HPS Law Firm Partner Pete Heidepriem was recently named General Counsel of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe. In that role, he will maintain a second office in Fort Thompson, South Dakota, and serve as the chief legal advisor to the Tribal Council and provide legal advice to all levels of the Tribal Government and members of the Tribe.
Much of Pete’s legal career has been devoted to supporting Native people and Native Nations. He has tried cases as a prosecutor for the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and served as counsel to a tribal judge of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate. Before the U.S. Supreme Court, he filed an amicus brief regarding tribal sovereignty on behalf of several tribes, and the Court ruled unanimously in favor of the party supported in the brief.
In representing individuals, Pete has achieved successful outcomes, including a lending discrimination claim brought against a lender who denied a loan to a Native farmer with land on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation.
Providing legal services to Native people and reservation communities—whether the claim is based on a car accident, discrimination, or something else—is a major focus for Pete, and he welcomes contact from people seeking representation in those cases.
Pete’s interest in federal Indian law also guides his work as an adjunct professor of law at the University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law, where he teaches a seminar on appellate advocacy and federal Indian law. During fall 2021, he was a Joachim Herz Fellow and visiting scholar at Bucerius Law School in Germany, where he conducted research on international investment law and the rights of Indigenous peoples. Bucerius featured Pete in an article about his fellowship, and you can access it here.