18 Facts About Brett Chapman

Brett Chapman is an American attorney, a direct lineal descendant of Chief White Eagle, and a public figure who frequently is interviewed and speaks on Native American civil rights and self-determination.

Brett Chapman attended a public school in rural Oklahoma and earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Oklahoma in 2007 and his JD degree at the University of Tulsa College of Law in 2010.

Brett Chapman began his career as an Assistant District Attorney in Oklahoma and prosecuted homicides, violence against women, and crimes against children.

In 2015, Brett Chapman prosecuted two cases that resulted in published law in Oklahoma's highest appellate court.

Brett Chapman later moved into civil practice where he represented railroad companies and now maintains a practice in Tulsa focused on criminal defense and civil rights litigation.

Brett Chapman is a public advocate for Native Americans on the issues of sovereignty, the Native American mascot controversy, and the proper representation of Native Americans in both a historical and contemporary context.

Brett Chapman was interviewed by The Daily Oklahoman about the significance of the placement of a bronze statue of Chief Standing Bear in the National Statuary Hall at the US Capitol, as a central figure in Standing Bear v Crook for which Native Americans were recognized as persons with equal rights as other Americans.

Brett Chapman stated in a December 2019 public radio interview by PRI The World that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was appropriating Native American history after Erdogan made a public statement that he would formally recognize Native American genocide in retaliation for the US Senate recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide.

In 2018, Brett Chapman led the effort to retire a Native American mascot at Maine West High School in Des Plaines, Illinois after seeing an image of a student wearing a Chief Illiniwek costume performing a leaping dance at a high school assembly.

Brett Chapman discovered that administrators at Maine West had been claiming for years to have the endorsement of the Cherokee Nation to use the Native American imagery.

In 2019, Brett Chapman advocated against the controversial Life of Washington mural by Victor Arnautoff in San Francisco and applauded the June 2019 decision to paint over offensive imagery of George Washington and American settlers stepping over the dead body of a Native American.

In 2019, Brett Chapman met with the President of Catalonia Quim Torra in Washington during the European leader's official visit to the United States.

Brett Chapman requested that the Government of Catalonia denounce all Catalan-speaking colonizers who participated in Spanish abuses during the Spanish colonization of the Americas.

On November 28,2018, Brett Chapman led Native American criticism of Spanish foreign minister Josep Borrell after he claimed the United States "only had to kill four Indians" to achieve independence and national unity.

Brett Chapman criticizes unfair or historically inaccurate portrayals of Native Americans in popular culture, including in 2019 criticism of historian David McCollough following the release of his book The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West.

Brett Chapman told the Associated Press that McCullough merely repeated the same stereotypes to justify stealing Native American land that the pioneers did when they stole it.

Brett Chapman advocates changing Columbus Day to Native American Day or Indigenous Peoples' Day.

Brett Chapman was asked whether Americans should honor soldiers who fought not in defense of country, but to dispossess native peoples of their land and their lives.