Programme Director, Comparative Tribal Constitutionalism Research Programme
Kirsty Gover joined the Law faculty in 2009. Her research and publications address the law, policy and political theory of indigenous land claims and self-governance. She has a particular interest in tribal constitutionalism. Her most recent work examines the ways in which recognized tribes govern membership, by reference to the criteria used in tribal constitutions.
Kirsty received her B.A./LL.B. from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and her LL.M. from Columbia University, United States. She was a Columbia University School of Law Human Rights Fellow and James Kent Scholar, and was the first full-time Institute Fellow at NYULawSchool's Institute for International Law and Justice (IILJ). She received her doctorate from NYULawSchool, where she was a Graduate Institute Scholar of the IILJ, and a New Zealand Top Achiever Doctoral Fellow. Kirsty was a Senior Advisor and then consultant to the New Zealand government on international and domestic policy on indigenous peoples, and taught in this field at the CanterburyLawSchool. She represented the New Zealand government at intergovernmental drafting sessions of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
She is currently working on a book project, based on her thesis, entitled “Constitutionalizing Tribalism: States, Tribes and Membership Governance in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.” Other work addresses the friction between tribal and settler state laws on the status of adopted children, and the participation of indigenous communities in international trade and investment dispute resolution fora. Her recent article “Genealogy as Continuity: Explaining the Growing Tribal Preference for Descent Rules” American Indian Law Review, 33-1 (2009) 243, looks at changes in the way United States tribes have determined membership since the 1930s, with an emphasis on the increased tribal use of blood quantum rules.
Kirsty is affiliated to the LawSchool’s Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies and the Institute for International Law and the Humanities.
Representative Publications
Genealogy as Continuity : Explaining The Growing Preference for Descent Rules In United States Tribal Membership Governance, Vol. 33(1), American Indian Law Review (2009).
Indigenous Groups and the Politics of Recognition in Asia, 11(1-2) International Journal of Minority and Group Rights, with Benedict Kingsbury (2004) (Guest editor with Benedict Kingsbury of the special volume by the same name).
Urban Maori in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Indigenous Affairs,3-4 (2002).
He Tirohanga o Kawa ki te Tiriti o Waitangi : A Guide to the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi(2002).
Identifying the Maori Treaty Partner, 52 Univ. of Toronto L.J. 39, with Natalie Baird (2002).
Recognizing the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (A Quentin-Baxter, ed., 1999) Book Review 16 NZ LawTalk (1999).
