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Professional competence in Aboriginal and Indigenous histories, cultures, and legal issues is essential across all areas of legal practice. Reconciliation is a shared responsibility that the Schulich School of Law remains committed to by continuing to implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)’s Calls to Action and the Calls to Justice arising from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Since the release of these landmark reports, the law school has made meaningful progress keeping reconciliation at the forefront of its mission, through the continued support of its Indigenous Blacks and Mi'kmaq Initiative, the appointment of the Chancellor's Chair in Aboriginal Law and Policy, the introduction of the Aboriginal and Indigenous Law Certificate, and the ongoing efforts of faculty, staff, students, and alumni.

Schulich Law also responded to the need to update its curriculum to reflect the current expectations for competencies for legal professionals.  This has included adding several upper-year courses focused on Aboriginal and Indigenous laws as well as a mandatory first-year course, Aboriginal and Indigenous Law in Context (AILC), that introduces students to the law school's commitment to reconciliation through its teaching, research, and community engagement, and by demonstrating what reconciliation looks like in practice at Weldon.

On Friday, September 25, several members of the faculty of law spoke to the first-year AILC class to share how reconciliation informs their teaching, research, and service, by rethinking how legal research is conducted and applied, and recognizing its role in shaping laws, policies, litigation, and broader legal processes.

The contributions highlighted below represent only a portion of the reconciliation work taking place across the law school and the Weldon community recognizes that meaningful progress depends on its continued listening, learning, and action.

Instruction & Public Services Librarian Kristan Belanger:

Belanger’s work involves guiding the effort to build space for Indigenous law and legal information resources within the library. When teaching the first-year Legal Research and Writing course, she engages with Indigenous law and legal research concepts to enrich students' understanding of all of Canada's legal orders. Additionally, as Research Lead with the Lnuwey Tplutaqan Wikuom, Belanger is engaged in several research projects involving Indigenous legal revitalization projects and improving access to Indigenous legal resources.

Professor Lucie Guibault:

The first-year course on Public Law that Guibault teaches introduces Canada’s constitutional framework. Until 1982, Indigenous communities had been left out of this framework and even today, these communities are still fighting to see their rights respected. She tries to draw the students’ attention to the fact that respecting Indigenous rights is a far cry from recognising Indigenous laws on equal footing with existing law, applying similar considerations to her Intellectual Property law course.

Associate Professor Adelina Iftene:

Criminal law can be used as a tool of oppression, and the system often replicates and furthers the disadvantages Aboriginal and Indigenous people experience. It deals with the relationship between the state and the individual, and it is impossible to teach or research in this field without discussing the significant intersections between colonial state power and the marginalization of Aboriginal and Indigenous people. Iftene’s research into incarceration and sentencing is informed by these significant issues and seeks to reflect them in the reforms she proposes. She also engages with these issues in the classes she teaches – Criminal Law, Evidence, and Imprisonment – seeking to expose students to Indigenous perspectives through readings and guest speakers.

Assistant Professor Karinne Lantz:

Lantz has incorporated reconciliation into her teaching of Tort Law and Damage Compensation by teaching on the Indigenous Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) and the civil justice section of the TRC’s Final Report. Exploring the negotiation, terms, and implementation of IRSSA provides insight into the limitations and benefits of tort law, and how settling tort claims may result in more ‘creative’ remedies that potentially offer a means of acknowledging and addressing harms that could otherwise fall outside the common law's understanding of compensable damage. The TRC Report allows students to reflect on how the civil justice system perpetuates harm for survivors and how procedurally sound litigation strategies employed by defendants may be questionable from a normative perspective. Going forward, she hopes to incorporate Indigenous traditions and perspectives into a module exploring different approaches to conceptualizing damage compensation in the civil justice context.

Associate Professor Andrew Flavelle Martin:

The Supreme Court of Canada has recognized that criminal sentencing is more complex for Indigenous offenders, and that there is a crisis of Indigenous over-incarceration that is an indication of the alienation of Indigenous people from the Canadian criminal justice system. Reconciliation requires addressing this crisis and alienation. His research considers whether and/or how these principles can apply to penalties or benefits outside the criminal law context, and to recognize and address alienation from the justice system and the settler state more broadly, with a particular focus on the professional discipline of Indigenous lawyers and judges.

Professor Sheila Wildeman:

Wildeman teaches Administrative Law, Poverty Law, Public Health Law, and Prison Law, each of which engages law’s role in colonialist injustice and its potential for creative resistance. Over the last decade through extended conversations with Chancellor's Chair in Aboriginal Law and Policy Professor Naiomi Metallic, Wildeman has reformed her Administrative Law course, which centres principles of fairness and justification in judicial review of state decision-making. Over the term, students reflect on the administrative state as a source of colonialist violence while learning how diverse sources of law – international, constitutional, statutory, common law and Indigenous law – may interact to constrain state decisions affecting Indigenous peoples and carve out space for Indigenous legal orders and jurisdiction.