Since 2012, Mary Guss and Claudia Nelson have worked with the U.S Department of the Interior Office of the Special Trustee and Native American communities providing will writing and other estate planning services with the Tohono O’odham and Navajo Nations as well as the Colorado River Indian Tribes.
Mary E. Guss earned her law degree in 1976 from Lewis & Clark. She then traveled to Alaska to clerk for the Ketchikan Superior Court judge for a year. Three decades of practicing law in Alaska followed, more than half of it as a solo practitioner. Guss also served as the part-time federal magistrate judge for Ketchikan. In 2008 she returned to school, receiving an LLM in Indigenous Peoples Law & Policy (IPLP) from the University of Arizona. Her work since then has included teaching an AIPRA will-writing clinic at Arizona Law, coordinating the Lunch in Indian Country CLE series with the state bar, and sitting on the Yavapai Apache and Salt River Pima Maricopa tribal appellate courts.
Since 2004, Claudia Nelson has served as the Director of the Native Peoples Technical Assistance Office (NPTAO) at the University of Arizona. A division of the Office for Research, Discovery, and Innovation, NPTAO provides a comprehensive, collaborative program of university-based technical assistance in the areas of economic and community development, research and research capacity building, and educational resource development for Native peoples, Arizona's Native Nations, and tribal organizations. Claudia received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona Eller College of Business, and Master’s degree from the University of Arizona American Indian Studies Program. As Director, Nelson brings more than 30 years of experience in relationship-building with Native Nations, focused primarily across Arizona.
- Photo of Mary E. Guss by Mary E. Guss.
- Photo of Claudia Nelson taken by Melissa Logan Haun for the James E. Rogers College of Law; © 2013 The Arizona Board of Regents for the University of Arizona.