Release provided by Edyn Clowater, Atlantic Human Rights Centre
Christa Big Canoe will deliver the annual Dr. Bernie Vigod Lecture in Human Rights on “Disappearing Indigenous Children – Canada’s Ongoing Genocide” at 7 PM on Wednesday, October 14th, in St. Thomas University in Kinsella Auditorium.
About her upcoming lecture, Christa Big Canoe says: “The stealing of Indigenous children and forcing them into Indian residential schools in law, policy and with force, is enforced disappearance in international law. It is even more difficult when children never returned from the schools because of death, often without proper notice and with so many unanswered questions. To call this anything less than genocide is to be willfully blind.”
This free public event offers a rare opportunity to hear from a distinguished lawyer and advocate. In her talk, Christa will address the solutions that have been offered and how Canada keeps failing to implement them at the peril of Indigenous people’s human rights.
Christa Big Canoe is an Anishinaabe and Mohawk mother and lawyer. She is a member of Georgina Island First Nation, an Anishinabek community. She has been the Legal Director of Aboriginal Legal Services since 2011. Christa was Senior and then Co-Lead Commission Counsel for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Christa has been before all levels of court, including the Supreme Court of Canada. Most recently, she was the lead prosecutor against Canada before the Permanent Peoples Tribunal on Disappeared Indigenous Children and Unmarked Burials.
She was named a change maker in Canadian Lawyer’s Top 25 Most Influential in the Justice System in 2017. In 2021, she was recipient of the first Alnoba Moment of Truth Award and Spirit of Barbara Schlifer Award; a recipient of the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University’s 2022 Scotiabank Ethical Leadership Award; and is a recipient of the King Charles III Coronation Medal.
The lecture is organized by the Atlantic Human Rights Centre and co-sponsored by Dr. Bernie Vigod’s family, in his honour. The Atlantic Human Rights Centre promotes and develops multidisciplinary teaching and research in human rights at the local, regional, national, and international level. The Centre has collaborated with various scholars, activists, and organizations to foster meaningful dialogue on human-rights-related topics since 1989.
