Ms. Kyle Gray and Mr. Steve Small, attorneys who argued the 2019 case Herrera vs. Wyoming before the Supreme Court, delivered the annual Preston Lecture, held on Thursday, April 25 in Walker Auditorium.

The Preston Lecture, established by the Preston family in 1992, is an annual presentation for all Humanities and Social Sciences students. Each year, a different speaker is invited to campus to address the community.

Ms. Gray and Mr. Small represented Mr. Clayvin Herrera in the Herrera vs. Wyoming case. In 2015, Herrera, a member of the Crow Nation, was found guilty of off-reservation hunting by the state of Wyoming for taking an elk in the Bighorn National Forest. Ms. Gray and Mr. Small represented Mr. Herrera in his appeal to the state of Wyoming and, eventually, before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The attorneys based their appeal on the Treaty of Fort Laramie, which was signed by the United States and the Sioux Nation in 1868. It guaranteed hunting rights to Native Americans in the Black Hills, even on lands ceded to the state. In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court overturned Herrera’s conviction and set a precedent for honoring Native treaty rights.

Before the lecture, Ms. Gray and Mr. Small visited a variety of classes, including “Honors Constitution & Supreme Court,” “Ethics,” and Mr. Phil Hodosy’s Lower Mid U.S. History class.

Katie Yang ’25, a student in “Honors Constitution & Supreme Court,” said, “Their win in court after a three-yearlong fight was especially inspiring.” Peter Berlizov ’24, another student in the class, said, “When we first heard that we were going to meet with [attorneys who have argued before] the Supreme Court, we didn’t expect them to be as down-to-Earth. It was fascinating to hear about the legal issues behind the case first hand.”

In Walker Auditorium, the speakers introduced the school to the history of Native American hunting and treaty rights and the timeline for Herrera vs. Wyoming. Ophelia Cham ’25 said, “It was great to learn about the history of Indigenous people’s hunting rights— definitely not something we normally explore in history classes.”

Ms. Gray and Mr. Small’s lecture aligned with the 2023-2024 school year’s theme of borders and the allschool summer read, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa. Mr. Rick Hazelton, director of the center for global understanding and independent thinking, said, “This is a case about how Native Americans culturally defined their native hunting grounds and how the federal government redefined those boundaries as states were established. It reminds us of the many ongoing physical and cultural borders in our world.”