About

Angela Riley is a legal scholar specializing in indigenous peoples’ rights, with a particular emphasis on cultural property and Native governance. She holds the Carole Goldberg Endowed Chair of Native American Law and serves as a Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs. Riley is also the Director of the Native Nations Law & Policy Center at UCLA. She earned her B.A. from the University of Oklahoma in 1995 and her J.D. from Harvard University in 1998. Her work includes research and scholarship on indigenous property rights, exemplified by her publication in the Harvard Law Review titled "Before Mine: Indigenous Property Rights for Jagenagenon."

Research topics

• Nursing
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Gerontology
• Medicine
• Physical therapy
• Family medicine
• Internal medicine
• Political economy
• Surgery
• Development economics
• Economic growth
• Socioeconomics
• Law
• Geography

Selected publications

• The Price Is NOT Right: Payers’ Roles in Addressing Financial Toxicity

  JCO Oncology Practice · 2025-01-01 · 3 citations

  editorial
  PublisherDOI

• Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Migration

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2025-11-19

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The situation of Indigenous Peoples remains largely invisible in the context of international migration law and policy. Indeed, while instruments such as the Global Compact on Migration call for increased attention to the human rights of migrants, it does not take into the particularized human rights violations, such as the deprivation of land rights or destruction of subsistence practices, causing Indigenous Peoples to leave their homelands. Nor do current programs sufficiently address the ongoing needs of Indigenous Peoples as migrants, including access to legal, health, and social services in their own languages. Accounting for the experience of Indigenous Peoples is critical to advancing a human rights approach to migration and addressing the legacies of conquest and colonization that undergird state policies on territorial sovereignty and border regulation. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognizes that when Indigenous Peoples are “divided by international borders,” they “have the right to contacts, relations and cooperation, including activities for spiritual, cultural, political, economic and social purposes, with their own members as well as other peoples across borders.” Recognition and realization of these rights raises difficult questions in the context of Indigenous Peoples’ migration. By focusing on the situation of Indigenous Peoples, this chapter pushes migration law, both in theory and practice, to consider more fully its colonial origins and impacts, and incorporate a broader concept of individual and collective human rights.

  PublisherDOI

• Effect of a Community Health Worker–Led Intervention Among Low-Income and Minoritized Patients With Cancer: A Randomized Clinical Trial

  Journal of Clinical Oncology · 2023 · 26 citations

  • Medicine
  • Gerontology
  • Physical therapy

  PURPOSE: To determine whether a community health worker (CHW)-led intervention could improve health-related quality of life (HRQoL; primary outcome) more than usual care among low-income and racial and ethnic minoritized populations newly diagnosed with cancer. METHODS: This randomized clinical trial was conducted from November 1, 2018, until August 31, 2021, in outpatient cancer clinics in Atlantic City, NJ, and Chicago, IL. Hourly low-wage worker members of an employer union health fund age 18 years or older with newly diagnosed solid tumor and hematologic malignancies were randomly assigned 1:1 to usual care (control group) or usual care augmented with a trained CHW for 12 months (intervention group). The CHW assisted participants with advance care planning (ACP), proactively screened symptoms, and referred participants to community-based resources for identified health-related social needs. Usual care comprised nurse case management and benefits redesign (waived copayments and free transportation for any cancer care received at preferred oncology clinics in each city). The primary outcome was HRQoL. Secondary outcomes included patient activation, satisfaction with decision, ACP documentation, health care use, total health care costs, and overall survival. RESULTS: A total of 160 participants were enrolled. Intervention group participants had a greater increase in mean HRQoL scores at 4-month and 12-month follow-up as compared with baseline than control group participants (expected mean difference, 11.25 [95% CI, 7.28 to 15.22]; 11.29 [95% CI, 6.96 to 15.62], respectively). CONCLUSION: In this randomized trial, a CHW-led intervention significantly improved HRQoL for low-income and racial and ethnic minoritized patients with cancer more than usual care alone.

