Rick West: Lawyer, Museum Director, Champion of Indigenous Causes (Stanford Lawyer)
Photo courtesy of Gregg Segal.
By Nadra Nittle, Stanford Lawyer, June 13, 2022
W. Richard West, Jr. considers himself a “boundary walker.” Born in 1943 to a Cheyenne father and a white mother, West grew up navigating two cultures. But his Oklahoma upbringing firmly planted him in the Native American community.
“My brother and I knew where we came from,” says West, JD ’71. “There was no question about that, but my parents wanted us to be able to negotiate across cultural boundaries.”
Through his work as a lawyer and director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and the Autry Museum of the American West, West did just that.
He credits his successful career and advocacy for Native Americans largely to the foundation he received at Stanford. But entering law school was a move West almost didn’t make.
After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in American history in the 1960s, West was en route to a doctorate program at Harvard University when he decided to change course.
“There was a lot going on at that time in terms of social movements and social action, and I concluded that my route to advocacy on behalf of Native justice was better done through law school than through having a PhD in American history,” he says.