NOTE: This is an edited version of the interview that was conducted for the project. Many, many, many names of people who initiated and supported the programmatic issues have been removed. This been done for ethical reasons, due to the fact that the Allard School of Law, UBC and Professor Borrows have not have had the time nor resources to contact them to approve the appearance of their names in this interview. At the same time, Professor Borrows wants to highlight and underline the fact that the work described herein was not solely his own. It was the product of many other peoples’ creativity, hard work, struggle and support. These people would be named but for the fact that it would be unethical to do so in this publication without their permission.
Academic weight and heft
Being the Director of the First Nations Law Program was my first full-time academic job. I had been a master’s and doctoral student at the University of Toronto Law School, where I had taught a course called Indigenous Peoples and the Law, but when I started at UBC I was excited to be on tenure track.” UBC was changing at the time. The former Director was in an administrative role, and organizing conferences, workshops and seminars. His position was more focused on developing continuing legal education, creating relations with external communities, and supporting the Indigenous law student’s recruitment and transition to law school. When I was hired, the faculty wanted me to internally focus on the academic dimensions of the program.
So, I tried to help students feel welcome and connected to one another and the broader school. I also focused on expanding the curriculum. There was a course or two on Indigenous issues when I arrived and the students wanted more. I chaired a Faculty committee related to First Nations legal issues and with the students’ advocacy and ideas, alongside faculty support, UBC Law boosted the offerings in the field from two to seven. I also published two or three peer-reviewed law review articles every year while I was there to add further ideas to the field. I really wanted the Program to have academic breadth and strength.
And I was the Director twice – ’92 to ’94, and ’96 to ’98. I really appreciated my colleagues help during that time and I felt their support—those who taught me about the school’s administration and others who shared their experience as leaders who taught First Nations issues and published in the field. The dean helped orient me to law teaching and introduced me to the profession in Vancouver and beyond and several faculty members worked on committees with me to advance these issues. I also had several colleagues who encouraged me and Indigenous people in the community and profession who were also a great help. In the midst of all this help, students played the biggest part in expanding our courses.
I remember we created courses in First Nations Economic Development, First Nations Self-Governance and Comparative Indigenous Rights which focused on US “Federal Indian Law. One faculty member taught a course in Indigenous Peoples and Criminal Justice and another taught about Indigenous Peoples and International Law. There was an introductory “Indigenous Peoples and the Law” class which was part of the curriculum.
We also offered an Indigenous Moot Court experience. The dean had been approached by someone from the north about developing an Indigenous moot that would be national, and involve students from coast-to-coast-to-coast. And I had been at the U of T and an Indigenous student there also had talked about this. When the dean asked—“Do you think we should have a national moot?” I said that would be great. And so Kawaskimhon was initiated, and we were part of that conversation, and helped develop a national moot, so that students would have a credit when they participated.
I also helped create links beyond the school to help the students. I was approached by Indigenous people working in the Legal Services Society who were doing legal aid, and other courtworker-type, Native courtworker–type work, who wanted to expand the field. They wanted to create a clinical program for students at UBC to have on-the-ground experience. So when I was Director, with the help of the Legal Services Society, we developed a First Nations Legal Clinic that has gone on and on and on. I also helped our students connect to broader policy issues. The treaty process had just begun and we travelled to visit leaders working on these issues. I actually remember being at the Squamish reserve as the BC Treaty Process was initiated. We saw Premier Vander Zalm and the federal representative, and Joe Mathias. This I was in my first or second year at UBC. It was a big deal. The Charlottetown Accord was also being discussed as a way to amend the constitution, and it proposed the inclusion of Indigenous rights to self-governance. People were really excited about the future potential of Indigenous law. It was post-Oka, and some people really felt like, “Wow, we need this.” There was also in-your-face activism that ignited people. And after the Oka crisis, and the failure of the Charlottetown Accord, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples was struck. Additional, Indigenous cases also started to flow from the Court: Sparrow, Vanderpeet, Delgamuukw. There were strands generating interest in Indigenous law.
Reasons to stay
We developed initiatives to give reasons for Indigenous students to enroll and stay in law school. We wanted to develop better pathways and possible futures there. They said, “We want to see ourselves in the law school.” They also wanted better networks for getting jobs as well. So, we organized socials, and invited law firms to “wine and chees,” gatherings to meet the students. Students wanted to feel connected. We were really trying to be responsive to their expressed needs and hopes.