  PublisherDOI

• The Ascension of Indigenous Cultural Property Law

  Michigan Law Review · 2022-01-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Indigenous Peoples across the world are calling on nation-states to “decolonize” laws, structures, and institutions that negatively impact them. Though the claims are broad based, there is a growing global emphasis on issues pertaining to Indigenous Peoples’ cultural property and the harms of cultural appropriation, with calls for redress increasingly framed in the language of human rights. Over the last decade, Native people have actively fought to defend their cultural property. The Navajo Nation sued Urban Outfitters to stop the sale of “Navajo panties,” the Quileute Tribe sought to enjoin Nordstrom’s marketing of “Quileute Chokers,” and the descendants of Tasunke Witko battled to end production of “Crazy Horse Malt Liquor.” And today, Indigenous Peoples are fighting to preserve sacred ceremonies and religious practices at places like Standing Rock, Oak Flat, and Bear’s Ears. Though the claims range from “lands to brands,” these conflicts are connected by a common thread: they are all contemporary examples of Indigenous Peoples’ efforts to protect their cultural property. As issues surrounding cultural property play out on the global stage, there is a parallel movement underway within Indigenous communities themselves. More than fifteen years ago, in 2005, I conducted a comprehensive study of tribal law to understand what American Indian tribes were doing to protect their own cultural property within tribal legal systems. Since my original study, the ground around issues of cultural preservation and appropriation has shifted dramatically. Transformative changes in human and Indigenous rights—including the 2007 adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, among others—have reignited interest in Indigenous Peoples’ own laws. Inspired by a convergence of global events impacting cultural rights, in 2020 and 2021, I set out to update my survey results and analyze the tribal cultural preservation systems and tribal laws of all 574 federally recognized American Indian tribes and Alaskan Native Villages in the United States. This Article reports those findings, situating the results in a human rights framework and leading to a core, central thesis: the data reveal a striking increase in the development of tribal cultural property laws, as Indian tribes seek to advance human and cultural rights in innovative and inspired ways. Indeed, in this Article, I contend we are witnessing a new jurisgenerative moment today in the cultural property arena, with tribal law already influencing decisionmakers at multiple ‘sites’—international, national, and subnational—in real time, with great potential for the future. To further demonstrate this phenomenon, I highlight the case study of the recent agreement to repatriate the Maaso Kova, a ceremonial deer head, from Sweden to the Yaqui peoples, and I also introduce several other examples where the seeds have been planted for the growth of the next jurisgenerative moment in Indigenous cultural property rights.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The effect of a multilevel community health worker-led intervention on health-related quality of life, patient activation, acute care use, and total costs of care: A randomized controlled trial.

  Journal of Clinical Oncology · 2022 · 3 citations

  • Medicine
  • Family medicine
  • Gerontology

  6500 Background: Low-income and minority populations have less activation in their cancer care, lower health-related quality of life, greater acute care use and total costs of care than affluent and white populations. Community-based interventions are needed to improve patient experiences and quality of cancer care equitably among these populations. We used community-based participatory methods to refine a previously tested intervention for use in urban communities. The intervention, LEAPS, uses community health workers trained to activate patients in discussions with their cancer clinicians regarding advance care planning and symptom-burden and to connect patients with community-based resources to overcome social determinants of health. We conducted a randomized controlled trial of LEAPS in collaboration with an employer-union health plan in Atlantic City, NJ and Chicago, IL. Members of the employer-union health plan with newly diagnosed with hematologic and solid tumor cancers were randomized to the 6-month LEAPS intervention. The objective of the study was to determine whether LEAPS improved quality of life (primary). Secondarily, we evaluated the effect of LEAPS on patient activation, acute care use, and total costs of care. Methods: We used generalized linear regression models to evaluate differences in quality of life and patient activation scores between groups from baseline to 4- and 12-months post-enrollment and regression models offset for length of follow-up to compare emergency department use, hospitalizations, and total costs of care. Results: A total of 160 patients were consented and randomized into the study (80 intervention; 80 control). There were no differences in demographic or clinical factors across groups. The majority were non-White (74%), female (53%), mean age 57 years with breast (31%) or lung cancer (21%) and Stage 3 or 4 (63%) disease. At 4- and 12-months follow-up, the intervention group had greater improvements in quality of life overtime as compared to the control group (difference in difference: 11.5 p < 0.001) and greater change in patient activation overtime (difference in difference: 11.9 (p < 0.001)). At 12-months follow-up there were no differences in emergency department use (0.44 (0.71) versus 0.73 (0.22) p = 0.22) however intervention group participants had fewer hospitalizations (1.55 (0.86) vs. 2.29 (1.31), p = 0.002) and lower median total costs of care ($72,585 vs. $153,980, p = 0.04). Conclusions: Integrating community-based interventions into clinical cancer care delivery for low-income and minority populations can significantly improve patient activation, reduce hospitalizations and total costs of care. These interventions may represent a sustainable resource to facilitate equitable, value-based cancer care. Clinical trial information: NCT03699748.

