Professor John Borrows, OC, FRSC, the inaugural Loveland Chair in Indigenous Law, at Jackman Law, is Anishinaabe/Ojibway and a member of the Chippewas of the Nawash First Nation in Ontario, and one of the world’s leading scholars of Indigenous law. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, an Officer of the Order of Canada and has received seven honorary doctorates and multiple prestigious awards, including the Molson Prize, the Killam Prize, the Governor General’s Innovation Award and the prestigious Mundell Medal for excellence in legal writing.

Professor Borrows’ scholarly work has four main themes. The first is the revitalization of Indigenous law as part of reconciliation in the context of historical wrongs. Second is the implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which he argues is tantamount to an Indigenous international economic agreement. Third is Indigenous approaches to the participatory development of law as a model at a time when democratic institutions are under threat. Fourth is the ability of Indigenous law to draw on the wisdom of the beyond-human world and respect the rights of more-than-human beings: fellow creatures, such as plants, water, land, air, insects, fish, birds and animals that make up the Earth, which is seen as a being in itself, with rights that must be honoured.

Professor Borrows work has changed the way Canadians and First Nations understand their shared history, their legal system and the sources, power and importance of Indigenous law. He has revealed that the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the Treaty of Niagara in 1764 were not intended to be an instrument for subjugating First Nations, but in fact recognized their independence as nations and engaged them as partners in the British Crown’s North American project. He reveals that these historic events, taken together, became Canada’s original Confederation. Building upon this, he has helped us to see that Indigenous peoples, long regarded as being without law because they did not have institutions that resembled western legal systems, have their own legal traditions pre-dating the arrival of European law. It follows that Canada is not bi-juridical as previously thought, but multi-juridical reflecting the legal traditions of its First Nations, plus the civil code of the French and the common law of the English. In the process of reshaping both our understanding of Indigenous law and Canada’s legal system he has shifted our focus from the external legal frameworks within which Indigenous law has persisted to First Nations’ own legal traditions and practices.

Reflecting the need to provide educational opportunities that enable current and future lawyers and jurists to function within Canada’s multi-juridical legal system, Professor Borrows has worked to provide educational opportunities in Indigenous legal studies in Ontario and elsewhere, including the world’s first trans-systemic joint degree program in Indigenous Legal Orders (JID) and Canadian Common Law (JD) and the celebrated immersive land-based program on Indigenous law in his community on the Bruce Peninsula in Southern Ontario – the Chippewas of the Nawash First Nation.

Photo Credit: May Truong