Tell us about yourself and how you came to be a researcher at uOttawa.
The University of Ottawa is the ideal host institution for my postdoctoral study of the history of lawyers-as-bureaucrats in the Department of Justice (DOJ). The potential to interview current (and former) staff lawyers in the Department, the ability to access the Department’s archival history at Library and Archives Canada, and the opportunity to work with my postdoc supervisor, Professor Constance Backhouse, were all factors drawing me to the University of Ottawa.
Tell us about your research topic. What are you working on?
I completed my PhD in Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, so I may take a bit of a different approach than other postdocs in the law school by incorporating historical/archival studies and sociology into my work. Broadly, my work focuses on colonialism and access to justice, and looks at the roles of the legal profession and of government administrators in what I call “administrative colonialism”. My dissertation study, under the supervision of Dr. Mariana Valverde, a professor at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto, was a history of an Indigenous legal aid program operated by the federal government (the Department of Indian Affairs and the Department of Justice), from 1870 to 1970. That national-scale, century-long study uses policy files, the DOJ capital punishment records, and over 600 homicide-legal aid case files from the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) archives to demonstrate the broad and deep relationship between the administration of justice and the administration of Indian affairs. I approach the study of Indigenous legal aid in that era as the product of ‘networks’ of legal actors across the country – judges, Indian agents, bureaucrats, defence lawyers, and Indigenous advocates – highlighting the contestations, disagreements and self-interests that motivated their participation. The project bridges a wide gap in the literature between historical studies of the ‘initial application’ of settler laws to Indigenous communities in the 19th Century, and criminological studies focusing on Indigenous over-representation in the justice system. I am currently revising the dissertation into a book.
My postdoc study continues to focus on ‘administrative colonialism’ by looking at the work of lawyer-bureaucrats in the Department of Justice from its beginnings in 1868, until today. Among other topics, this study seeks to build on findings from my legal aid study about the DOJ’s ad hoc hiring of local lawyers in rural areas to act as ‘Agents of the Minister of Justice’ for the defence of Indigenous accused.
What do you hope to accomplish during your fellowship at uOttawa?
In addition to writing a few articles, securing a book contract, and getting knee-deep into Department of Justice records at the national archive, I am looking forward to connecting with Indigenous organizations in Ottawa to share my PhD findings, and to explore their current concerns about access to justice and Indigenous justice. I am also looking forward to starting a monthly series of meetings to help build a community among postdocs, graduate students, and faculty members; stay tuned for information about that in the fall!
What influences your work?
I have been very lucky to have had the opportunity to engage in extensive personal and professional development at the Centre for Indigegogy, in the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University. Led by Professor Kathy Absolon, and PhD Candidate Giselle Diaz, I was able to participate in circle-work, Anishinaabe ceremony, and many, many days of reflection on my potential role as an ally in decolonizing education and research. The decolonial methodologies, approaches, and relationships from the Centre for Indigegogy have been the core influence on my work since 2017. In terms of traditional disciplinary influences, I very much identify as an interdisciplinary scholar. I studied literature in my undergraduate and Master’s degrees, and I bring a humanities/humanist approach to my work in criminology, legal studies, and socio-legal history.
Do you have any advice for those who are currently completing their PhDs?
My advice for those in the writing stage of their PhDs is to take care of yourselves, mentally, physically, and emotionally. Writing a dissertation is indeed a marathon, but it also has a lot of sprints built into it! For those in the earlier stages of their degrees, I recommend auditing additional classes in your areas of interest (with permission, of course). I audited four additional courses during my degree and benefitted from each and every one of them. Finally, try to find a few “library buddies” so you can sit together to write in the library; the mutual encouragement of this kind of community is fantastic, and it also helps to have someone who can watch your laptop while you take a break.
Do you have publications that you would like to share with our community?
- Briggs, Jacqueline. 2019. “Exemplary Punishment: T.R.L. MacInnes, the Department of Indian Affairs and Indigenous Executions, 1936-1952” Canadian Historical Review 100(3): 398-438.
This article was awarded the Political History article prize in 2020 by the Canadian Historical Association, and the Peter Oliver prize by the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History. - Briggs, Jacqueline. 2020. “Mercy Redux: A Genealogy of Special Consideration of Indigenous Circumstances at Sentencing in Canada, from Indian Agents to Gladue and Ipeelee” Studies in Law, Politics and Society 83: 57-97.
What are you currently reading?
I love this question. My reading time is currently divided in three streams. The first stream is books and articles relevant to my area of study (history of the legal profession, sociology and history of bureaucracies, works in the fields of settler colonial studies and Indigenous studies); in this stream, I have just started reading Robert Caro’s huge 1974 biography The Power Brokers, about bureaucrat Robert Moses’ highway-building projects (etc.) in NYC. The second stream is a series of writing/rhetoric guides to help revise my dissertation into a ‘readable’ book; one of the most helpful so far has been William Germano’s From Dissertation to Book. The third stream is a series of gifts to myself: I am taking time to read novels again after so many years of only reading scholarly texts; one of my most satisfying reads, post-dissertation-defence in the fall, was Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. (Did you know it was a book first? And that Crichton was a medical doctor before he became a fiction writer?).
