Environmental Challenges on Indigenous Lands

Oonagh E. Fitzgerald was director of international law at CIGI from April 2014 to February 2020. In this role, she established and oversaw CIGI’s international law research agenda, which included policy-relevant research on issues of international economic law, environmental law, IP law and innovation, and Indigenous law.

Kathleen E. Mahoney is a Calgary-based lawyer and has been a professor of law at the University of Calgary for over 35 years.

Hannah Askew is a lawyer of English and Scottish ancestry who practices at the intersection of Indigenous and environmental law.  She is currently the Executive Director of Sierra Club BC and a regular instructor at the Annishinaabe law camps led by Professor John Borrows for the Osgoode, University of Toronto, McGill and Windsor law faculties.

Robert YELḰÁTŦE Clifford is a doctoral candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University.  He is W̱SÁNEĆ and a member of the Tsawout First Nation on Vancouver Island, where he lives and writes. His work engages the resurgence of WSÁNEĆ laws and relates the ways in which those laws reflect and generate the values, philosophies, lands, and worldviews of his people. His work is community-focused and draws upon WSÁNEĆ law as a valuable source of strength, wisdom and authority for answering pressing problems throughout WSÁNEĆ territory.

Robert Hamilton is an assistant professor at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law. He holds a B.A. (Hons.) in philosophy from St. Thomas University, a J.D. from the University of New Brunswick Law School and an LL.M. from Osgoode Hall Law School. Robert is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law. His dissertation focuses on Aboriginal and treaty rights in Canada’s Maritime provinces, and his research engages law, legal history, and theoretical perspectives on law and history. He has published on Aboriginal land and treaty rights in the Maritime provinces and has presented his research at numerous academic conferences. 

James (Sa'ke'j) Youngblood Henderson is a research fellow at the Native Law Centre of Canada, University of Saskatchewan College of Law. He was born to the Bear Clan of the Chickasaw Nation and Cheyenne Tribe in Oklahoma in 1944 and is married to Marie Battiste, a Mi’kmaw educator. In 1974, he received a juris doctorate in law from Harvard Law School.

Darcy Lindberg is mixed-rooted nêhiyaw (Plains Cree), whose relations come from the Maskwacis and Battleford areas. He is an assistant professor with the University of Alberta's Faculty of Law.

Aaron Marr Page is an international human rights and US criminal justice attorney. He serves as managing attorney at Forum Nobis PLLC, an international human rights and environmental public interest law and consulting firm that works with Indigenous peoples and other affected communities around the world struggling to better understand and assert their rights.

Sharon Mascher is a professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Calgary and an honourary fellow at the University of Western Australia. She teaches in the areas of property law, environmental law and ethics and climate change law. Her research focuses on climate change and the intersections between property law, environmental law and Aboriginal land rights. Sharon was a co-organizer of the Indigenous Solutions to Environmental Challenges conference and participated in the Determining Access, Theory and Practice in Implementing Indigenous Governance over Lands and Resources workshop and the Tsilhqot’in Think Tank's Implementing Tsilhqot’in Governance gathering.

Bud Napoleon is a Cree Elder, trapper, hunter, traditional food gatherer and steward of Treaty 8 territory.  He served as Chief of the Saulteau First Nation for two terms, and was one of the founders and the first Chief of the Treaty 8 Tribal Association. He formerly worked for the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs. He was one of the founders of "Pemmican Days" for the Saulteau First Nation which continues to this day. 

Graeme Reed is a doctoral candidate at the University of Guelph, studying the intersection of Indigenous governance, environmental governance and the climate crisis.