Academic Partner – University of Victoria

Val Napoleon

Professor Val Napoleon [Indigenous Peoples’ Counsel, LLB, PhD] is the Acting Dean of the Faculty of Law, UVIC, and the Law Foundation Chair of Indigenous Justice and Governance. She is the co-founder of JID/JD (dual degree program in Indigenous legal orders and Canadian common law), and the founding director of the Indigenous Law Research Unit. She is Cree from Saulteau First Nation and an adopted member of the Gitanyow [northern Gitxsan]. Her research areas are Indigenous legal traditions and methodologies (e.g., land, water, governance and democracy, human rights, gender, dispute resolution, and intellectual property), Indigenous legal theories, Indigenous feminisms, legal pluralism, Indigenous democracy, and Indigenous intellectual property. She teaches common property law and Gitxsan land and property law transsystemically or intersocietally in the JID/JD.

Val Napoleon