Patricia M. Barkaskas

Patricia Barkaskas earned a M.A. in History, with a focus on Indigenous histories in North America, and a J.D., with a Law and Social Justice Specialization, from the University of British Columbia. She is the Academic Director of the Indigenous Community Legal Clinic and an Instructor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law. Patricia has practiced in the areas of child protection (as parent’s counsel), criminal, family, as well as civil litigation and prison law. She has worked closely with Indigenous peoples in their encounters with the justice system and has worked for Residential school survivors as an historical legal researcher for the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. In addition, she has written Gladue reports for all levels of court in BC. Her current and future teaching and research interests include access to justice, clinical legal education, decolonizing and Indigenizing law, particularly examining the value of Indigenous pedagogies in experiential and clinical learning for legal education, and Indigenous laws. Patricia is Métis from Alberta.

What are your key research interests?

• Clinical Legal Education
• Experiential Learning
• Decolonizing and Indigenizing Law
• Indigenous Pedagogies
• Métis Law

What drew you to working with Transformative Health & Justice?

Social determinants of health for Indigenous peoples include state laws and legal policies and practices in Canada. The intersection between health and justice for Indigenous peoples needs to be examined further to determine what changes need to be made to better support Indigenous health outcomes.