This article originally appeared in the winter 2026 issue of Res Gestae.
Stories of her father attending the Haskell Institute, a Native American boarding school in Kansas, profoundly affected Mary Ellen Sloan (JD ’75), who knew early in life that she wanted to practice Indian law.
“My father was enrolled in the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes, so I was moved by his life and the hardships he faced after being sent to the Indian boarding school run by the U.S. government. I also grew up next to the Crow Reservation in Montana,” Sloan explains. “As an undergraduate at the University of Utah, I read ‘Of Utmost Good Faith’ by Vine Deloria, a Native American writer, that delved into how the United States had failed to uphold its end of the bargain in treaties with tribes. I became very interested in the field.”
Restoring federal recognition to Utah tribes
While at the University of Utah, Sloan worked for the American West Center and was assigned to study the termination of the Utah Paiutes as federally recognized Bands. She read literature and historical reports social scientists had gathered in the 1950s about the termination—ending the government’s trust relationship with the tribe and withdrawing federal recognition and services. As a law student working as a clerk at the Office of the Solicitor’s Intermountain Region, Sloan received the same research assignment.
“All of the data showed that the Utah Paiutes did not fall into the parameters for termination that the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Congress had established. They were among the poorest, least-educated, least economically advantaged Native people in the United States, yet they were among the first selected for termination,” Sloan recalls. “In 1975, the director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs, Bruce Parry, and I conducted a survey of the Paiutes’ economic, social, and educational conditions, and it showed that their unemployment rate was over 40%, and there was little advancement in educational opportunities. In other words, termination had done nothing for them except to tax their lands, which they ended up losing as a result of property tax.”
When she graduated from Utah Law in 1975 as the first Native American female lawyer in Utah, Sloan was eager to begin helping Native populations. Her first job was in Mission, South Dakota, on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation.
“I had the opportunity to work with three skilled attorneys— Terry Pechota, Anita Remerowski, and Marvin Amiotte—and represent the people of the Rosebud Sioux tribe and other low-income people in both civil and criminal matters,” she says.
About a year later, Sloan transferred back to Utah Legal Services and worked there for a couple years until joining Utah Law alum Larry EchoHawk (JD ’73) and Bill Thorne’s law firm in Salt Lake City.
“Larry asked me to represent the Utah Paiutes in their effort to restore their status as a federally recognized tribe. I worked with the Utah Paiute Tribal Corporation, which represented the five Paiute bands of Utah: Shivwits, Kanosh, Koosharem, Indian Peaks, and Cedar Band. They led the effort for their own restoration, and I assisted in that effort,” she recalls. “In 1980, Congress restored federal recognition, and a second piece of legislation was adopted in 1983 to grant them a certain amount of acreage and funds for economic development.”
During that time, Sloan also represented the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation and helped them obtain legislation as a federally recognized tribe. She also represented several individual Native Americans in different cases.
“At that time, there was not a public defender office in the federal court system in Utah, so I was often appointed to represent Native Americans in major crimes cases in the federal court,” she says. “I also represented the Navajo Nation in Indian Child Welfare Act cases, advocating for the Nation’s right to be involved in the protection of their own children.”
Sloan says the years she spent representing the Native people of Utah were “the privilege of my lifetime” and notes that the Paiute led the way in efforts to pass legislation.
“Had it not been for their strong voices, advocacy, and desire to have restoration legislation, it wouldn’t have happened. I don’t want their names to go unsaid: McKay Pickyavit, Travis Parashonts, Vera Charles, Clifford Jake, Beverly Snow, Geneal Anderson, Marguerite Lane, and Patrick Charles. All of them, among others, were instrumental in these efforts,” she says.
She is most proud of helping Utah’s Native people gain restoration or recognition of their tribal status.
“The Paiutes have developed their own healthcare clinics, built a wonderful tribal headquarters in Cedar City, and expanded educational opportunities for their members,” Sloan says. “I hope I was able to make a contribution that led to educational and economic advancement in their situation.”
Mentoring and hiring other women in law
In 1988, Sloan joined the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office. She eventually became the assistant chief district attorney of the civil division and was the first woman to hold such a position in the District Attorney’s Office. Though she retired in 2010, Sloan continues to advocate for women in law.
“The law school class before mine had three women in it. In my class, there were 14. From that point forward, the women in classes grew to the point where there were more women than men graduating in some instances,” she recalls. “There were other women in law—my late mother-in-law, Maxine Charlier Pace, graduated from Utah Law in 1940—but not in the classes on a large scale.”
Kathy Collard, one of the three women in the class of 1974, inspired Sloan.
“I thought, If my friend can go to law school, maybe I can do that, too. Would I have thought that way had there not been any other women? I don’t know,” she says.
With no other lawyers in her family, Sloan was grateful for the mentors she had at South Dakota Legal Services (now Dakota Plains Legal Services) and wants every new lawyer—especially women and minority lawyers—to have that same mentorship.
“While in the civil division as assistant chief DA, I was in charge of hiring law clerks. I brought in several women, including minority women, who then established careers in the District Attorney’s Office and beyond,” she remembers. “I wanted to help other women advance in their careers and support them.”
Making room for mindfulness
In 2001, a family member expressed interest in Buddhism, and Sloan decided to look into it as well. She began studying Zen with a teacher in Salt Lake City and became a Zen teacher in 2017.
“Meditation practice helped immensely when going into a very stressful situation. I was involved in litigation full time and supervising other attorneys, and the equanimity that I gained through Zen practice assisted me in my practice of law,” Sloan says. “It gave me the space to work with and supervise others in a better way, in my opinion.”
She plans to keep teaching Zen and continue her legal education in the future.
“I hope Martin Luther King’s famous quote, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,’ will continue to inspire lawyers, and that the courts, which are under a great deal of pressure, will be able to ensure that is the case,” Sloan says.