Indigenous Justice and Allyship: Reimagining What the Law Can Do
- Date
- October 23, 2025
- Time
- 12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. ET
- Location
- POD-457 (lunch will be provided)
This Speaker Series talk invites students and faculty to reimagine how Indigenous legal orders and methods can shape just relations in Canada today within law schools and communities.
Drawing on teachings about responsibility, reciprocity, and grounded decision-making, Dr. John Borrows will explore how Indigenous justice practices illuminate pathways for and meaningful access to justice. He will also discuss the role of allyship, particularly relationships between Indigenous and Black communities, in building legal infrastructures that redistribute opportunity and repair historical and ongoing harms.
Dr. Borrows will offer examples of legal methods (story, land-based practice, deliberation, and community governance) and show how these methods can unsettle default assumptions. Participants are invited to imagine institutions that are not only compliant with rights but filled with dignity, belonging, and shared prosperity.
John Borrows B.A., M.A., J.D., LL.M. (Toronto), Ph.D. (Osgoode Hall Law School), LL.D. (Hons., Dalhousie, York,SFU, Queen’s; Law Society of Ontario), D.H.L, (Hons., Toronto), D.Litt. (Hons., Waterloo), F.R.S.C., O.C., is the Loveland Chair in Indigenous Law in the Henry N.R. Jackman Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto.
His publications include, Recovering Canada; The Resurgence of Indigenous Law (Donald Smiley Award best book in Canadian Political Science, 2002), Canada's Indigenous Constitution (Canadian Law and Society Best Book Award 2011), Drawing Out Law: A Spirit Guide (2010), Freedom and Indigenous Constitutionalism (Donald Smiley Award best book in Canadian Political Science, 2016), The Right Relationship (with Michael Coyle, ed.), Resurgence and Reconciliation (with Michael Asch, Jim Tully, eds.), Law’s Indigenous Ethics (2020 Best subsequent Book Award from Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, 2020 W. Wes Pue Best Book Award from the Canadian Law and Society Association).
Dr. Borrows is the 2017 Killam Prize winner in Social Sciences and the 2019 Molson Prize Winner from the Canada Council for the Arts, the 2020 Governor General’s Innovation Award, and the 2021 Canadian Bar Association President’s Award winner. He was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2020.
Dr. Borrows is a member of the Chippewa of the Nawash First Nation in Ontario, Canada.