Val Napoleon

Val Napoleon, Indigenous Peoples’ Counsel, LLB, PhD is a Professor for the Faculty of Law, the Law Foundation Chair of Indigenous Justice and Governance UVic, and the former Acting Dean of Law. She is the co-founder of the JD/JID (Juris Doctor and Juris Indigenarium Doctor) dual degree program in Indigenous legal orders and Canadian common law, and the founding director of the Indigenous Law Research Unit. She is Cree from Saulteau First Nation and an adopted member of the Gitanyow (northern Gitxsan). Her areas of research are Indigenous legal traditions and methodologies (e.g., land, water, governance and democracy, gender and human rights, dispute management, and families), Indigenous legal theories, Indigenous feminisms, legal pluralism, Indigenous democracies, and Indigenous intellectual property. She teaches common law property intersocietally with Gitxsan land intersocietally in the JID/JD.