Aimee Craft

Biography

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 Law at the University of Manitoba.  Her expertise is in Anishinaabe and Canadian Aboriginal law.

Professor Craft is one of the lead researchers on Water sustainability and indigenous laws (SSHRC Partnership Grant) and on hydro-impacted communities in Northern Manitoba (SSHRC Partnership Grant). Since 2013, Craft has lead research on Anishinaabe water law (SSHRC Partnership Development Grant).

Craft'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. Prof. Craft is the former Director of Research at the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and the founding Director Research at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (University of Manitoba).

In her decade of legal practice at the Public Interest Law Centre, Craft has 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 and a member of the Speaker's Bureau of the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba. In 2011, she received the Indigenous Peoples and Governance Graduate Research Scholarship.