Mar. 16: Indigenous Worldviews, Indigenous Law Revitalization and Self Determination as Critical Responses to CNE

IN PERSON REGISTRATION

ZOOM REGISTRATION

The Wall Catalyst Emeriti cohort meet monthly to share research experience and engage with guest lecturers on the topic of the “Climate and Nature Emergency”. These lectures and panel sessions are hosted at the Institute and will be open to the public as well as available over Zoom in the months ahead.

More information available on the UBC Emeritus College website.

Indigenous Worldviews, Indigenous Law Revitalization and Self Determination as Critical Responses to CNE. A Panel Discussion with Robert Clifford and Jocelyn Stacey

The Panel Discussion will be moderated by Jo-ann Archibald Q’um Q’um Xiiem, Professor Emeritus, Educational Studies, Faculty of Education, UBC

Lecture abstracts

Robert Clifford will highlight how the project of Indigenous law revitalization and the reality of climate crisis necessarily interact, so that Indigenous theories and methodologies for Indigenous law revitalization and diagnoses and approaches to climate crisis mitigation are intricately intertwined and mutually reflective. Guiding this project are W̱SÁNEĆ understandings of place and relationship with the more-than-human world, which is a valuable source of wisdom and practice in re-imagining relationships and place within the world, and alternatives to the ‘Anthropocene’.

Jocelyn Stacey will discuss the critical connection between the climate emergency-disaster response-and Indigenous self-determination through sharing the story of her research with the Tsilhqot’in National Government, which emerged from the 2017 wildfires that at the time broke wildfire records in BC. That wildfire response highlighted how provincial and federal responses to emergencies fail to recognize and support the exercise of Indigenous jurisdiction. This story emphasizes how and why Indigenous self-determination needs to lead responses to the climate and nature emergency.

Speaker Bios

Robert Clifford, Peter A. Allard School of Law, UBC

Robert Clifford is W̱SÁNEĆ and a member of the Tsawout First Nation on Vancouver Island. He carries the name YEL.ÁTTE, passed to him by his late grandfather, Earl Claxton Sr.

He lives and writes in his home community of Tsawout. His work engages the resurgence of W̱SÁNEĆ laws and seeks to relate the ways in which those laws reflect and generate out of the values, philosophies, lands, and worldviews of his people.

His work is community focused and draws upon W̱SÁNEĆ law in relation to pressing problems throughout W̱SÁNEĆ territory.

Jocelyn Stacey, Peter A. Allard School of Law, UBC

Jocelyn Stacey is an associate professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Traditional Territory. She researches environmental crises and the visible and invisible ways in which law creates, regulates and prevents these events. Her work focuses on environmental assessment law, disaster law, climate change, emergency powers and the rule of law.

Her current research project, The Law of Disaster Exceptionalism, investigates how law regulates disasters as disconnected and exceptional events, contrary to the experiences of those made most vulnerable to disaster and in spite of our current era of climate disruption.

Prof. Stacey works closely with BC First Nations, advancing the implementation of First Nations’ inherent jurisdiction through and beyond disaster. With the Tŝilhqot’in National Government, she has co-authored two reports on Tŝilhqot’in jurisdiction in the 2017 wildfires and the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.