Implementing BC’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act requires new approaches to law-making, legal practice and law reform.

The BC Law Institute’s new Reconciling Crown Legal Frameworks (RCLF) program, guided by an advisory committee of public servants, practitioners, and Indigenous leaders, will build resources and recommendations to support the reconciliation of Crown law with Indigenous laws and forms of governance. BCLI sees the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a blueprint for revitalizing the legal pluralism that has always existed, and which colonialism has denied and diminished.

Our vision is for BC to progressively realize UNDRIP’s promise by stepping back from Indigenous jurisdictional spaces, by finding new ways and tools that protect and promote individual and collective Indigenous human rights, and by collaboratively (re)building inter-societal practices and institutions of co-governance and conflict resolution. These are the pillars of strong Indigenous-state legal pluralism, both in principle and practice.

We also see Indigenous peoples as legal pluralism experts. Our program for reconciling Crown legal frameworks must therefore also consider ways to learn from Indigenous laws, knowledges, and forms of governance.

This is our challenge; these are our commitments. Stay in touch by visiting us at bcli.org.