Indigenous scholar Val Napoleon has been appointed interim Dean of Law from October 1, 2021 to December 31, 2022. Napoleon is the director of the Indigenous law degree program at UVic and of the Indigenous Law Research Unit, which she co-founded in 2012 to partner with Indigenous communities, helping them to research, re-articulate and rebuild their laws. She also holds the Law Foundation Chair of Indigenous Justice and Governance, has been named a Canadian Indigenous Bar Association People’s Counsel—a rare distinction awarded to a First Nations, Inuit, or Metis lawyer for “outstanding achievements in the practice of law"—a L’expert Zenith Award, and was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars in 2017. In 2021 she received a national Indspire Award and an honorary Doctorate of Laws from UNBC.