Sabrina and Ashleigh developed this module to focus explicitly on Indigenous perspectives, worldviews, pedagogy and relational understandings of law among Indigenous peoples in Australia, Canada and the United States. It demonstrates a decolonised curriculum and anti-racist pedagogy as well as co-creation, and creates strong engagement and a sense of belonging.

Teaching area

Decolonial pedagogy

Course

Level 6 optional module in Law, open to Law students, Visiting and Exchange students and students from other disciplines

Description

Sabrina: When this module was first proposed, it was mainly a discussion‑based seminar focused on Canadian and American Aboriginal Law (domestic law affecting Indigenous people or engaging with Indigenous issues). Although students were enthusiastic, we gradually realised that this approach centred settler‑colonial legal systems and was inconsistent with Indigenous worldviews and perspectives. We wanted students to gain a better understanding of Indigenous legal thought and practice. As our research developed and we read more extensively, we recognised that we did not need to be Indigenous to introduce Indigenous perspectives responsibly; what mattered was approaching them with respect, depth and care.

Over the last seven years, this module has undergone a significant transformation. The first half now focuses explicitly on Indigenous law – perspectives, worldviews, pedagogy and relational understandings of law among Indigenous peoples in Australia, Canada and the United States. The second half examines settler‑colonial law against these foundations, enabling students to see the profound tensions between the two. This structure does more than diversify the syllabus: it positions Indigenous knowledge as central rather than peripheral.

Embodied teaching

A key aim has been to make the teaching embodied and tactile. Drawing on Indigenous pedagogical traditions, we introduced creative, sensory and arts‑based activities that encourage students to explore law through their bodies, emotions and senses. One major activity involves beadworking. There is a growing body of scholarship which discusses the normative elements of Indigenous beadworking. The specific materials used in beadwork carry symbolic and historical meaning, and they encode relationships of responsibility, reciprocity and intergenerational learning. These relationships are forged not only through human-to-human interaction (in the form of beading circles), but also through human interaction with the materials of beadworking: the beads, the needle, the threads.

Beadworking

Before the session, the students design an image on felt responding to the question ‘What is law?’ They are asked to watch two instructional videos on beadworking and read articles about the normative value of beadworking in Indigenous communities. In class, they spend around 40 minutes beadworking their designs. Throughout, they are prompted with reflective questions about the process of beadworking and the images they have designed. Afterwards we hold an Indigenous‑style sharing circle where everyone is given the opportunity to communicate their experiences but also has the option to only listen.

We ask them how they learned about the norms of beadworking. Many admit that they either did not watch the instructional videos and/or learned more from the embodied practice of beadworking and watching their peers. They also note that they learned something about the process from their interaction with the materials. For example, if the needle pricks you, it is a sign that you’re not doing it right; you haven’t learned the ‘rules’. Through this process, students discover how norms are transmitted not only through written rules, but also by observing others and embodied practice. They further discover that the non-human world generates norms that may both enable and constrain their own actions and behaviours. This helps them develop a non-anthropocentric notion of legal normativity, which is a fundamental aspect of Indigenous legal thought.

Art activity

Ashleigh: We introduced a powerful art activity based on a crowd-sourced art installation called ‘Walking with our Sisters’, spearheaded by Métis artist Christi Belcourt, which commemorates missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Students design moccasin tops, or ‘vamps’ – illustrations representing the tops of unfinished moccasins, which symbolise those female lives cut short. We give the students reflective prompts to help them to draw on what they’ve learned in the module about violence against Indigenous women and Indigenous notions of justice (for example, that it is relational, holistic, and focused on establishing harmony and balance). The activity ties in with the beadwork exercise as students are invited to use ‘dot painting’ as an Indigenous art form to emulate the beadwork designs on moccasins. We discuss and draw inspiration from the Indigenous artists of the Papunya Tula Art movement in Australia and the work of Métis artist Leah Dorion, whose paintings often portray the strength and centrality of Indigenous women and girls.

Nature observation

Students also undertake observations of nature, where they examine relationships between different elements and how each element exerts its own normative structure, which may limit (or support) the activities of others (human and non-human). For instance, they might note how wind shapes the activities of birds, humans and trees. Interestingly, when students were asked to ‘mindmap’ these normative relationships, they instinctively used images instead of words. We found this very interesting because it showed a growing comfort with non‑textual forms of legal expression.

Photography

Another strand of the module involves photography. Students take or select photographs that illustrate tensions between Indigenous relationships to land and dominant Canadian property law frameworks. Students are asked to share their photographs before our scheduled seminar, and then we spend part of the seminar discussing what the photographs represent to them.

