Caroline LaPorte, J.D. (Immediate Descendant of LRBOI, Daughter of Jim LaPorte) 
Caroline is a Texas Bar Licensed Attorney, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, the Academic Department Head and Associate Professor of Native American Studies at Northern Michigan University, and a part time law and policy advisor to the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center.  She is also a mother, a wife, a daughter, and a niece.

Caroline previously served as the Director of the Indigenous Safe Housing Center at the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center (a project she started) and as NIWRC's Senior Native Affairs Policy Advisor in Washington, D.C. She also previously served as an attorney and the Judicial Advisor to the Seminole Tribe of Florida's Tribal Court.  She graduated cum laude from the University of Miami School of Law, was named a Henry Bandier Fellow for her Human Rights advocacy, and received the Natasha Pettigrew Memorial Award for child welfare advocacy work. Her legal career has focused on Indian country, specifically child welfare, housing, human rights, and gender-based violence. She serves on the American Bar Association's Victim’s Rights Task Force, previously chaired the Victim’s Committee for the Criminal Justice Section of the ABA, and is the chair of the Board of Directors for StrongHearts Native Helpline.  She is also a member of the Trilateral Working Group on Violence Against Indigenous Women and Girls. She has worked at CASA in Dallas Texas (Guardian ad Litem Program for kids in foster care), has worked on Amicus Briefs, and was a family law attorney. She clerked for the Department of Justices' Office of Tribal Justice and for LRBOI when she was in law school. She has written and received numerous federal grants, has been published by the American Bar Association, American Law Review and others, and has been the Department of Justice's 904 Task Force Facilitator for the past few years. She has also worked on key federal legislation such as the Violence Against Women Act, the Not Invisible Act, and Savanna's Act. 

Her grandfather, Francis J. LaPorte, was an Indian Boarding School survivor, having attended Holy Childhood in Harbor Springs.  Her Great Grandmother, Annie, attended Genoa Industrial School in Nebraska.