UWindsor law professor Sylvia McAdam was brought before a Saskatchewan judge last week, put on trial for attempting to use her family’s ancestral lands.

She and her brother, Kurtis McAdam, had begun building a shelter on provincial park lands that they claimed as their ancestral home.

After a one-day trial, a judge dismissed the case. The government had not presented enough evidence to prove its case and the McAdams did not testify.

Though the case ended without their testimony, it shows that a deeper commitment to reconciliation is needed, argue Prof. McAdam and her Windsor law colleagues Jillian Rogin and Reem Bahdi in an article for the Conversation, which publishes news and views from the academic and research community.

“Canada is built on broken treaties, dispossession, starvation and forced assimilation,” they write. “Reconciliation requires a holistic approach which includes nothing less than changing relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.”

Read the entire article, “Law professor put on trial for ‘trespassing’ on family’s ancestral lands,” in the Conversation.