News

The Schulich School of Law is pleased to share that Associate Professor Violet Ford (LLB '91) was recently named the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Circumpolar Indigenous Marine Governance and International Law. The announcement was made on Wednesday, October 22, 2025, by the Honourable Mélanie Joly, federal minister of industry, as part of a national investment of more than $690 million in science and research funding.

The CRC program recognizes scholars whose work has the potential to transform understanding and improve lives and whose research is shaping a more sustainable, just, and resilient future. It supports thinkers and innovators whose discoveries push the boundaries of knowledge, while preparing the next generation to do the same through teaching, mentorship, and collaboration.

A residential school survivor who became the first female Inuit lawyer in Canada, Ford is a globally recognized expert on Inuit rights and the international legal dimensions of Indigenous cultural heritage.

For Arctic and subarctic Indigenous peoples, the ocean is central to their survival, their culture, and their way of life. Yet, international marine legal frameworks still overlook their rights and laws. Ford is leading a new effort to change that. 

"This CRC provides an opportunity for reconciliation by reclaiming, applying and creating ways for Inuit legal traditions to be recognized and legitimized within a global legal context,” she says.

Her “Nuliajuk Project” aims to create an Indigenous-led partnership to shape an Arctic and subarctic Marine Legal Framework that integrates Indigenous legal traditions and international law. Her work seeks to redefine how the world governs the Arctic and subarctic marine areas by setting a new standard for how international law norms regarding Indigenous rights can be achieved in legally binding instruments.

Learn more about Ford’s work in this story from the 2025 edition of Hearsay, the Schulich School of Law’s annual alumni magazine.