The Government of Canada's Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) unveiled the winners of the 2013 Impact Awards, and the University of Alberta Faculty of Law's Ph.D. Candidate Hadley Friedland ('09, LL.M.) has been chosen as the award winner in the Talent award category. Hadley will be presented with the Talent award at the World Social Science Forum, in Montréal, on Tuesday, October 15, 2013.
"I am very honoured to have been selected as the winner of this award," Hadley replied when asked for her reaction to the announcement. "I am excited because I think the Indigenous, academic and professional interest in my work so far demonstrates the growing interest in finding ways to respectfully engage with Indigenous legal traditions, within and across these communities. If my work is contributing to that, then it is worthwhile work."
The Talent Award recognizes outstanding achievement by a current SSHRC doctoral or postdoctoral fellowship or scholarship award holder. The Talent Award is given to an individual who maintains academic excellence, has a talent for research and knowledge mobilization and has demonstrated clear potential to be a future leader within and/or outside the academic sector. The Faculty of Law is delighted that Hadley Friedland has been chosen for this award, and is confident that she will indeed be a future leader in her area of legal studies.
Steven Penney, Associate Dean (Graduate Studies & Research) at the Faculty of Law, said that "Hadley's research has already had a substantial impact on legal scholarship, Indigenous communities, and the legal system. Moreover, by helping to bridge the divide between Indigenous and Western legal systems, her work promises to assist in healing relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and finding solutions to a variety of pressing social problems."
Hadley is currently working on her doctorate, at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law, with a Vanier Graduate Scholarship. The Vanier support enabled Hadley to return to her partner's small but vibrant Cree community of the Aseniwuche Winewak, to do her doctoral work.
"It is grounding (and delightful) to be working on Cree law surrounded by his large extended family, with my children and my many lively nieces and nephews running in and out of my home office all day," Hadley said.
The working title of Hadley's doctoral dissertation is: Reclaiming the Language of Law: Exploring the Contemporary Articulation and Application of Cree Legal Principles in Canada. Her research focuses on how to identify and articulate Indigenous legal principles, and whether and how they can be accessed, understood and applied today. Her approach to this question, which is increasingly recognized as a relevant and pressing one within Canada for many reasons, is to take Indigenous laws seriously as laws. She has built on the work of contemporary Indigenous scholars to develop a method for investigating Indigenous legal principles using adapted methods and the same rigor required to seriously engage with state laws in Canadian law schools. Her method involves using an adapted 'case brief' method' to analyze a number of published and oral stories, as well as other available resources, for potential legal principles, and synthesizing the results into an analytical framework that organizes the principles in a convenient, accessible and understandable form.
You can learn more about Hadley Friedland's method and some of the issues facing scholarly and professional engagement with Indigenous legal traditions in "Reflective Frameworks: Methods for Accessing, Understanding and Applying Indigenous Laws" (2013) 11 (2) Indigenous Law Journal 1.
Recipients of prestigious awards in Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Announced: