You are listening to "Diversonomics", a Gowling WLG podcast Episode 1 Season 4
Roberto: Welcome to Season 4 of Diversonomics. The podcast about diversity inclusion from Gowling WLG. I'm your co-host Roberto Aburto and a new season brings a new co-host, although for those of you familiar with the podcast it's somebody you would have heard in Season 3, welcome this time as a co-host, Cindy Kou.
Cindy: Thanks Roberto. I'm so happy to be here and I'm really excited about our first show of the season, especially to welcome our guest. She was recently recognized as one of the top 25 most influential lawyers in Canada. She is the national leader of Gowling WLG's Indigenous law group and was the first Indigenous woman admitted to the partnership at Gowling WLG. So, please welcome to the show, Jaimie Lickers. Jaimie, can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Jaimie: Well, you've covered all the good stuff, Cindy, but I'll pick up a bit on where you left off. As you mentioned I'm Indigenous myself. I have an Indigenous background and I grew up in my home community of the Six Nations of the Grand River which is here in Southern Ontario. It's an Iroquois community. I spent my childhood years in my community at Six Nations and left here only to go to university and then onto law school, obviously. Never fancied myself turning into an Indigenous rights lawyer, that's for sure. I had big dreams of running a general corporate commercial litigation practice on Bay Street, which was what I did straight out of law school. I think to no one's surprise, more than mine, I woke up one day and realized that where I could probably make the biggest difference in the legal landscape in Canada was practicing Indigenous law. And, the rest is history, as they say.
Cindy: That's great. You have personal experiences and also work a lot with Indigenous clients as you say. Reconciliation is a big concept. It's thrown around a lot, particularly in Canada lately. What does reconciliation mean?
Jaimie: That's a really big question and obviously it's a very timely question. From a legal perspective, if you were to read some of the case law that has come out of the courts in the last decade around the concept of reconciliation, in its strict legal sense reconciliation is the attempt to reconcile the existing occupation, the prior existence of First Nations and Indigenous people in North America with the assertion of Crown sovereignty. But in so many ways it's become a lot more than that legal reconciliation of the those pre-existing interests with that assertion of Crown sovereignty. It has taken on so many branches and so many elements over the last couple of years. Everything from talk of economic reconciliation to cultural reconciliation and historical reconciliation. Each of which is a huge topic. Obviously Indigenous people have an interest in having the recognition of their history, and their prior existence and their contributions to Canada recognized in a way that is meaningful. That's really just a first step towards reconciliation. A hot topic right now is the topic of economic reconciliation and the question of overcoming the stereotypes of Indigenous people as unproductive members of society or as somehow failing to contribute to the wealth and the health and the success of the Canadian economy. Which couldn't be farther from the truth so economic reconciliation is becoming a hot button topic right now and something that you hear discussed a lot.
Roberto: This question is probably a lot more complicated then I would've thought in light of that answer and how multifaceted reconciliation really is. But why is reconciliation important?
Jaimie: That is a big question. I think it's important in a lot of ways. There continue to be significant legal issues that arise as a result of the failure to have true reconciliation right now. What I mean by that is you don't have to read that many cases on Indigenous legal issues to see these struggles arise by judges and by the application of the common law. Two concepts that are really unique and really different than sort of an Anglo-European legal history. Something as simple as the way in which First Nations in Canada hold land. It's something that we say is sui generis in that it is distinct and that it is different. Trying to reconcile complex concepts that come out of this collision of a pre-existence of people who had a very different way of doing things and a very different philosophy and a very different legal and moral order. Then imposing common law and Anglo traditions onto those societies as people we continue to see the conflicts that arise from trying to mesh those concepts. That's one of the big reasons that I think reconciliation is so important. Aside from the importance of just recognizing the richness and diversity of cultures of Indigenous people, and like I said before, the contributions that Indigenous people have made to the history and the development of Canada and where Canada is today in terms of its success.
Roberto: Again, with reconciliation, it's such a big and massive topic. I mean, we have lots of law firms and businesses as listeners. What are some tangible steps that law firms can take with respect to reconciliation?
Jaimie: I think part of what we're doing right now in this podcast is an important step that our law firm is taking to further the goals of reconciliation. Generally speaking, I think it's important, as lawyers and as keepers of the legal profession, to really educate clients when the opportunity arises on the differences in these philosophies and legal histories and to ensure that businesses and individuals, who may not otherwise have any interaction with Indigenous people, that they understand the reason for the issues that exist today. The history of Indigenous people in North America, and the imposition of the very foreign system of law on those people, that have served to really dismantle traditional Indigenous cultures and led to a number of issues which then have themselves led to many other issues. It surprises me that there are still people who don't have any knowledge of the Indian residential school system and the impacts that the forced dissimilation through education, the impacts that that had on generations and generations of Indigenous communities, and how closely tied it is to a lot of the issues that we see First Nations communities struggling with today.
Cindy: Following up on that we have a lot of listeners that are students and while, semi recently, some law schools such as the University of Victoria have started to embed a plurality of legal traditions the Indigenous legal traditions into the education. Not all law schools are there yet. What steps can non-Indigenous students take towards reconciliation.
