FLSQ keynote speaker Professor Val Napoleon presents “Indigenous Women Talking: The Work of Indigenous Feminisms in the World,” dividing her talk into five stories that look at contemporary Indigenous law and gender issues and reflections based on her predictions of what will come in the next few decades.
FLSQ keynote speaker Professor Val Napoleon presents “Indigenous Women Talking: The Work of Indigenous Feminisms in the World,” dividing her talk into five stories that look at contemporary Indigenous law and gender issues and reflections based on her predictions of what will come in the next few decades.

The Wetʼsuwetʼen pipeline dispute, reflections on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG), and the stereotypes faced by Indigenous peoples, particularly women, were all topics of discussion at the Feminist Legal Studies Queen’s Conference 2020.

The annual two-day conference, which takes place around International Women’s Day, brought together approximately 60 legal and multi-disciplinary scholars and activists on March 6 and 7. 

The conference began with a keynote address by Professor Val Napoleon, Law Foundation Professor of Aboriginal Justice and Governance. Napoleon – who teaches Indigenous Lands, Rights and Governance at the University of Victoria, where she established and manages the Indigenous Law Research Clinic and combined Indigenous JD/JD program – came to campus as a Queen’s University 2019-2020 Principal’s Development Fund Visiting Scholar.

Napoleon’s unique presentation, titled “Indigenous Women Talking: The Work of Indigenous Feminisms in the World,” was divided into five stories that look at contemporary Indigenous law and gender issues and reflections based on her predictions of what will come in the next few decades. 

Her discussions on the Wetʼsuwetʼen dispute delved into how Indigenous laws are formed, and how colonialism has impaired the existing Indigenous legal structures from resolving the conflict. 

“Indigenous legal orders require civility toward one another, including those we disagree with, and when they break down, we have war,” Napoleon said. “There’s a need to work on rebuilding relationships between Wetʼsuwetʼen groups and a need for hard conversations without imposing stereotypes and judgement.”

The reflection on the current conflict was counterbalanced by another story of Napoleon’s – this one an imagined conversation between two Indigenous law professors many decades in the future. She used the story to note the simplicity that is sometimes attributed to Indigenous people.

“What I hate is the assumption we can only be one thing at a time,” Napoleon said, giving voice to one of her characters. “It is frustrating and it is exactly what leads to us being conflated to the simple, lacking any depth or complexity…[People] assume that I [as an older Indigenous woman] am always agreeable, that I will support whatever they are doing, that I am only interested in the spiritual, and that I don’t think critically or independently.”

Another pair of Napoleon’s stories focused on the importance of Indigenous feminisms to the law and the concept of legal personhood, and increasing the representation of women in the law and academia, in light of the increased attention around MMIWG; and on Indigenous male privilege and its consequences for Indigenous women.

To close her presentation, Napoleon provided a brief overview of her work supporting Indigenous communities in building, or rebuilding, their legal systems. Napoleon engages many Indigenous communities on legal projects around questions of water, land, human rights, governance and child welfare, to name a few topics. 

“When we work with communities on questions of law that they have chosen, we have to consider the sources of law,” she says. “They don’t have law libraries…but we can look at what gives law authority in different situations. It can be slow, iterative and hard work involving as many as 60 oral histories per legal problem.”

The 2020 FLSQ Conference agenda also included several other presenters speaking on Indigenous rights, as well as sustainability, gender equality and inclusion, elaborating on and imagining how to actualize the United Nations’ theme for 2020 International Women’s Day: “An equal world is an enabled world.”

Watch Professor Napoleon’s full keynote address.

Please note that the video transcript has been automatically generated by a transcription service and may not be reliable to an absolute degree of accuracy. 

By Phil Gaudreau