Perspectives on Treaties: Indigenous Law and Settler Worldviews

Fri. Aug. 22, 2025

Perspectives on Treaties: Indigenous Law and Settler Worldviews
Carwyn Jones and Nikki Hessell, Victoria University of Wellington in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Date: Wednesday Sept 17 (Wednesday) 
Time: 4 - 6 pm
Location:  Aabijijiwan/Kishaadigeh space

The BIPOC Network and the Department of English Special Programs present this talk which will look at issues around treaties in a comparative and interdisciplinary way. Carwyn Jones will talk about the example of Aotearoa New Zealand and the Waitangi Tribunal as an accountability mechanism, including the importance of understanding treaties as Indigenous law instruments. Nikki Hessell will talk about how historical settler ideas about treaty-making can be understood using Indigenous concepts that take in creative expression, including poetry, as part of the textual world of treaties.

Carwyn Jones is a Māori scholar from the Ngāti Kahungunu people. He is a former President of the Māori Law Society and has also served as a negotiator for his own community in the settlement of their historical treaty claims against the Crown. He is the author of New Treaty, New Tradition: Reconciling New Zealand and Māori Law, Co-editor of the Māori Law Review, and has published widely on topics relating to the Treaty of Waitangi, the rights of Indigenous peoples, and Indigenous legal traditions.

Nikki Hessell (Pākehā/settler)  works on the intersection between eighteenth-century literature, settler colonialism, and Indigenous writing. She is currently collaborating with Carwyn Jones on the project "The Poetics of Treaties: Settler Treaty-Making and Eighteenth-Century Poetry," funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Email Kerry Sinanan with queries: k.sinanan@uwinnipeg.ca