An Alexander First Nation judge has received one of Canada’s most prestigious Indigenous awards.
Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Cheryl Arcand-Kootenay received an Indspire Award May 12, the awards ceremony for which aired on APTN and CBC June 19.
The Indspire Awards are the highest honour Canada’s Indigenous community bestows upon Indigenous people, said Brandon Meawasige, spokesperson for Indspire (the charity behind the Indspire Awards). The awards recognize outstanding and inspirational achievement by Indigenous Canadians in 12 categories. Arcand-Kootenay won in the Law and Justice category.
“She has proven to many, especially Indigenous youths, that their voices, too, can be heard through hard work and perseverance,” Meawasige said.
Arcand-Kootenay said the award committee told her about her win in December, and sent a camera crew out to film clips for the award show in February. Her daughter accepted the award on her behalf at the awards gala in Ottawa in May, and the award itself (a Lucite trophy and a diamond pin) arrived in the mail on Friday.
Compassionate justice
A Morinville resident and Alexander member, Arcand-Kootenay was the first Treaty 6 woman in Alberta to become a provincial court judge and in May became the first Treaty 6 person to join Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench.
Arcand-Kootenay said she was inspired to get into law by hearing stories about renowned Indigenous figures such as architect Douglas Cardinal and lawyer Willie Littlechild in the news.
“Nobody told me I could be a lawyer,” she recalled in an interview June 20, and no one in her family is a lawyer or a judge.
Arcand-Kootenay earned her law degree at the University of Alberta and started her own law firm, specializing in child welfare and Indigenous justice. In 2018, she joined Alberta’s provincial court as a judge based in St. Paul, presiding over criminal, family, and civil matters, and advocating for culturally respectful access to justice.
Arcand-Kootenay said that something like 80 per cent of the people she saw in the docket up in St. Paul were Indigenous.
“You want to help these people,” she said, and make sure they only have to go to court once instead of ending up in the docket again and again.
One tool Arcand-Kootenay uses to do this is the healing circle, the use of which she pioneered in Alberta for family law matters. Instead of having both parties argue it out under a time limit, as per the traditional judicial dispute resolution process, the healing circle has parties talk for as long as they need to resolve an issue with the help of an elder. The circle uses the principal of the talking stick (where only the person holding a certain designated object can speak) to control the conversation, and includes a smudge ceremony and a prayer.
“It was very emotional,” she said of the first circle she organized, with a lot of crying and spoken truths, and the parties worked out a solution in a few hours.
Arcand-Kootenay said healing and sentencing circles often result in a plan to help an accused deal with trauma and get their life on track, reducing the chance that they become repeat offenders. She hopes she and other Indigenous judges will encourage more courts to use these forms of dispute resolution.
Arcand-Kootenay said she hopes to finish her master’s degree in law this summer and to continue serving as a mentor to law students.
“I’m proud to be where I am, and I just want to do a good job where I am.”
Arcand-Kootenay said it feels good to receive this recognition, and hopes it will inspire other Indigenous youths to get into law.
“These are spaces and places they can be as well.”
The 2022 Indspire Awards show can be viewed on CBC Gem.
