Against Exclusion: Teaching Transsystemically, Learning in Community

Abstract

In September 2018 the University of Victoria Faculty of Law on Vancouver Island, Canada welcomed its first cohort of students to its cutting edge and innovative joint degree programme in Canadian Common Law (Juris Doctor (JD)) and Indigenous Legal Orders (Juris Indigenarum Doctor (JID)). The JD/JID programme draws on the law faculty’s more than two decades of experience and research on Indigenous legal orders, and Indigenous legal education. It is the first of its kind in the world, combining intensive study of Canadian Common Law with rigorous engagement with Indigenous law. The rationale behind this programme is to engage with Indigenous legal orders using the depth, rigour, and critical focus that law schools bring to the study of other legal orders. Pushing against exclusion happening in higher education throughout the Commonwealth and beyond, the JD/JID programme aims to ensure that education in Indigenous Law is no longer an education in exclusion and displacement. This short piece provides necessary background to the programme, including structure and content, and details its transsystemic pedagogical and community-based learning approaches.