First Nations legal advocate Doug White lectures at OISE on Social Change and Reconciliation: Pursuing Social Justice in the 21st Century
May 5, 2015
First Nations legal advocate Douglas S. White, Director of the Centre for Pre-Confederation Treaties and Reconciliation at Vancouver Island University, lectured on Social Change and Reconciliation: Pursuing Social Justice in the 21st Century on Thursday, April 30 at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) University of Toronto.
One of the greatest public policy challenges and imperatives of our time is the need to rethink and rebuild the Crown-Indigenous relationship in Canada and to achieve meaningful and lasting reconciliation and justice.
In his lecture, White explained that much of the progress over the past 50 years has been marked by dramatic legal decisions (Calder, Haida Nation, Tsilhqot’in Nation) and political achievements (s. 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982) and yet, while we have mostly moved away from explicit harm-based relations (residential school, dispossession), we have not built relations of kind necessary for meaningful reconciliation.
This should deeply trouble all aspects of Canadian society, because it is a precursor to further suffering of Indigenous peoples and conflict with the Crown and third-parties. Part of the answer lies in social understanding and knowledge as a necessary driving force of social change toward social justice.
Douglas S. White, BA, JD, is a member and former Chief of the Snuneymuxw First Nation in Nanaimo, BC. His Coast Salish name is Kwul’a’sul’tun and his Nuu-chah-nulth name is Tlii’shin. He practices as a lawyer and negotiator across the country for First Nations governments. He was recently named the 2015 recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award by the University of Victoria Faculty of Law.
The Centre for Pre-Confederation Treaties and Reconciliation was established in 2014 by Vancouver Island University to advance research, understanding, and public dialogue in relation to Pre-Confederation Treaties across the country and to wrestle with the challenge of reconciliation.
