Bruce McIvor (Indigenous Rights in One Minute: What You Need to Know to Talk Reconciliation) and David A. Robertson (52 Ways to Reconcile: How to Walk with Indigenous Peoples on the Path to Healing), together with author Daniel Heath Justice, will discuss Indigenous rights and the meaningful ways we can work together to advance reconciliation.
Bruce McIvor is the founder and senior partner at First Peoples Law LLP and an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia’s Peter A. Allard School of Law. He is the author of Standoff: Why Reconciliation Fails Indigenous People and How to Fix It (2021). He is a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation, and lives in Vancouver, BC.
David A. Robertson is a two-time winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award, and has won the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award and the Writers’ Union of Canada Freedom to Read Award. He has received several other accolades for his work as a writer for children and adults, including being named Globe and Mail Children’s Storyteller of the Year in 2021, and for his work as a podcaster, public speaker and social advocate. In 2023 he was honoured with a Doctor of Letters by the University of Manitoba for outstanding contributions in the arts and distinguished achievements. He is a member of the Norway House Cree Nation and lives in Winnipeg, MB.
Moderator Daniel Heath Justice is a Colorado-born citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a Spears-Foreman-Riley descendant. He is Professor of Critical Indigenous Studies and English and a Distinguished University Scholar at the University of British Columbia on unceded and occupied Musqueam territory. His research extends from Cherokee literary and cultural history and Indigenous literary expression more generally, to literary considerations of other-than-human kinship, speculative fiction, Indigiqueer belonging and animal studies. His fully revised twentieth-anniversary edition of Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History, is forthcoming in December, with an updated focused on Cherokee citizenship and sovereignty.
