Aimée Craft is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Common law, University of Ottawa and an award-winning teacher and researcher, recognized internationally as a leader in the area of Indigenous laws, treaties and water. She holds a University Research Chair Nibi miinawaa aki inaakonigewin: Indigenous governance in relationship with land and water. She is from Treaty One territory and the homeland of the Red River Métis in Manitoba, Canada and is of Indigenous (Anishinaabe-Métis) and settler descent.
Since 2025 has chaired the Manitoba Clean Environment Commission. She was nominated by the Indigenous Bar Association to serve on the 2026 Independent Advisory Board for Supreme Court of Canada Judicial Appointments. She is also the former Director of Research at the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and the founding Director of Research at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. She practiced at the Public Interest Law Centre for over a decade and in 2016 she was voted one of the top 25 most influential lawyers in Canada. In 2021 she was awarded the prestigious Canadian Bar Association President’s Award and was appointed to the Order of Ontario in 2022. In 2024, she received the King Charles III Coronation Medal.
Prof. Craft has received numerous awards for research and knowledge mobilization. She leads a series of major research grants on Decolonizing Water, works with many Indigenous nations and communities on Indigenous relationships with and responsibilities to nibi (water) and prioritizes Indigenous-lead and interdisciplinary research, including through visual arts and film. She also plays an active role in international collaborations relating to transformative memory in colonial contexts and relating to the reclamation of Indigenous birthing practices as expressions of territorial sovereignty.
Breathing Life into the Stone Fort Treaty, her award-winning book, focuses on understanding and interpreting treaties from an Anishinaabe inaakonigewin (legal) perspective. Treaty Words, her critically acclaimed children’s book, explains treaty philosophy and relationships.
She is past chair of the Aboriginal Law Section of the Canadian Bar Association, past chair of the Manitoba Arts Council and a current member of the Speaker's Bureau of the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba and the Day Scholars Revitalization Society.