Our own study group
In my section, there were three other Aboriginal students. We had our own study group, the four of us. We bonded pretty closely because we met once a week during the school year, and we developed CANs and we would have a rotating dinner between our places.
The Longhouse had peer support training as well that we participated in. We just went to Bowen Island, and then they had some workshops. There were a few First Nation-trained psychologists who came in and helped do the training. So it was a good retreat. We got some basic training, and they had certainly good intention. I don’t think in practice it meant a lot after that I guess. It was just sort of like, “Here are some tools for when someone needs support.”
First Nations Awareness Day
We organized the first First Nations Awareness Days and we had different people come in, give guest presentations on culture and spirituality and so on. And then during second year, the First Nations Longhouse opened up. All of our coordination was sort of self-initiated coordination. We sort of took it upon ourselves to find our other First Nations students and to work with them and do volunteer work and social activities and that. When we were in first year, we got to know a lot of the Indigenous students who were in second and third year, and all these students are still our friends to this day. We see them on a regular basis. And so it was really good for support, because you’d get the CANs and coaching tips on how to get through, and everything else.
I know that we did some newsletters as well. I think that we just did something that was on topical things for First Nations.
Colonial perspectives
The challenging parts were I guess probably financially and so on, being the typical not having a lot of money. Then, too, I was leaving my community, so we had a lot of suicides that September. And I think just the other challenge was with the non-Native students, and some of the different colonial perspectives in the class. I think at that time, the school had a hard time grappling with any proper discussion on First Nations and the law or Indigenous people and the law. So you still had a lot of people who didn’t like having First Nations students in the law school because they thought they were taking up seats from other students. There’s a perception that the First Nations students didn’t have the same criteria when you got called to the bar or there was some fast-track process.
We taught our class Aboriginal title.
We used to actually have a social at a prof’s house every semester. And so you had a number of profs who would host an event for First Nations students, and then they’d have a sharing circle and that.
So there was some profs who were definitely involved in respect to First Nation legal issues. But, by the same token, there was some profs who would not even talk or teach about Aboriginal title. There was at least one professor at the time who denied the existence of Aboriginal title and that one class or that one section never got taught anything about Aboriginal title.
Law school was hard, and it was a bit different back then because there was really no First Nation law content per se. I think the only thing that we maybe covered off is the Sparrow case. In property law, we actually taught the Aboriginal title component. Our professor let the four of us teach a class on Aboriginal title. So we each had a turn presenting to our classmates regarding our conceptions of Aboriginal title.