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John Borrows, professor and inaugural Loveland Chair in Indigenous Law, has received the Guthrie Award from the Law Foundation of Ontario, the Foundation’s signature award.
Borrows was recognized for his transformative impact on how the academic and legal sectors understand and intersect with Indigenous law and for his innovations in teaching that have been recognized both nationally and internationally.
“He has profoundly shaped our recognition of Canada as multi-juridical and has revitalized Indigenous law within legal education, Indigenous communities, and Canadian society broadly,” said Linda Rothstein, the Foundation’s Board Chair.
Borrows is Anishinaabe/Ojibway and a member of the Chippewas of the Nawash First Nation in Ontario. He teaches a course to first-year law students that addresses the intersection of Indigenous Peoples’ laws with Canada's laws. Over the past decade, Borrows has also taught an intensive course in Anishinaabe law and legal tradition, often bringing students to his People's Neyaashiinigmiing reserve to meet with Elders, Chiefs, colleagues and teachers and experience Indigenous law in context.
He has edited and authored several award-winning books, including Canada’s Indigenous Constitution, Law’s Indigenous Ethics, Recovering Canada: The Resurgence of Indigenous Law, and more recently, Voicing Identity Cultural Appropriation and Indigenous Issues – all with University of Toronto Press. An Officer of the Order of Canada, he holds six honorary degrees from Canadian universities, including Dalhousie University, Queen's University, Simon Fraser University, York University and Victoria University in the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo.
“John has integrated Indigenous law rooted in Indigenous Peoples’ natural and social environment into the very heart of legal education,” says University Professor Jutta Brunnée, Dean of the Faculty of Law and James Marshall Tory Dean’s Chair. “His extraordinary work revivifying Indigenous law has also contributed to a re-envisioning of the potential of law and participatory democracy. As John says: ‘Law is a social and human activity. It’s something you do, not merely something that’s done to you’. His message is reaching not only law students, but the broader world.”
The Law Foundation of Ontario announcement
