Constitutional lawyer to discuss Canada's continued pattern of colonization

Posted: February 24, 2012 1:00 p.m.

High profile litigator Mary Eberts will visit the University of Regina February 29 to deliver a lecture entitled ‘Canada’s Ministry of Aboriginal Assimilation and Private Property Development: Still Colonizing After All These Years’. The lecture will examine some of the Canadian government’s current initiatives toward Indigenous peoples, which Eberts argues continues a long and unbroken history of oppression.

“A century and a half after Confederation, Canadian government policy is effectively still working to “assimilate” Indigenous peoples. One can place the government’s current policies into the context of a much larger policy of assimilation,” says Eberts, Ariel F. Sallows Chair in Human Rights at the University of Saskatchewan.

An expert in constitutional law, Eberts helped develop the equality provisions enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and has argued some of this country’s touchstone equality cases before the Supreme Court. She is a co-founder of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) which is an organization devoted to litigation and education on women’s equality rights and has also acted as long-time litigation counsel to the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), a national body representing the interests of Aboriginal women in Canada.

Lecture co-organizer Joyce Green, professor in the Department of Political Science, says that Eberts' insights come at a crucial time in Canadian policy-making.

“At a time when governments are pursuing a number of legislative initiatives affecting Aboriginal lands, resources, and governments,” Green says, “Mary Eberts's analysis is urgently needed. Her work contributes to our understanding of the power relations of dominance and oppression inherent in colonialism and reveals how gendered and racialized distinctions in our laws affect men and women in this country.”

Ebert’s lecture will take place Wednesday, February 29 at 7:00 p.m. in the Research and Innovation Building (RIC 119). For more information: http://www.arts.uregina.ca/general-public/public-lectures/mary-eberts