[…] We also socialized as a group. We went out to dinners or visited the nearby reserve to enjoy the events there. We also connected through smaller groups. Of course, I was only 29 when I started at UBC. In many ways it felt like I was part of a student group in some ways. This made it easier to be connect too.
We also worked to help people see the opportunities they could enjoy at the Law School. We did a lot of recruitment. We would visit communities and colleges. We also visited with groups of Indigenous students who came to Vancouver from throughout the province for career days. I would speak at these events and encourage them to come to UBC. The admissions director at the time was huge part of these efforts.
[…] The First People’s House was a draw for myself and our students. It was not constructed when I arrived but it opened during the second year that I was there. This was a place where we could hold events, seminars, lectures and celebrations. It allowed us to better welcome students. And that was very helpful. The students enjoyed meeting with the elders there. The First People’s House helped students think about coming to UBC. It really helped having older people there who shared their vision about what the students could accomplish.
Indigenous Laws
When I was the Director of First Nations Legal Studies I also tried to kick-start a research agenda. When you are on tenure track, you’re more than a teacher, you’re also a researcher and writer. The former director had prepared excellent conference materials, but I was expected to make contributions to peer-reviewed scholarship. It was a little challenging because I had not finished my doctorate when I started. So, I was writing chapters of my doctorate as well as writing other papers for law reviews. Fortunately, I successfully defended my doctoral research in 1994. At the same time, I developed another research agenda to better understand Indigenous Peoples own laws, working with a faculty member who wrote legal history, and some Indigenous graduates from the law school.
Four of us went to Musgmagw Dzawada enuwx north-west of Vancouver Island, to talk about Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw law, which was was Judge Alfred Scow’s community. And there was quite a bit of interest around what we might do to facilitate Indigenous law research. Then we went to the Upper Nicola Indian Band in the Merritt area and got to know some folks there. It didn’t result in us creating immediate curricular offerings, but I think these experiences helped to solidify the idea that we shouldn’t just be talking about Western law related to Indigenous peoples. We learned that we should also be getting out into communities and finding ways to facilitate the revitalization of Indigenous law, and then if possible bring this scholarship into the law school.
As I was publishing in law reviews I started to canvass these issues. For example, n 1995 I published an article in the McGill Law Journal called “With or Without You: First Nations Law in Canada”. It was sparked by my visits to these two different territories. It took me beyond what I wrote in my LLM and PhD. So it was an important time for me, and hopefully for my students, too. There were so great students at UBC who would go on to work with their own people’s laws, as well as their interactions with Canadian law.
It was around this time that I also began thinking about teaching Indigenous law as a stand alone subject in Canadian law schools. It was in ’95 that we first talked about developing an Indigenous law degree. This foreshadowed the JD/JID which we would eventually develop at UVic, almost two decades later. I met with Indigenous faculty at the University of Saskatchewan. We sat down and asked “What would an Indigenous Law School’s curriculum look like? Who do we approach to teach these issues?” We decided we needed more graduate students to prepare to teach in the field.
I shared these ideas with my colleagues at UBC. Some faculty were really, really encouraging—there were probably 15 or 20 people who helped me think through the implications of teaching Indigenous peoples’ own laws. Then I also taught the first year legal perspectives class, and I co-taught a course sometimes which included some of these ideas. One of these courses examined issues surrounding law and racism. So the faculty seemed supportive of these ideas. There were some faculty who were more passively involved. Then some of my colleagues who probably that couldn’t care less, and the students would complain about this. […] There was a couple of professors who didn’t want to move the curriculum in that direction. But they were a very small minority. The dean was amazing in her support. Another faculty member who specialized in human rights law was also really enthusiastic.
Community engaged
Returning to our developing community connections, at first I had the sole responsibility to coach the Kawaskimhon moot. Practitioners and other professors eventually joined in. We would get feedback or involvement of other folks. I remember one moot where we learned Nisg̱a’a law and we went to Ontario somewhere for the moot. In preparation we talked with Nisg̱a’a people, and the students brought the Nisga’a legal idea of the common bowl into the moot that year. They were amazing students. So they brought Indigenous people’s own law to the Kawaskimhon process. And I remember that happening in the times that I was coaching the moots. I was the coach, but we would get others’ help.
