Indigenous Legal Studies Faculty and Staff
Indigenous Legal Studies Committee
Anne Uteck
Assistant Professor of Teaching
Faculty Lead, Indigenous Legal Studies Summer Intensive in Torts; Director, Upper-year Mooting Program; Co-Academic Director, Indigenous Legal Studies (January 2023)
- Phone: 604 822 5019
- Email: uteck@allard.ubc.ca
Professor Uteck practiced law in Nova Scotia before before deciding to pursue an academic career beginning at the SMU Sobey School of Business. She completed her doctorate on reconceptualizing spatial privacy for the Internet of Everything during which time she was the recipient of several awards, including the Gowlings Fellow in Technology Law, as well as winning several international peer reviewed competitions.
Johnny Mack
Assistant Professor
Co-Academic Director, Indigenous Legal Studies
- Phone: 604 827 4823
- Email: mack@allard.ubc.ca
Professor Johnny Mack is from the Toquaht Nation (Nuu-chah-nulth) and is Assistant Professor at UBC Allard School of Law. From 2014-2018 he was jointly appointed across First Nations and Indigenous Studies and Allard Law at UBC. His research investigates the legal relationship between Indigenous and settler peoples in contemporary settler states, particularly Canada, as well as Indigenous constitutionalism, subjectivity, critical theory, and legal pluralism.
- Centre for Business Law
- Indigenous Legal Studies
Mary Liston
Associate Professor
- Phone: 604 822 9844
- Email: liston@allard.ubc.ca
Mary Liston is an Associate Professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia. She teaches public law including administrative and constitutional law, legal theory, and law and literature. Her research focuses on public law broadly and administrative law in particular. It also lies at the intersection of constitutional law, legal theory, and democratic theory.
- Centre for Feminist Legal Studies
- Indigenous Legal Studies
Alexandra Flynn
Associate Professor
- Phone: 604 822 6810
- Email: flynn@allard.ubc.ca
Professor Alexandra Flynn’s teaching and research focus on municipal law and governance, administrative law, property law, and experiential education. She has published numerous peer-reviewed papers, public reports, media articles, and a book on how cities are legally understood in law and how they govern, including the overlapping geographies and governance of city spaces, and the formal and informal bodies that represent residents.
- Centre for Feminist Legal Studies
- Centre for Law and the Environment
- Indigenous Legal Studies
Salima Samnani
Lecturer
Supervising Lawyer - Indigenous Community Legal Clinic
- Email: samnani@allard.ubc.ca
Salima Samnani is a Kenyan Indo-Canadian Muslim immigrant. Her experience as a litigator and as a lecturer focuses on public law and civil law including family, child protection, and employment law. Salima’s research, areas of expertise, and advocacy focus mainly on access to justice, anti-racism, clinical legal education, and education for self-represented and underrepresented litigants.
- Indigenous Community Legal Clinic
- Indigenous Legal Studies
Allan Prest
Indigenous Law Students Association Co-President
Student
- Indigenous Legal Studies
Cheyenne Campbell
Indigenous Law Students Association Co-President
Indigenous Legal Studies JD Summer Intensive Program Assistant
- Indigenous Legal Studies
Charlotte Weston
Allard LSS Director of Indigenous Affairs
2L Student
- Indigenous Legal Studies
Lee Schmidt
Associate Director
Indigenous Legal Studies
- Phone: 604 822 2177
- Email: lschmidt@allard.ubc.ca
- Indigenous Legal Studies
- JD Student and Academic Services
ILS Faculty
Gordon Christie
Professor
- Phone: 604 822 9872
- Email: christie@allard.ubc.ca
Professor Christie has a LL.B. from the University of Victoria, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has taught in universities in Canada and the United States, in Faculties of Law, and Departments of Philosophy and Indigenous Studies. Most recently he was an Assistant Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School (1998 - 2004), where he also acted as Director of the Intensive Program in Aboriginal Lands, Resources and Governments.
- Indigenous Legal Studies
Johnny Mack
Assistant Professor
Co-Academic Director, Indigenous Legal Studies
- Phone: 604 827 4823
- Email: mack@allard.ubc.ca
Professor Johnny Mack is from the Toquaht Nation (Nuu-chah-nulth) and is Assistant Professor at UBC Allard School of Law. From 2014-2018 he was jointly appointed across First Nations and Indigenous Studies and Allard Law at UBC. His research investigates the legal relationship between Indigenous and settler peoples in contemporary settler states, particularly Canada, as well as Indigenous constitutionalism, subjectivity, critical theory, and legal pluralism.
- Centre for Business Law
- Indigenous Legal Studies
Robert Clifford
Assistant Professor
- Email: clifford@allard.ubc.ca
Robert is WSÁNEĆ and a member of the Tsawout First Nation, his home community; he carries the name YELKATŦE, which was passed to him by his late grandfather, Earl Claxton Sr. His PhD research uses community participation methodologies to explore the ways WSÁNEĆ laws are generated by and reflect the values, philosophies, lands, and worldviews of the WSÁNEĆ people.
