Dispute Resolution grad helping First Nations

When Calgary native Jessica Dickson was a political science undergraduate at the University of British Columbia after starting her BA in humanities at the University of Calgary, like a lot of poli-sci students, she thought the natural progression of her education pointed towards the bar. Consequently, upon receiving her BA, she took a job at a law firm.

“When I was in poli-sci I started becoming familiar with some of the dispute resolution initiatives that were taking place in civil war contexts and that was really interesting to me,” she says. “Then when I went to the law firm it kind of solidified for me that maybe litigation as an approach to conflict resolution wasn’t always the best one. So I applied to UVic.”

But it wasn’t just UVic’s reputation that brought her east of the Rockies. The allure of West Coast living was too strong to resist. “I came out to Vancouver for a concert and decided I had to live on the coast,” explains Dickson, a self-described “music festival junkie.”

While pursuing UVic’s Master of Arts in Dispute Resolution, Dickson quickly found her path, one she said she would have never anticipated. This was largely due to her co-op experience. “I came to understand and be exposed to the BC treaty negotiation process through my co-op placement as an evaluation analyst at Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada,” she says. “I worked for the audit and evaluations sector, and on the same floor as the federal treaty negotiators, and that’s kind of how I came into that whole scene.”

Dickson made First Nations dispute resolution her focus, saying “Through my master’s thesis [entitled "Addressing Disputes Between First Nations: An Exploration of the Indigenous Legal Lodge"], I furthered my understanding of First Nations relationships with the Crown.” Ultimately, she learned that the past still resonates very much in the present for BC First Nations.

Since defending her thesis in November, Dickson has moved out of the public sphere and into the private sector, and the change has been significant. “I went from working for the biggest organizations in Canada to working in a boutique company with a tight-knit team,” says Dickson, who now works as a consultant with the Castlemain Group, a management consulting, finance, technology solutions and strategic communications firm for First Nations communities. “As a consultant working pretty much exclusively with First Nations, it’s kind of like doing public sector work on private sector timelines,” Dickson explains. “Everything just happens a lot faster.”

Dickson’s understanding of the processes of dispute resolution has become more holistic as a result of her experience, with her focus on “the linkages between dispute resolution, governance, capacity building, and all of those processes that a community undertakes to move forward. That’s probably where I’ll take it from here.”