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7:00 PM
Kinsella Auditorium

Christa Big Canoe will be delivering the lecture "Disappearing Indigenous Children - Canada's Ongoing Genocide" as part of the Vigod Memorial Lecture in Human Rights on Wednesday, October 14 at 7:00 PM in the Kinsella Auditorium.

Christa Big Canoe was the lead Prosecutor against Canada for crimes against humanity and genocide before the Permanent Peoples Tribunal in May 2026, and the Lead Commission Counsel for the National Inquiry into Missing Indigenous Women and Girls. In her talk, she will address the solutions that have been offered and how Canada keeps failing to implement them at the peril of Indigenous people’s human rights.

“The stealing of Indigenous children and forcing them into Indian residential schools in law, policy and with force, is enforced disappearance in international law. It is even more difficult when children never returned from the schools because of death, often without proper notice and with so many unanswered questions. To call this anything less than genocide is to be willfully blind.”

Christa Big Canoe is an Anishinaabe and Mohawk mother and lawyer. She is a member of Georgina Island First Nation, an Anishinabek community. She has been the Legal Director of Aboriginal Legal Services since 2011. Christa was Senior and then Co-Lead Commission Counsel for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Christa has been before all levels of court, including the Supreme Court of Canada. Most recently, she was the lead prosecutor against Canada before the Permanent Peoples Tribunal on Disappeared Indigenous Children and Unmarked Burials. She was named a change maker in Canadian Lawyer’s Top 25 Most Influential in the Justice System in 2017. In 2021, she was recipient of the first Alnoba Moment of Truth Award and Spirit of Barbara Schlifer Award; a recipient of the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University’s 2022 Scotiabank Ethical Leadership Award; and is a recipient of the King Charles III Coronation Medal.