Michael will be participating in three conferences this Spring. All focus, in one way or another, on the rightful place of Indigenous jurisdiction in Canada.
The first, on March 18, 2021, will be hosted by the University of Québec. The topic is “Can Sovereignty Exist Within Sovereignty?”. Michael will be one of two presenters, along with Stephen Tierney, Professor of Constitutional Theory at the University of Edinburgh Law School. Taking as a starting point the ideas of Haudenosaunee scholar Audra Simpson, we will explore her idea of “nested sovereignty”, created by the historic resistance of Indigenous peoples to state control of their lives.
The second, to be held on April 8, 2021, is a conference to debate the ideas presented by Anishinaabe legal scholar John Borrows in his book “Canada’s Indigenous Constitution”. Michael will be chairing and commenting on a panel called, “Indigenous legal traditions, the common law and the civil law in Canada/ Les traditions juridiques autochtones, la common law et le droit civil au Canada: ‘Working against and alongside each other’?” Speakers on the panel will include: Jean Leclair (University of Montreal), Sarah Morales (University of Victoria) and Joshua Nichols (University of Alberta).
The third conference is the annual meeting of the American Law and Society Association, to be held from May 27 to May 30, 2021. Michael will present on “Legal Pluralism and the Recognition of Indigenous Legal Orders”. The other panelists will be Dwight Newman (University of Saskatchewan), Bertram Turner (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), and Gregoire Mallard (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva).
Stay tuned!