Jeffery Hewitt

Biography

Jeffery Hewitt is an Associate Professor whose teaching, research and legal practice bring together Indigenous legal orders and governance, art and law, visual legal studies, constitutional law, human rights, legal education and business law. Jeff was called to the Ontario bar in 1998 and is mixed-descent Cree. He has continued to practice law alongside his academic work (largely in-house legal work with a First Nation). This experience informs his interest in how law operates not only as doctrine, but in the practical work of communities making decisions, developing laws and building institutions.

His interdisciplinary research considers how law can be understood through visual as well as textual methods. He is working on a PhD in Art History at York University placing early maps of what is now known as North America in conversation with contemporary Indigenous artists whose work engages land, territory and relationships.

Selected publications

Books

• Jeffery Hewitt, Beverley Jacobs & Richard Moon, eds, Indigenous Spirituality and Religious Freedom (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2025).

Book Chapters

• Beverley Jacobs & Jeffery Hewitt, “Practices of Indigenous International Law and Development” in Ruth Buchanan, Luis Eslava & Sundhya Pahuja, eds, The Oxford Handbook of International Law and Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023) 527–544.
• Jeffery G Hewitt, “Certain (Mis)Conceptions: Westphalian Origins, Portraiture and Wampum” in Shane Chalmers & Sundhya Pahuja, eds, Routledge Handbook of International Law and the Humanities (London: Routledge, 2021) 159.
• Ruth Buchanan & Jeffery G Hewitt, “Treaty Canoe” in Jessie Hohmann & Daniel Joyce, eds, International Law’s Objects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) 491–503.

Journal articles

• Jeffery G Hewitt, “Land Acknowledgment, Scripting and Julius Caesar” (2019) 88 Supreme Court Law Review.
• Ruth Buchanan & Jeffery G Hewitt, “Encountering Settler Colonialism through Legal Objects: A Painted Drum and Handwritten Treaty from Manitoulin Island” (2017) 68:3 Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly.
• Jeffery G Hewitt, “Decolonizing and Indigenizing: Some Considerations for Law Schools” (2016) 33:1 Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice 65–84.

Other publications

• “How Indigenous Art is Challenging Colonial Law” (2017) Special Canada 150 Publication Series, Centre for International Governance Innovation.
• “Indigenous Peoples, Art and Law” (2017) Law Society of Upper Canada, Special Lecture Series.

Grants

• Along with Val Napoleon et al. this project follows a 2012 initiative on working with Indigenous laws in communities and updates the community development of laws as well as seeks to educate courts and tribunals on engaging with Indigenous legal orders.

• Along with Richard Moon and Beverley Jacobs, this project seeks to bring academic and Indigenous community-based contributors together in a workshop to investigate the various issues relating to Indigenous Peoples’ spirituality and the Charter.

• This project examined Indigenous legal research methodologies through cultural objects, with a focus on drums through a Connections grant and brought together a number of Indigenous and non-Indigenous thinkers in considering ways in which research methods are set out within cultural objects themselves from different Indigenous nations. 

Recognition and awards

• 2022 Osgoode Hall Law School, Teaching Award
• 2016 Faculty of Law, University of Windsor Teaching Award, Students Law Association
• 2014 Osgoode Hall Law School, York University Teaching Award, Adjunct Faculty

Courses

• LAW 350I: Indigenous Field Study Level I
• LAW105I: Transsystemic Contracts 

Graduate supervision

Professor Hewitt is interested in supervising graduate students working in Indigenous legal orders and governance, art + law and visual legal studies, constitutional law, human rights, legal education, and interdisciplinary legal research, particularly projects engaging visual, experiential or other non-textual methodologies.