We asked the professor if we could teach the class
I think one of the best things that came out of law school was the relationships that we formed with other Indigenous students. There was a real support system that was already existing amongst Indigenous students when I first entered, and so there were a number of people in third year and even alumni who we could go to with issues that we had. And a lot of the issues, they weren’t academic issues. They were about the existing racism. There was a lot of very open and overt racism at law school when I attended. It was the first year that Aboriginal title was being taught in first-year property, and one of the professors refused to teach it. And in my class, to my professor’s credit, the only materials that he had were published from the BC Forest Association, as we—First Nations people—and the forest industry were sort of at a war, a war in the woods. So there were three other Indigenous students and myself in our small group, and we asked the professor if we could teach the class.
And I think there was a lot of that, that the academy did not have very many trained people that had any knowledge of Indigenous peoples in British Columbia or recognized the history of Indigenous peoples in British Columbia. It was the year they had just hired Professor John Borrows, and I think that he was probably the first Indigenous person on a tenure track at UBC. That was his first year at teaching as well. In many of the classes that I was at, we were basically asked to address any issue surrounding Aboriginal people, simply because the faculty didn’t have that knowledge.
I often feel like I should never have had to pay tuition in law school because we were always called upon to educate students and faculty around Indigenous issues.
Our own peer support network
And I also have to say that I’m glad that I went to UBC. I mean, I didn’t understand that people apply to a number of different universities. I mean, I’m from British Columbia. I wanted to stay in British Columbia. I needed family support because I was a single parent and I didn’t have the financial ability to move anywhere else. So I am very thankful and grateful that I was able to attend law school at UBC. The other Indigenous students that I met in law school were lifelong friends because we’d come from other Indigenous communities in British Columbia that faced similar circumstances and situations. And I learned as much from fellow students as I learnt from faculty. I learnt as much from other Indigenous students as I did from faculty. We had a study group, the four of us in our section, and we basically taught each other the course material. As students, we formed our own peer support network with other Indigenous students, so that all of us could be successful.
The first Indigenous Awareness Week
I think there probably was [Indigenous student government], but I don’t believe that it was very formal. I don’t think we had an executive. I mean we operated more in line with Indigenous ways of governance, where we got together and we had discussions. That was also the first time there was an Indigenous Awareness Week at the law school, and it was all student-run. We had no support from faculty, we had no support financial or otherwise from the law school. It’s something that we conceived of ourselves and we put on ourselves. We even invited all the law students to the Longhouse where we put on a dinner that we as students contributed all of the food. I would say there was probably 150 people that showed up. And there was a dance group that came from Bella Bella. They were students in the faculty of teaching, one of them, and so they came in to help us with that awareness. But it was student-led and student-run. I know that that’s changed.
Musqueam Welcome
A Musqueam law school alumni, [during] the first-year orientation, would host on her own dime a barbecue at her house at Musqueam and formally welcome the Indigenous students that were starting at UBC. She did that for years. She opened up her home and supplied all the salmon, and she would host a big barbecue. It was so important in our culture to be properly welcomed to UBC by a Musqueam person whose territory UBC is on. They gave up a lot for UBC, and it was really nice to have that proper cultural protocol happen in the first week of orientation at law school. It was important for me, and probably other Indigenous students too.
Addressing racism
I’m the kind of person that erases bad experiences. I really try not to hold onto racist events. However, they did occur regularly when I attend law school at UBC. Yeah, there were lots that happened. Lots of things were said. Lots of things were done. I bring up historic racism because it goes to the need to address racism and discrimination. So I think that that’s important to know: “This is what we’re doing to address these types of situations”.
Let’s take concrete steps towards addressing any racism that may still exist at the law school. And when we talk about it, if you know human rights law, it’s not just what is said, it’s the effect of what is said and what was done. And really it points to the faculty and students not having been educated about the history of Indigenous people and settlers in BC. And I really hope that that is a priority to ensure that the faculty recognizes the importance of Indigenous people in British Columbia.
You’re not qualified to teach here if you don’t have that understanding. It has to be part of the qualifications of being a professor of law at UBC. Thirty-four different languages, and peoples—we’re not all the same in British Columbia. It’s one of the most diverse places on earth. And there needs to be that recognition. It’s different from anywhere else in the world. It’s different from anywhere else in Canada. And to understand our systems of governance and laws, I think that that needs to be taught. The fact that Aboriginal title wasn’t taught in law school before 1992 is negligent. You can’t practise law in British Columbia, especially in resource development, without having a knowledge about Aboriginal title and rights and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Legal reconciliation
I wanted to talk a little bit about admissions and the background for the program as I understand it. The first Indigenous people to attend UBC Law in the 1960s and 1980s talked quite openly about the barriers to being successful at law school, including the financial barriers and having to take years off to be able to afford to come and to complete law school and also talked about the admission of other Indigenous students and the benefit to society, it was grounded in issues around Aboriginal title. And, one of those students went on to be one of the authors of section 35 of the Constitution. The idea was to have Indigenous students from British Columbia to be able to get law degrees to become part of the discussion about what we would now call legal reconciliation with respect to land in British Columbia. And this really grew out of the work of UBCIC addressing the land question in the 1960s.
The idea was to have Indigenous students that were from communities in British Columbia to become educated to be able to not only address land issues but also other social justice issues—criminal law, family law—to be able to improve Indigenous people and Indigenous communities’ social and economic status. And I would like the program at UBC to continue for Indigenous legal students in the same vein—that they are going to be contributing to the betterment of Indigenous people as a whole and Indigenous communities. That’s why I think that it’s important for the program to continue. But in order to do that, we need to have students admitted that their statement of intent is to work for social justice and to work towards reconciliation.
And I like to talk about the different types of reconciliation. Individual reconciliation—we saw that with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the small nominal payments from the government to people who attended residential school. We’re starting to see some social reconciliation in terms of education, and access to health care, in an effort to try to close that social and economic gap for Indigenous people.
And then there’s legal reconciliation that’s been defined by Supreme Court of Canada as reconciling Aboriginal title and Crown title, and their jurisdictions over lands. That’s a process that I think will take longer than individual and social reconciliation. And we have to look at this sort of on a timescale of other common law areas, like contract law. We have to realize that we’re just part of this process. We’re not going to be able to solve and come to conclusions on these issues with a quick fix like legislation. We need to get this right.