Offered by the University of Tulsa College of Law, the Native American Law Certificate program, launched in 1990, reflects the school's mission of trying to better serve American Indians and Alaska Natives in Oklahoma who, according to the 2006 U.S. Census estimates, make up 6.8 percent of the state's population. This number is significantly larger than the 1 percent they represent nationally. The University of Tulsa's program also reflects a larger movement among law schools across the country to both establish as well as expand Native American law course offerings that are increasingly being regarded as a fundamental component of a well-rounded law education. "There is a greater awareness today in general of the importance of studying both Indian law as well as tribal law," says Heather Dawn Thompson, president of the National Native American Bar Association and a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. "And law schools across the country are gradually but surely responding to that with a variety of different programs," Thompson added. Those programs are mostly designed to study how tribal governments, of which there are more than 560 in the United States that are officially recognized by the federal government, interact with both federal and state governments. Although law schools in most states offer at the very least a federal Indian law course, which is usually both a survey and introduction to the material, the greatest concentration and variety of course and program offerings are based in the Great Plains and western states, where American Indians make up a larger percentage of the population.