- Centre for Law and the Environment
Patricia M. Barkaskas (on leave)
Associate Professor of Teaching
Academic Director, Indigenous Community Legal Clinic
- Phone: 604 822 5629
- Email: barkaskas@allard.ubc.ca
Patricia M. Barkaskas is Métis from Alberta. Her research focuses on the intersection of justice and law, including access to justice, clinical legal education, and decolonizing and Indigenizing law. She is particularly interested in examining the value of Indigenous pedagogies in experiential learning, clinical legal education, and skills-based legal training, and disrupting the normative violence of colonial legal education.
- Centre for Feminist Legal Studies
- Indigenous Legal Studies
Michael Jackson Q.C
Emeritus Professor of Law
- Email: jackson@allard.ubc.ca
Michael Jackson has been involved in the teaching and advocacy of human rights for over thirty years, specializing in the areas of prisoners rights and Aboriginal rights. His courses on these subjects were the first to be introduced in a Canadian law school. Professor Jackson is a member of the bar of British Columbia and has represented prisoners and First Nations in landmark cases before the Supreme Court of Canada, including the Delgamuukw and Haida Nation cases.
Anne Uteck
Assistant Professor of Teaching
Faculty Lead, Indigenous Legal Studies Summer Intensive in Torts; Director, Upper-year Mooting Program; Co-Academic Director, Indigenous Legal Studies (January 2023)
- Phone: 604 822 5019
- Email: uteck@allard.ubc.ca
Professor Uteck practiced law in Nova Scotia before before deciding to pursue an academic career beginning at the SMU Sobey School of Business. She completed her doctorate on reconceptualizing spatial privacy for the Internet of Everything during which time she was the recipient of several awards, including the Gowlings Fellow in Technology Law, as well as winning several international peer reviewed competitions.
Nikos Harris, KC
Associate Professor of Teaching
Director of Experiential Learning, Faculty Lead for of Indigenous Legal Studies Academic Leadership Certificate
- Phone: 604 827 5340
- Email: nharris@allard.ubc.ca
Nikos Harris is an award-winning professor who also has extensive experience as appellate counsel. He has authored numerous articles on issues in criminal law and evidence, and his writing has been cited in a number of trial and appellate judgments. Nikos has served as a guest speaker for a number of organizations including Continuing Legal Education, the Trial Lawyers Association, and Crown Counsel of British Columbia. He is also is an advocacy advisor for the Supreme Court Advocacy Institute which assists counsel in preparing submissions for the Supreme Court of Canada.
ILS Instructors
Mark Gervin
Lecturer
Legal Services Director - Indigenous Community Legal Clinic
- Email: gervin@allard.ubc.ca
- Indigenous Community Legal Clinic
Salima Samnani
Lecturer
Supervising Lawyer - Indigenous Community Legal Clinic
- Email: samnani@allard.ubc.ca
Salima Samnani is a Kenyan Indo-Canadian Muslim immigrant. Her experience as a litigator and as a lecturer focuses on public law and civil law including family, child protection, and employment law. Salima’s research, areas of expertise, and advocacy focus mainly on access to justice, anti-racism, clinical legal education, and education for self-represented and underrepresented litigants.
- Indigenous Community Legal Clinic
- Indigenous Legal Studies
ILS Adjunct Professors
Nigel Baker-Grenier
Adjunct Professor
- Indigenous Legal Studies
Maxime Faille
Adjunct Professor
- Indigenous Legal Studies
Kate Gunn
Adjunct Professor
- Indigenous Legal Studies
Darwin Hanna
Adjunct Professor
- Indigenous Legal Studies
Bruce McIvor
Adjunct Professor
- Indigenous Legal Studies
Staff
Lee Schmidt
Associate Director
Indigenous Legal Studies
- Phone: 604 822 2177
- Email: lschmidt@allard.ubc.ca
- Indigenous Legal Studies
- JD Student and Academic Services
Dalia Al Houseini
Indigenous Legal Studies Programs Coordinator
- Phone: 604.827.4720
- Email: alhouseini@allard.ubc.ca
- Indigenous Legal Studies
- JD Student and Academic Services
Cherry Chiu
Student Services Program Assistant
- Phone: 604 827 3602
- Email: chiu@allard.ubc.ca
Cherry Chiu is the Student Services Program Assistant.
- JD Student and Academic Services
Vernon Black
Legal Assistant
- Phone: 604 827 3832
- Email: vblack@allard.ubc.ca
- Indigenous Community Legal Clinic
- Indigenous Legal Studies
Trevor Roemer
ILS Coach
- Email: troems@student.ubc.ca
- Indigenous Legal Studies