Keynote Address for Celebrating Indigenous Expertise in Sustainability by Danika Billie Littlechild

The Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability and the Loyola Sustainability Research Centre are thrilled to welcome Professor Danika Billie Littlechild to give a keynote address for the  Celebrating Indigenous Expertise in Sustainability conference.

As a member of the Ermineskin Cree Nation, Neyaskweyahk, Maskwacis (Alberta) in Treaty No. 6 territory and Assistant Professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University, Professor Littlechild has served First Nations as a practising lawyer and advisor in the areas of environment, Indigenous Legal Orders, and health and governance and currently has an active research program in the field of Ethical Space as applied to biodiversity conservation and environment. As a practicing lawyer and scholar, she has also advised Indigenous representative organizations such as the Assembly of First Nations, regional treaty-based organizations, and PTOs. Internationally, On the international stage, she has served as an advisor and Indigenous Peoples Representative in various UN mechanisms, treaty bodies and special procedures including participation in treaty body mechanisms, and standard setting negotiations such as the development of the SDGs as a member of the Indigenous Peoples Major Group, and the intergovernmental process leading to the Minimata Convention on Mercury. She served as an advisor to the North American representative on the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues  and was general counsel for International Indian Treaty Council from 2011-2018, working internationally with Indigenous Peoples from the Caribbean, the Pacific and the Americas. She was the first Indigenous woman to be appointed as Vice-President of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO (2014-2018) after almost 15 years of working with CCUNESCO in various voluntary, leadership and advisory capacities.

Danika has focused much of her efforts over the past few decades on issues related to environment, water, climate change, sustainability and more recently conservation and biodiversity. She was the Co-Chair of the Indigenous Circle of Experts under the Pathway to Canada Target 1 initiative, intended to contribute to the realization of Canada’s commitments under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

For more details on Professor Danika Billie Littlechild’s impressive list of achievements and past and ongoing work, see her full bio here.