Too Many Land Claims Documents? Not a Problem.
Robson Hall Law Professor Provides Free Public Resource on Specific Claims
Dr. Bryan Schwartz, who holds the Asper Chair of International Business and Trade Law at the University of Manitoba Faculty of Law, has updated and improved his Specific Claims website.
The website is a free public access resource, intended for use by the general public, members of Indigenous communities, students, teachers and legal practitioners. The website contains thousands of documents stretching over many decades in relation to case law and policy development in the area of Indigenous claims against the Crown. Included are all the reports of the Indian Claims Commission and its successor, the Specific Claims Tribunal. A search function enables users to search every document, including those in PDF format, using word search.
The website will be further developed in the year ahead with additions to the filters in the search function, including improving date range and word search functions.
Schwartz has worked extensively as both an academic and practitioner in Indigenous law, including in the area of specific claims. He served as counsel for the Assembly of First Nations in its partnership with Canada to develop the Specific Claims Tribunal Act, and has appeared there as an expert witness. He has also appeared at the Supreme Court of Canada as counsel in a number of Indigenous law cases and continues to act in specific claims cases for various Indigenous communities.
With the support of the Indigenous Initiatives Fund at the University of Manitoba, Schwartz recently introduced a new course at the Law faculty on Indigenous People, Oral History and the Law. This year, he also released a collection of oral histories of Indigenous jurists and policy-makers from Manitoba. It is available for free public access at the Manitoba Law Journal website in Volume 41 (2) and other e-locations.