Tricia Tingle

Associate Director, Tribal Justice Support Directorate

Tricia Tingle is an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and received her Law Degree from Oklahoma City University in 1990. Her legal career encompasses 34+ years working in Indian Country. Ms. Tingle has always insisted on creating a pathway to incorporate Indian Country during her legal career. From 1990-1994, Ms. Tingle had her own law firm, and created the Texas Indian Bar Association and served as its President, as well as serving as the President of the Native American Bar Association. In 1994, Ms. Tingle left Texas to work at the United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Voting Section where she worked to create majority Indian voting districts giving the Native community representation and a voice in state and local elections. She also protected Native Languages by enforcing Section 202 of the Voting Rights Act, specifically at the Navajo Nation and Mississippi Choctaw. Later in her career she served as an Assistant United States Attorney prosecuting major crimes in Indian Country while in the U.S. Attorney’s Office District of Minnesota. Additionally, she provided legal counsel to the Bureau of Indian Affairs as the Assistant Solicitor of General Indian Law in the U.S. Department of the Interior. Since 2011, Ms. Tingle has served as the Associate Director for Tribal Justice Support focusing on building tribal justice systems.

Under Ms. Tingle’s guidance, the Tribal Justice Support Directorate has served over 450 tribal justice systems providing funding, training and technical assistance to a cadre of tribal justice systems in the United States. Additionally, Ms. Tingle created a tribal justice system environment where tribes train tribes, and peer to peer (tribe to tribe) training is encouraged. Ms. Tingle is thankful to her staff for strengthening sovereignty by working with tribal justice systems and highlighting the unique ways tribes have provided justice through traditional and cultural methods, and sharing the positive effect traditional and cultural methods are used to create alternatives to incarceration, which is now used by other jurisdictions.

Ms. Tingle is originally from Texas but presently lives in Alexandria, Virginia.