  PublisherDOI

• Decolonizing Indigenous Migration

  eYLS (Yale Law School) · 2021-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  As global attention turns increasingly to issues of migration, the Indigenous identity of migrants often remains invisible. At the U.S.-Mexico border, for example, a significant number of the individuals now being detained are people of indigenous origin, whether Kekchi, Mam, Achi, Ixil, Awakatek, Jakaltek or Qanjobal, coming from communities in Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala and other countries. They may be leaving their homelands precisely because their rights as Indigenous Peoples, for example the right to occupy land collectively and without forcible removal, have been violated. But once they reach the United States, they are treated as any other migrants, without regard for their status or experience as indigenous peoples. In a recurring set of events, indigenous detainees have been presented translation and legal services in Spanish, when they actually speak only an indigenous language, in cases associated with the separation of children from their families and even the death of individuals unable to describe their health care situation to service providers.In this article, we argue that accounting for the experience of Indigenous Peoples is critical to advancing a human rights approach to migration, and addressing the legacies of conquest and colonization that undergird state policies on territorial sovereignty and border regulation. On the one hand, Indigenous Peoples like other migrants are often fleeing situations of economic, social, and political unrest in their countries. They seek personal and familial security, economic mobility, and political freedom. On the other hand, as “peoples” with political and cultural rights to self-determination and territory, indigenous peoples experience discrimination and violence not only in their individual capacities, but also with respect to their survival as collective entities. Moreover, Indigenous worldviews and relationships with traditional landscapes often predate, by hundreds or thousands of years, the contemporary boundaries of states. For example the Haudenosaunee people of North America recognize their homeland as “Turtle Island” a place not inherently defined by current borders between the U.S. and Canada. The Yaqui and Tohono O’dham peoples’ community and ceremonies stretch across the much contested Mexico-U.S. border, such that their lives and lands have become militarized zones. Family members, sacred sites, subsistence habitats, and migration patterns are similarly dispersed across current socio-political fault lines.Accordingly, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognizes that when indigenous peoples are “divided by international borders,” they “have the right to contacts, relations and cooperation, including activities for spiritual, cultural, political, economic and social purposes, with their own members as well as other peoples across borders.” Other articles define the right to be from violence, to keep families intact, and to maintain an Indigenous identity without reference to national identity or citizenship status. But recognition and realization of these rights raises difficult questions – for example, if Indigenous cultural identity is tied to land and territory, do Indigenous Peoples retain their rights following relocation and displacement? As societies are more mobile, are concepts of individual identity and collective self-determination also mobile, do they go with indigenous peoples when they cross borders whether internal or external to nation-states? Whose obligation is it to effectuate such rights? Can the situation of Indigenous Peoples as migrants be meaningfully addressed through legal regimes of asylum and refugee law – or must they implicate international diplomacy and norms of state-indigenous relations. These are other questions are left largely untouched by federal law in the United States as well as the 2018 Global Compact on Migration. By focusing on the situation of Indigenous Peoples, this article pushes migration law, both in theory and practice, to consider more fully its colonial origins and impacts, and incorporate a broader concept of individual and collective human rights going forward.

  PublisherDOI

• Decolonizing Indigenous Migration

  2021 · 24 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  As global attention turns increasingly to issues of migration, the Indigenous identity of migrants often remains invisible. At the U.S.-Mexico border, for example, a significant number of the individuals now being detained are people of indigenous origin, whether Kekchi, Mam, Achi, Ixil, Awakatek, Jakaltek or Qanjobal, coming from communities in Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala and other countries. They may be leaving their homelands precisely because their rights as Indigenous Peoples, for example the right to occupy land collectively and without forcible removal, have been violated. But once they reach the United States, they are treated as any other migrants, without regard for their status or experience as indigenous peoples. In a recurring set of events, indigenous detainees have been presented translation and legal services in Spanish, when they actually speak only an indigenous language, in cases associated with the separation of children from their families and even the death of individuals unable to describe their health care situation to service providers. In this article, we argue that accounting for the experience of Indigenous Peoples is critical to advancing a human rights approach to migration, and addressing the legacies of conquest and colonization that undergird state policies on territorial sovereignty and border regulation. On the one hand, Indigenous Peoples like other migrants are often fleeing situations of economic, social, and political unrest in their countries. They seek personal and familial security, economic mobility, and political freedom. On the other hand, as “peoples” with political and cultural rights to self-determination and territory, indigenous peoples experience discrimination and violence not only in their individual capacities, but also with respect to their survival as collective entities. Moreover, Indigenous worldviews and relationships with traditional landscapes often predate, by hundreds or thousands of years, the contemporary boundaries of states. For example the Haudenosaunee people of North America recognize their homeland as “Turtle Island” a place not inherently defined by current borders between the U.S. and Canada. The Yaqui and Tohono O’dham peoples’ community and ceremonies stretch across the much contested Mexico-U.S. border, such that their lives and lands have become militarized zones. Family members, sacred sites, subsistence habitats, and migration patterns are similarly dispersed across current socio-political fault lines. Accordingly, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognizes that when indigenous peoples are “divided by international borders,” they “have the right to contacts, relations and cooperation, including activities for spiritual, cultural, political, economic and social purposes, with their own members as well as other peoples across borders.” Other articles define the right to be from violence, to keep families intact, and to maintain an Indigenous identity without reference to national identity or citizenship status. But recognition and realization of these rights raises difficult questions – for example, if Indigenous cultural identity is tied to land and territory, do Indigenous Peoples retain their rights following relocation and displacement? As societies are more mobile, are concepts of individual identity and collective self-determination also mobile, do they go with indigenous peoples when they cross borders whether internal or external to nation-states? Whose obligation is it to effectuate such rights? Can the situation of Indigenous Peoples as migrants be meaningfully addressed through legal regimes of asylum and refugee law – or must they implicate international diplomacy and norms of state-indigenous relations. These are other questions are left largely untouched by federal law in the United States as well as the 2018 Global Compact on Migration. By focusing on the situation of Indigenous Peoples, this article pushes migration law, both in theory and practice, to consider more fully its colonial origins and impacts, and incorporate a broader concept of individual and collective human rights going forward.