We’ve been impressed with the photos that they take – even the simplest shots can carry rich meaning. Photography allows them to express something they might not have been able to express in writing. For instance, images of gates, locks and fences evoke the exclusionary logic of Canadian property law, which can then be juxtaposed against other students’ shots of (for instance) broken fences, demonstrating resistance.

Creative perspectives on the power of property law as a mode of settler colonial control are reflected in photographs of passports, manor homes, and maps with grid roads and European place names. Students have used photographs of sacred objects such as totem poles to interrogate the impacts of the colonial taking of cultural property, one student even using it as a prompt for reflection on her own (perceived) complicity in these takings.

Medicine-wheel-inspired paintings

Sabrina: We are continuing to expand our aesthetic approach to the law. In later weeks, students work in groups to create medicine-wheel-inspired paintings, reflecting on the four dimensions of responsibility in the Indigenous worldview: to self, land, community and ancestors. This form of ‘visual jurisprudence’ helps them to connect the laws of the past, the present and future generations using images and relationships to map inter-relationality between human and non-human societies.

Later in the term, we revisit these examples of visual jurisprudence when examining Indigenous experiences of residential schooling. Students create stories based on the paintings they made earlier in the term, to represent the long-term impacts of residential schooling and Canada’s reconciliation efforts. Storytelling is an essential form for communicating knowledge in Indigenous societies. By anchoring their stories in the medicine-wheel-inspired paintings, students begin to see storytelling as ethical and moral practices rather than just aesthetic ones. This form of co‑creation enables students to see their own work embedded meaningfully into the curriculum.

Sound

In 2024/25, we introduced a new session on the normative value of sound and the idea of sound colonialism (how colonial power is exercised through forms of sensory control). We gave a seminar on sonic law, where we exposed the students to Indigenous throat-singing as a way of protesting climate change. Students described it as a memorable experience – particularly in the way that it was juxtaposed against a typical parliamentary debate about climate change. They indicated that they really felt the discomfort, existential threat and oppression of climate change in the form of throat-singing, in a way that could not be conveyed through traditional legal debate.

Outcomes

Decolonisation of the curriculum and anti-racist pedagogy

This module positions Indigenous knowledge as central rather than peripheral.

Student engagement

Students consistently describe the module as creative, meaningful and unlike any other legal teaching they have experienced. Artwork, beadwork, photography and sound enable students to express complex legal ideas they might not be able to articulate through traditional writing. Following the introduction of the seminar on sonic law, the essay question on sound was the most frequently chosen topic, proving that this embodied approach appeals to students.

Co-creation of the curriculum

We use materials produced by students in teaching.

Sense of belonging

Students of colour in particular have commented that they feel reflected in the module and safe to share their lived experiences.

Comments

• Sabrina: I always leave the seminar feeling inspired; the module has become ‘everything I wanted teaching to be’.
• Students often say that they feel alienated from the law – applying the law seems like a disembodied rational practice that they’re not involved in. Our practice encourages them to engage all their senses, to consider how they feel and to see themselves reflected in legal discussions.
• Co‑teaching has strengthened the module, with both of us willing to take risks, innovate and experiment.
• Ashleigh: We can be creative in our teaching methods and make space for students to be creative too, which sees us all grow. I continually learn from my students in this module.
• Departmental support has enabled us to redesign assessments towards creative portfolios and to resource arts‑based activities.
• The small cohort size (under 20) creates a tight-knit group, which is crucial to the module’s success.

Student feedback

My experience in Aboriginal Law was genuinely transformative, largely because of its hands-on and creative approach to learning. Rather than focusing on traditional lectures and case analysis, the course invited us to engage with law in a more holistic and reflective way. Activities such as beadwork, drawing and painting in an Indigenous dot art style encouraged me to think about law beyond written rules and court decisions. These practices helped me better understand how law can be lived, embodied and expressed in ways other than text. What I appreciated most was how this approach challenged my assumptions about what ‘counts’ as legal knowledge. Engaging in creative practices made space for different ways of knowing and highlighted the importance of Indigenous perspectives that are often overlooked in conventional legal education and in the western legal community.

Overall, this class expanded my understanding of law as something dynamic and interconnected with identity, community, and history. It demonstrated the value of decolonial legal pedagogy by showing that meaningful learning can happen through experience, creativity, and reflection.

(Natasha Belle Wilson)

A student on the module published this blog post in 2025 about ‘listening to the law’.