The (Canada) Indigenous Bar Association is working on a project inspired by the work of the Women’s Court of Canada. Organizers Professor Larry Chartrand (Saskatchewan) and Professor Naiomi Metallic (Dalhousie) held an initial meeting at the Academics’ Workshop in November, 2018. Here is a partial description of the project, taken from a call for participation from 2018 (I just became aware of it today):
[T]his year’s Academics’ Workshop seeks to disrupt current thinking around Section 35 Aboriginal rights and reimagine how these cases could have been decided. What if Calder, Sparrow, Van der Peet, etc. were written from the perspective of Nisga’a, Musqueam or Stolo law? What if the Supreme Court actually questioned Crown sovereignty or the doctrine of discovery? Or what if Aboriginal rights were read consistently with international human rights obligation, such as the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples? What if treaty obligations in Marshall were truly understood from a Mi’kmaq understanding of the Covenant Chain of Peace and Friendship Treaties? Or, what if Ktunaxa had actually been informed by an intersectional approach to s. 2(a) and s. 35?
I look forward to following the success of this project!
