Esteemed Blackfoot researcher to discuss Buffalo Treaty at HSD Engage

Esteemed Blackfoot researcher, educator and First Nations advocate Leroy Little Bear is coming to UVic on Nov. 2 to discuss the historic Buffalo Treaty as part of an HSD Engage event. 

Little Bear, an emeritus professor at the University of Lethbridge, will discuss the international treaty, signed in 2014 by First Nations on both sides of the US-Canada border. The first such treaty in 150 years, the Buffalo Treaty puts the largest land animal on the continent at the centre of an agreement around cooperation, restoration and renewal.

Little Bear has long said that the buffalo are a "keystone species," intricately connected to Indigenous Peoples of the northwest plains. 

“The treaty uses the buffalo as the centrepiece, the portal, to work together on a number of issues, such as conservation, education, economics, the environment and research," Little Bear told CBC News in Banff in 2015. 

School of Indigenous Governance Associate Professor Gina Starblanket will facilitate the talk at First Peoples House as part of the HSD Engage speaker series, which brings researchers from the Faculty of Human and Social Development (HSD) together with communities to explore issues that contribute towards building just, equitable, decolonial and sustainable futures.

Starblanket, who is Cree/Saulteaux and a member of the Star Blanket Cree Nation in Treaty 4 territory, researches issues including Indigenous political orders and Indigenous movements towards political transformation, the politics of treaty implementation, and prairie Indigenous political thought.

Please join us for this special evening, which starts at 5 pm, at UVic's First Peoples House. 

Registration is required to attend.