Wednesday December 1st, the Sustainability Council is inviting professor Val Napoleon, Acting Dean of the University of Victoria Faculty of Law, to talk about indigenous law.

Join Professor Val Napoleon (Indigenous Peoples’ Counsel, LLB, PhD) for a virtual talk on the topic of how Indigenous intellectual and legal resources, including narratives, oral histories, and stories, might inform and expand discussions about sustainability.

Val Napoleon is the Acting Dean of the University of Victoria Faculty of Law, and the Law Foundation Chair of Indigenous Justice and Governance. She is the co-founder of the JID/JD, a dual degree program in Indigenous legal orders and Canadian common law, and the founding director of the Indigenous Law Research Unit. She is Cree from Saulteau First Nation and an adopted member of the Gitanyow (northern Gitxsan).

Her areas of research are Indigenous legal traditions and methodologies (e.g., land, water, governance and democracy, human rights, gender, dispute resolution, and intellectual property), Indigenous legal theories, Indigenous feminisms, legal pluralism, Indigenous democracy, and Indigenous intellectual property. She teaches common property law and Gitxsan land and property law (intersocietal) in the JID/JD program.

 

The Sustainability Council’s ongoing lecture series explores local and global perspectives on sustainability, equity and climate action. Hear researchers and practitioners from the University of Alberta and beyond in fields ranging from engineering to ecology, public health to poetry, native studies to nanotechnology.

Steering Committee

The Sustainability Council’s Research Steering Committee guides the selection of speakers for this lecture series.

Meet the Committee