Bio
Aimée Craft is an Indigenous lawyer (Anishinaabe-Métis), an assistant professor at the Faculty of Common Law, University of Ottawa, and an adjunct professor in Native Studies at the University of Manitoba. Her expertise is in Anishinaabe and Canadian Aboriginal law. Aimée is one of the lead researchers on two SSHRC-funded partnership grants: on water sustainability and Indigenous laws; and on hydro-impacted communities in Northern Manitoba. Since 2013, Craft has led research on Anishinaabe water law alongside a faculty of Anishinaabe Elders and knowledge holders.
Aimée’s award-winning 2013 book, Breathing Life Into the Stone Fort Treaty, focuses on understanding and interpreting treaties from an Anishinaabe inaakonigewin (legal) perspective. In 2016, she was voted one of the top 25 most influential lawyers in Canada. She is the former director of research at the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and the founding director of research at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (University of Manitoba). She is a member of the Speakers Bureau of the Treaty Relations
In her decade of legal practice at the Public Interest Law Centre, Aimée worked with many Indigenous peoples on land, resources, human rights and governance issues. She is past chair of the Aboriginal Law Section of the Canadian Bar Association. In 2011, she received the Indigenous Peoples and Governance Graduate Research Scholarship.