Congratulations to UVic Law PhD student Aaron Mills who was awarded the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s (SSHRC) Talent Award at the 2016 ‘Impact Awards’ ceremony in Ottawa on Tuesday. The SSHRC Talent Award is awarded to an individual each year “who maintains academic excellence, has a talent for research and knowledge mobilization and has demonstrated clear potential to be a future leader within and/or outside the academic sector.”
Describing his doctoral research at UVic, Aaron explains:
At the heart of my project is the idea that indigenous peoples, like all peoples, are free only when living under systems of law that reflect their own deep norms—for instance, their ideas about freedom, justice, and equality—which they have authorized as legitimate. Because Canadian constitutionalism disallows this basic freedom for indigenous peoples, it has institutionalized a relation of domination, the violence of which impacts all Canadians, not just indigenous peoples. Colonialism isn’t a completed historical fact; it is a relational mode and it is thriving. I believe the only way to decolonize our relationship is to empower the revitalization of indigenous legal orders. Healthy indigenous legal orders stand to benefit us all. As such, my project explores the legal order of one indigenous people, the Anishinaabeg (also known as Ojibwe in Canada and Chippewa in the U.S.), of which I am a member. I am articulating a conception of Anishinaabe constitutionalism for the understanding of all Canadians, not just for my own cultural community.
http://www.fondationtrudeau.ca/en/community/aaron-mills
Aaron was recently interviewed on CFAX (with Dean of Law, Jeremy Webber) and CBC’s All Points West where he talked about the award, his scholarship and UVic’s strength in Indigenous law and the proposed JID program. You can listen to both interviews here: CFAX interview / CBC All Points West interview. More information about the Indigenous law initiatives at UVic Law can be found here.
Don’t forget to check out some of Aaron’s scholarship held in the UVic Libraries collections:
- Aaron Mills, “Aki, Anishinaabek, kaye tahsh Crown” (2010) 9:1 Indigenous Law Journal 107.
- Aaron Mills, “Constitutional Stories: Pride, Violence and Citizenship in Canada” (2015) 17 The Cairo Review of Global Affairs 114.
Congratulations Aaron!