ph.D. in American Studies (Native Studies concentration) from SUNY-Buffalo.

Dr. Valandra has served his nation, the Sicangu Titunwan Oyate, in various capacities. He served a four-year term on the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Council (1985–89) and was a representative on the Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative (ITBC) board of directors (1996– 2000). He also served on his nation’s seven-member Constitutional Task Force (2004–2006).

Professor Valandra has taught at both Native and non-Native colleges and universities: Oglala Lakota College, Sinte Gleska University, Metropolitan State University (St. Paul, Minnesota), the University of California at Davis, and the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. His research focuses on the national revitalization of the Oceti Sakowin Oyate (People of the Seven Fires, commonly called the D/L/Nakota people) and the development of Native Studies. In February, 2010, he was elected President of the American Indian Studies Association, the signature association for the discipline of Native Studies.

His numerous articles have been published both in professional journals and in edited volumes. In 2006, the University of Illinois Press published his book on the “Termination Era” in the U.S. and South Dakota, Not Without Our Consent: Lakota Resistance to Termination, 1950–1959, with a Foreword by the late great Hunkpapa Titunwan scholar Vine Deloria, Jr. The book documents Oceti Sakowin Oyate opposition to attempts at applying in South Dakota federal legislation to terminate Native nations coast to coast (Public Law 83-280). The book follows the struggle of the Oceti Sakowin Oyate through the 1950s when, against all odds, their resistance succeeded—a powerful and inspiring story.

Dr. Valandra is the founder and Research Fellow for the Community for the Advancement of Native Studies (CANS), a Native-government-chartered, research-based, reservation-rooted organization. CANS supports the advancement of Native Studies as both an intellectual and applied discipline. It serves Native Peoples by conducting research that promotes the liberation of Native Country, which involves revitalizing nationhood. Dr. Valandra’s work for CANS ranges from consulting Native colleges and Native governments to forming networks and providing guidance on Native-based community projects to building undergraduate and graduate curricula in Native Studies.

Since 2003, Dr. Valandra has served as an advisor to Living Justice Press on Native understandings of justice and on how to apply restorative justice to repairing longstanding, historical, and current harms between peoples. He has helped LJP most generously at every stage of the publishing process, from acquiring manuscripts to editing them to promoting them, helping us get LJP books into the hands of target-audience readers. We are most grateful to have him on board officially as LJP’s Senior Editor—a service he has performed almost from the start.

Formerly, The Honorable Timothy P. Conners

Timothy P. Connors, a lecturer at the University of Michigan Law School, has been a state court judge since 1991, serving as a chief judge for 11 years. He presides over cases in the civil and domestic divisions of the Washtenaw County Trial Court and handles the neglect and abuse docket for the Juvenile Court.

Connors is past co-chair of the Michigan Tribal-State-Federal Forum, has served by appointment as judge pro tem for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, and is the presiding judge of the Washtenaw County Peacemaking Court.

The Native American Rights Fund appointed Connors to its Indigenous Peacemaking Initiative in 2017. The initiative supports efforts of tribes and their allies to use traditional Native methods of dispute resolution whenever those methods might afford desirable outcomes. He is incorporating peacemaking principles, philosophies, and procedures shared by tribal communities into state court justice systems—an effort supported by the Michigan Supreme Court. To date, successful outcomes of peacemaking efforts have been witnessed in wrongful death suits, elder guardianship disputes, estate distribution issues, custody and parenting time disputes, and neglect and abuse proceedings.

Connors is the author of “Exit, Pursued by a Bear: Why Peacemaking Makes Sense in State Court Justice Systems” (American Bar Association Judges Journal, Fall 2016); “Our Children Are Sacred: Why the Indian Child Welfare Act Matters” (American Bar Association Judges Journal, Spring 2011); and “Crow Dogs vs. Spotted Tail: Case Closed?” (Michigan Bar Journal, July 2010). He co-authored “Tribal Court Peacemaking: A Model for the Michigan State Court System?” (Michigan Bar Journal, June 2015).

In 2021, Connors received the Daniel J. Wright Lifetime Achievement Award for Exemplary Service to Michigan’s Families and Children from the Michigan Supreme Court. In 2018, he received the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Award from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Ypsilanti Willow Run Branch. Among his numerous other awards, he is a past recipient of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges Innovator of the Year Award, the Hilda Gage Judicial Excellence Award from the Michigan Judges Association, and a three-time recipient of the Justice Blair Moody Award for Significant Contributions to Judicial Excellence.