We also went into the prisons to visit Indigenous peoples. We went out to Matsqui with the studentswith one of the criminal law professors to visit Indigenous people there. We did this two times, maybe—it could have been more than two times. But I know that was memorable for the students. Certainly memorable for me. And again, that’s part of that orientation we developed at that time: we don’t just want to stay within the walls of the law school. We want to be actively community-engaged.
In other community contexts, we found that a couple of times we had our opening welcome for the Indigenous law students over on the [Musqueam] reserve. They had this amazing fish fry, not fry, but fresh salmon, and other good food from the sea. An elder there, who was also the elder with the First People’s House, also welcomed us. Being respectful of the host nation was something we wanted to work on more. One law school alumna from Musqueam was a big part of that. But we didn’t get to the stage I hoped to, and there was still lots of work to do when I was Director.
A lineup of ten students outside my door
[…]Being Director of First Nations Legal Studies was a demanding job. I felt like it was three jobs. And so that was a lot of work—I don’t say I burned out, but I was worried about being able to sustain that kind of a work load. And so when I left UBC I went to Osgoode. I did this because I’m from Ontario, and I wanted to make connections there. It was amazing when I was there. We founded the Intensive Program in Lands, Resources, and First Nations Governments. That’s been now going for over 20 years and we’re at 400 students. And this experience was a forerunner dimensions to field school aspects of the Indigenous law degree we’re teaching [at UVic]. But I might not have gone to Osgoode had I not felt like I was doing three jobs at UBC. And I enjoyed Osgoode, but I received another invitation to come back to UBC, so I did. And I loved it as much as before. But after two more years I found again that I just couldn’t manage the demands of the job, to be publishing, to be doing all this administration, and then to be teaching. It was a lot.
This happened despite so many others being involved. One of my goals when I got to UBC, and this was very explicit, was to push as much responsibility as I could for First Nations Legal Studies outside my doors. I hoped I would have other people pick things up and do the work, which by and large they tried to do. But the kind of help that I needed was lacking. I needed a colleague in an associate director role and this was lacking when I was there. So I would sometimes have a lineup of 10 students outside my door, and they could be coming to deal with personal tragedies in their family, or the stresses of anxiety and depression, or an academic question, or help with funding. They might ask: “Can you write me the letter to help my band know that I’m in good standing?” I enjoyed helping but there was too much to do, and we really needed to reform the systems of support. And I think the school eventually got there. But the two times I was there… I loved it, you can tell I loved it, but it was just too much, you know?
I loved it, but it was too much of a good thing.
Changing the culture
[…] I do know that there were tensions, and to try and address them we held talking circles. So faculty would sit with the students and would share their experiences. I remember those being a big deal, because they involved colleagues who never really had that experience before. I was also so happy that students and faculty spoke from the heart.
So I remember these talking circles having an impact but I can’t remember what triggered them. I remember one faculty member in particular was key supporter of those processes. Not only did the dean encourage them but obviously other colleagues sat in these circles and helped their colleagues, too.
I think one of the issues we addressed was student-faculty relations. In the past there was a divide that said, “We are the faculty. You are the students. They don’t respect us as faculty.” So there [was] a bit of a hierarchy that needed to be broken down, I think. Faculty members’ work in feminist legal studies were dealing with these questions too. But we started to address these challenges. I feel like we were changing cultures. It felt productive to use an Indigenous way of processing information to respect what everyone had to contribute there.
The First Nations Legal Studies Committee was also part of this change. We didn’t use circles but student voices were very prominent in these committees. While this could sometimes lead to a bit of friction, I think that was good. People got a sense that we needed to start thinking about issues differently
I remember one of the complaints the students often made was related to the law firms. They said, “All these law firms are earning millions and millions of dollars off of us as Indigenous peoples and they need to hire us, but they don’t.” I still think that’s an issue. I think law firms are doing better but people felt that money was being taken by these firms, and there was no reciprocity in hiring all these bright young people who had finished with their law degrees. Of course not everyone wants to go into a downtown practice, but some did, and this is why they wanted to see changes