Jaimie: That's a really important question too although I do want to take a step back from that question for a moment because you noted, rightly, in the introduction to that question that some law schools are much farther down the reconciliation path. Some law schools have made a real commitment to Indigenous content and not just in courses that have the word "Indigenous" in their title. There are Indigenous law courses. There are Indigenous theory and Indigenous traditions courses. But really there should be an element of Indigenous content in every law school class. I can't think of an area of the law that doesn't have interesting nuances and applications when you're dealing with Indigenous issues or Indigenous clients. It's relevant in property law. It's relevant to contracts. It's definitely relevant to constitutional law. It's relevant to criminal law. All of those classes that you have to take as a first year law student have very different applications in an Indigenous context. The fact that still isn't a standard part of the curriculum baffles my mind a little bit, but getting back to your actual question, which is what can non-Indigenous law students do to advance reconciliation. First of all, I think you could demand that content from your law schools. I think it's really important that all lawyers come out of law school ready to practice law with some basic understanding of these legal issues. I also think it's a really great opportunity. The law school environment is a very open-minded, very thoughtful, very academic environment where everyone is meant to be on a quest for knowledge and the hope is that that quest for knowledge is really grounded in a commitment to concepts of justice. If there are Indigenous law students in your class, which based on the statistics I'm seeing, it would be rare to have an incoming class of law students at any school in Canada that doesn't have some Indigenous members. Talk to those students and talk to them about their experiences and their history and their culture. Just get a sense of how varied Indigenous people's experiences in Canada are because they're not all going to have grown up in their communities like I did. There's an increasing population of urban Indigenous people that have a very vibrant culture outside of their lands of their home communities. There's so many different experiences out there and the only way to get to know anyone's experience other than your own is to have these conversations and the law school environment is a great place to have those conversations.
Cindy: That's a fantastic tip or actually two tips and absolutely about embedding different legal traditions. I'm going a bit off script here but just wanted to comment that we already do, in certain law schools, acknowledge different legal traditions between common laws and civil laws. There's already precedent in Canada that we've done that. Follow up question to that. For Indigenous listeners in the practice law do you have any thoughts you wanted to share with them?
Jaimie: I'm sure that they don't need any advice from me because just getting to where they are and where we are, and I can say we because I'm one of these Indigenous practitioners, I know how hard that was. I know how much dedication it takes and how hard you really have to fight for that dream of being a lawyer. It was not that long ago in history that you could not be both a status Indian and a lawyer in Canada. I like to remind people of that because we are not that far away from that era when discrimination and racism was embedded, and some would say still is embedded, in many aspects of our Federal legislation governing the lives of Indians in this country. They don't need advice from me but if I were to say one thing, and primarily towards our younger Indigenous legal practitioners, it's that we need more Indigenous lawyers practicing in the areas of law that we wouldn't traditionally associate with Indigenous law. We need corporate lawyers. We need people who can provide sophisticated structuring advice to increasingly sophisticated First Nations clients who are looking to do business in a way that is comparable with companies in the mainstream. They need the same level of legal advice and legal service. They need corporate governance experts. They need structuring experts. They need tax experts. They need securities lawyers and transactional lawyers. They need real estate lawyers. It's the idea of Indigenous lawyers being confined to this particular way of practicing law is so outdated and litigators are a dime a dozen. I hate to say it because I'm sort of half a litigator myself but there's a lot of Indigenous lawyers who are amazing Indigenous rights litigators. But I always struggle to find those corporate lawyer and those tax lawyers that our clients are looking for and we need more of them. There's no shortage of business, and so if you want to specialize in an area where there's pretty much a guaranteed stream of clients, that would be my recommendation to our young Indigenous lawyers.
Roberto: We need more Cam Cameron's in the world.
Jaimie: We do and we have a couple. We have Jessica George and we have Kelly Campagnola but they're few and far between. We definitely need more of them.
Roberto: Thank you so much for being here with us today, Jaimie. This has been a lot of fun and really educational and an important topic.
Jaimie: It's my pleasure.
Roberto: For our listeners, if you every have any questions, comments or ideas for topics and guests please look us up at gowlingwlg.com and get in touch with us. We'd love to hear from you. Also make sure to check out the show notes for this episode at diversonomics.com. Last but not least make sure to subscribe on Apple podcast so you don't ever miss an episode and, while you're at it, leave us a review. Let us know what you think. You can also follow me on Twitter at @robaburto. Jaimie, do you have anything to plug?
Jaimie: I might as well tell people that they can also follow me on Twitter at @jaimie_lickers. If you're looking to read traditional materials or keep up to date on Indigenous legal issues in Canada I would encourage you to subscribe to our Indigenous newsletter that we put out through the firm.
Cindy: Thank you so much Jaimie. You can follow me on Twitter at @ckoutweets. Diversonomics was presented to you by Gowling WLG and produced by Rachael Reid and edited by Joshua Bowman.