Violence as teacher and mentor
The Faculty of Law welcomes Professor for a talk on missing and murdered Indigenous women.
Abstract
What are we learning from the heterosexual, transgendered and two-spirited women and girls sacrificed in violence within our communities?
Hearing about the loss of a community member to violence may bring us all to a sobering second thought, may change the dynamic of our family, our community, or our very personhood. This kind of loss is cause to look over your shoulder, lock your door, pull your sweater a little tighter around you, your family a little closer, may push you to numbness, or to live on the edge a little further. It may find you challenging life itself to come out and take you on. We all try to make sense of violence and then try to continue on with our lives. How? What do we learn though this loss? What might we learn? How can we honour the feminine?
About the speaker
Marilyn Poitras is Michif Irish from the prairies and has taught at the College of Law, University of Saskatchewan, since 2009. She is a student of Indigenous legal traditions and has worked on ancestral domain or Indigenous land issues for all of her career. She works and teaches with Elders across the country. Her legal expertise reaches into constitutional and Aboriginal law as well as negotiation on Indigenous land issues both in Canada and the Philippines.
Marilyn received her law degree is from the University of Saskatchewan and her masters in law from Harvard Law School. She has worked with many traditional teachers, Cree, Dene, Saulteaux, Michif and Inuit within Canada. She works within community to create discuss and design opportunities for Indigenous participation in the Canadian politic, in rural and urban issues and on inclusion of Indigenous voice, philosophy and laws in as many places as possible. In 2017, she stepped down as a Commissioner to the National Inquiry for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls created by the Canadian government in 2016.
About the Patricia Allen Memorial Lecture
Created in 1992 by the Class of 88 in memory of classmate Patricia Allen, a graduate of the Faculty who was senselessly murdered, this annual lectureship is devoted to sensitizing and educating the legal community and others about pressing social and legal issues, particularly that of violence against women. This lecture is part of the Annie MacDonald Langstaff Workshop series.
A request for 1.5 hours of accredited Continuing Legal Education for jurists has been made to a recognized provider.
