Life skills and career tips for Canada's lawyers in training
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/708249
this would continue for some time so things really can be put in place that will make a real diff erence." Bilson adds the Law Society of Saskatchewan is taking a serious look at the Calls to Action. The road ahead "One of the comments I would make about the relationship with 27 and 28 is that there is a lot of work for lawyers to do and law schools have a lot of work," says Cra . "I read into those two calls the obliga- tion of judges to start thinking about how indigenous law interacts with the legal system into which they work in their courtrooms." Cra says the resolution of land claims and treaty rights along with lower incarceration rates among indigenous people will help measure the progress of the Calls to Action. She says another thing to consider is how people are feeling about their interaction in the legal system. Cra stresses the importance of building relationships like they do in Anishinaabe law. "I had a non-indigenous senior counsel who a er a few oppor- tunities to interact fi nally said, 'I now understand this idea of bas- ing your law on relationships. It has taken me a long time to get here, but now I understand why it's so diff erent, a diff erent realm of decision-making, the legal players are not the same, and we need to think about broader implications, whereas law is about coming in and pinpointing something very specifi c that indigenous legal systems really take the broader overall view in order to make prin- cipled decision-making based on those relationships.' To me, that was the greatest success of this work. It's not just about convincing non-indigenous people that indigenous law exists but actually say- ing this is a system that might be able to off er something better than any other legal system." e University of Victoria's Johnson agrees there is a lot of work that needs to be completed, adding it's time to look within for an- swers. "What do we learn, not from the representation of Indians in westerns, but what do we learn about settlers from our obsession to this form of storytelling? What is it that we are telling to our- selves?" says Johnson. "So, it meant that I needed to start turning the lens around to really make the focus on settler society and on our stories and the work we as settlers have to do to be full partici- pants in a reconciled Canada, but there is a huge amount of work for settlers to do." features 4S C A N A D I A N L a w y e r 4STUDENTS AUGUST 2016 59 Untitled-3 1 2016-07-08 1:55 PM Untitled-3 1 2016-07-08 1:50 PM