I’m a litigation lawyer for Indigenous peoples, governments, and organizations.
I write about how Canadian law works, how it doesn’t work, and how it should work.
Staggering number of Indigenous people in jail is a Canadian crisis
To call these incarceration numbers a crisis would be the understatement of the century. We cannot as a society be okay with this, and we cannot be okay with moving on from this, as we do with so many other headlines, without taking real action.
No, Indigenous people are not coming for your privately owned land
Politicians, lawyers and pundits have been stoking fears among property owners that Indigenous people are coming to take their land. The Cowichan decision says nothing of the kind — and the people invoking it know that.
The Indigenous incarceration crisis demands a bolder response: Decarceration
Canada has crossed a terrible threshold: 50 per cent of all women in federal prisons are Indigenous. The solution is not more policy tinkering. It is decarceration — the intentional and directed reduction of the number of Indigenous people in jails as a policy goal in itself.
I write about four overlapping things — but really, I write about one thing. How Canadian law operates, in public and in court, where it meets Indigenous peoples.
The honour of the Crown in practice
Duty to consult, treaty implementation, and what Canadian governments actually owe Indigenous peoples versus what they actually deliver.
State violence and Indigenous peoples
Policing, prisons, deaths in custody. Why the colonial state and the carceral state are the same state, and what justice for bereaved families looks like in court.
How Canadian law gets argued in public
The “rule of law,” “fee simple,” “judicial activism” — the legal language politicians and pundits reach for when they don’t want Indigenous peoples to win, and how to read past it.
Reconciliation, with legal content
What reconciliation means when it is treated as a legal obligation, and not a political slogan.