Supporting your community’s
Sovereignty and Inherent Jurisdiction
I support Indigenous governments to protect jurisdiction and rights, enforce treaties, and resolve historical claims
How I Support Indigenous Exercises of Rights
I advise and support Indigenous governments to safeguard their nation's rights and enforce inherent jurisdiction and agreements. My dedicated services include:
Rights Advocacy
I represent Indigenous governments to protect and manage rights.
Jurisdictional and Self-Government Rights Counsel
I provide legal guidance to maintain land stewardship, sovereignty, and self-determination.
Treaty Negotiation and Enforcement
I advise on the enforcement of treaties with the Crown government and secure other agreements.
Specific Claims Resolution
I help First Nations resolve historical grievances against Canada and redress the Crown's past wrongs.
Law Reform
Pictured above, personal photo of Lake Slocan on the shores of former Japanese internment/incarceration camp at New Denver, BC. The image that appears next to my name draws from the Japanese kanji for my last name "kawa" being river, and from personal and community resilience and the concept of crossing mountains.
Where I Come To This Work From
My Japanese-Canadian grandparents and their communities endured dislocation and dispossession which the Canadian government promised to prevent going forward.
Honouring my grandparents and enforcing this promise drew me to obtain a JD from the University of Ottawa. I now support Indigenous governments as they pursue wide-ranging objectives and in my work apply the strategic insight I gained over the past ten years while an intern with the Specific Claims Tribunal, clerk at the BC Supreme Court, as counsel directly serving Indigenous governments, and as non-litigation counsel at the federal Department of Justice supporting the negotiation and implementation of land claim agreements.
I am passionate about the redistribution of power and resources as influenced by my clients' and my own family's experience, anti-oppression work, and Black Feminism. I am honoured to work with Indigenous Peoples as they exercise self-determination and their own legal orders.
Innovating and Advancing Legal Reform
Replacing the test for Aboriginal Rights:
Excerpt: In the second article of our firm’s four-part series on Montour, I examine how Montour ’s shift in thinking about Aboriginal rights marks a crossroads in Canadian law’s commitment to racial justice in judicial decision-making. In Montour, Justice Bourque of the Québec Superior Court set the stage for eliminating the Van der Peet test. If our legal system can become truly just, it must include racial justice, leaving no place for the Van der Peet test. The choices that judges make will determine whether we get there.
Abstract: Twenty years after the Supreme Court of Canada authored the test for Aboriginal rights in R v Van der Peet, the test is no longer viable. In the wake of diverse and persistent criticism, the test and Indigenous claimants have suffered from what has become an incoherent formula for establishing rights. On the eve of the test’s twentieth anniversary, this paper picks apart the initial formula, juxtaposing it against other Canadian rights jurisprudence and critiques of the test, and suggests a new formula going forward. Specifically, the paper uses rights jurisprudence to rearrange the test so that the sui generis aspect is focused not on the interest at stake, but the
basis for protecting that interest. Reconciliation plays a significant role in the new formula, requiring a greater need to look into the relationships between the Crown and Indigenous peoples and how those relationships have worked to threaten specific Indigenous interests. The protection resulting from applying the new test encourages remedying those relationships. The new test avoids the problems of stereotyping and exclusivity for which the old test is critiqued. Finally, the paper provides examples as to how the new test would affect an Aboriginal rights claimant.
Link: https://commons.allard.ubc.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1121&context=ubclawreview
Right of Jurisdiction:
Abstract: This paper focuses on the duty to consult and accommodate as it applies to the right of Indigenous jurisdiction. It contends that the right, as accounted for by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), attracts the duty and that such duty could be used to challenge limitations on Indigenous jurisdiction under proposed legislation (Bill C-61 aka First Nations Clean Water Act, or future versions of it) and the long-standing Indian Act. The paper uses the federal government's policy, legislative, and litigation positions and the courts' pronouncements on the right to show progressively open acknowledgement of the right since 1996 to 2024. The paper additionally argues for revisiting the SCC's 2018 conclusion in Mikisew Cree First Nation v. Canada (Governor General in Council) and opening the legislative process to the duty in respect of this particular right. Finally, it concludes that co-jurisdiction as accommodation would align with UNDRIP and the reconciliatory purpose of s. 35.
Abstract: Bhinneka Tunggal Ikais a popular Indonesian phrase meaning “unity in diversity.” Through comparing Canadian and Indonesian approaches to conceptualizing and administering legal pluralism vis-à-vis indigenous peoples, the paper uses this concept to recommend direction for the administration of justice in Canada. The areas of comparison are the three main barriers to instituting a robust legal pluralism in Canada – legitimacy, dependency, and implementation. Where Asian and particularly Indonesian philosophies of legal pluralism create an atmosphere that legitimates legal pluralism's role as a nation-building tool, North American philosophies exacerbate an already adversarial and hierarchical relationship between multiple coexisting legal orders. While these divergent ways of framing legal pluralism have not resulted in large differences for these countries in terms of legislating to reconcile the existence of indigenous legal orders with those of the state, they have affected the way indigenous peoples and state citizens actually practice such coexistence. In general, current Indonesian practices founded on the idea of regionalism and _bhinneka tunggal ika(unity in diversity) offer more opportunities for indigenous legal traditions to function. In contrast, Canadian practices founded on the centralization of power and the dominance of state legal order over indigenous ones hinder such opportunities. Ironically, the origins of the Canadian legal system and the creation of the nation were dependent on and shaped significantly by indigenous and non-indigenous societies' early respect for each other's legal orders – as treaties and early Canadian jurisprudence show. This paper advocates for a return to that respect in the interest of Canadian nation-building.
Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07329113.2015.1072387
Protecting Rights and Interests
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A focus on protecting Indigenous sovereignty, jurisdiction, and rights
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Providing expert and reliable legal representation
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Achieving fair and timely resolutions for historical claims
Strengthening Governance for Indigenous Communities
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Supporting Nations to maintain stewardship of their land
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Facilitating productive negotiations with government and third parties
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Advocating and innovating for a changed legal system where Indigenous jurisdiction thrives
I advocate to strategically overhaul the Canadian legal system, positioning your inherent jurisdiction to thrive.