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| Joan Jack |
Having practised law for decades as an Indigenous lawyer in Canada, I’ve witnessed first-hand how deeply the legal system misunderstands who we are as Indigenous Peoples. Most lawyers — both non-Indigenous and many Indigenous colleagues shaped by colonial education — interpret Canadian law solely through a Western legal framework. They fail to engage with the complex, land-based, relational legal systems that continue to govern Indigenous nations across Turtle Island.
The legal profession’s blind spot
While the Canadian legal profession often champions procedural fairness, it routinely disregards the fundamental reality that Indigenous Peoples live under distinct and valid legal orders. These systems are not folklore or cultural symbolism; they are laws — rooted in centuries of governance, responsibility and relationships with the land. Yet Bill C-5, which accelerates the federal approval process for projects deemed in the “national interest,” is poised to marginalize these legal traditions even further.
The legal community is largely unprepared for what’s coming. A compressed two-year approval timeline will trigger a legal feeding frenzy. Firms will race to represent Indigenous clients navigating increasingly complex negotiations over pipelines, mining, transmission lines and other extractive infrastructure. But who will these clients rely on? And are those lawyers equipped to advise within Indigenous worldviews, not just Canadian legal standards? The answer, in most cases, is no.
Misapplied legal advice — with real consequences
Most legal advisers, even those with good intentions, do not understand Indigenous law and governance. Their advice is filtered through paradigms of property, sovereignty and profit. This distorts what is offered to Indigenous leadership: short-term impact-benefit agreements, narrow readings of consultation obligations and transactional arrangements that sidestep true consent. In fast-moving legal contexts like Bill C-5, this isn’t just a flaw — it’s a threat to Indigenous self-determination.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Canada has adopted into federal law, requires free, prior and informed consent before development can proceed on Indigenous lands. Yet Bill C-5 frames consultation as a procedural box to check — an obstacle to economic growth rather than a space for Indigenous law and jurisdiction to guide decision-making. This contradiction cannot be overlooked.
Culturally competent legal capacity is not optional
For Indigenous Peoples, the acceleration of project approvals means a race to secure sound, culturally aware legal representation. But in a legal profession that has barely begun to decolonize its education and practice, there is no real infrastructure in place to meet that need. Indigenous leadership will be left choosing among counsel who may not understand their values, their legal orders or their visions for the future.
And so, the cycle continues: fast-tracked development, rushed agreements and legal outcomes that compromise Indigenous jurisdiction under the guise of economic progress.
Indigenous law is law
This is not a matter of ideology; it is a matter of law. Indigenous legal orders continue to exist and govern, despite Canada’s centuries-long efforts to erase or absorb them. These laws must be respected as foundational, not as afterthoughts. If Indigenous leadership is to meaningfully engage with Bill C-5 or any future infrastructure regime, we must assert not only our right to be consulted, but our jurisdiction to co-govern as the means of accommodation.
The legal profession must also transform. It must do more than provide pro forma consultation training or occasional cultural competency seminars. It must reckon with the legitimacy and applicability of Indigenous legal orders and rebuild its frameworks around a plural legal landscape.
What now?
If Canada is serious about reconciliation, and not just rhetorical inclusion at the performative level, then Bill C-5 must be reworked. The legislation must embed Indigenous co-governance from its foundation. It must ensure that project approval processes are not just faster, but more just. And it must support Indigenous nations in building and funding legal capacity on their own terms.
Because without these reforms, Bill C-5 will not be a tool for building Canada. It will be another tool for the continued dismantling of Indigenous law and jurisdiction.
We do not need faster approvals. We need deeper respect, stronger consent and substantial accommodation through legal solutions that honour and are based on the laws that have governed our lands for millennia — Indigenous laws. Anything else will be “bigger beads and trinkets.”
Joan Jack is an Ojibway woman and member of the Berens River First Nation in Manitoba. She is also married and adopted into the Taku River Tlingit First Nation in B.C. She is a mother to many children, a grandmother and auntie to many more. Besides being a lawyer and educator, Joan is an activist and is proud to say stands for Indigenous women always and has most recently created a private Facebook group to bring together Indigenous grandmothers and aunties and her group now has over 20,000 members and an average activity rate of over 80 per cent. Learn more here: www.nakinacall.ca
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