The most widely read magazine for Canadian lawyers
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/1161314
www.canadianlawyermag.com 31 Indigenous Law Research Unit: Established in 2012 and housed at the University of Victoria law school, it provides public legal education. It works with the Indigenous community by invitation, researching and articulating Indigenous laws regarding land and resources. The main source of law drawn on is from oral histories and narratives. The ILRU has worked with communities across Canada, from Micmac in Nova Scotia, to northern Alberta, northern B.C. and Ontario, on issues including water sustainability and management; lands and resources; and harms and injuries. Current projects include child welfare, and human rights within Gitksan law. The ILRU is credited with building a profile for Indigenous law that helped get support for the Indigenous law degree program (below). Joint Degree Program in Canadian Common Law and Indigenous Legal Orders JD/JID: Started by Napoleon and John Burrows at the University of Victoria, the program welcomed its first cohort of students in September 2018 and is unique in the world. It's a four-year professional degree program in which students receive both a Canadian and an Indigenous law degree; the first two years of the program are the equivalent of a regular law degree, but students study Indigenous law alongside Canadian. Napoleon has taught land and property law, John Burrows Anishinaabe and Canadian Constitutional law, and David Milward Cree and Canadian criminal law. Global reach: Inquiries have come from around the world regarding how the joint degree program works. Napoleon travelled to New Zealand in August to talk about Indigenous law issues and what it means to teach Indigenous law. The ILRU has given workshops in places as far-flung as Oslo and South Africa. Early years and activism: At age 17, Napoleon moved to the Smithers-Hazelton area of B.C. There she worked on the Delgamuukw action that became the first aboriginal title case in Canada (Delgamuukw v. British Columbia [1997] 3 SCR 1010) and "heard people talk about their laws, and working hard to make their laws visible to the rest of Canada. That was an incredible opportunity and education; I was so lucky to be a part of that as a young woman." FAST FACTS CL: What are your hopes for the first Indigenous law program? Would you like to see it expand elsewhere in Canada or the world? VN: Absolutely; I think that that's inevitable. As people can see Indigenous law as law, as having accountability, structure, institutions — if you think about all the ways Canadian law is part of your life, your identity as a Canadian, your work life, your ability to navigate in the world . . . all of that is why Indigenous people want to rebuild their law and to figure out how that then relates to Canada. And there are serious issues. If we think about missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, from my perspective, the undermining and destruction of Indigenous law has created lawlessness, and Canadian law has also failed. It has created a lack of safety for Indigenous women and girls, and our work is about rebuilding safety, including inclusion and fairness and protection and accountability — all the things people want for their communities, for their grandkids. In the Indigenous Legal Research Unit, we create educational materials and share them. There's a graphic narrative on Cree criminal law [that is] used in Canada, and a 100-page teaching guide that goes with it. We've almost finished a Cowichan water law graphic narra- tive. We've been developing materials that aren't just for academics but [are] alongside the academic papers that we also write. But there needs to be lots of conversa- tion around what law is; what makes law law? How does it work? What are the stan- dards of legitimacy? What does it mean to be accountable? These are questions that not just Indigenous people but all people should be asking.