Associate Professor of Law & Academic Director of the Indigenous Legal Studies Program, University of British Columbia
Biography
Darlene is one of GRASAC’s co-founders. She was instrumental in the conceptualization of the GRASAC Knowledge Sharing System (our GKS database) and its unique use of a holistic heritage item table to store information on all types of items/beings/objects to better highlight the relations that exist between them. She has travelled on a number of GRASAC team research trips and has provided valuable legal and organizational advice to the project since 2005. Darlene is a member of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation.
Darlene is Associate Professor of Law and the Academic Director of the Indigenous Legal Studies Program at the Peter Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia. She earned her B.A. from Queen’s University, and an LL.B. and LL.M. from the University of Toronto. In 2008, she was awarded the designation of Indigenous People’s Counsel from the Indigenous Bar Association of Canada. Prior to accepting her appointment at the Allard School of Law, Professor Johnston was an Associate Professor and Aboriginal Student Advisor at University of Toronto. Her teaching areas include Indigenous Legal Traditions, Canadian Aboriginal and Treaty Rights, and Law & Colonialism. Her current research focuses on the relationship between totemic identity, territoriality and governance.