Professor Pascale Fournier has been awarded a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant for a project entitled “Developing an Indigenous & non-Indigenous collaborative research partnership: human rights, self-determination and the Indian Act's legacy of harm and discrimination.” The project brings together an exceptional team of leaders, including Professor Fournier’s primary partners, Dr. Dawn Lavell-Harvard (Trent University, Director of the First Peoples’ House of Learning), and Mélanie Vincent (Executive Director of KWE! Meet with Indigenous Peoples).
The Indian Act has left a legacy of eroded rights, severed community ties, and disproportionate harm inflicted on Indigenous women and their descendants. Despite amendments meant to address these injustices, legislation has too often continued to entrench systemic discrimination through complex rules like the “second-generation cut-off.” In its 2024 review, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women underscored Canada’s failure to fully remedy these harms.
At the heart of this new partnership is a bold question: How can Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners work together to transform a colonial legal legacy into a platform for self-determination, justice, and healing?The project seeks to engage Elders, women, communities, and youth to develop human rights-based approaches to identity, recognition, and belonging. It will connect domestic and international legal mechanisms with lived experiences on the ground, ensuring that Indigenous women and their descendants can have a voice in shaping the systems that have historically excluded them.
Six students will support the research, joining consultations, intercultural training and field visits. Their work will also contribute to a forthcoming documentary, offering a portrait of research and collaboration rooted in respect, reciprocity, and reconciliation. This innovative research will also be presented at the United Nations in Geneva.
Professors Fournier and Lavell-Harvard recently sat down for a candid and powerful conversation on the legacy of the Indian Act, the Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark Lavell decision, and the path toward reconciliation. Click here to watch that discussion.
And Professors Fournier and Vincent previously authored an article for La Presse to mark National Indigenous Peoples Day in 2022, emphasizing the importance of building relationships rooted in respect, recognition, and mutual understanding. Click here to read their article “Tendre la main pour se connaître, se reconnaître et pour s’allier.”
Professor Fournier is the Director of the Observatory on Human Rights at the UN, an initiative of the Civil Law Section that strives to support the development of human rights in collaboration with the UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies, to innovate legal education by bridging the gap between theory and practice, and to empower the public through knowledge democratization. In 2024, she directed a Learning Futures Fund project that took her and Jurivision to Manitoulin Island to film interviews with Indigenous women impacted by the Indian Act since the 1970s – perspectives that are crucial to this new research partnership. Previously the University of Ottawa Research Chair in Legal Pluralism and Comparative Law (2012-2018) and President and CEO of the Trudeau Foundation (2018-2023), Professor Fournier has a wealth of experience training, mentoring and supervising students and emerging scholars.
SSHRC Partnership Development Grants are designed to spark innovative, collaborative projects that generate real-world impact from academic research. These grants have the power to amplify the impact of new ideas through the creation and exchange of knowledge across disciplines, sectors and borders, with the goal of addressing pressing social, intellectual, cultural, economic, or environmental issues that can benefit all Canadians.
Congratulations to Professor Fournier and her team. We look forward to watching this partnership grow!