This was an interview that took place March 14, 2019 after the Professional Development luncheon where we were honored to hear from Elder Larry Echo Hawk, Emeritus General Authority, current Special Counsel for Indian Affairs for the Governor and Attorney General of the State of Utah. Elder Echo Hawk will be speaking on “The Power to Change”.
Larry Echo Hawk:
Larry was born in Cody, Wyoming in 1948. He was raised in Farmington, New Mexico. He earned a football scholarship to Brigham Young University and graduated in 1970. He thereafter earned a Juris Doctor Degree from the University of Utah, and took graduate studies in business at Stanford University.
Larry Echo Hawk served as the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs in the United States Department of the Interior. While serving three years in the Obama Administration he was on a leave of absence as a Professor of Law at Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School. Prior to joining the BYU law school faculty in 1995, Larry Echo Hawk served as the Attorney General for the State of Idaho. In 1991, he became Idaho’s 30th Attorney General and the first American Indian in U.S. history elected as a state attorney general.
On March 31, 2012 Larry Echo Hawk was called to serve as a General Authority Seventy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 2018 Elder Echo Hawk was released from full-time church service and is now designated as an Emeritus General Authority Seventy. He presently serves as Special Counsel for Indian Affairs for the Governor and Attorney General of the State of Utah. Larry Echo Hawk is a member of the Pawnee Indian Tribe and served honorably in the U.S. Marine Corps. He and his wife, Terry, have six children, thirty grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.