Lana Lowe

Topic

Dene K’ę́ káɂedets’enįɂá: Thinking Like Dene Engaging Dene Legal Reasoning through Community Dialogues with the Fort Nelson First Nation

Faculty of Law

Date & location

• Friday, October 9, 2026
• 10:00 A.M.
• Virtual Defence

Examining Committee

Supervisory Committee

• Dr. Val Napoleon, Faculty of Law, University of Victoria (Supervisor)
• Prof. Deborah Curran, Faculty of Law, UVic (Member)
• Dr. Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, School of Indigenous Governance, UVic (Outside Member)

External Examiner

• Prof. Naiomi Metallic, Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Brian Pollick, Department of Art History and Visual Studies, UVic

Abstract

For generations, Indigenous peoples have been struggling to reclaim jurisdiction and self-determination in our homelands. At the same time, our governance processes have become more entangled in colonial governance and extractivist paradigms, and it seems finding our way to determining our own future in our own lands, on our own terms is becoming difficult to imagine. The purpose of the study is to explore how to engage Indigenous legal traditions in community as a means for grounding governance in Dene worldviews. The focus is on the practice and process of revitalizing Indigenous law at a community level. Using Dene stories, this study combines storytelling and dialogue to engage collective legal reasoning grounded in Dene legal traditions. This approach involves taking our stories seriously as sources of law while engaging in dialogue to co-create legal meaning in a series of dialogues with the Fort Nelson First Nation. I ground the research in an approach consistent with Dene K’ę́ Káɂedets’en ̨ıɂá, or ways of “thinking like Dene.” Findings summarize the priorities, concerns and tensions that emerged in the dialogues, organized around four themes: perceptions of law, restoring relationships, accessing knowledge and making decisions. Findings also show that the process of collective story analysis and dialogue is, itself, Indigenous legal practice, as participants engaged with Dene legal thought, resulting in the creation of new and shared meanings over time and participant’s increasing ability to think critically with stories, both without the need for previous expertise in Dene law. By demonstrating a community-based approach to legal resurgence that is grounded in Indigenous methodologies and Dene thought, this study complements ongoing efforts to rethink Indigenous governance and offers a case study in how Indigenous law can be engaged as a living, deliberative practice within Indigenous communities.