• Why so Salty

  Journal of Introductory Biology Investigations · 2019-01-01

  articleSenior author
  Publisher

• In Defense of Property

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2019-12-10 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  A B

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Euphorbia bicolor (Euphorbiaceae) Latex Phytochemicals Induce Long-Lasting Non-Opioid Peripheral Analgesia in a Rat Model of Inflammatory Pain

  Frontiers in Pharmacology · 2019-09-03 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access

  The negative side effects of opioid-based narcotics underscore the search for alternative non-opioid bioactive compounds that act on the peripheral nervous system to avoid central nervous system-mediated side effects. The transient receptor potential V1 ion channel (TRPV1) is a peripheral pain generator activated and sensitized by heat, capsaicin, and a variety of endogenous ligands. TRPV1 contributes to peripheral sensitization and hyperalgesia, in part, via triggering the release of proinflammatory peptides, such as calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), both locally and at the dorsal horn of the spinal cord. Ultrapotent exogenous TRPV1 agonists, such as resiniferatoxin identified in the latex of the exotic Euphorbia resinifera, trigger hyperalgesia followed by long lasting, peripheral analgesia. The present study reports on the analgesic properties of Euphorbia bicolor, a relative of E. resinifera, native to the Southern United States. The study hypothesized that E. bicolor latex extract induces long-lasting, non-opioid peripheral analgesia in a rat model of inflammatory pain. Both inflamed and non-inflamed adult male and female rats were injected with the methanolic extract of E. bicolor latex into the hindpaw and changes in pain behaviors were reassessed at various time points up to 4 weeks. Primary sensory neuron cultures also were treated with the latex extract or vehicle for 15 minutes followed by stimulation with the TRPV1 agonist capsaicin. Results showed that E. bicolor latex extract evoked significant pain behaviors in both male and female rats at 20 minutes post-injection and lasting around 1-2 hours. At 6 hours post-injection, analgesia was observed in male rats that lasted up to 4 weeks, whereas in females the onset of analgesia was delayed to 72 hours post-injection. In sensory neurons, latex extract significantly reduced capsaicin-evoked CGRP release. Blocking TRPV1, but not opioid receptors, attenuated the onset of analgesia and capsaicin-induced CGRP release. Latex was analyzed by mass spectrometry and eleven candidate compounds were identified and reported here. These findings indicate that phytochemicals in the E. bicolor latex induce hyperalgesia followed by peripheral, non-opioid analgesia in both male and female rats, which occurs in part via TRPV1 and may provide novel, non-opioid peripheral analgesics that warrant further examination.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kristen A. Carpenter

  15 shared

• Sonia Katyal

  4 shared

• Paramita Basu

  3 shared

• Taylor L. Harris

  Washington University in St. Louis

  3 shared

• Jennie Wojtaszek

  American College of Medical Toxicology

  3 shared

• Manali I. Patel

  Stanford University

  3 shared

• John Granger

  American College of Medical Toxicology

  3 shared

• Dayna L. Averitt

  3 shared

Labs

• American Indian StudiesPI

Education

• Ph.D., American Indian Studies

  University of California, Los Angeles

  2005

• M.A., American Indian Studies

  University of California, Los Angeles

  2000

• B.A., American Indian Studies

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1997