$10 million gift from Law Foundation of BC will transform legal landscape
This remarkable donation will support work to revitalize Secwépemc legal orders through a UVic initiative called Next Steps. It builds on the Foundation’s long-standing partnership with UVic Faculty of Law to support innovative legal education and drive meaningful societal transformation.
On a rainy December day, a group of chatty teenagers jostle each other as they trek from a yellow school bus into the new Indigenous Law wing at the University of Victoria. The young members of the Cowichan Tribes pass through a hallway lined with large windows looking onto native plant gardens and assemble in the Large Gathering Space—an impressive room inspired by Coast Salish Longhouses. They are here to learn about programs and opportunities offered by UVic Law, including the first joint degree program in Canadian Common Law and Indigenous Legal Orders.
Sitting in that vast, cedar-scented room, the students could perhaps envision their future studying or researching law at UVic. They might even envision helping to record and shape the laws of their community. For Indigenous youth across BC, that possibility moved closer to reality following a $10 million gift from the Law Foundation of BC for: Next Steps: Rebuilding Indigenous Legal Orders.
UVic alumna and law professor Val Napoleon is founder and academic lead for Next Steps. At a public celebration in 2025 to launch the program and mark the gift, she framed the occasion as “a day of transforming the legal imagination of Canada.”
“This moment would not be possible without the support of the Law Foundation and its confidence in this project and its vision,” said Napoleon at the event.
A vision to renew and rebuild legal orders
Next Steps is an Indigenous-led initiative to renew and rebuild Indigenous legal orders across Canada. While it builds on work done by UVic’s Indigenous Law Research Unit (ILRU) and within communities for many years, an initiative of this scale or scope has never been undertaken anywhere in the world.
Working in partnership with UVic, Next Steps will enable communities to work on rebuilding entire legal orders. "For the first time, we are working at a societal level, not at a small, community by community, sector by sector, level,” said Napoleon at the event. “We are working to restate and rebuild all the areas of law that comprise a legal order. All the areas of law that Indigenous peoples require to be lawful and to govern themselves lawfully."
Next Steps is built on Napoleon’s vision of a future where: “every Indigenous legal order in this country is healthy and functioning, allowing ourselves to manage our societies and to manage ourselves as peoples.”
Her vision for Next Steps includes rebuilding five legal orders across the country—but that’s only the start. Eventually, she envisions a Canada where all Indigenous legal orders can be rebuilt “doing the work of law and enabling people to take care of themselves, the land and this world."
Next Steps – Secwépemc Law
The first project is a partnership with the Secwépemc Nation to rebuild their legal orders, grounded in 16 years of past collaboration and research, including with ILRU. The project is led by Secwépemc for Secwépemc, with a dedicated team at UVic and supported by the investment from the foundation. The foundation’s $10 million investment will sustain the work for an initial five years.
Three associate directors of research, Racelle Kooy from Stswécem’c Xgat’tem and Samahquam First Nations, Sunny LeBourdais of the Whispering Pines/Clinton Indian Band and Bonnie Leonard of the Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc band are leading the project, bringing Secwépemc people together to put Secwépemc ancestral knowledge back to work for their own community and future generations.
"I really hope and dream that after this project, and moving forward, that the Secwépemc Law really becomes common knowledge. That it's something that people can't imagine their lives without. And it's something that they're no longer afraid of…, but they can see themselves reflected in it and because of that they become more connected to the Secwepemcúl’ecw and to the land than they ever have before."—Sunny LeBourdais, associate director of research, Next Steps – Secwépemc Law
An investment that fuels confidence and hope
The Law Foundation of BC funds legal education, legal research, legal aid, law reform and law libraries throughout BC and its vision is a future where systems of law and justice support all people to live and thrive in dignity. Their $10 million funding for Next Steps supports three full-time associate directors of research, additional community researchers, project communications and outreach, events and travel. It also helps instill confidence and hope in the project among the communities.
At the celebration, which took place in November 2025, Josh Paterson, the executive director of the foundation, was gifted a beaver pelt hung on a red willow hoop.
Paterson said that the foundation was proud to be a “quiet partner” in the work—acknowledging the collective work already accomplished and that lies ahead.
While accepting the gift, Paterson noted that gratitude is due to all the "teams and people who are doing this work, here at the faculty, in community, the people who will do work yet to come—the generations of knowledge keepers and practitioners." He added that this project will be built on the work of many people and communities that span decades.
Paterson wants other foundations and funders to consider doing the same.
The law foundation also contributed $11 million to the construction of the Indigenous Law wing, a 2,440-square metre addition to the Murray and Anne Fraser Building that offers a much-needed culturally appropriate space for learning and teaching Indigenous Laws. The high-school students who visited the new wing on that December day hopefully travelled home over the Malahat with a strong sense of possibility and a vision for their own future in law.