NOVEMBER 24, 2022 - Ottawa book launch: The Valley of the Birdtail

Divided by a beautiful valley and 150 years of racism, the town of Rossburn and the Waywayseecappo Indian reserve in Manitoba have been neighbours nearly as long as Canada has been a country. Their story reflects much of what has gone wrong in relations between Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous Canadians. It also offers, in the end, an uncommon measure of hope. Valley of the Birdtail is about how two communities became separate and unequal—and what it means for the rest of us.

Please join the authors Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Douglas Sanderson (Amo Binashii) for the launch of their bestselling book. The discussion will be moderated by Adam Dodek, Full professor and former Dean of the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section at the University of Ottawa.

About the Speakers

ANDREW STOBO SNIDERMAN is a writer, lawyer, and Rhodes Scholar from Montreal. He has written for the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, and Maclean’s. He has also argued before the Supreme Court of Canada, served as the human rights policy advisor to the Canadian minister of foreign affairs, and worked for a judge of South Africa’s Constitutional Court. He developed the idea for the book while he was a visiting scholar at HRREC and the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section!

DOUGLAS SANDERSON (AMO BINASHII) is the Prichard Wilson Chair in Law and Public Policy at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and has served as a senior policy advisor to Ontario’s attorney general and minister of Indigenous affairs. He is Swampy Cree, Beaver clan, of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation.