Walter Echo-Hawk is a Native American (Pawnee) speaker, author, and attorney. Throughout his distinguished legal career, he has worked to protect the legal, political, property, cultural, and human rights of Indian tribes and Native peoples. An articulate and versed Indigenous rights activist, Echo-Hawk is an expert on topics involving Native arts and cultures, Indigenous history, federal Indian law, religious freedom, environmental protection, Native American cosmology, and human rights. In 2018, he taught law in Honolulu as the Dan and Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Democratic Ideals at the University of Hawai’i. As a tribal leader, Walter currently serves as the President of the Pawnee Nation Business Council.

Echo-Hawk’s most recent work, The Sea of Grass: A Family Tale from the American Heartland (2018), is an historical fiction novel inspired by real people and events that were shaped by the land, animals, and plants of the Central Plains and by the long sweep of Indigenous history on the grasslands. Major events are presented from a Pawnee perspective to capture the outlook of the Echo-Hawk ancestors. The oral tradition from ten generations of Echo-Hawk’s family tell the stories of the spiritual side of Native life, and give voice to the rich culture and cosmology of the Pawnee Nation.

This public keynote is presented as part of the Hall Center’s Col(LAB)orative Project Spring 2021 workshop, “Indigenous People and Colonization in the North American Grasslands."

Walter Echo-Hawk, "The Sea of Grass: A Family Account of the Colonization of the Great Plains of North America"