Bridging the Gap

You could say Casey Matthiesen’s career path began before she was even born. Her birth mother, a member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe living on the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota, decided to give her up for adoption, and it became official with the help of a local lawyer who had no experience in adoption law, but a commitment to getting it right for everyone involved. 

As a kid, Matthiesen knew she was adopted—her parents celebrated and talked about it. It was so woven into her life that she wrote for a school assignment that she wanted to become a lawyer to help other kids have families like she did.

Today, she’s an associate at Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath, and the third-ever Yankton Sioux Tribe member to practice law. But it took her a while to get there. 

Growing up on a third-generation family farm in southwest Minnesota, she was distanced both geographically and culturally from her Native American roots in South Dakota. She says she never felt comfortable with her full identity as a child, even though her family encouraged her to celebrate her heritage. When family tree assignments came up at school, she leaned on the Matthiesen family’s trunk. 

“I was ashamed of being Native American growing up in a small school,” she says. “I didn’t want anything to do with it. I had no positive associations with it in my life.” 

She bloomed as she practiced her painting. “I remember my mom saying my birth mother was creative and a good painter. And that’s what I was doing,” Matthiesen says. “Art: That was my safe haven from math.”

Her art earned her a scholarship to the University of South Dakota, and also afforded her the opportunity to study at Florence University of the Arts in Italy. “It was one of the best chapters of my life, where I really was opened up to diversity, culture, and [new] experiences,” she says. 

She also realized that, despite the “positive expression” it had become, art wouldn’t be the way she’d make her living. But she enjoyed criminal justice and political science classes, and eventually set her sights on law school.

A professor connected Matthiesen with then-U.S. Attorney for the District of South Dakota, Brendan Johnson. She remembers him telling her, “You have such a powerful story, and you should be so proud of your heritage.” Then, when she moved to Minneapolis to attend law school at the University of St. Thomas, she was coincidentally paired with mentor Jeanine Hill, who is also Native American and helped Matthiesen understand how to be an advocate. 

“She was a saving grace, a light in my life,” Matthiesen recounts. Hill also took her to the state Native American Bar Association’s annual meeting. “I remember walking in, seeing these other people who looked like me and who were happy to meet me. It was the first time I had, in my life, been around Native people in that way.” By 2021, she was elected president of the group herself. 

As a summer associate at Robins Kaplan, mentors again gave Matthiesen a “friendly push” to connect to her roots, opening a pro bono case to unseal her adoption records and get her enrolled as a member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe. 

Matthiesen began her career practicing personal injury and medical malpractice law, racking up early experience with depositions, arbitration, and trials. Eventually, she dabbled in finance and business law, which led her to opportunities to represent tribal groups. 

“Tribes are inherent sovereigns under the Constitution, and there are a lot of challenges to tribal sovereignty,” she says. In one often-contentious area, Matthiesen helps clients defend their rights to generate revenue through gaming. 

“My goal is to keep building and establishing relationships with tribes, tribal members and non-natives who have important roles within tribes,” she says.

Matthiesen experienced another major milestone in June 2025: meeting her birth mother. She brought her an abstract painting, knowing her birth mother shared her artistic talent. “It felt to me like an opportunity to signal: No matter how different our worlds may seem, we will always share this, and I’m grateful to you for the decision you made so long ago,” Matthiesen says.

“There was this missing piece in me that I always worried about,” she says. “Would she accept me? Would she think I am using being Native American to get attention as a lawyer? But those worries were wiped away. She was so proud—for both of us. It was so important for me to thank her for the decision she made. It’s allowed me to connect some of the dots over the course of my life.”