Ms. Baum is an enrolled member of the Mole Lake (Sokaogon) Chippewa Tribe of Wisconsin and a descendant of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, and was born and raised in Wisconsin. She currently lives and works in Washington, D.C., as a staff attorney at the National Indian Gaming Commission. Before her recent move to the NIGC, she was a staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund, a nonprofit law firm dedicated to asserting and defending the rights of Indian tribes and their members. She has also worked at the Environmental Appeals Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and at the University of Tulsa’s Boesche Legal Clinic, where she instructed and supervised law students in the representation of tribal members of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in tribal, state, and federal courts. Early in her career, she worked in a permanent clerkship with the Navajo Nation Supreme Court, assisting the justices of the highest court of the judicial branch of that tribe’s government. Ms. Baum began her education with a B.A. in Religious Studies from Beloit College graduating magna com laude and earning the Departmental Prize for Religious Studies. She earned her J.D. from the University of Wisconsin, cum laude, and later completed a Master of Laws degree (L.L.M.) with honors in American Indian and Indigenous Law at the University of Tulsa. Dawn currently serves as the President to the Executive Board of the Native American Bar Association of D.C.

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