Faculty Colloquium: Scott Franks - Settler Harm Reduction as Legal Pedagogy

Event Description

This lecture will present Scott Franks' article which explores settler harm reduction approaches in legal education. While critical of these approaches, the author argues that a settler harm reduction approach may assist in reducing the harm caused by settlers and settler colonialism to Indigenous peoples, persons and lifeways, and to the non-human relations that sustain those peoples and lifeways. This article is an attempt to sketch a theoretical framework for understanding settler harm reduction as a legal pedagogy. The author defines the components of a settler harm reduction approach, including its objectives, and the agents, objects, and categories of harm that it addresses. The author also explores arguments for settler harm reduction in legal contexts and closes with a discussion of the risks and limits of a settler harm reduction approach. 

For Zoom details, email: eventassistant@allard.ubc.ca

Speaker

Scott Franks is a citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation and is from northern Saskatchewan. His doctoral research investigates the judicial construction of Métis legal identity in the Alberta Métis settlements (University of Ottawa; SSHRC - Doctoral - Joseph-Armand Bombardier). His LLM research investigated barriers and opportunities to the implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action in law schools (SSHRC CGS-M, CBA Viscount Bennett, York University Graduate Fellowship and Scholarship, and Law Foundation of British Columbia).

Franks' research is in the areas of Canadian Aboriginal law and Indigenous legal theory and practice. He also writes in criminal law and procedure, and in other legal areas relevant to Indigenous-settler relations.