THE INDIGENOUS LAW CENTRE

MARILYN POITRAS

DIRECTOR, INDIGENOUS LAW CENTRE

The Indigenous Law Centre is undergoing substantial transformation. Our team has been in a dreaming process for several months to vision the best way to Transform Justice by Growing Indigenous Knowledge. We are well on our way.

As we move into our next halfcentury, the Centre is ready to take a new leadership role in legal innovation, to transform law by growing Indigenous knowledge. As the future of law expands to include Indigenous laws and perspectives, new legal forums will emerge and Indigenous laws will be at the centre of the new discipline we now call law. Ancient practices will revitalize stories, traditions and laws which will supplement and transform the current justice model and our traditional knowledge keepers will lead this innovation.

Our strong, almost half-century history of creating access to legal education for Indigenous students and contributing to Aboriginal law with our publication history has driven our team to review and assess where we are and who we are. Our new and growing advisory board includes our Dean, Martin Phillipson, our Cultural Advisor Maria Campbell, former Provincial Cree Court Judge Gerald Morin and Senator Murray Sinclair, former Chief Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They, and our highly engaged alumni, are advising where the Centre needs to grow to meet the needs of the next stage of development in Aboriginal law and legal education.

Dean Roger Carter’s original dream was to create access to law schools for Native people. That dream was realized and since the 1970’s this vision has grown. It came to include a variety of legal education programs and creating a space for Aboriginal case commentary, both live and in print. The Centre has educated over 1,750 students, published books and monographs, built an international student exchange experience and, ultimately, played a significant role to pave the way for Aboriginal law as a legal discipline in Canada. Many of our legal warriors have gone on to the bench, to community leadership, to advocate and to lead in politics and education. We salute the alumni who have gone on to create solid structures, like the Indigenous Bar Association whose lawyers have influenced the courts all over Canada. We also honour the past directors and staff who have worked hard to shepherd students, programs, publications and research through the Centre. Carter’s dream was visionary and he can rest well knowing the impact it has had.

The new path for the Centre will lead the growth of Indigenous law by recognizing the foundation of those laws as coming from natural and spiritual law. Each Indigenous community’s knowledge keepers are our experts in this field. Building on traditional practices, ancestral teachings and working with contemporary issues, we see that justice, environmental relations and social structures will transform and become responsive, in a good way. The Centre will become a space for bringing those thought leaders and knowledge keepers together to nurture the changes into reality. We see this work being built with government, the tech sector, health, environmental centres and, of course, the justice system.

We also hear from our alumni and friends in the courts of the need for the recognition and practice of Indigenous law in a much larger space. We are redesigning our programming and our publications to continue to lead and engage in the transformation of laws and the education of legal participants. An expansion of the internationally known Summer Program, with a new Certificate Program, offering credited law courses in Indigenous and Aboriginal law is under way. Expansion will include a new and exciting journal to advance Indigenous legal learning, teaching styles and language issues, as well as an increase in our publication, virtual legal education and our information footprint. We will also be trained in the keeping or storage of laws, an area that needs much attention and will be a primary focus for us in the

future as our laws are brought into the light and our processes become mainstream.

We have begun to diversify our work on and off-campus and we are reaching out to our Sister Colleges across the country to build with them a national network of knowledge-sharing and legal supports. We will create new research, curriculum and engaged models of community participation for advancing traditional knowledge and transforming justice. With diversity as a major component of our thinking and working processes, the Centre is reaching out to fully include university partners, experts and community members working on the Indigenous legal issues pressuring people today. Our goal: to innovate and co-create laws and legal processes with community; laws that are holistic and inclusive, created through a diverse sharing and that are designed to innovate and support, to teach, reinvigorate and embrace a culture of responsibility.

The legal environment globally is shifting into an inclusive space for Indigenous law and Indigenous people. The Cree concept of wahkotowin - our interdependence and interconnectedness, as humans and to the earth - is becoming a concept many more people can relate to and understand. Thus, wahkotowin will play a key role in the creation of new laws in revitalizing the old ones. We look forward to being involved with this work at the Centre and invite you to join us.

As the world is shapeshifting, the Indigenous Law Centre team sends out our best thoughts and our support to everyone in this time of seclusion and of change and activism. Be safe. Think of others. Look after yourselves and family, and we are all family.

In Spirit, Marilyn Poitras