Jean Teillet

Jean Teillet

In April 2012, Ms. Teillet was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.  She was awarded the title of Indigenous Peoples’ Counsel by the National Indigenous Bar Association in September of 2011.  Ms. Teillet was the first recipient of the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Lincoln Alexander Award.  She is one of the 19 women honoured in the ongoing Trailblazer Exhibit at the University of Toronto Law School.  She was awarded the University of Alberta Aboriginal Law Students Association’s 2005 Aboriginal Justice Award and the University of Windsor Law School has named an Access to Justice scholarship in her name.

Ms. Teillet is a graduate of the University of Toronto Law School.  She is a partner in the law firm of Pape Salter Teillet.  She specializes in aboriginal rights litigation and treaty negotiations.  She has also acted for many years for midwives in Ontario and BC.  She was lead counsel at the Supreme Court of Canada in the first Métis rights trial R. v. Powley.  She also acted for Métis organizations in interventions in Cunningham and Blais.  She has acted for First Nations in several cases at the Supreme Court of Canada including most recently Taku River and Little Salmon Carmacks and in interventions in the Manitoba Métis Federation, Cunningham, Delgamuukw, Haida, and Paul.

Ms. Teillet has several published works including chapters in the 2nd edition of Great Questions of Canada, Métis-Crown Relations, Aboriginal Law Since Delgamuukw, and The Long Journey of a Forgotten People.   In 2011 she published an article in Walrus Magazine and a fictional short story of hers was published by the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Journeys: How travelling fruit, ideas and buildings rearrange our environment.  Ms. Teillet has also been published in several law and social science academic journals including the Australian Law Journal, the Supreme Court Law Review, the Saskatchewan Law Journal, and Canadian Universe, a co-publication of the Association for Canadian Studies and Ruppin Academic Centre of Israel.  She wrote the introduction to Dr. Arthur Ray’s recent book Telling it to the Judge and for the forthcoming book by Walter Hildebrand The Battle of Batoche.  She also writes the annual Métis Law in Canada, the only comprehensive compilation of Métis law available.

Ms. Teillet maintains an active role as a public speaker in Canada and internationally speaking about aboriginal and human rights, culture, identity, access to justice and Charter issues.  She dedicates much of her time to aboriginal law students and is a frequent lecturer at many law schools in Canada.  Ms. Teillet initiated Kawaskimhon (speaking with knowledge) Aboriginal Rights Moot in 1993 and has periodically acted as a judge/facilitator since that time.

Ms. Teillet is the great grand niece of Louis Riel.

Events

ID Event Name Duration Start Date
Métis and the Crown: Resolving Old and Difficult Grievances Full Day October 11, 2012

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